American Horror Story

Cooper's original, shot in a basement — furniture under plastic sheeting, a christening dress underwater, babies in jars. The theme is built partly out of a distorted coat hanger.

Institutional horror for the asylum: a pig's head on a bed, patients rocking and cowering.

The first season where the sequence commits entirely to its subject rather than the house style, turning tactile and occult for the witches.

Stop-motion and 3D mixed into the live action for the first time, to match the carnival.

Back to practical effects after the previous season's animation — Cooper's stated preference is for things that exist in the world and behave unpredictably on camera.

Live bees, honeycomb and green gas. Reshot partway through production once the political imagery started overwhelming the hive metaphor it was supposed to serve.

End-of-the-world imagery for the season that crossed the first and third over.

The furthest the sequence has ever travelled from itself — a slasher pastiche shot to look like period video, made with a fan of the show brought in to work on it.

Coastal and vampiric, for the first half of a split season. The second half abandoned this and ran a completely different alien sequence — the only time the titles have changed mid-season.

Nineteen-eighties New York, in the palette to match.

Pregnancy horror, and at seventy-four seconds the longest of the twelve.