Buffy The Vampire Slayer: 5 Ways The Show Is Accurate To Vampire Folklore (& 5 Ways It Isn’t) – Screen Rant

Buffy the Vampire Slayer started out as a little, mid-season replacement series on the WB in the late 90s, but quickly rose in popularity and has become one of the most beloved shows of all time. It has also become the textbook for all the vampire dos and donts.Theres a lot of folklore and myth in this series. Almost every episode introduces a new demon or super vampire that Buffy must face.

In fact, a lot of those storylines stem from actual ancient storytelling, but a lot of it also stems from the inner-workings of Joss Whedon, the shows imaginative creator. Whedon used pieces of folklore that worked for his show and left out the things that didnt work, which made it a pretty close to perfect series. So without further delay, here are five waysBuffy the Vampire Slayerstays true to classic vampire mythology and five ways it diverges.

Everyone knows that as long as you never invite a vampire into your home, youre safe from the undead. Buffy the Vampire Slayer doesnt try to change this rule, which makes for some interesting scenes, especially in the beginning of the series when Buffy first meets Angel and doesnt know who he really is.

The first time Buffy invites Angel into her home, she yells out, Come in! Come on!," because theyre being chased by vampires. Its a fun little Easter Egg and also makes you wonder what wouldve happened if she hadnt said that as soon as they got to her front door.

Though, we never see a vampire on the show attempt to eat it, its safe to assume that garlic is not a weapon of choice against vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness in Buffys world.

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Its been a popular and widely known antidote to ward off these demons in a lot of vampire tales. The idea of garlic being used against vampires originated from Bram Stokers Dracula." Some people also assume the garlic theory could have come from the fact that mosquitoes, another blood sucking demon, are repelled by it as well.

Both in Buffyand many other vampire tales, when vampires look into a mirror or a window or anything offering a reflection, they see nothing. This was another fact believed to have been invented by Bram Stoker when he wrote, Dracula," but theres also evidence that it stems from the original Balkan mythology.

The two theories as to why theres no reflection are 1) because a vampire doesnt have a soul and your reflection is that of your soul, so you cant reflect what you dont have, and2) mirrors were backed by silver, a kind of metal that vampires are actually averse and (in a way) allergic to.

The vampires in Sunnydale can not and will not be confined to small, wooden coffins. These big-bads actually tend to have pretty nice apartments and lairs, equipped with beds and other basic human amenities.

It seems as though the undead still appreciate some of the luxuries they had when they were living. Just because they cant be in daylight and like to drain the blood from innocent victims doesnt mean they cant have nice things and a comfortable sleeping arrangement. Coffins are for the dead, after all, not theundead.

This is probably the number one rule across all vampire folklore: Vampires can only come out at night. According to some legends, if a vampire steps into daylight, they will quickly burn up and turn to dust.Other myths don'thave such a dramatic end; instead, nighttime is simply described as the most active time for these creatures.

The idea of vampires only coming out at night makes the sun going down that much scarier, not just for the people of Sunnydale but for anyone who believes that the undead live among us.

Early on while creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon decided that his vampires would not fly and did not have the availability to turn into bats. Mainly, this was a budget concern for the show.

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The show didnt have the money to create an effect like that and if they tried, it would have looked silly. So as a workaround, Whedon gave his creatures other abilities like super strength, a heightened sense of smell, and some of them could even read minds . There were notably much easier to factor into the shows budget.

This has always been the case since the invention of vampires in Balkan and Eastern European folklore. Vampires feed on blood, usually human blood, and usually by sucking it from their victims neck. Butreally,anywhere a vein or artery rests will do the trick.

This being their main source of sustenance has given way for the development of a lot of clever nicknames, including: Bloodsuckers, Leech, Freeloader and Buffys favorite term, a Big Bad.

What vampires actually look like has been described differently across almost all folklore and stories about the creatures. Originally, it was said they were bloated with a purplish skin tone due to the fact that they were previously dead. The gaunt and pale vampire image dates back to early 19th century folklore and literature. The idea of vampires having fangs was also not in original tales.

Joss Whedon took vampire imagery a step further with his show. Here, the vampires look like normal humans until they are provoked to kill, which is when their face changes to something more demonic and monstrous.

When it comes to killing a vampire, most folklore and storytelling gives you two options: You can either shoot the vampire through the heart with a silver bullet, or if you can get close enough to the demon, you can stab it in the heart with a wooden stake.

Some stories, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also say that decapitating a vampire will turn them to dust rather quickly. The most common method out of all of these is the stake-through-the-heart approach which, by coincidence, is also Buffy's favored way of dispatching evil Bloodsuckers.

Joss Whedon probably took the most liberties on the show when he started combining different folklore to create storylines. Never before had there been a story about a vampire with a soul, but thats what Joss wrote when he came up with the character we now know as Angel, the undead love of Buffys life andavampire who was cursed with a soul after killing a young gypsy whose family practiced magic.

Having a soul and the memories of all the people you hurt is the ultimate punishment for a demon like Angel, and its also a very clever addition on Whedons part. This, in more ways than one, was a new way to humanize nightmarish monsters that are known for feeding on people.

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Amelia Brantley is a writer and actor based in Los Angeles, California. Her love for film, television, and theater drove her to pursue her dreams at a young age. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Acting from The American Music and Dramatic Academy and constantly auditions/works in the industry. In addition to writing for ScreenRant, Amelia also blogs, on her own blog, as well as for other entertainment industry online resources. If she isn't writing or self-taping, she's most likely cuddling with her dog, Warner George.

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Buffy The Vampire Slayer: 5 Ways The Show Is Accurate To Vampire Folklore (& 5 Ways It Isn't) - Screen Rant

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