Buffy the Vampire Slayer presents the Scooby Gang as a collective David fighting a Goliath in the "Big Bads" of each season. The term "Big Bad" suggests that these demons are larger than life, and each season of the show ups the ante on the power and evil of these villains. Fourth season’s "Fear, Itself", by contrast, presents the "Little Bad" Gachnar, a disembodied demon that possesses the power to separate and disillusion the Slayer and the Scooby Gang. But when Gachnar is brought to corporeal form, the Scooby Gang is surprised and amused to discover he is truly a "Little Bad."

In this episode, Buffy asks, "Size doesn’t matter?" This question echoes the characters’ responses to Buffy’s own diminutive stature. "Fear, Itself" offers a peek into the existing dichotomy between the miniature and the gigantic, a theme reiterated throughout the body of the show. When disembodied, Gachnar becomes the overwhelming gigantic, and thus a threat much like the giants in early modern and children’s literatures. But when embodied as a tiny creature, Gachnar is no longer threatening. Through a reading of "Fear, Itself" and a cursory discussion of the issues of size and corporeality in the show, this paper argues that the miniature represents no threat through its sheer lack of size, and perpetuates the stereotypes of the cuteness and coddling necessary for diminutive things. By contrast, disembodied evil becomes a parallel for the vastness and devouring nature of larger monsters.