Buffy The Vampire Slayer: 10 Things About Sunnydale High That Make No Sense

For the first few seasons of the iconic supernatural teen series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sunnydale High School was basically it’s own character in the show. It’s where nearly all of the action takes place, and whether the Scooby gang is just living the life of regular high schoolers or literally battling against the apocalypse, they’re doing it all at Sunnydale High.

A high school is an understandable setting for a series about high schoolers, but a lot about Sunnydale High stretched the boundaries of believability. So what about this fictional California school just doesn’t make any sense?

10 It’s Extremely Endowed For A Small Town Public School

This applies to pretty much every aspect of Sunnydale as a small and idyllic town, but it seems especially obvious when it comes to the high school.

For a high school in a normal California suburb, Sunnydale High’s facilities are really extraordinary. It has all of the basic school amenities, but it has far more than that, including a school courtyard, a student lounge, and it even has it’s own pool.

9 It’s So Easy To Come And Go

Anyone who has ever been a high school student in an American public school can attest, getting in and out of school is actually absurdly difficult in most instances.

The fact that Buffy and the other students have such an easy time walking out of school whenever they like, or even more strangely, the fact that students and teachers can get in and out of the school during the night, is incredibly hard to believe.

8 They’re Not Particular About Non-Students In School

In that same vein, it doesn’t seem like Sunnydale High has much knowledge or care about who is actually a student or employee of the school and who isn’t.

In the average American school, anyone who comes into the school who doesn’t belong there is going to immediately be noticed and raise alarm bells. The notion that so many random people who don’t even have a visitor’s pass wouldn’t be noticed is nuts.

7 They Apparently Don’t Keep Track Of Their Library Books

The Sunnydale library seems to solely be used by Giles and the rest of the Scoobs, but even with that in mind, the inventory of the library makes no sense.

It’s clear that there are a ton of books about the supernatural and demonology in the library, and if the audience is to assume that Giles brought them when he started working there, how is it that nobody noticed or cared, or even thought it was strange?

6 Or They Had An Extremely Weird Library

The other even stranger option is that, if Giles didn’t bring all of these demon-related books with him and nobody actually noticed, then they were just at the library to begin with.

So if that were the case, how did no one ever question the fact that a high school library in some random suburb had an occult literature collection that would rival Anton LaVey’s?

5 It’s Employees Often Tried To Murder Students

Clearly a show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer requires an enormous amount of suspension of disbelief. However, if Sunnydale were a real high school, the fact that multiple members of the high school staff have tried to murder students on school property would be utterly baffling.

It would be even more confusing that, despite the shockingly high rate of employees getting violent, that issue never raised any flags with local or national authorities.

4 Students Often Tried To Murder Other Students

Putting aside the impressive level of violence when it comes to faculty vs. students, the record of violence between students is even more insane.

Given the level of attention one single violent crime between students in school tends to get, it’s downright bizarre that these kids are constantly going full Lord of the Flies without it ever catching any sort of legal or media attention from the rest of the world.

3 A Student Firebombed The School And Wasn’t Arrested

The world certainly isn’t unfamiliar with students acting out violently in their schools, but Buffy Summers has the dubious distinction of being the only student to blow up their entire school.

Granted, she was doing so to save the world from a giant snake demon, but still, it’s hilariously absurd that Buffy did something like that and not only seemed to suffer no consequences for it, but didn’t even seem to have anyone follow up on it at all.

2 It Wasn’t Closed Down

So, perhaps it’s understandable or at least not outside the realm of believability that people somehow excused the ridiculously high death toll of Sunnydale High School.

But once Buffy and the rest of her graduating class practically razed the entire school to the ground, it’s baffling that the town didn’t just call it a day on their local high school and decide to send all of their students to a regional high school or something.

1 It Wasn’t Investigated By The FBI

It really can’t be understated how unbelievably strange the entire existence and continued usage of Sunnydale High School really is.

There is constant violence, murder, suspicious occurrences, and apparent terrorism going on there at a nearly constant basis, and not only does the school continue to function, but no one bothers to investigate. Sunnydale PD’s lack of action can maybe be understood since this is standard for the town and they seem to be terrible at their jobs, but the fact that the FBI has never looked into it is very odd.