The Initiative (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
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The Initiative was a fictional secret government organization in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Located below the University of California at Sunnydale, the Initiative was commanded by psychology professor Maggie Walsh. Under her direction, military commandos in service to a covert US government operation captured werewolves, demons, vampires, and other supernatural or otherworldly creatures so that scientists could study them. Ostensibly, the Initiative's mission was to negate the threat that such entities posed to human beings, although some believe that the organization's actual purpose was to hybridize superpowered human-non-human soldiers. Among the Initiative's captives were the werewolf Oz and the vampire Spike, the latter of whom was implanted with a chip that caused him to experience extreme pain whenever he attacked a human being.
Buffy's boyfriend Riley Finn was a member, as were other soldiers posing as UC Sunnydale students. Other recurring characters who were part of the Initiative included Forrest and Graham. Unknown to Riley, Professor Walsh was experimenting on him, causing life-threatening performance enhancements (a metaphor for steroid use).
Professor Walsh's secret project was the creation of Adam, a humanoid creature that consisted of one part machinery, one part humanity, and one part demon. Adam was possessed of a strength far superior to Buffy's, and it was only through a spell cast by Willow, whereby Buffy's power was combined with that of her friends and the Primitive (i. e., the first Slayer) that she was able to defeat him—but only after he had killed a young boy, Professor Walsh, and Forrest.
After season 4
The initiative operation was officially closed down by the government and deemed a failure. However they maintained operations in demon hunting and transferred many of their staff (including, eventually, Riley Finn). They have since been known to hunt down demon nests in jungles.
The initiative before Buffy
The initiative program has been around at least since the 1940s when it employed the talents of Angel (vampire with a soul) to capture a German submarine during World War II; it was originally known as the '"Demon Research Initiative"'. It was learned in this episode that the Nazis had a similar program, and had kidnapped Spike (at a supposed virgin-blood party in Madrid) among with other notable demons (Rasputin's lover, for one) to assist with their war effort. This revelation would seem to cast the Initiative in the same light as other WWII era projects, like the nuclear weapons of the Manhattan Project.