Buffy is amazing. This is one of the few undisputed facts of pop culture. No matter how famous Joss Whedon has now become as Marvel Studios' unofficial overlord, his true calling card will probably always be the story of a tiny blonde girl who saved the world a lot.

In the eleven years (eleven!!) that have passed since Buffy aired its finale, plenty of trivia and making-of factoids have become common knowledge among the show's still-devoted fanbase. But you know what they say: on a hellmouth, you never stop learning.

Here are 27 behind-the-scenes tidbits you may not have heard before.



1. Britney Spears was originally in line to play dream girl robot April in the season five episode 'I Was Made To Love You', but scheduling conflicts forced her to drop out and actress Shonda Farr took the role instead.

2. An alternative first season could have featured Katie Holmes as Buffy and Ryan Reynolds as Xander. Both were offered the roles, with Reynolds reportedly turning it down because he couldn't bear to relive his own grisly high school experience.

3. Buffy's death was foreshadowed two full seasons in advance. In the season three finale 'Graduation Day', Buffy and Faith share a coma dream in which Faith cryptically says: "Little Miss Muffet, counting down to 730". At this time, Buffy had two years (730 days) left to live. The line also foreshadows the arrival of Dawn, who is likened to Little Miss Muffet a few times throughout season five.



4. One of the weirdest bits of behind-the-scenes drama involved stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt, who was fired from the show and subsequently took to fan message board The Bronze in order to vent his frustrations about Joss Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar. He did so by writing an elaborate metaphorical story set in a medieval kingdom, in which he cast himself as a humble knight, Whedon as the corrupt king, and Gellar as a spoiled princess. You can read the entire baffling thing, along with Whedon's response, here.

5. Joss Whedon has described Oz (Seth Green) as "the only character that was really ever based on somebody I knew", the person in question being a very cool college acquaintance who played guitar.

6. Before Willow began dating Tara in season four, Whedon had toyed with the idea of making Xander gay instead.

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7. During the scene in season two finale 'Becoming' when Giles is tortured by Drusilla, Anthony Stewart Head put chilli peppers in his mouth in order to look convincingly agitated and physically wrecked. Pity poor Juliet Landau, who had to kiss that mouth.

8. Actress Bianca Lawson, who played stony-faced vampire slayer Kendra in three season two episodes, was originally cast as Cordelia but turned the role down.

9. Xander is the first of the Scoobies to drink alcohol, in the episode 'Teacher's Pet' where he ends up getting almost date raped by a praying mantis teacher. Next it's Buffy and Cordelia in 'Reptile Boy', and they end up getting almost date raped by a creepy frat boy who's actually a reptile demon. Drinking is bad, m'kay?



10. Season one sub-villain The Anointed One was always kind of lame, but he had to be killed off even earlier than planned in season two because the young actor (Andrew J Ferchland) had noticeably matured, and was supposed to be playing an immortal vampire.

11. Buffy gets turned into a rat for a large portion of the Xander-centric season two episode 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered', because Sarah Michelle Gellar needed time off during production in order to film her first appearance on Saturday Night Live.

12. That "Grrr. Arrgh." that you hear at the end of every Mutant Enemy episode is Joss Whedon's voice. Mutant Enemy was the name he gave to his first typewriter, at the age of 15.



13. Nathan Fillion originally auditioned to play Angel way back in the late nineties, and while he lost out to David Boreanaz, he's gone on to become one of Joss Whedon's most regular collaborators (Firefly, Dr Horrible, Much Ado, not to mention the eventual role of creepy priest Caleb in Buffy).

14. Season three's 'Helpless', which sees Buffy lose her Slayer abilities as part of a sadistic Watchers Council test, was originally titled '18' in reference to her birthday.

15. Dawn was originally intended to have several superpowers of her own, including the power to communicate with the dead and move objects with her mind.



16. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan are the only two actors who appeared in all 144 episodes of the show – Nicholas Brendon doesn't appear in season seven's 'Conversations With Dead People'.

17. Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia), Julie Benz (Darla), Elizabeth Anne Allen (Amy) and Mercedes McNab (Harmony) all originally auditioned to play Buffy before being cast in their roles.

18. The continuity of Buffy's birthday was jumbled throughout the show. A season one shot of her school records showed her birthday as October 24, 1980, while another showed May 6, 1979. Buffy's birthday episodes were always aired in January from this point on, and it was decided by Joss Whedon that her birthday is January 19, 1981, which is the year that appears on her tombstone in 'The Gift'.



19. During seasons four and five of Buffy, there were several crossover episodes with new spinoff Angel, but these became prohibited once Buffy moved from the WB to rival network UPN. Even without direct crossovers, though, the shows' storylines still overlapped – Willow appears in Angel's fourth season and brings Faith back with her to Buffy; Angel shows up for Buffy's series finale, and so on.

20. Freddie Prinze Jr, Sarah Michelle Gellar's Scooby Doo co-star and future husband, was originally set to play Dracula in season five opener 'Buffy vs Dracula'.

21. The original plan was not to have either of Buffy's parents appear at all in the show, but the writers realised it would be tough to make this realistic. While her mother Joyce became a key character, her absent dad Hank Summers appears in just three episodes.

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22. When James Marsters initially auditioned for Spike, he played the part with a Texan accent, but the producers felt that cockney was more fitting for his backstory.

23. Angel was the character Joss Whedon always found hardest to write. "How to make a decent, handsome, stalwart hero interesting – tough," he said in a Reddit AmA. "Angelus, on the other hand…"

24. Eliza Dushku was offered the chance to star in a Faith-centric spinoff series after season seven of Buffy ended, but turned it down in order to do Tru Calling.



25. Joss Whedon didn't intend for there to be lesbian subtext between Buffy and Faith, and was initially irritated when fans raised the subject on message boards. "I was like 'You guys see lesbian subtext behind every corner, you just want to see girls kissing – get over it," he recalled during an NPR interview. After a fan directed Whedon to their website where they had dissected Buffy and Faith's interactions, Whedon realised that he had been wrong and apologised. "Everything they said was true, it was all right there, and this is where I coined the phrase BYO Subtext."

26. Season six's villainous Nerd Trio was initially meant to consist of Warren (Adam Busch), Jonathan (Danny Strong) and Tucker Wells (Brad Kane), who had previously been seen setting a pack of hellhounds loose on the graduating class in season three's 'The Prom'. When that plan fell through, Tucker was replaced with his younger brother Andrew (Tom Lenk).

27. In the hiatus between season six and season seven, Nicholas Brendon and Sarah Michelle Gellar pitched the idea of a Xander/Buffy romance to Joss Whedon, who felt that the relationship needed to remain unrequited.

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