When Joss Whedon set his smash hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Sunnydale, California, he played upon the typical horror movie trope of ominous danger occurring in a bucolic small town, where nothing exciting ever happens. Its oblivious population didn't seem to wonder why so many of its members died in mysterious ways, never knowing that it was the Slayer and her friends' frequent patrolling of the cemeteries that kept the forces of darkness from taking over the town.
The cemeteries have always been a prominent setting in the series, with Buffy and the Scoobies encountering some of their deadliest foes lurking among their tombstones, as well as unexpected allies (Spike does make his home there after all). But over the years, fans have raised more questions about them than vampires waiting for one of Sunnydale's bizarre nightly funerals.
How Many There Are
Sunnydale isn't a big town - it has 38,500 inhabitants, Sunnydale High, one small college, one museum, one zoo, one club, and one main street. Given its small town Southern California charm, why does it have so many cemeteries?
In total, Sunnydale has twelve cemeteries, which seems excessive for a town with its population. Did the town have a plague in its historical past that wiped out a third of its population at one time? It almost seems like at a certain point the dead would outnumber the living, making many more vampires than the Scoobies can handle.
How Buffy Patrols Them All
With twelve cemeteries to monitor, it's amazing that Buffy has time to patrol them all. In the series, it always seems like she's strolling through a couple of prominent ones, but surely all of them are a hot spot for supernatural activity given Sunnydale's proximity to the Hellmouth.
While it's true the Slayer has her Scooby Gang, even putting Xander at one, Willow at another, and Oz, Tara, and Cordelia (depending on the season) at another one, that would only account for half of the cemeteries having Scooby eyes on their restless occupants.
Perpetually Foggy Environments
In the first three seasons of the series, Buffy and her friends are seen at the beach, where they're shown lounging in the sun and tossing around a beach ball. At one point Sunnydale is shown on a map appearing similar to Santa Barbara and situated in a bend on the coast, with a harbor where coastal freighters can dock along the Pacific Ocean.
But by Season 7's finale, when Sunnydale is almost wiped off the map, it's shown in a far away shot to be land-locked. So where does all the fog come from for the cemeteries if Sunnydale doesn't actually have any bodies of water nearby?
Nightly Services
There have been several times throughout the series where the cemeteries have so much foot traffic that daily services aren't enough. The Scoobies have been walking among the gravestones when funeral services are shown being held in the background, and Spike breaks up one while singing his angsty ballad in "Once More With Feeling".
Are people really dying that often in Sunnydale to require almost around-the-clock funeral processions? Even with the amount of supernatural activity around the Hellmouth, wouldn't the amount of murders draw some sort of national attention? Surely the Slayer and her friends can't be the only ones that remark on how strange their town's preoccupation with death is.
Affluence
Some of the cemeteries in Los Angeles are sprawling, beautifully-manicured places with stately mausoleums housing some of the wealthiest people in show business. The cemeteries in Sunnydale seem to be very much the same, despite the fact that Sunnydale is half as big as one zip code in greater LA.
Where does all the money come from in Sunnydale that allows its residents to be able to afford the sort of opulent resting places featured on the show? Sunnydale has many nice homes, but they're not indicative of wealth - housing prices are low because of the frequent murders.
Electricity And Cable
After converting the Hawley mausoleum into his crypt, Spike is able to get working lamps inside as well as cable television, on which he watches his favorite daytime soap, "Passions". How is he able to get electricity in a place designed for candles?
The Hawley mausoleum turned bachelor pad is covered with candles and candelabras at the corners, indicating it was mostly a place for quiet reflection and spiritual guidance surrounded by the deceased members of the Hawley family.
Changing Features
Buffy and the Scoobies mainly patrol three notable cemeteries in the series: Sunnydale Cemetery, Restfield Cemetery, and Shady Hill Cemetery. Restfield is notable because it houses several prominent mausoleums, one being for the Hawley family (Spike's crypt), and one for the Alpert family.
Viewers will know Buffy is in Restfield Cemetery because of the sight of the mausoleums, even if they don't see the sign. Except when those mausoleums appear in completely different places, like in the Season 6 episode "Grave" when the Alpert mausoleum appears in a cemetery that looks nothing like Restfield.
Buffy's Grave
After "The Gift" in which Buffy heroically sacrifices herself, she's buried in a grave with the appropriate epitaph, "She saved the world. A lot" somewhere in Sunnydale but not at any of the twelve gothic cemeteries it's famous for.
The Scooby gang uses the Buffybot to make supernatural forces believe Buffy is still alive, making the use of a marked grave confusing. Why wouldn't they bury Buffy in one of the cemeteries in Sunnydale, either unmarked or marked with something much less Buffy-ish? What's the point of a marked grave otherwise?
The Amount Of Vampires
Besides the sheer amount of cemeteries in Sunnydale, another running gag is that active vampire recruitment seems to be happening all the time. Buffy has to patrol the cemeteries because vampires seem to be popping up out of the ground like daisies.
Assuming vampires are feeding on humans elsewhere, why do newly turned vampires pop up out of their own coffins? Are vampire sires so sadistic that they would let their victims be buried, only to have to crawl their way out of their own grave to be reborn as children of the night?
Changing Location
According to Showbiz Cheat Sheet in Season 1, the series was shot in an actual cemetery in Los Angeles, but because Sarah Michelle Gellar had to act during the day when Buffy went to school, and then at night for the shots of the Slayer patrolling the cemetery, she worked around the clock.
After Season 2, the art department set about creating one set where the actors could work in a way that could reduce hours on set, and scenes were shot in a small parking lot. The cemeteries looked quite different after that, as they often needed to be dressed for whichever cemetery the Scoobies would be in that night.