History YMMV / AmericanHorrorStoryHotel

* EvilIsSexy: The Countess and Mr. March are both well-known for this reason, alongside their highly quotable dialogue.

* CompleteMonster: [[ManipulativeBastard James Patrick March]], the deceased first owner of the Hotel Cortez, is a wealthy man who [[SerialKiller murdered countless people]] in life and continues to do so as a ghost. When he learned that his wife was still interested in her former lover, he had the man sealed up behind a wall in an abandoned wing of the hotel and [[MurderTheHypotenuse left him there to die]]. He has also served as an EvilMentor to some of [[HistoricalRapSheet history's most prolific serial killers]], and is responsible for corrupting [[spoiler: John Lowe]] into becoming the Ten Commandments Killer. This is part of a project of his in order to "[[BlasphemousBoast kill God]]," purely to spite a particularly defiant religious man he killed while alive. March is [[ItsAllAboutMe completely self-centered]] in his desire for the Countess, arranging her death so that she will be forced to spend eternity trapped in the hotel with him. Finally, March controls the [[HornyDevils Addiction Demon]], a strange rapist creature with a drill for a penis whom March uses to threaten others into following his orders. A sadistic, brutal savage who hides his true nature beneath a veneer of class and aristocracy, March is the only member of a morally ambiguous cast without a single redeeming quality.

** [[DrJerk Alex Lowe]]. A lot of fans hate her for being [[IceQueen cold]] and [[{{Workaholic}} detached]], finding her to be far too unlikable for a protagonist. Her comments about ParentalFavoritism towards Holden and request for a divorce did not help. On the other hand, just as many fans find her to be an incredibly compelling character because of how flawed but sympathetic she is, noting that she's [[OutlivingOnesOffspring a mother who lost a child and is now trying her best to move on with life]], while also getting some good moments in (such as putting the smackdown on a GranolaGirl mother who refused to vaccinate her children, with [[IllGirl predictable results]]). [[Creator/ChloeSevigny Chloë Sevigny]]'s near-universally praised performance plays no small role in her popularity either. Alex ''really'' hit this status following "Devil's Night" and "Room Service", where she [[spoiler: ''decides to become a vampire'' with the Countess so she could be with Holden, further pushing the idea of those who hate her favoritism ''[[FromBadToWorse and then]]'' infecting the measles patient with the virus to save him only for him to kill his parents, infect his classmates and ''massacre the school'']]. It gets worse. Even her biggest fans are finding it near impossible to defend how Alex treats [[spoiler: John and Scarlett. Alex has abandoned the latter entirely so that she could be with her son, and she's been doing everything possible to drive John away from her and Holden, even collaborating with ghosts in the hotel to break his already fragile psyche in hopes of driving him away.]]

* CompleteMonster:[[ManipulativeBastard James Patrick March]], the deceased first owner of the Hotel Cortez, is a wealthy man who [[SerialKiller murdered countless people]] in life and continues to do so as a ghost. When he learned that his wife was still interested in her former lover, he had the man sealed up behind a wall in an abandoned wing of the hotel and [[MurderTheHypotenuse left him there to die]]. He has also served as an EvilMentor to some of [[HistoricalRapSheet history's most prolific serial killers]], and is responsible for corrupting [[spoiler: John Lowe]] into becoming the Ten Commandments Killer. This is part of a project of his in order to "[[BlasphemousBoast kill God]]," purely to spite a particularly defiant religious man he killed while alive. March is [[ItsAllAboutMe completely self-centered]] in his desire for the Countess, arranging her death so that she will be forced to spend eternity trapped in the hotel with him. Finally, March controls the [[HornyDevils Addiction Demon]], a strange rapist creature with a drill for a penis whom March uses to threaten others into following his orders. A sadistic, brutal savage who hides his true nature beneath a veneer of class and aristocracy, March is the only member of a morally ambiguous cast without a single redeeming quality.

** [[DrJerk Alex Lowe]]. A lot of fans hate her for being [[IceQueen cold]] and [[{{Workaholic}} detached]], finding her to be far too unlikable for a protagonist. Her comments about ParentalFavoritism towards Holden and request for a divorce did not help. On the other hand, just as many fans find her to be an incredibly compelling character because of how flawed but sympathetic she is, noting that she's [[AdultFear a mother who lost a child and is now trying her best to move on with life]], while also getting some good moments in (such as putting the smackdown on a GranolaGirl mother who refused to vaccinate her children, with [[IllGirl predictable results]]). [[Creator/ChloeSevigny Chloë Sevigny]]'s near-universally praised performance plays no small role in her popularity either. Alex ''really'' hit this status following "Devil's Night" and "Room Service", where she [[spoiler: ''decides to become a vampire'' with the Countess so she could be with Holden, further pushing the idea of those who hate her favoritism ''[[FromBadToWorse and then]]'' infecting the measles patient with the virus to save him only for him to kill his parents, infect his classmates and ''massacre the school'']]. It gets worse. Even her biggest fans are finding it near impossible to defend how Alex treats [[spoiler: John and Scarlett. Alex has abandoned the latter entirely so that she could be with her son, and she's been doing everything possible to drive John away from her and Holden, even collaborating with ghosts in the hotel to break his already fragile psyche in hopes of driving him away.]]

* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped:
** Alex's speech denouncing anti-vaxxers in the second episode is incredibly {{anvilicious}}, but the show does make a very good point that honestly shouldn't need to be made at all, let alone by a horror TV show.
** Embittered ghosts, vampires in need of humans to exploit for blood, and psychopathic killers in need of stimulation all serve as heavy-handed metaphors for addiction. Cue the song "Hotel California" by [[{{Music/Eagles}} The Eagles]] to close out the first episode.
** The finale can be interpreted as the writer saying: If you'd all just make an effort to stop being nasty to each other for 5 minutes, everyone would be a lot more happy - even the utterly antisocial psychopaths.

* HarsherInHindsight: There's now an outbreak of the measles that's being attributed to the anti-vaccer movement.

*** Sally crosses it in the very first episode by having some random hapless junkie be brutally raped / tortured by the Addiction Demon, while psychologically torturing him herself, then trying to kill the guy by asphyxiation/dehydration after he fails to die from the shock. The fact that she calls "dibs" on that guest makes it clear it wasn't the demon who chose the victim, long before the show explains that she sacrifies people to the demon so it won't attack her. (Besides, between killing / torturing guests for fun being shown as the usual modus operandum for the ghosts, and Sally being the one to lure the victim for March's Devil's Night serial killer party[[note]]March appears to have control over the Addiction Demon in the last few episodes, so the deal may be more that Sally has to bring one victim per year to March, not to the demon directly.[[/note]], it's not at all clear if she actually ''has to'' bring the demon people to rape.)

*** Each of the serial killers at the Devil's Night dinner encountered March and his hotel at some point in their lives. While some of them might have met him, the Axeman was dealt with by a coven in 1919, before completion of the hotel, and Dandy Mott was a manchild with an [[MyBelovedSmother anxious, overbearing mother]] and likely never traveled far from home.

** John for one thing: He lives with immense guilt for the disappearance of [[spoiler: his son, Holden]], he's more straight forward of being a ControlFreak, and his once [[HappilyMarried happy marriage]] with Alex is falling apart, to the point where Alex [[spoiler: wants to get a divorce so the two won't deal with the pain of Holden's disappearance]]. You ''just'' want to hug him. Makes it worse that everyone in the hotel '''[[WhatTheHellHero INCLUDING HIS OWN WIFE]]''' [[TraumaCongaLine are messing with him psychologically]] to the point where you just wonder if he's going to go on a murder spree or commit suicide later on. What makes John such a woobie is that, besides a few others, he's such a NiceGuy, and the most issues he has is how much he seeks to control his problems. Makes it worse when you learn [[spoiler: '''he's the Ten Commandments Killer''', having been manipulated by James early on in 2010 to continue his work, ''and'' James was also the one who told the Countess to kidnap Holden to drive John into a murderous rampage]].

** Vendela and Agnetha ae affable tourists who get treated pretty nastily even before being kidnapped in the first episode,e are tortured and threatened over their lifestyle (for having drugs which might have very well just been normal antidepressants on them), dispatched in a somewhat sadistic manner, and are [[FateWorseThanDeath reduced to wandering the halls as ghosts]] to the point where they fall in with the more dangerous ghosts out of a desperate desire to find some kind of peace in the hotel, only to be deeply guilt-ridden and still stuck there after killing someone.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy:
** Most of the cast are psychopaths but the show really hits this point when [[spoiler: Alex abandons Scarlett and John is revealed to be the Ten Commandments Killer, leaving Scarlett as the only sympathetic regular and even then, she does not show up a lot]].
** Starting to be somewhat {{Averted}} as the season goes on. Most fans agree the entire cast is insane at best ([[MyFriendsAndZoidberg excluding Will Drake]]), but a large chunk of the audience have begun to root for [[DeadpanSnarker Liz]] [[EnsembleDarkhorse Taylor]] and [[TheDogBitesBack Iris]] to come out victorious, due to providing much needed comic relief and being among the most sympathetic characters of the entire season (aided greatly by most the others being ''very'' [[VillainProtagonist unsympathetic]].)

* CompleteMonster:
** [[ManipulativeBastard James Patrick March]], the deceased first owner of the Hotel Cortez, is a wealthy man who [[SerialKiller murdered countless people]] in life and continues to do so as a ghost. When he learned that his wife was still interested in her former lover, he had the man sealed up behind a wall in an abandoned wing of the hotel and [[MurderTheHypotenuse left him there to die]]. He has also served as an EvilMentor to some of [[HistoricalRapSheet history's most prolific serial killers]], and is responsible for corrupting [[spoiler: John Lowe]] into becoming the Ten Commandments Killer. This is part of a project of his in order to "[[BlasphemousBoast kill God]]," purely to spite a particularly defiant religious man he killed while alive. March is [[ItsAllAboutMe completely self-centered]] in his desire for the Countess, arranging her death so that she will be forced to spend eternity trapped in the hotel with him. Finally, March controls the [[HornyDevils Addiction Demon]], a strange rapist creature with a drill for a penis whom March uses to threaten others into following his orders. A sadistic, brutal savage who hides his true nature beneath a veneer of class and aristocracy, March is the only member of a morally ambiguous cast without a single redeeming quality.
** Richard Ramirez is listed at ''[[YMMV/AmericanHorrorStory1984 1984]]''.

* CompleteMonster: [[ManipulativeBastard James Patrick March]], the deceased first owner of the Hotel Cortez, is a wealthy man who [[SerialKiller murdered countless people]] in life and continues to do so as a ghost. When he learned that his wife was still interested in her former lover, he had the man sealed up behind a wall in an abandoned wing of the hotel and [[MurderTheHypotenuse left him there to die]]. He has also served as an EvilMentor to some of [[HistoricalRapSheet history's most prolific serial killers]], and is responsible for corrupting [[spoiler: John Lowe]] into becoming the Ten Commandments Killer. This is part of a project of his in order to "[[BlasphemousBoast kill God]]," purely to spite a particularly defiant religious man he killed while alive. March is [[ItsAllAboutMe completely self-centered]] in his desire for the Countess, arranging her death so that she will be forced to spend eternity trapped in the hotel with him. Finally, March controls the [[HornyDevils Addiction Demon]], a strange rapist creature with a drill for a penis whom March uses to threaten others into following his orders. A sadistic, brutal savage who hides his true nature beneath a veneer of class and aristocracy, March is the only member of a morally ambiguous cast without a single redeeming quality.

* FanPreferredCouple: Liz Taylor/Tristan, who were well-liked by a majority of the fanbase due to their sweet and genuine love for each other and Liz Taylor's EnsembleDarkhorse status.