American Horror Story (TV Series 2011– ) Poster

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Certification

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Certification

Sex & Nudity

  • In Murder House, a man looks at a sadomasochistic website and then goes to a sex shop where sex toys are described and shown for an extended period of time before the man buys a gimp suit and wears it later.
  • A man and a woman have sex on an iron bed no nude shown.
  • A man describes how he plans to have sex with twins on their wedding night.
  • There are a lot of very graphic rape scenes that may be triggering to people.
  • In Season 2, a man is shown being sprayed with water after he is arrested. Buttocks shown.
  • In season 11 there are multiple scenes in a bathhouse, but no nudity is shown.
  • Sex and violence are often paired. For example, one episode has a foursome (breast nudity), which suddenly turns into extremely graphic cannibalism and murder.
  • A man masturbates while crying. We see his buttocks.
  • It is worth mentioning that all seasons differ in sexual content and nudity. Some seasons are pretty tame compared to some severe ones as the anthology format allows you to watch any season you want as each season is a new show.
  • In a dream, a nude woman is seen. Her buttocks are visible.
  • Female buttocks.

Violence & Gore

  • Roanoke is probably the most violent season, followed by Hotel, Cult, and then Asylum (the top 4). Coven is probably the least violent, as it was largely targeted to a teen audience, though still gory.
  • Two men are put into a decontamination room. A woman detects radiation from one of them and he is shot.
  • A man is whipped.
  • In one scene, people are given apples to eat. These apples secretly have poison in them, and those eating the apples quickly die from the poison. They are shown splitting out thick amounts of blood and screaming in pain as they die.
  • A man's ankles are slashed by an old woman. Blood spurts.
  • There is a scary scene of a satanic ritual being performed on a young woman. She waits at a bus stop, an old woman in a taxi picks up the young woman and she gets into her car. She then looks at an upside down cross and asks to get out of the car. Before she's able to get out, the old woman drugs her. The scene then transitions into a house with 3 people performing a ritual on her. They start by stabbing and moving upwards until one of them rips her heart out and another eats it. This is very graphic and disturbing.
  • There are tons of extremely frightening imagery, and lots of tension.
  • In one of the episodes, an innocent and easily manipulated girl is sawed in half by a psychopathic mentally disturbed circus performer. We see lots of blood pour out of the box she's in, and when it's separated, we see guts and entrails spill out. Incredibly graphic, brutal and sad.
  • This show is incredibly gory and contains extreme graphic violence and full detailed bloody images, as well as disturbing themes and frightening imagery.
  • A girl is repeatedly stabbed to death by clowns; lots of blood shown. Graphic and terrifying.
  • In Season 7, a character is tied to a chair, and other characters use a nail gun to shoot nails into the man's head several times. Really disturbing, detailed and graphic. It can be hard to watch.
  • Almost every episode is very violent.
  • A woman drinks blood from a prostitute's arm.
  • A man kills a prostitute and drinks blood from him.
  • A woman slits a man's throat and proceeds to drink blood from his corpse.
  • A man bludgeons a pale creature to death, with lots of blood being shown.
  • A man discovers bodies on the beach that have been disemboweled. Very graphic.
  • A woman finds her daughter drinking blood from a dead rabbit, graphic.
  • A woman cuts her finger while cooking, a man then begins to suck blood from her wound until she pushes him away.
  • A man discovers a dead deer on a road. Very graphic.
  • A creature eats a dead animal.
  • Season 1 (Murder House) is violent but one of the less violent seasons as the violence is less frequent than in other seasons. Yet, still graphic at points.
  • Season 2 (asylum) is the second most violent season. It has explicit and extreme violence, the worst instances being a suicide scene and a scene where a half human and half wolf creature is disembowelled in extreme close-up. Extremely violent season.
  • In season 1, a woman explicitly self-harms herself.
  • Every single season is explicitly bloody, graphic, gory, and stomach-churning. All of the violence is deeply disturbing, incredibly realistic and the camera never ever cuts away. The show has extremely graphic bloody and gory violence with gore and bloody imagery, scenes and images of self-harm, bloody and shocking injury detail, graphic and upsetting crime scene gore, explicit and extreme sexual violence, frequent suicide attempts and brutal torture.
  • The most frightening seasons are Murder House, Asylum, Coven and Hotel. Freak Show, Roanoke and Cult are all more intense than actually horrific even if they are just as violent as the other seasons.
  • A teenage girl walks into her parents room to find her father raping and beating her mother.
  • Very strong bloody violence, scenes of self-harm and self-harm images, bloody injury detail, gory images and gory violence, crime scene gore, sexual and sexualised violence, suicide attempts, bloody images, and torture.
  • Every season is graphically violent.
  • An older woman slits the throat of a younger girl. Very surprising and quite graphic.
  • Almost every episode has extreme gore and violence.
  • A man is raped on his bed by a demon with no face. The demon has a metallic sex toy strapped on. This is EXTREMELY EXPLICIT, and is one of the most graphic sexual and violent scenes in the entirety of the show.
  • Seasons like Asylum and Cult have extremely graphic but realistic violence, while other seasons are more supernatural.
  • Some seasons are more violent than others. Coven and Murder House are very violent but tame compared to some of the rest of the series. Hotel and Cult are among the most disturbing seasons.
  • A child's guinea pig is put in a microwave and explodes. This is onscreen, and blood is seen on the walls of the microwave. (however this was obviously special effects)
  • A woman is seemingly (but briefly) trapped in a supermarket. She is visibly distressed.
  • A character's throat is slit; this is only implied.
  • A man hits a young woman on the head, knocking her out.
  • A woman has a nightmare in which she is struck by an elevator.
  • A woman drowns in a bathtub.
  • A woman shoots two intruders in her home.
  • A man imagines that he is stabbed to death by a man.
  • A character brings a razor blade close to her hand, accidentally drawing blood.
  • A man shoots another man; we see his body on the floor.
  • A man wearing a gimp suit has sex with a woman. When he turns around, we see that he is covered with blood.
  • A woman stabs a man to death. Some blood is shown.
  • We see a large wound on the back of a woman's head.
  • A man in a gimp suit drowns another man in a barrel of water.
  • A man is thrown around around a room; he hits his head.
  • A man smothers a character with a pillow.
  • It is implied that a woman commits suicide.
  • A woman dies in a self-inflicted explosion.
  • A woman accidentally cuts her husband with a knife.
  • A man gets choked to death after trying to rape a woman.
  • Violent scenes include shootings, stabbings, car accidents and brawls.
  • It is implied that a baby is killed.
  • There is a school shooting. While not bloody, it's very tense and stressful to watch, as you already know the outcome.
  • The level of violence differs between episodes, but it's always extremely brutal and graphically bloody.
  • A woman stabs another woman repeatedly.
  • Many deformed creatures can be seen briefly.
  • A sequence shows a woman murdering her family with an axe. There is some blood, but no focus is put on the family. However, it is still very graphic, bloody and gory.
  • A couple is killed in their apartment.
  • A nun kills a man using a shard of glass. The wound is shown graphically, which is very intense.
  • It is implied that someone is buried alive.
  • A man briefly cuts his hand with a razor blade.
  • A man chokes a woman.
  • A man is abducted by aliens.
  • The devil kills a priest.
  • A 'doctor' purposely amputates a patient's legs and mutilates her after sexually abusing her. This subplot is extremely gut-wrenching and terrifying as well as brutally violent.
  • A priest is nailed to a cross offscreen. But he is shown alive in graphic detail.
  • While not very frequent, violence in this season can be quite sudden.
  • A man does experiments on his patients, and these are always violent and explicit.
  • A man commits suicide by laying on top of a dead body that was going into a crematorium.
  • A serial killer who killed his brother also kills his friend.
  • A man dressed up as Santa shoots multiple people and whips a nun's buttocks before attempting to rape her. Very explicit.
  • There are stabbings, animal violence (animal cruelty), and shootings.
  • not as scary as other seasons.
  • Prisoners have their eyes and mouths stitched shut, eyes removed, nearly stabbed to death, chained up and beaten, and having their heads removed and replaced by animal heads. Extremely terrifying and graphically gory.
  • A character is also shown shown using a homemade beauty mask made of her victims' blood.
  • In a very unsettling scene, we see a major character enter her own version of hell. A women is forced to dissect a living frog in a conventional biology class. We can see some of the frogs internal organs briefly and the women screams in terror as she uses a small knife to cut its belly open. What makes the scene so unpleasant is that she is stuck in that situation (hell) and she has to repeat what she had done multiple times, and she is screaming and crying.
  • A boy beats his mother repeatedly. She is okay, though.
  • A man is drugged and raped (not clearly shown; more implied).
  • A bunch of men get murdered by a serial killer.
  • a bunch of women are shot in a massacre.
  • Contains a lot of gore and torture in this season that is extremely graphic and violent.
  • It may not be the darkest season but still is very violent and graphic.
  • An exhibit glorifies body parts taken from people with strange or horrific deformities. Very frightening.
  • In this season, there are some murders, people kept hostage and a scary ritual, as well as a psychopath the audience will feel sorry for.
  • A woman is penetrated in the eye with a knife. She is later decapitated, and this entire chain of events is very brutal.
  • A man hangs himself. He survives, but the suicide attempt is graphic.
  • Throughout many episodes, themes or tones of BDSM are present, and they're always shown in graphic detail.
  • A woman works at a fetish whore house and we see masochistic acts. The woman later makes a man sit on spikes and she is later drugged and gets her legs cut off.
  • A man and a male prostitute strip down to their underwear, facing away from each other. When they turn, one man pulls a knife and tears through the other's chest and slashes him repeatedly. The man tries crawling away but he is stabbed repeatedly through the hand, chest, and throat. The killer then chops off his arms with a long serrated blade. Later we see him dispose of an arm by throwing it inside quicklime.
  • A man shoots his mother, and then takes a bath in her blood, extremely graphic
  • A man decapitates a woman and sews her head on to his mother's dead corpse.
  • A man is stripped naked and covered in tar, which rips and sears his flesh and is covered in feathers afterwards
  • We see a man beat three people to death with a hammer bashing their faces
  • A man stabs a puppet who we see as a human multiple times with blood going everywhere
  • A guard has his skull beaten in
  • A man violently slits the throat of his maid
  • Several people are shot, some in the head, in one sequence. Lots of blood.
  • A character knocks two characters out. One of them wakes up and sees the other being stabbed, very brutally in the stomach and chest. Very bloody.
  • Multiple shootings and stabbings.
  • A woman is literally sawed in half during a magic trick gone horribly wrong. Lots of blood pours out of the box, and a number of her internal organs fall to the floor when the table separates
  • A man comes out from a mattress with multiple scars and scratches on him.
  • Kids are shown drinking blood from a human
  • A woman is thrown out of a window, some blood is shown
  • We see two different crime scenes, the first one a man has his tongue and eyes cut out while he is still inside of his sexual partner who is impaled, the other one has men with their stomach cut open
  • A man is thrown on the bed and anally raped violently by a demon. The demon also wears a strap on screw driver dildo.
  • Bloody sheets are shown.
  • Two characters slit the throats of two people during an orgy. LOTS of blood is shown.
  • One character's throat was slit and she falls to the ground lots of blood.
  • We see a flashback of a serial killer who kills about 10 people by hitting them in the back of the head with a hammer then slitting their throats
  • A man and woman commit suicide together he shoots the woman in the head and slits his throat
  • we see images of crime scenes
  • A stabs a gay hooker in the neck and sucks his blood
  • A man shoots a prostitute in the head
  • A man is sewn into a mattress
  • A man comes out of the mattress and repeatedly stabs a woman
  • A woman shoots a bunch of rappers
  • Several people have their tongues cut out
  • A bunch of killers stab a man to death
  • A man drills through a mans head
  • A man bashes a lamp in a mans face to death
  • A doctor who's recently become a vampire thirsts for blood. She goes into the storage room where units of blood are stored and drinks a bunch of them. Kind of gross. She later injects blood into a boy's IV unit to save his life, but ultimately infects him with a vampire-like contagion.
  • The boy's parents are later seen in their home surrounded by blood. It's assumed the boy killed them and drank their blood.
  • Some crime scene photos are shown.
  • A woman slits two men's throats in a flashback sequence. She then licks some blood off of her finger. Bloody, but brief.
  • A woman serves cat food to a rude hipster couple in a hotel, having them think it's a gourmet dish. They eat it, which is kind of gross.
  • Blood is given to a sick-looking woman in a martini glass.
  • A woman gives birth and her baby kills the nurse. Some blood is shown, this is brief.
  • A woman commits suicide and she's shown in the bath dead and blood in the water.
  • A woman gets a cut by a monster-baby and she has a bit of blood.
  • There is a little flashback when a woman stabbed a hipster couple. The woman is shown cutting the man's throat. Bloody but brief.
  • A dead young man's naked body is shown covered with blood. Later, in a flashback is shown that after having sex, a girl cuts the man's throat and later the naked girl jumps on him, and thows him to the floor and the other girl stabs him two times.
  • A dead man is shown in the floor with blood.
  • A dead priest is shown with all he's organs leaking from his body and with something in his mouth.
  • During a threesome a young woman bites another young girl various times, the three get covered in blood.
  • A man shoots with his gun to the baby that is not reveled how it looks and later blood is shown in the floor.
  • A woman cuts a young man's throat.
  • A baby has a very disfigured face. Nothing bloody, but he only has half face.
  • Two men are attacked by two people that they look like vampires.
  • Two men start fighting but they are later stopped, nothing truly violent.
  • The corpses of two men are shown, some blood.
  • A woman is killed by the people that they look like vampires.
  • Someone cuts a "girl's" arm and they start to drink of it. Graphic.
  • Is implied that a man was torturing a homeless man. He has instruments of torture covered with blood, the killer is covered with some blood and he has some scissors and the homeless is shown in the bath covered with blood various times.
  • A man hits another man with a tray. Nothing violent at all.
  • A (vampire?) couple is shown drinking blood from the wounds of a woman. They have blood in their face.
  • A girl is knocked down by a truck.
  • A girl is shown dead and some blood is shown.
  • Jars with organs and body parts inside are shown various times.
  • Flashbacks of people being murdered by a serial killer.
  • A man is seen in front of a mirror with blood on his shirt.
  • Corpses of other episodes are shown again. Some of them are very disgusting, like a man with his organs out.
  • A man stabs his friend two times. Blood is shown. Later, he's shown with a bag, implying he has the head of his friend. A bit of blood is shown.
  • A man tries to comite suicide with a rope, but another man cuts the rope.
  • Animals heads, and even a human head are shown. Nothing too much.
  • A woman drinks blood from a glass.
  • A woman cuts a man's throat and later stabs the knife to another woman. The man with the throat cutted on the floor, the bed covered with blood and the dead woman bleeding to a bucket are shown various times. The woman (killer) is cleaning her hands of bloody.
  • A man is kidnapped and they extract him blood with a machine. Glasses full of blood are shown in the same scene. They drink that blood in another scene.
  • A dead woman's corpse is shown.
  • A man has blood on the head. A bit bloody.
  • A woman cuts her wrist and gives bood to her father.
  • A woman and an old man drink blood from bowls.
  • Two dead men are shown with wounds and blood in their face and chest. An old man killed them and he has blood coming from his mouth.
  • A woman kills her father drowning him.
  • A lot of dead people are shown covered in blood.
  • A kid drinks blood of a young man. The young man has his throat cut.
  • Kids have blood in their faces and is reveled that they killed their fathers and drank their blood.
  • A woman hits a man and he later has a bit of blood in his head.
  • A woman cuts a man's throat, pushes him and drinks his blood.
  • A married couple shoot eachother in the head. They are later shown dead in the bed bleeding for some seconds.
  • Human organs in crystal bottles.
  • A man stabs a few people to death
  • A man shoots a man in the head, later the man's corpse is shown in again.
  • A woman shoots a woman in the head
  • A man burns alive another man.
  • Gun shots (played for laughs, no blood).
  • Two women shoot a couple various times.
  • A man is injured and bleeding. He continues bleeding and they try to safe him, but he dies.
  • There's a lot of blood in the floor.
  • A woman is removing bullets from another woman's body and she later sews up her wounds. The place where they are is full of corpses.
  • A woman injects a syringe in another woman's arm and a man's penis
  • There's is a threesome scene between heroin addicts they are all seen having sex and shooting up on heroin then a woman sews up her friends with her. Her fiends die from the a heroin od then a demon comes and tortures the woman who is alive Much later she escapes cutting the rope which she was tied with her friends possibly the most disturbing scene in the series
  • Various people with blood in their hands, clothes, etc. are shown various times.
  • A woman starts touching her son's ashes and she later is shown covered with ashes for some time. There're also ashes in the room where she was staying.
  • Two women discover a lot of corpses in the dark
  • A girl is stabbed and later she stabs herself because she's a witch and the pain goes to the other person. She later is stabbed by a ghost. A woman drinks her blood.
  • A woman is shot various times and later they take her head off, they also show other organs in bottles
  • A woman is stabbed in her neck at the start of the episode.
  • A woman injects a syringe in a man's chest, he starts to drool and shake, finally dying. Very intense
  • A man stabs a woman in her neck.
  • The same woman of the start is shown again getting stabbed, revealing what happened.
  • A woman's dead corpse is shown, bleeding.
  • A man stabs another man in his neck and fills a canteen with his blood.
  • A man is shot various times.

Profanity

  • Early seasons have many uses of "bitch", "shit", "hell" and "goddamn", but no uses of "fuck".
  • Season 7 features constant swearing throughout each episode. Words like "fuck", "shit", and "bitch" are left uncensored.
  • Season 7 onwards contains F words.
  • New York has 162 uses of Fuck.
  • Frequent profanity including "shit", "damn", "goddamn", "ass", "hell", and "bitch" along with strong sexual dialogue including words like "pussy", "dick", and a few rare uses of "cum" and "jizz". In the earlier episodes however, bleeped uses of "fuck" are used rarely, but since Season 7, uses of the f-word are more frequent and uncensored.
  • Coven in particular, includes racial slurs like "nigger", "negress" and "colored people", due to its time period.

Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking

  • In Season 6, characters casually smoke and sometimes drink alcohol. In fact, one character has a drinking problem.
  • The 10th Season's main themes involve drugs and addiction. Characters are frequently seen taking pills which make them crave human blood and strong drug themes in this season.
  • In Season 5, a lot of people inject themselves and get high on heroin and it is shown in graphic detail.
  • In Season 1, characters occasionally smoke cigarettes, and man inhales opium before performing surgery.
  • Season 2 includes cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking. A major character is an alcoholic and is often seen drinking, medical drugs are used and a woman smokes marijuana and comments it making her girlfriend's "cooking tastes better".
  • Season 3 includes brief use of cocaine; frequent cigarette smoking, drinking, and partying. An older woman smokes marijuana through a pipe and offers it to a young girl. A main character uses prescription pills on occasion.
  • Season 4 includes cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking. A woman is drugged and has sex in an orgy, smoking opium seems to be common in the tent, and a character is seen using it several times. Characters get drunk and usually make fools out of themselves after.
  • Season 5 includes cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking and one character snorts cocaine. A man drinks to intoxication. More drinking, smoking and drug use than previous seasons.

Frightening & Intense Scenes

  • This show is extremely horrific, and may cause nightmares for some viewers.
  • The show's overall content can be too frightening.
  • Lots of bizarre and frightening moments throughout that can be very intense and disturbing to some viewers.
  • Many scenes in the show can be intense including disturbing scenes of torture, gore, satanism, non-stop criminal behavior, racism, explicit rape, suicide, strong vulgar sexual content including brief graphic nudity, BDSM, pervasive, incest, strong language from Season 7 on and drug use, alcohol & smoking throughout.
  • Season 8 is centered around a realistic nuclear apocalypse which is a very scary and depressing theme.
  • There are suicide themes and suicide scenes throughout the series. Multiple storylines about suicide and self-harm are extremely tragic and can be hard to watch.
  • Scenes in Season 7 feature holes which can make viewers with trypophobia very uncomfortable.
  • The storylines based around suicide, self-harming and drug addiction are shown in graphic detail and may upset or trigger viewers.
  • Almost every season features explicit rape scenes. A main character shoots up a school and most of the seasons, 'Hotel' in particular, feature graphic violence against children as well.
  • Sexual violence and rape scenes are in several seasons. Do not watch if you are triggered by that.
  • The sacrifice of an infant may be very upsetting to more sensitive viewers.

Spoilers

The Parents Guide items below may give away important plot points.

Violence & Gore

  • An extended sequence that takes place at a middle school might rank among the most violent and shocking in the history of the show. The boy goes to school and, at a classroom Halloween party, kisses a girl he likes. He bites her lip while kissing her and she cries out in pain. Then he bites his own lip and lets her taste his blood, thus infecting her with the vampire contagion. The kids' teacher goes to look for them, and the boy slashes her throat as torrents of blood gush out. The girl is later seen drinking the teacher's blood. A male teacher then comes in and finds the two kids and the dead teacher and a classroom full of kids infected by a measles-like illness. The vampire boy then slashes the teacher's throat and blood gushes out in spurts as children gather around to feast on his blood. The man then escapes to the main office, while his arteries are still spurting blood out of his neck, and bangs on the window, bloodying it up and shocking the women in the office. Later, police are called to the scene and escort students out of the school. A number of blood-soaked bodies are shown lying around the floor throughout the school. The vampire children are then escorted out of the building with blood on their clothes, but virtually unharmed. No one finds out they're vampires.

Frightening & Intense Scenes

  • In Season 10, a woman commits suicide by slitting her wrists (very gory, disturbing, and shown in graphic detail).
  • A woman tears a man's throat out and drinks his blood (graphic and prolonged).

See also

Taglines | Plot Summary | Synopsis | Plot Keywords


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