Vampire (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) - Creation

Creation

The idea of the "vamp faces" — to have vampires' human features distort to become more demonic — was implemented for a number of reasons. Firstly, Whedon wanted normal high school students that the other characters could interact with normally, only to have them turn out be vampires, therefore creating a sense of paranoia. Secondly, he was conscious to make the vampires look physically demonic, stating, "I didn't think I really wanted to put a show on the air about a high school girl who was stabbing normal-looking people in the heart. I thought somehow that might send the wrong message, but when they are clearly monsters, it takes it to a level of fantasy that is safer."

In early episodes, the vampires appeared "very white-faced, very creepy, very ghoulish". This was changed in later seasons to make the vampires look more human, partially because of the sympathetic vampire character Angel, and partially because such elaborate make-up was too time-consuming. Whedon claims that people thought the white faces to be "funny looking" but personally found it creepier, comparing it to the monsters in zombie movies such as Day of the Dead and The Evil Dead. The character of the Master was designed to be in vamp face permanently to highlight his age and make him appear more animalistic; make-up artist John Vulich based the Master's appearance on a bat, reasoning that the character has devolved to a more primal, demonic state over the years.

It was decided that vampires and their clothes would turn to dust after they died. Indeed, the introduction to one episode, "The Wish", parodied this vampiric trait; when Buffy kills a non-humanoid demon, one of her friends, Willow, wonders why the demon corpse "doesn't go poof" and must be buried.

Joss Whedon had the vampires explode into dust (even when they are freshly dead) because it is practical. It represents that they are monsters. He didn't want a high school girl killing bad guys every episode and have them clean up bodies for 20 minutes; and it also "looks really cool".

The first episode toyed with the idea that vampires' clothes would resemble the era in which they died, with Buffy identifying one purely by his dated outfit. Joss Whedon felt this concept was a "charming notion" but ultimately rejected it for the most part (though a few vampires such as Drusilla and Dracula do prefer archaic clothing) because he believed that, if every vampire in the show was dressed in old-fashioned clothes, they would cease to be scary.

When creating the vampire "rules" that they would use in the show, the writers chose bits and pieces from various existing vampire lore. They decided not to have the vampires fly as in the Buffy movie because it was impossible to make flying vampires look convincing on a television budget. Garlic was mentioned in early episodes as a deterrent to vampires, but is seldom used. Some established rules, such as a vampire's inability to enter a home uninvited, both helped and hindered the storytelling. Joss Whedon says that, whereas shows such as The X-Files spend more time explaining the science behind the supernatural and making it as real as possible, Buffy and Angel are more concerned with the emotion resulting from these creatures and events than justifying how they could conceivably exist. The shows therefore tend to gloss over the details of vampire and demon lore, simply using the Hellmouth as a plot device to explain unexplainable things.