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Creepy old house + troubled family looking for a fresh start = bad times.note 

The first season of American Horror Story, originally titled American Horror Story but retroactively titled American Horror Story: Murder House, follows the story of a couple from Boston, Ben and Vivien, and their daughter, Violet, who decide a change in location to sunny Los Angeles will help heal the wounds left by Vivien's miscarriage and by Ben's affair with a former student. Their nightmares are far from over, however, as their new dream house turns out to be full of dark secrets.

Jessica Lange won a Primetime Emmy and a Screen Actor's Guild award for her portrayal of Constance in Murder House.


American Horror Story: Murder House provides the following tropes:

  • Abhorrent Admirer:
    • Larry, who is disfigured by burns, towards Constance.
    • Tate becomes this to Violet once she learns the whole truth about his past.
  • Abusive Parents: Constance hits almost every category: emotional abuse, psychological abuse, even physical abuse (when she starts hitting Tate, whose reaction implies that he is used to it and terrified of her). Example? Locking Addie in a closet filled with mirrors for making noise, guaranteeing that Addie will get even more distressed at seeing herself and being unable to get out or look anywhere without seeing her reflection. She later keeps her grandson in the same closet, in the dark. Constance is a highly complex character, and her abusiveness as a parent is part of that; she does fiercely love her children and at one point admits that she regrets how she treats Addie, but it doesn't make her behavior any less despicable. Her reaction to Adelaide being hit by a car is still heartbreaking.
  • Adults Are Useless: Violet walks around public areas of the school smoking and is never confronted by any authority figures about it, she is also repeatedly attacked in those same public places and no authority figure ever steps in. Given the writers' other show, the high school's Darwinian approach to discipline isn't too surprising.
  • Afterlife Angst: Because the Murder House keeps the spirits of anyone who died on its grounds Barred from the Afterlife, there's quite a bit of this. In particular, Violet attempts to kill herself by overdose, but appears to survive the attempt, with Tate forcing her to throw up the drugs. Episodes later, Violet finds while trying to run from Tate that she keeps ending up back in the house. To explain, Tate shows Violet her rotting body, hidden in a crawl space - while she threw up some of the drugs, she had taken too many for it to help. This caused Violet to break down crying.
  • Alpha Bitch: Leah, at first. She does get nicer to Violet after Tate scares the crap out of her, but then, it's probably because she's steadily losing her mind over what happened to her in the basement; Violet is the only one who was there and knows what happened, so Violet becomes her confidant.
  • American Title
  • And I Must Scream: Moira, and pretty much all of the ghosts trapped in the house. They can actually scream all they want about their condition and beat the shit out of each other freely, but they're still stuck there for as long as the house stands (and possibly longer, who knows).
  • And the Adventure Continues: For Constance, at least. The last episode ends with her in the process of raising the child who's prophesied to bring about the Apocalypse.
  • The Antichrist: Michael, conceived by a ghost and a living woman: Tate and Vivien. He kills his half-brother in the womb and kills his nanny at the age of three.
  • Anyone Can Die: The only cast members to survive to the end are Constance, Leah, Larry, Billie Dean, Luke, Marcy, and Hallie.
  • Artistic Title: The opening credits manage to be both creepy and fascinating.
  • Artistic License – Medicine: Ben is supposedly a psychiatrist, a medical doctor specializing drug management of mental illness. He is shown do little if any medical treatment, instead acting as a psychotherapist. However, it's possible he's filling both roles; he does ask Tate questions regarding his medication.
  • Ass Shove: The Rubber Suit Man shoved a fireplace poker up Patrick's ass before killing him.
  • Ate His Gun: How Nora committed suicide after killing her husband out of grief over her monster baby.
  • The Atoner:
    • Larry, except not really, he just wants to impress Constance.
    • Tate claims to want redemption in the season finale, but is doubted even by his own formerly idealistic therapist.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Addie toward the family dog, when Vivien is trying to get across that she can't keep breaking in.
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work:
    • One of the serial murderers gets sick from the poisoned muffin Constance baked for Violet.
    • Larry kills Hayden when she is about to tell Vivian about her pregnancy. He even tells Ben the problem is solved without Ben having to become a murderer.
  • Barred from the Afterlife: The spirits trapped in the house.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: The ghosts without the wounds that killed hide them in the interest of preserving their looks.
    • Moira's young self does not sport the eye bullet wound that killed her, though her old form has a blind eye.
    • Hayden sports no more than a bloody nose after being smashed in the face — and then beaten to death — with a shovel. After she bathes, she has no visible injuries.
    • The Black Dahlia only briefly appears with her mutilations, though this could be because the mutilations were inflicted on her body after she died.
  • Bed Trick: Played for drama when the Rubber Suit Man impersonates Ben to have sex with Vivien in the first episode.
  • Betty and Veronica: Ben (Archie), Vivien (Betty) and Hayden (Veronica).
  • Big Bad: While Constance and Hayden cause their fair share of problems, Tate is ultimately the primary source of conflict by raping Vivien.
  • Birds of a Feather: Tate and Violet, who bond over the cuts they've given themselves, similar tastes in music, feelings on popular kids, etc., etc. Cue one angry, angsty teen love-connection.
  • Bittersweet Ending: All of the Harmons die and are trapped in the House with all the other ghosts forever, but are actively working to make sure no other family ends up like them and are finally happy being dead together. Moira still can't move on, but she finally finds happiness in being embraced by the Harmons as a friend and member of the family. Constance is raising the Anti-Christ, with mixed emotions. Tate and the rest of the ghosts in the house are still miserable and the dog lives.
  • Boy Meets Ghoul: Violet and Tate.
  • Breather Episode:
    • It's an odd show where an episode featuring multiple characters being shot and another attempting suicide is the breather episode, but "Piggy Piggy" was much less chaotic and downplayed following the big grand Halloween episodes, and had more answers than questions. Although it turns out to be less of a breather episode when it is revealed later in the season that Violet actually succeeded in her suicide attempt later.
    • The episode "Spooky Little Girl" also counts. Aside from the ghost of Elizabeth Short appearing and a depiction of how her murder happened, this episode is more character driven, focusing mostly on Ben, as well as Hayden's motives and Travis wanting to become famous. Then enters Mood Whiplash territory when Billie Dean and Constance talk about what exactly happens if a spirit had a child with a human, with Billie revealing that it would result in The Antichrist.
  • Breathless Non Sequitur: Unsurprisingly, Chad:
    Pat: [leaving] I'm hitting the gym.
    Chad: Well make sure you wear a condom. And pick me up some gala apples. I thought these golden delicious would look dramatic in the bobbing bucket, they just look dull and depressing... there's no contrast.
    Pat: [re-enters] Why would I wear a condom at the gym?
    Chad: Maybe because you're screwing that twink trainer of yours? And I need gourds. I'm going to hang them on the tree out front... spray paint them and they're going to be these clever, little, organic ghosts.
  • Bungled Suicide: Subverted. It initially appears that Violet survived her suicide attempt in the fifth episode. It's only towards the end of the season that Violet herself learns that didn't, when Tate leads her to her dead body hidden in the basement.
  • Bury Your Disabled: Adelaide, who has Down Syndrome, is fatally hit by a car in the fourth episode. Although of the characters who die she probably has the best fate since she's not stuck as a ghost in the house for eternity and actually gets to pass on.
  • Calling the Old Man Out:
    • Violet does this to her parents to little effect.
    • Tate also did this to his mom, also to little effect.
  • The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House: From under the gazebo, at least.
  • Came Back Wrong: Charles and Nora Montgomery's child, Thaddeus, AKA the baby-thing in the basement. Charles tried stitching his body parts back together and stitched in animal parts where he couldn't, then used a still-beating heart from a client to resurrect him. The "baby" came back with a craving for blood, resulting in Nora attempting to kill him.
  • Cassandra Truth: Adelaide directly told the twins that they would die in the house. They didn't listen. She also tells Vivien that she'll die in the house. She didn't listen either.
  • Central Theme:
    • Infidelity.
    • Everyone is haunted.
    • Also, babies. Everyone either wants one or lost one or has one on the way.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • The rubber suit Vivien discovers in the attic, which turns out to be a physically and sexually violent manifestation that is probably the most-recurring villain in the season.
    • The cupcakes Constance brought over for Violet. One is eaten by one of the home invaders, which makes her ill and results in her not joining the other two in the basement.
    • A subtle one, but the cop at the end of the second episode says that Bianca was found blocks away from the murder house, nearly cut in half. He says that it looked like her friends tried to do a Black Dahlia on her. The Black Dahlia is revealed to have happened in the murder house in episode 9, and to have carried out in a similar way.
    • The realtor had an actual gun, which Vivien later steals and accidentally shoots her husband with. Quite a lot of the onscreen deaths are caused by guns.
    • In an example that stretches across several seasons, Billie Dean Howard vaguely references the Roanoke colonists dying and then haunting the Indians, who banished them. This becomes a major plot point in the sixth season.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: The young woman Ben is counseling in the second episode. She is one of the three people who invade the house, and is the only one who escapes alive. She is later found dead by the cops who believe she was murdered by her accomplices, whose bodies haven't been found.
  • Christianity Is Catholic: The Anti-Christ subplot is played out in Catholic terms.
  • Closed Circle: The Harmons can't just leave because they can't afford to lose such a large amount of money. Later added to when Violet threatens to run away if they move again, and Vivian's doctor warns her that the stress of moving is potentially detrimental to her unborn child.
  • Cold Touch Surprise: When the family moves in, Violet teases Gabriel after touching him by saying she has "cold hands, but warm heart." By this point, she's a ghost. It's heavily implied she was actually only invoking the trope so that Tate would try to kill Gabriel (so he and Violet could be Together in Death), Violet would save his life, but he'd be sufficiently freaked out to leave with his family and not come back.
  • Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: Said verbatim by Violet and Constance to invoke ghosts.
  • Creepy Twins: The redheaded boys who were murdered in the opening of the first episode and who now haunt the house.
  • Creepy Basement: The most dangerous place in the house. It's where the twins meet their fate, where Violet and Tate teach Leah a lesson, where Dr. Montgomery carried out his illegal abortions, where Travis and the home invaders are killed, and where the Black Dahlia was chopped up.
  • Cross-Referenced Titles: The last two episodes: "Birth" and "Afterbirth".
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Everyone, but points go to the Harmon family, whose problems could count as Deus Angst Machina.
    • Charles and Nora Montgomery; a drug-addict surgeon who can't pay the bills, and an East Coast socialite used to a higher-class lifestyle. After they set up a secret abortion clinic, one girl can't hold her tongue and her boyfriend retaliates by kidnapping, murdering, and mutilating the body of their son Thaddeus. Driven further into madness, Charles tries to stitch back together and resurrect their son a la Frankenstein, but Thaddeus Came Back Wrong. Nora kills her husband then herself in grief. After this, we don't see much of Charles, though we know that he's still practicing surgery in the basement. Every time we see Nora, it seems that she's forgotten that she's dead (likely due to the brain damage a bullet through the skull would've caused) and is wondering where her baby is.
    • Chad and Patrick were happy and planning on having children for a long time. By the time they moved into the Murder House, they became an unhappy couple. Patrick began cheating on Chad constantly, and while Chad tried his hardest, he seemed to only be in the mood for something "weird" around Halloween, much to Patrick's chagrin. On Halloween 2010, they were attacked and killed by the Rubber Man. Since they died on-property, Chad and Patrick found themselves stuck forever in their unhappy relationship.
    • Constance is "no stranger to tragedy" herself - you can practically hear her Virginia drawl! In a way, Constance is responsible for most of the tragedies caused. Killed her husband and her maid for suspecting them of sleeping together. Mother of three or four kids (she says four at the beginning, though we only hear about three), all died before they reached adulthood. Her first child we know about was Beau, a disfigured young man who was chained up by Constance in the attic. When Child Protective Services threatened to take Beau away for criminal child neglect, Constance had her then-lover, Larry, smother him with a pillow. Her second oldest child, Tate, was of "model good-looks," but deeply disturbed inside, something Constance refused to see. One day, Tate set Larry on fire in his office, then shot up his high school, and then was killed in the Murder House later that day when the police arrived. Finally, Constance's daughter Addie was born with Down Syndrome, something Constance was always embarrassed and ashamed of. And that's just by the first episode!
    • Moira. In 1984, she had a one-time affair with Constance's then-husband, Hugo Langdon. When she tried to call it off, Hugo decided differently and tried to rape her. While Constance was walking down the hallway, she believed the cries she heard from the room were noises of pleasure, withdrew a pistol, then shot Moira in the eye and then killed her husband soon after, and buried them both separately in the ground. In the wake of the event, all Moira wants is for someone to find her bones and release her from the house's grip.
  • Daydream Surprise: Horrifically subverted. The answer to the viewer's startled "did that just happen?" is always "yes".
  • A Day in the Limelight: "Rubber Man". Explains the origins of the rubber suit and reveals that Tate had donned the suit to kill Patrick and Chad, then to father one of Vivien's twins, just because Nora wanted a baby.
  • Dead All Along:
    • Moira O'Hara, killed by Constance long before the series began.
    • Tate Langdon, killed by a full-on SWAT team after shooting up his school. This is how Constance knew about the house's power, as they were living there at the time.
    • Violet Harmon, who doesn't survive her overdose as we initially believe.
  • Dead to Begin With: The ghosts of the house, e.g. Chad and Patrick, who had been killed by the Rubber Man a year before the Harmons moved in. Most of the time, the ghosts have already been shown when they were alive in their own time, and their death scenes covered, so you are well-aware of their state of being when they pop up in current-day.
  • Death by Childbirth: Vivien, along with one of her twins.
  • Death by Irony:
    • The girl in the second episode claims that she has been having recurring nightmares of getting cut in half. It doesn't matter if she's lying to get into Ben's office or not, because she ends up is sliced along the stomach all the same, thanks to Tate. She is bleeding heavily as she staggers out of the house, and police find her dead of the injury.
    • Ben. After his wife dies and he finds out that his daughter overdosed, he seriously considers killing himself to be with them. Shortly after their ghosts talk him out of it, he gets killed anyway by the ghosts of Hayden and the two home invaders, who conveniently hang him from a chandelier.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: After a terrifying encounter in the Harmons' basement, this seems to happen with Leah and Violet, as they are later seen hanging out together and sharing personal details.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: Seems to be a chronic problem for Ben.
  • Does Not Like Men: Moira likes to give speeches on how men are cruel, oppressive, and treat women like dirt, while telling Vivian it's women's job to suffer quietly and clean up men's mistakes. This may have to do with suffering an Attempted Rape at the hands of her last employer, only to be shot by his jealous wife. Rather than voice her feelings and try to get some closure, she uses her looks to try and manipulate Ben into screwing up.
  • Dream Sequence: Vivien's prone to these. In one episode, it was her baby's hand being visible through the skin of her stomach.
  • Dressed All in Rubber: The man in the rubber suit. Thinking it's Ben, Vivien has sex with him and conceives a child. The audience is left to question who the father is, as she had had sex with Ben earlier in the episode. It's both; she's having twins.
  • Driven to Madness:
    • Violet shows signs of this after she discovers the truth of what Tate had done. It's further compounded when she looks for Tate in the basement and instead finds one of the nurses, the two home invaders, and Charles, leading to her being Driven to Suicide.
    • Charles, after the kidnapping and murder of his and Nora's son.
    • What the ghosts do to Vivien as her pregnancy goes on.
    • Constance is after she discovers that Tate raped Vivien. It resurfaces in her monologue near the end of "Afterbirth".
  • Driven to Suicide:
    • Nora lost her mind after her son's murder and her husband's downward spiral.
    • As it turns out, Violet DID die of the overdose.
    • On subsequent tours of the house, Marcy says this is what happened to Ben Harmon.
  • Dual Age Modes: Moira, who appears as an elderly lady to women and as an attractive young woman to men. Nobody compares notes to realize the discrepancy, even when Violet comes across old-lady Moira straddling her dad. In the third episode, Moira says that men see what they want, whereas women see into a person's soul. Both forms are technically her real appearance; men see her as she looked before she died whereas women see her true age, as well as a reminder of the gunshot wound that killed her, in her one blind eye. Eventually, when Ben rejects Moira's advances once and for all and begins looking deeper, he begins seeing her as an old woman, too, signifying that he is starting to see the truth. This typically shown to work on living, straight, men and women. She's seen talking to Chad briefly in her old form, but it's never explained if he sees her that way, or if him being gay, a ghost, a longtime acquaintance, or particularly perceptive has anything to do with it.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Every family and relationship, except the Spanish family in the final episode.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: This season was made before it was totally clear which actors were in it for the long haul, and which were going to drop out. So, a lot of series mainstays end up playing second-fiddle to the one-offs. This is particularly notable in the case of Jessica Lange, who later become the face of the show.
  • Easy Amnesia: Ben, during the third episode, coupled with spacing out. Caused by Moira spiking his coffee with laudanum, in an effort to get him to dig up her bones.
  • The '80s: The beginning of the third episode takes place during this time period.
  • Enfant Terrible:
    • The baby-thing in the basement that attacks Leah, nearly attacks Violet, and is responsible for the death of the twins. If Tate can be believed, this is Thaddeus, the son of Charles and Nora Montgomery, killed in revenge for an abortion and resurrected using a still-beating heart by Charles.
    • Vivien's Anti-Christ baby.
  • "Everybody Dies" Ending: None of the Harmons survive. (Except the dog.) Really, this show killed off almost every cast member. Constance and Larry are the only major characters who are still alive (and since Larry has brain cancer, he likely didn't survive for long).
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Hallie, Vivien's dog, who leads Violet to the basement the first time they visit the house and bites Adelaide.
  • Evil Redhead:
    • The twins, though they were more Jerkasses than outright evil.
    • Moira, who appears as a young woman to Ben and tries to seduce him. Somewhat subverted in that all she really wants is for someone to find her bones.
    • Hayden, a victim of Love Makes You Crazy and Love Makes You Evil.
  • Fan Disservice: Young Moira playing with herself is hot, until you remember that to females she appears as an old lady while appearing young to men.note 
  • Fanservice: This seems to be young Moira's main purpose in the show. We also get a few shots of Ben's naked ass.
  • Fetus Terrible:
    • What the situation with one of Vivien's twins, specifically the one Vivien and Rubber Man conceived during the pilot, appears to be. It started kicking at eight weeks, then was revealed on the ultrasound to be much further along, and made the nurse faint. The nurse later quits her job. When Vivien meets her again, she claims she saw what can be interpreted as The Antichrist.
    • The jars in the basement invoke this trope.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The basement incident gives subtle hints that Tate already knows he's Dead All Along. He switches places with Thaddeus several times before appearing next to Violet to watch.
    • The medium's story of Roanoke Colony. It's almost completely inaccurate, so it's no surprise when that her advice turns out to be worthless.
    • When Violet's ex-bully tells her that the devil is beautiful, not ugly. It mainly works as a parallel to her relationship with Tate, but it later applies to her beautiful baby brother - The Antichrist.
    • At one point, Adelaide remarks that she hopes to never become a ghost as she finds the idea horrible. But the end of the episode, Constance tries to make this happen unsuccessfully, and Adelaide later has a medium explain she's still glad to have died instead.
    • The events of episodes 5 and 6 are alluded to when Tate has his first session with Ben; the sequence where Tate is shown walking through a school and a very brief shot where Tate sees himself covered in blood alludes he actually has acted on his murderous thoughts. Additionally, Tate also being a ghost is implied when the dead cheerleader remarks that she would be 34 if he hadn't killed her; since she went to the same high-school at the same time as Tate, it's highly implied that he should be about 30 too.
  • French Maid Outfit: Moira wears a highly-eroticized version of this as her younger self, complete with garter belt.
  • Girl on Girl Is Hot:
    • Elizabeth and young Moira attempt to invoke this on Ben. It doesn't work.
    • Defied by Luke whose wife cheated on him with a woman. He comments that a lot of guys would be into that but he was just upset.
  • Glasgow Smile: Given to both Elizabeth Short's and Travis' corpses by Charles Montgomery so that they'd "smile."
  • Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Inverted in that Hayden's choice to not have an abortion is presented as the wrong choice because it involves pulling The Baby Trap on the father, and she's clearly presented as delusional for thinking otherwise. Becomes a moot point when Larry kills her. Likewise the girls who went to Dr. Montgomery are presented as victims of his insanity and not villainized for their abortions.
  • Going in Circles: In a truly freaky scene, Violet flees the house, screaming for her father, when Tate wants her to commit suicide with him, but keeps ending up back inside no matter how many times she tries. Tate's not actually the one doing it; it's Violet herself, as she is now a ghost bound to the house.
  • Gory Discretion Shot/Take Our Word for It:
    • Charles is shown a box of jars containing their dead baby by two officers; not only are their contents hidden, an officer then stops Nora from seeing them, and it's enough to help drive Charles insane. Subverted soon after when Charles is shown sewing appendages onto an infant arm.
    • The horribly mangled "Dead Breakfast Club" subverts this, considering how grotesque their injuries are. Played straight in the next episode, as said horrible injuries are inflicted offscreen.
  • Goths Have It Hard: Both teenagers Tate and Violet are modelled quite purposefully on the goth/emo subcultures. Violet was actually initially written as a goth, and Tate often dresses in quite a goth style, but also both have distinct crossover with emo culture, such as listening to sad music (Kurt Cobain is a favorite), chain-smoking, and both are shown being fascinated (rather than scared) of the ghosts in the house. Both are self-harmers, and Violet is a depressed teenager who commits suicide, while Tate is a psychopath who burned his stepfather alive, committed a mass shooting, and raped and impregnated Vivien out of Mommy Issues.
  • Grief-Induced Split: Chloe, one of the victims of Tate's school massacre, reveals that her parents split up and moved out of the area after her murder, meaning that she could never go home again.
  • Groin Attack: Moira's part to play in the plan to kill the Armenian man. Under the pretense of fellatio, she bites his penis off.
  • Hall of Mirrors: The "Bad Girl Room".
  • Happily Failed Suicide: Inverted. After being Driven To Madness, Violet intentionally overdoses. Tate, screaming and sobbing at her not to die on him, drags her to the bathroom, puts the shower on full blast, and makes her throw up the drugs. It initially appears that she has survived with his help, but ultimately it is revealed that she died anyway. When Tate shows her her rotting body, the reality of her death hits her and she bursts into tears, wishing that she were still alive.
  • Haunted House: Murders and suicides have been taking place in the house since at least the 1920's.
  • Here We Go Again!: After Ben is killed, another family buys the house. Ben and Vivien save their lives by convincing them to leave shortly afterward, scaring the ever-loving hell out of them in the process. Marcy has to redouble her efforts to sell it.
  • Historical Domain Character: Elizabeth Short, aka The Black Dahlia, in "Spooky Little Girl". She was raped and killed inside the house. Her appearance is not only foreshadowed but is in and of itself foreshadowing, as Travis' body is mutilated the same way hers was.
  • Hope Spot:
    • For Moira, when Larry discovers her bones while digging a hole to bury Hayden in. Dashed when her bones are not removed, Hayden is buried with her, and Ben builds a gazebo on top of them!
    • Invoked in Episode 3 when Adelaide appears and tries to help. This is quickly reverted when Constance misinterprets what she's saying and locks her in a closet to keep her quiet.
  • I Just Want to Be Beautiful: Adelaide, who obsesses over being a pretty girl at least for Halloween. Assuming the medium is to be believed, she got her wish after she died.
  • It Runs in the Family: Tate's son apparently inherited his dad's psychotic tendencies, if the nanny he murdered at three years old is any indication.
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Tate to Violet. However, he has several major misconceptions about how to go about it. Like trying to kill off the new owners' son, who had only displayed a passing interest in her, so she wouldn't be alone.
  • Jack the Ripoff: The home invaders attempt to recreate the murder of the two nurses using Vivien and Violet, down to the smallest details like the exact same time, the exact same clothes, and the exact same murder weapons. Needless to say, all three of them die.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Nora is introduced as a very cold, distant, impatient mother with her son Thaddeus. When he was kidnapped and murdered, she's distraught, and forever cries, "Where's my baby?" However, when she finally gets her wish, she's back to being cold, distant, and impatient with the baby she had Tate take from Vivien, and promptly dumps him on her the second she gets a chance. She then finally has to admit that she doesn't have the patience (or desire) to be a mother. What? You didn't think that being remorseful over what happened to her son would magically imbue her with the traits of a nurturing mother, did you?
  • Just a Flesh Wound: When Ben was shot, he didn't go to the hospital because it was just a through and through. Justified, as being shot in the thigh is one of the places you can take a bullet without sustaining a terrible injury.
  • Karma Houdini: Constance. For all of the pain and misery she causes to the people around her, she more or less suffers no real consequences.
    • Marcy, the real estate woman. She sells the house to people knowing the full history of it and the fate that usually awaits the people who own it, but she deliberately fails to mention this to potential buyers, just so she can continue to receive the commision for the sale. She is a truly a dispicable woman who nonetheless experiences no consequences for her actions. When all is said and done she is shown on the final episode ready to try to make a sale to the next potentially doomed family.
  • Killed Off for Real: The entire Harmon family, Hayden, Travis, and several others are killed and return as ghosts. Adelaide is the only one who died who did not return as a ghost, as she died off-property.
  • Kiss-Kiss-Slap
  • Leitmotif: Charles Montgomery and his family are nearly always accompanied by the theme from Bram Stoker's Dracula.
  • Lightmare Fuel: Harvey hitting Hayden with a shovel, followed by Ben building a gazebo in under an hour. Scary because he was hiding a body, funny because it's ridiculous.
  • Look Both Ways: Addie is struck by a car while trying to join the other trick-or-treaters. The brutal irony is that the accident was caused by the mask Addie's mother gave her to look like a "pretty girl," which blocked her peripheral vision.
  • Locked into Strangeness: The incident in the basement causes Leah's hair to start turning white.
  • Malevolent Masked Men: The home invaders in the second episode, who are intent on reenacting one of the murders that had occurred in the house. Two are lured to the basement and dispatched by the victims of said murder. The third, seriously injured by Tate, manages to get away and dies off-property.
  • Madwoman in the Attic: Beau, Constance's son whom she had kept chained up in the attic.
  • Major Injury Under Reaction: Travis handles being murdered rather well, only being bummed that he won't be famous now. He even asks if he was in the news after his body is found, then requests newspaper clippings. He plans on starting a scrapbook.
  • Mama Bear: Constance. Despite her obvious contempt for her daughter, she threatens to break Vivien's arm if she touched her again. She's the same way with Beau and Tate, even though Tate hates her. The woman will kill without a flutter of remorse to keep her family together, as seen when she allies with Larry and Moira to off a possible buyer who was going to tear the house down.
  • Meaningful Echo:
    • "You're gonna regret it," said by Adelaide to the twins, is heard again a few minutes later in the episode as Vivien confronts Ben. Considering this was the main catalyst that caused them to move to the house and everything that happened afterward, it's quite safe to say they did regret it.
    • The music that played as the twins wrecked the place is heard again, midway through "Afterbirth". It plays as the new buyers flee the house.
    • Tate's whistled theme is heard again as Constance finds his son and the body of the boy's nanny, who he had killed.
  • Moe Greene Special: How Constance killed Moira. She's even impressed with her own marksmanship.
  • Murder-Suicide:
    • According to the realtor, the gay couple who lived in the house before the series started died this way. It is revealed in the first part of the Halloween two-parter that they were actually both murdered by the man in the rubber suit, who first tries to drown Chad and then snaps his neck. After Patrick walked into the room, he attacked him as well, beating him, sticking a fireplace poker up his ass, then shoving him and Chad down the basement stairs. The man in the rubber suit finished the job by shooting them to frame it as a murder-suicide.
    • Charles and Nora Montgomery, after Nora discovers just what their child had become; she kills him, then herself.
    • Larry's wife burned herself and her daughters after Larry announced he was leaving her for Constance.
  • Never Trust a Trailer:
    • That scene in the trailer for episode 6 where Vivien's baby's hand is clearly visible pressing against her stomach is a Dream Sequence.
    • The trailer for episode 10 implies that Tate is going to kill Violet. He does not, instead revealing that she's been Dead All Along since her overdose.
  • Nightmare Fetishist:
    • Violet only wants to move in the house after the real estate ladies tells the family about the murders.
    • Tate, who has many macabre fantasies and interests, some of which he has even acted on.
    • The reenactment group in the second episode.
    • It appears that Hayden REALLY enjoyed stabbing Travis.
  • The '90s: Episode 6 starts here in a very shocking way.
  • Non Human Lover Reveal: Violet eventually finds out that Tate is a ghost.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: A few rules of thumb:
    • Ghosts are fully capable of physically interacting with the living, and their behavior is often casual enough that it can be a surprise when we learn which characters are ghosts. Ghosts can kill the living, have sex with them...and even conceive children with them, as we ultimately find out. They can't be substantially harmed by any physical violence; though they appear to still feel some degree of pain, being beat up, stabbed, shot in the head, or even disemboweled appears to cause minimal discomfort and they heal almost immediately afterwards.
    • Some ghosts aren't aware that they're dead, though plenty more are.
    • Most ghosts have at least some control over their appearance, being able to mask or hide the bodily disfigurements that they may have gotten when they died, and some can make themselves appear to age after their deaths. Moira, for example, alternates between appearing young and elderly (despite dying when she was around 30), and in the older version she appears with one blind eye because she died from a gunshot to the eye.
    • Unless their remains are moved elsewhere, all ghosts must spend eternity confined to the place where they originally died—save for on October 31st, when they can roam the Earth freely.
  • Parental Neglect: While her parents spend all their time and energy on their shattered relationship, Violet is left to fend for herself. They don't even notice her being Driven to Madness, overdosing, and dying. In her own words, they think she's "depressed."
  • Parent-Induced Extended Childhood:
    • Chad and Patrick are both desperate to claim Vivien and Ben's baby as their own, both to have something to keep them together and to give them something to do in their eternity together as ghosts. Chad offhandedly mentions that he plans to smother the child while it's still "young and cute", though this doesn't end up happening - because they end up having yet another breakup and abandon the plan out of sheer despair.
    • Zigzagged by Nora Montgomery. Having lost her baby to a horrific kidnapping/murder/resurrection in the 1920s, she is obsessed with getting her baby back, and latches onto Vivien and Ben's one surviving baby as a substitute - to the point that she might be willing to go through with Chad and Patrick's plan. However, she doesn't bother with either killing or keeping the baby, if only because she finds herself incapable of putting up with said baby's crying once she has him; as it happens, Nora wasn't much of a mother when she was alive and hasn't changed in death, so she wearily returns him to Vivien of her own free will.
  • Patched Together from the Headlines: The house's whole history. All of this take place there: a Columbine school shooting, which at least had something to do with the ghost of Nora, who was involved in a baby's kidnapping that closely resembles the Lindbergh kidnapping; the Black Dahlia murder; and a man also committed crimes that closely resemble Richard Speck's, although with two nurses rather than eight.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • Constance doesn't have many redeeming qualities, but you feel damn sorry for her when Adelaide gets hit by a car and she tries desperately to keep from losing her. What she says to Adelaide's ghost also counts.
    • Nora rescuing a young Tate from Thaddeus.
    • Hayden informing Elizabeth that she did ultimately achieve her dream of becoming famous posthumously. One of the very few instances of Hayden not doing something for her own interests during the season.
  • Police Are Useless: The dozens of murders and disappearances over the years certainly haven't inspired the police to do anything like thorough investigations.
  • Pro-Human Transhuman: In the final episode Moira and a loose confederation of ghosts team up with the Harmons to scare new buyers away so they don't get killed.
  • Racist Grandma: Constance and the realtor may not be quite old enough to be considered grandmas, but both are racist and homophobic, the latter apologetically so, the former... not so much.
  • Red Herring: Shortly after moving into the Murder House, Ben starts sleepwalking, being drawn to put his hand on the lit fireplace and gas stove. Larry warns him that the same thing happened to him when he lived in the house, which eventually compelled him to burn his wife and daughters alive. When Tate's horrific crimes are revealed, Constance insists that "the house" drove him to it. It's later revealed that Larry didn't kill his wife or daughters, she committed murder-suicide with them when he announced he intended to leave them for Constance. Her ghost was also the one that caused Ben's fire-driven sleep-walking, as she wanted someone to feel her pain. Tate is also revealed to have committed his crimes because of deep emotional/psychological issues, not the house. All in all, it seems that while the Murder House ghosts can and do do many terrible things, possession, mind-control, and compelling the living to kill each other is not among their modus operandi.
  • Red Right Hand: The Two-Faced Larry Harvey, whose left arm is also apparently of little to no use. He quickly evolves into more and more of an antagonist.
  • Related All Along: Tate is revealed to be Constance's son.
  • Resurrected Murderer: After setting Larry on fire and committing a Columbine-like shooting, Tate is killed by SWAT in his bedroom. As a result, his ghost remains in the Murder House, where he becomes Rubber Man, raping and murdering Chad and Patrick and murdering Vivian. Until Violet's love redeemed him... maybe.
  • Retronym: The first season was given the subtitle Murder House after the show's seasonal anthology format was announced.
  • The Reveal: The opening for "Rubber Man". The Rubber Suit Man who may have fathered Vivien's baby, and who killed Chad and Patrick, is Tate.
  • Rich Bitch: Billie Dean, the medium whom Constance contacts after Violet discovers that Tate's dead.
  • Self-Inflicted Hell: Some of the ghosts complain about not being able to leave (due to their bones interred on the grounds) but they seem more interested in staying to torment each other (and the new living residents) for their perceived "crimes".
  • The '70s: The beginning of the pilot takes place in this time period.
  • Shapeshifting Seducer: Moira probably counts, appearing as a beautiful young woman to seduce men when it will help with a bigger plan. However, it's complicated in that she doesn't change herself to seduce them, they just automatically see her that way.
  • Ship Sinking: Tate and Violet gets torpedoed near the end of the season once Violet learns that Tate killed Chad and Patrick and raped her mother.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: In "Piggy Piggy", Ben's patient Derek finally overcomes his fear of being alone in the bathroom, only to be murdered by two robbers in the bathroom.
  • Shovel Strike: How Larry kills Hayden.
  • The '60s: The beginning of the second episode takes place in this time period.
  • Sleepwalking: Starts happening to Ben after they move in, coupled with a disturbing fascination with fire. Larry Harvey, former owner of the house, confirms that this happened to him as well. He says that it led to him killing his family and horribly burning himself, but later reveals that he'd lied about killing his family. It's also mentioned in the Rubber Man episode that Patrick started sleepwalking after he moved in, and is explicitly shown to be the case with Miguel, the new owner, which suggests that the house tends to have this effect on its residents. "Afterbirth" explains that it is Larry's late wife Loraine waking them up in a trance and leading them down to the stove, wanting them to burn themselves and feel her pain. Pretty creepy. It was one of the examples of how the ghosts in the house work, trying to get others to feel their pain.
  • Sole Survivor: Hallie, the dog. Adopted by Marcy after Ben is killed.
  • Stalker with a Crush:
    • Tate, towards Violet. He likes to stare at her while she sleeps.
    • Larry, towards Constance. The whole reason he wants the Harmons out of the house is so he can stay close to her. When she discovers this, she is fairly disgusted.
  • Stalker without a Crush: Larry, towards Ben. He keeps appearing out of nowhere and talking to him. Though Ben is repulsed by him, he apparently just wants to be buds. In episode three, he even helps Ben out by killing Hayden. It takes a turn for the worse in episode 4: he really wants his thousand dollars. In episode 5, he teams up with Hayden to get revenge on Ben.
  • Star-Crossed Lovers: Tate and Violet, due to Tate being Dead All Along. It was resolved once Violet found out that she had died, too, but their relationship was shot for good when Violet found out that Tate killed Chad and Patrick, and raped her mother.
  • Stock Unsolved Mysteries: Elizabeth Short, AKA The Black Dahlia, was accidentally killed during an operation, and her body was dismembered by Charles for easier transport. She is now one of the ghosts haunting the house.
  • Straw Misogynist: The Armenian man who plans on buying the house displays this behavior, especially towards Constance and Moira. That's not why Constance, Moira, and Larry team up to do away with him; he planned on tearing the house down.
  • Suicide by Cop: After burning Larry and shooting up his school, Tate tricked the SWAT team sent to apprehend him, into shooting him dead.
  • Supernatural-Proof Father: Violet is the first Harmon to catch on, and really, that's only halfway through the season. Vivien seems to figure it out pretty soon after that, leaving Ben as the last member of the family to cross the finish line, thus fulfilling the trope.
  • Surreal Horror: Bondage monster. That is all.
  • Swiss-Cheese Security: Even discounting the ghosts, it seems there is always at least one person in the house who shouldn't be there. The only thing missing are creepy phone calls, which show up in the Halloween episode.
  • Tangled Family Tree: Tate causes all sorts of tangles when it's revealed that he is the Rubber Man and the one who had sex with Vivien.
  • Teacher/Student Romance: One of the reasons for the tension between Ben and Vivien.
  • Teens Are Monsters:
    • Her first day at school, Violet is confronted by a group of girls who give her an insane rant for smoking on campus. Leah tries to make her eat her cigarette and promptly screams "YOU ARE SO DEAD!" in a high-pitched wail once Violet manages to get away. Minor subversion in the fact that even Leah's friends thought she was going too far in trying to make Violet eat the cigarette.
    • Tate, who lit a man on fire, was a school shooter who viciously gunned down over a dozen classmates, murdered at least two former occupants in cold blood and is implied to have done similar things to others, anally raped a gay man with a fireplace poker for no apparent reason before killing him, raped his love interest's mother to impregnate her and steal the baby for another ghost, terrorized a girl so badly she started losing her mind, and, oh yeah, fathered The Antichrist. His mindset, as he explains it in the first episode, is that the world is so horrible that he is "saving" people from it. That doesn't explain his downright sadistic approach to it.
    • Averted with Violet. She can be exceptionally cruel to her parents, was willing to go along with Tate's basement plan without asking too many questions, and lied to her father and the police about what she and her mother saw, allowing them to conclude that her mother is insane and lock her up. At the same time, she is going through a lot (to put it mildly) and has good reason to be upset with her parents, considering how they moved her away from home to rebuild their family but then neglect her and their marriage falls apart anyway. She was horrified by Tate's basement plan when it spun out of control and never thought he'd go that far. Her only real crime is not supporting her mother's story to save her from the mental institution, but by then the situation too crazy for an adult to handle well, let alone a teenager.
  • There Are No Therapists: Averted, as Ben is one. It doesn't help a whole lot.
  • Title Drop: "Spooky Little Girl". The song of the same name plays in the background during a flashback sequence where Ben and Hayden first hook up.
  • Together in Death:
    • Chad and Patrick—unfortunately for them, as they were about to split up when they'd died. Now they're stuck together forever. Not much of a happy ending for either of them.
    • Tate and Violet are this, up until she finds out the truth about him.
    • Violet later gets this for real when she is reunited with Ben, Vivien, and the stillborn twin after they all die, getting her whole family back.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: Happens to Violet in "Smoldering Children," although subtle hints are dropped in past episodes that she is a ghost trapped in the house.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Probably literally. It's not like Violet can't guess that continuing to stay in that house will likely lead to the deaths of her and her family, but she really doesn't seem to want to leave. Turns out to be justified, as it's not because she doesn't want to leave, it's that she can't leave.
  • Unintentional Backup Plan: In an attempt to prevent Chad and Pat from stealing and eventually killing Vivien's twins, Tate and Violet follow the psychic's instructions to get rid of them, which requires burning a ghost's possession and shouting a curse. The plan doesn't do anything, but Tate fighting Pat for his wedding ring results in Pat shouting how Tate's killing him means he's spending eternity with someone he doesn't love, resulting in Chad hearing and breaking up with him anyway.
  • Unusual Euphemism: "The procedure," for abortion. Justified in that, during the timeframe Charles and Nora Montgomery lived in, one did not discuss such things openly.
  • Urban Legends: One of Ben's patients, Derek, recounts one of these, about a man with a pig's head. Ben has him enact the legend. Instead of the pig man, he sees one of the nurses from the second episode. Later on, he does it again. This time, he surprises a burglar in the act and is shot.
  • Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
    • Episode 3, Ben after Hayden gets whacked.
    • Episode 6, when Tate shoves his fingers down Violet's throat to try to keep her from dying.
  • Weirdness Magnet: Violet, eventually. The rest of the house's ghosts start appearing to her, but Tate instructs her to tell them to go away when they do. They listen. Of course, by then, she's actually one of them too, she doesn't know it yet.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: Nora was apparently this for Charles. Too bad Charles was a drug-addicted mad scientist who murdered a girl to put her still beating heart into the resurrected body of his formerly dismembered child. Nora did say he was a genius before she shot him in the head.
  • Wham Episode:
    • "Rubber Man". The Rubber Suit Man's identity is revealed, Hayden tries to marshal the ghosts against Vivien and Ben, and Ben has Vivien committed.
    • Less of an example, but still wham-worthy, is "Smoldering Children". Larry takes the fall for Constance, who is suspected of murdering Travis, and it's revealed that Violet did not survive her overdose.
    • "Birth". Ben finally finds out that his daughter's dead, Chad reveals to Violet that Tate impregnated her mother, and Vivien ends up giving birth to The Antichrist, dying in the process.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Constance mentions in the second episode that she had four children. Only three show up in the show. The eighth season, Apocalypse, finally reveals that Constance's fourth child was a blonde little girl named Rose with no eyes, who is also a ghost in the Murder House along with her brothers Tate and Beauregard. We still don't know how she died, though.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Violet calls both of her parents out on their neglectful behavior towards her.
  • Yandere:
    • Hayden shows some shades of this in the second episode, but the third episode is where she really shines. If you can believe it, she only gets worse from then on.
    • Tate has shades of this; he turns full-on Yandere after Violet rejects him.
  • Wrongfully Committed: Being a Supernatural-Proof Father, Ben has Vivien wrongly committed because he doesn't believe that she really saw ghosts. Violet denies that she saw anything so she wouldn't have to leave the house, and out of revenge because one of the twins wasn't his. Ben eventually pulls Vivien out of the asylum after realizing she wasn't lying and had been raped by Rubber Man.
  • Yaoi Fangirl: Violet thinks gay porn is hot. Tate agrees, though he didn't seem sincere.

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