30 Most Shocking Moments in All Of American Horror Story

Photo courtesy of FX

Freak Show: The Lizard Girl Origin

Penny (Grace Gummer) was part of a freak show orgy in the beginning part of the season when Elsa befriended her and kidnapped her to the freak show. While she was drugged and confused, she ended up returning home to her father.

There, she told him that she fell in love with Paul, who was the Seal Boy in the freak show. Her father’s reaction to her confession? If you want to love a freak, you’ll be a freak yourself.

It was the strangest and most disturbing reaction American Horror Story has ever given us and it ended up in the origin story of the Lizard Girl. He has her face tattooed to look just like a lizard and gets her tongue split. 

So naturally, Penny returns to the freak show and lives among those who changed her entire life. But it’s the logic (or lack thereof) of her father that really shocked audiences. Most fathers would disapprove or force their daughters to stay in the home or even kick them out.

Not Penny’s dad though, he decides the most logical thing to do is to completely change his daughter into someone who would be a part of the freak show. And that’s exactly why Freak Show was one of the strangest and most shocking seasons of all.