PRINCIPAL FLUTIE (Ken Lerner). BtVS Character.
The principal of Sunnydale High School when Buffy first arrives, Principal Robert (“All the kids are free to call me ‘Bob.’ But they don’t”) Flutie can’t decide whether he wants to be the students’ friend or a strict disciplinarian. He appears in four episodes of Season One: “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” “The Harvest,” “Teacher’s Pet,” and “The Pack,” in which he is devoured by a pack of hyena-possessed students. Clark and Miller argue that his fate demonstrates that in Sunnydale, “Like parents, school authorities are there to be subverted, overcome, or ignored” (par. 8). Flutie’s death becomes a cautionary tale for Sunnydale High administrators, referred to by his replacement, Principal Snyder, twice, in “The Puppet Show”: “My predecessor, Mr. Flutie, may have gone in for all that touchy-feely relating nonsense, but he was eaten,” and “I know Principal Flutie would have said, ‘Kids need understanding. Kids are human beings.’ That’s the kind of wooly-headed, liberal thinking that leads to being eaten.” Again, at the start of Season Seven, Principal Robin Wood advises Buffy: “A little authority can be a wonderful thing. Just remember […] you’re not here to be their friend. Trust me, you open that door, and these students will eat you alive,” leading Buffy to wonder, “You heard about Principal Flutie, right?” (“Beneath You”).
In the first of the Buffy novels, Halloween Rain, by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder, Principal Flutie is raised as a zombie.
