Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguably one of the best teen dramas to ever be produced on television, introduced more than a handful of memorable characters to the world. It also gave Joss Whedon his first taste of legitimate success and was one of the first shows to have a female-driven narrative that wasn’t all about boys. Though the series aired from 1997 to 2003, it feels like the costume designs never left the '90s. Some of the lamest Buffy villains reflect that influence to the nth degree.
While there are things that only hard-core Buffy fans noticed, most people recognized that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had some dumb-looking bad guys that resembled Rob Zombie video extras. If you don't remember any lame antagonists who ended up on Buffy after failing a GWAR audition, it's time to look back to whenthe showwas running low on creative juices and vote up the villains with the most unoriginal '90s roots that were only possible in that era.
Is there anything more boringly '90s than an Internet villain? The episode "I, Robot... You, Jane" tries its hardest to plant a fear of the Internet into its audience by having Willow begin an IM relationship with a Canadian boyfriend, who turns out to be a demon called Moloch. He "wreaks havoc" by making Willow miss her classes. The final showdown with Moloch, who makes a physical appearance as a Predator lookalike built from computer parts, is pretty anti-climactic, but the meetup is oddly prescient for how most Tinder dates would go 20 years later.
This '90s caricature of a Native American character appears in "Pangs," the Thanksgiving episode of Season 4 where everyone is trying to keep a secret from Buffy. Named Hus, the villain feels like a throwback to the monsters in Season 1, deeply entrenched in a mid '90s way of storytelling. If you can get over his pretty racist depiction, it's a fun episode to watch.
Is there anything more '90s than a crew of frat bros that are trying to raise a snake god? At the time of this episode, hazing scandals were all the rage on shows like Dateline and Hard Copy, so it makes sense to try to use some of that real life juju on a TV show. It's just unfortunate that the bros are simply typical bros, making them quite lame as "villains."
Do you guys remember Sunday? The leader of a vampire gang that lives in a condemned frat house on the campus of UC Sunnydale? Does she look like the singer of that band Harlow from VH1's Band on the Run to anyone else? No, that's not it. What is the unnameable quality that Sunday possesses that makes her feel so familiar?
You know what it is? She looks like she's cosplaying as an extra from the Ava Adore video. Yeah, that's it.
Veruca may be the number one '90s villain that the Scooby gang ever came across. If you don't remember, Veruca is the hot lady werewolf who sports a bleached bob haircut, fronts a band that sounds like Portishead, and has sex with Seth Green. Everything about that sentence sounds like it was written in 1999.
John Ritter plays Ted, a robot man who courts Joyce Summers, gets angry during a round of mini golf, and becomes very Lifetime-movie abusive. Even in the '90s, the idea of an abusive robo-step daddy was a little passé, especially after Buffy had just drowned, come back to life, killed the Master, and had her Halloween ruined by Ethan Rayne.
