History Series / AmericanHorrorStoryRoanoke

* AdultFear:
** Never getting to see your daughter because you lost custody, having to essentially kidnap her in order to spend time with her - and then ''losing her'' in the woods, only finding her hoodie.
** Lee's first daughter, Emily, was kidnapped from her car when she went into the store for five minutes. Judging by the fact that she communicates with Cricket, she was also murdered.

* KillThemAll: [[spoiler: every major character, barring two, die over the course of the season.]]

* BadMoonRising: "Chapter 4" reveals that during the dying grass moon when the moon turn red the Roanoke ghosts can kill the living.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: By some variation, the house is destroyed, therefore nobody will allow to go back to it and be harmed, plus Lee performing a HeroicSacrifice to be the carer for Priscilla and become the next Butcher as a RedemptionEqualsDeath for having nearly ruined Flora's life. On the downside, Shelby, Matt, and the entire "real life"/"reenactment" cast and crew of ''Roanoke'' are dead and the spirits of the Colony are still to return every Blood Moon]].

* DecoyProtagonist: Married couple Matt and Shelby Miller are at the center of the story and their survival seems guaranteed for the remainder of the season, [[spoiler: until they return to the house against their better judgement and are killed as a result]], leading to [[spoiler: Lee becoming the FinalGirl and TheHeroine.]]
* DelayedDiagnosis: Played with where one overly-optimistic historian speculates that deranged nobleman Edward Phillippe Mott had severe social anxiety. Considering that he killed his entire household because someone destroyed his collection of paintings, social anxiety probably doesn't explain all of his problems.

** Actually, the more the series progressed, the more teasers became relevant. The odd swamp thing romance, for example, was based off of [[spoiler:Matt getting seduced by Scathach]]. The paranormal monster (the hair ghost in the tub) was a reference to the supernatural monsters (possibly the Chen family ghosts), the creepy rednecks coming towards the house referenced both the Polks and the Roanoke colonists, probably more.

** Ryan Murphy revealed that Scathach was the original Supreme of the American witches. However, it is a major plot point in ''Coven'' that ThereCanOnlyBeOne Supreme, with the incumbent dying to make room for her successor. Whether or not Scathach is alive (and, in that case, how there came to be subsequent Supremes, as well as how she's managed to live this long) or dead (in which case her manner of death as well as how she managed to retain her magic as a ghost are unexplained) is never revealed.

* BrownNote: The word "Croatoan" holds the ghosts at bay. [[spoiler: An element invented fir the re-enactment.]]

* DangerTakesABackseat: The Pig Man. Played with at one point, with an actor dressed as the Pig Man taking an Uber to what he thinks is just a set.

* DemotedToExtra: Denis O'Hare, Wes Bentley, Cheyenne Jackson, Lady Gaga, and especially Evan Peters have much less screentime than in the last season. Frances Conroy, Creator/FinnWittrock, and Taissa Farmiga go from main or important recurring roles to TheCameo. Matt Bomer is reduced to TheVoice, and is not even credited.

** Though of course, this is only how the in-universe show portrayed it; we don't know what he might have actually faced back when he was alive.

** And in episode six an onscreen bump announces that [[spoiler:all of the characters involved in "Return to Roanoke" will be dead by the end of the season, except for one.]]

* NiceCharacterMeanActor: Without exception, the reenactment actors are revealed to be arrogant, rude, and downright hostile toward their real-life counterparts.

** Actually, the more the series progressed, the more teasers became relevant. The odd swamp thing romance for example was based off of [[spoiler:Matt getting seduced by Scathach]]. The paranormal monster (the hair ghost in the tub) was a reference to the supernatural monsters, the creepy rednecks coming towards the house referenced both the Polks and the Roanoke colonists, probably more.

* OddballInTheSeries: By far the most unusual season because it's presented as a paranormal documentary in the first half then as a reality television show in the second, has no opening sequence just a title card and series mainstay Evan Peters isn't introduced until episode 5. It's also currently the shortest season at ten episodes.

* RealAfterAll: The actors who played the Millers had assumed the real life family had either exaggerated or outright lied about what they went through on the show. It takes [[spoiler:some deaths]] for them to realize the horrors are all too real.
* RomanceOnTheSet: In-universe, Audrey Tisdall who plays Shelby Miller and Rory Monahan who plays Edward Mott started dating while filming ''My Roanoke Nightmare'' and got married.

* DecoyProtagonist: Married couple Matt and Shelby Miller are at the center of the story and their survival seems guaranteed for the remainder of the season, [[spoiler: until they return to the house against their better judgement and are killed as a result.]], leading to [[spoiler: Lee becoming the FinalGirl and TheHeroine.]]

** Leslie Jordan plays a role in the series for the first time since ''[[Series/AmericanHorrorStoryCoven Coven]]''.

* DecoyProtagonist: The story starts off being about Matt and Shelby, with Lee as a supporting character. [[spoiler: In the end, Lee is the FinalGirl, and the person with the most CharacterDevelopment throughout the series.]]

* AdaptationalAttractiveness: In-universe, ''My Roanoke Nightmare'' does this with all the ghosts. On the ShowWithinAShow, they look just like ordinary people. But as we see later on, they actually all look more like walking corpses.

* AllMythsAreTrue: Piggy Man from ''Murder House'' turns out to be true, though somewhat exaggerated. He was merely a SerialKiller named Kincaid Polk who wore a pig mask (inspired by the Pig Man ghost living at Roanoke) and killed people, rather than a Bloody Mary-type supernatural monster.
* AnyoneCanDie: [[spoiler:Possibly the most extreme example in the series. Lee's ex-husband Mason, Dr. Cunningham, and Cricket are killed before the events of the season. Sidney's PA Diana and Edward Mott's actor Rory become the first (named) victims in the present, followed by producer Sidney himself and the Butcher's actress Agnes getting the axe in "Chapter 7". In the same episode, the most shocking death at this point in the season is main character Matt (the main male character whose survival in the first half of the season was a ForegoneConclusion) getting abruptly and brutally offed. The following episode, Shelby (who was in the same boat as Matt) kills herself out of grief over Matt's death, and Dominic is killed by the Pig Man. By the end of episode 9, Lee is the only one still alive, and she dies at the end of the final episode (along with the whole paranormal investigative crew).]]

''American Horror Story: Roanoke'' [[note]]originally marketed as ''American Horror Story ?6''[[/note]] is the sixth season of Creator/RyanMurphy's horror {{anthology}} series ''Series/AmericanHorrorStory'', aired by the Creator/{{FX}} network in 2016.

Unlike previous seasons of ''AHS'', ''very'' little information about ''Roanoke'' was revealed prior to airing. A total of twenty-six promotional videos were released in the weeks leading up, but according to Murphy, only one of them was indicative of the real seasonal theme. The subtitle itself, ''Roanoke'', wasn't confirmed by FX until the day after its premiere.

Creator/DenisOHare also returns as a writer who used to live in the house (and whose video tape diaries recording the history of the house provide backstory), while Creator/LadyGaga, Creator/KathyBates, and Creator/WesBentley return as the leadership of the Roanoke colonists.

* GenreSavvy: When Diana sees a sinister apparition alongside the road, she tells the camera she has no intention of finding out who it is. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, she's GenreBlind when it comes to checking the [[DangerTakesABackseat backseat of her car.]] ]]

* DemotedToExtra: Denis O'Hare, Wes Bentley, Cheyenne Jackson, Lady Gaga, and especially Evan Peters have much less screentime than in the last season. Frances Conroy, Finn Wittrock, and Taissa Farmiga go from main or important recurring roles to TheCameo. Matt Bomer is reduced to TheVoice, and is not even credited.

* AnyoneCanDie: [[spoiler:Lee's ex-husband Mason, Dr. Cunningham, and Cricket are killed before the events of the season. Sidney's PA Diana and Edward Mott's actor Rory become the first (named) victims in the present, followed by producer Sidney himself and the Butcher's actress Agnes getting the axe in "Chapter 7". In the same episode, the most shocking death at this point in the season is main character Matt (the main male character whose survival in the first half of the season was a ForegoneConclusion) getting abruptly and brutally offed. The following episode, Shelby (who was in the same boat as Matt) kills herself out of grief over Matt's death, and Dominic is killed by the Pig Man. By the end of episode 9, Lee is the only one still alive, and she dies at the end of the final episode (along with the whole paranormal investigative crew).]]

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Some aspects of ''My Roanoke Nightmare'' are later revealed to be fabrications or inaccuracies. The rain of teeth never happened, though the TV show convinced the Polks that it was real. The reenactment Mama Polk says that her kin made a deal with the Butcher over 200 years ago, but the real Mama Polk says it was exactly 150 years ago. The three hunters who killed each other in 1952 never appear or are mentioned outside of the reenactments, so it's not clear whether they actually existed.
** They do. They're the ones who keep shooting arrows at people and kill the [[spoiler:policemen and one of the Spirit Chasers]].

* DangerTakesABackseat: The Pig Man pulls this off later in the series. Played with, in that it's actually an actor dressed as the Pig Man who is taking an Uber to what he thinks is just a set.

** The fact that Shelby, Matt, and Lee are giving interviews on ''My Roanoke Nightmare'' indicates that they survive.
** And in episode six an onscreen bump announces that [[spoiler:all of the characters involved will be dead by the end of the season except for one.]]

* DangerTakesABackseat: The Pig Man pulls this off later in the series.

* MythologyGag: Just like in ''Murder House'', a family move into a seemingly wonderful house, only for it to turn out to be involved in some paranormal weirdness, and are unable to leave because they've sunk their entire savings into it.

The sixth season, presented as a faux paranormal documentary series "My Roanoke Nightmare" about an interracial couple (Shelby and Matt Miller) who buy a home out in the woods in Dare, North Carolina. Unfortunately, everything that can go wrong starts to go wrong for the couple: the house turns out to be a former nursing home owned by a pair of murderous sisters who butchered their clients. Matt's drug addicted ex-cop sister Lee kidnaps her kid, who promptly goes missing on the property, while the land is the same land as the legendary lost colony of Roanoke. And the colonists, led by the maniacal matriarch the Butcher, don't take kindly to tresspassers, unless it is to use them for their annual ritual blood sacrifice to the Harvest Moon... Which is almost upon them.