FAQ

In the film Buffy is a senior, while she is a sophomore by the start of the TV series. She lives with a neglectful mother while in the show, her mother is thoughtful and careful even though Buffy becomes the distant one, due to her Slayer routine (Joyce comments in the series that she's not the 'social butterfly I used to be').

In the movie vampires can fly or at very least levitate, don't transform into 'vamp-face' and they don't 'dust' when killed as they do in the TV series (the special effects simply didn't exist yet). In the movie Buffy's vamp-sense is more pronounced whilst in the series she largely relies on her 'keen fashion sense' perhaps it is more intense shortly after a Slayer inherits her powers. There is no indication that Faith, Kendra or any of the other Slayers we meet have the Slayer birthmark Merrick refers to. Merrick refers to himself constantly being reincarnated, if so this appears to be something unique to him as in the series being a Watcher is a family tradition. The movie is much more overtly Christian than the series with Buffy declaring 'I am his (Christ's) sword', possibly a scene rewritten by Donald Sutherland given Joss Whedon's self-professed atheism.

No, she just experiences the past memories of the other Slayers who came before her in first person, seeing their experiences through her eyes.

According to the Buffy]/i] comics he and Buffy split up in Vegas, as he fears he will endanger her if she has to be constantly worrying about his safety rather than concentrating on Slaying. He makes a return several issues later, for the "Note from the Underground" uncanonical story arc set between seasons Six and Seven. He comes to Sunnydale and rescues a felled Buffy from a horde of demons, which makes clear for him that, in addition to vampires, such creatures also exist.

This comics, however, are not considered canon and Pike is never mentioned throughout the television series.

The Buffy episode "Normal Again" suggests that Buffy Summers is a schizophrenic in a mental hospital and her being the Slayer is simply a hallucination caused by her illness. This means that her delusion starts during the Buffy movie when she first meets Merrick and ends with the last scene of the TV series where she destroys Sunnydale, defeats her 'demons', triumphs over the ultimate evil (symbolicaly represented by herself) and is told from now on she must 'live like an ordinary person', Buffy regaining her sanity once more after 7 years, still only 23.

Another theory is that both Asylum Buffy and Sunnydale Buffy are real and have some sort of psychic link across the dimensions which drives Asylum Buffy crazy. After the end of the TV series Buffy is only one of thousands of Slayers so her calling no longer dominates her life, allowing Asylum Buffy to regain her sanity in her early 20s and for both to live a more or less ordinary existence.