David Fury grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and was raised on a steady diet of classic horror movies. His mother was a model for pulp book covers. He swears he has no oedipal issues.

Before his glorious role as "Mustard Man" in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Once More with Feeling," he performed in productions of The Fantastiks, Godspell and Cabaret.

Fury developed his comedy-writing skills as a stand-up comedian at New York's Catch a Rising Star, The Improv and The Comedy Cellar, later founding the critically acclaimed comedy theater troupe Brain Trust, which was featured on The Tonight Show and Comic Strip Live.

Before landing a full-time gig writing for Buffy, Fury wrote for a handful of television shows including The Jackie Thomas Show and John Leguizamo's House of Buggin', which broke ground as the first network Latino variety show. He also wrote for HBO's Emmy-nominated series Dream On, and the Emmy-winning animated series Pinky and the Brain for Steven Speilberg.

His first episode for Buffy the Vampire Slayer was "Go Fish," a campy tribute to the classic horror movie swamp monster. He co-wrote the episode with his wife, Elin Hampton. They later split up (uh, not the marriage, the writing team). Elin went on to write for Mad About You, and Fury moved into the Mutant Enemy think tank full time with his next episode, "Helpless." He eventually became co-executive producer, and later executive producer on the Buffy spinoff series Angel. Since Angel wrapped, he's served as a co-executive producer on the hit ABC series Lost and now 24.

Fury also wrote a story called "Glittering World" in the graphic novel Tales of the Slayers.

And for you trivia geeks, he's also the voice of Jock, in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He did quite a bit of voice over work for the film, but the clearest example is the prop plane pilot's admonishment of Indiana Jones, "That's just my pet snake, Reggie! Show a little backbone, will ya?"