Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, was first published in 1818, but the story of Frankenstein’s monster has been retold numerous times.
- 2.02 Some Assembly Required: Daryl Epps is brought back to life by his brother, who then sets about making a ‘girlfriend’ for him using the body parts of various dead girls.
- The villain of season four, Adam, was clearly based on Frankenstein’s monster. Professor Walsh created him to be a super-monster, made of different demons and humans. Although Shelly never named Victor Frankenstein’s monster in the book, she did at times refer to him in talk as “Adam,” obviously referencing the story of Adam and Eve from The Bible. Buffy’s Adam definitely parallels Shelly’s Adam: Both monsters were built out of a pure want to do good and help people, but the monster turns and becomes a killing menace.
- 4.04 Fear, Itself: Giles says, “It’s alive!”, which is from the 1931 movie Frankenstein.
- 4.05 Beer Bad: Buffy’s “Fire bad” line comes from the 1931 movie. The monster in the movie (played by Boris Karloff) is chased by angry villagers with torches, when he shouts, “Fire Bad!”
- 4.14 Goodbye Iowa: the shot with Adam and the little boy is an homage to the 1931 movie Frankenstein. When Frankenstein’s monster escapes, he walks through a forest and comes upon a little girl, Maria, who is throwing flowers into a pond. The monster joins her in the activity but soon runs out of flowers. At a loss for something to throw into the water, he looks at Maria and moves toward her. In all American prints of the movie, the scene ends here. But as originally filmed, the action continues to show the monster grabbing Maria, hurling her into the lake, then departing in confusion when Maria fails to float as the flowers did. This bit was deleted because Karloff - objecting to the director’s interpretation of the scene - felt that the monster should have gently put Maria into the lake. This scene is restored in the video cassette reissue. Both monsters were created using body parts from other people/demons and both encountered a child and expressed curiosity, which ended in the child’s death.
- 5.16 Shells: Gunn says:
“Everything you know, or there won’t be enough of you left to stitch back together, Frankenstein.”
- 5.04 Hell Bound: Nina says to Angel:
So, what? You’re, like, a Frankenstein?
Related episodes: 2.02 Some Assembly Required, 4.04 Fear, Itself, 4.05 Beer Bad, 4.14 Goodbye Iowa, 5.04 Hell Bound, 5.16 Shells
Comments on this trivia
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Meghann on July 11th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Another reference is from Shells:
Gunn: Everything you know, or there won’t be enough of you left to stitch back together, Frankenstein.
jc21269 on January 12th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Doesn’t Nina ask Angel if he’s Frankenstein in “Unleashed”?