The vast majority of AHS's characters have enjoyed just one seasonal run, but there have been a handful of returnees who've popped back in for a second showing. The first character to bridge the divide was Pepper (Naomi Grossman), who made her debut in Asylum as a patient at Briarcliff Manor who'd been committed for killing her own child. In Freak Show, though, we got to see what transpired before those events and found out that poor Pepper was actually a microcephalic member of Fräulein Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities—before she got framed by her sister Rita Gayheart and brother-in-law Larry for the murder of their disfigured infant Lucas and was thus sent to live out her days in the institution.

Sister Mary Eunice (Lily Rabe) followed suit, showing that there was more to her, too, than her devilish possession as seen in Asylum; she also appeared in Freak Show as a much more serene and affable individual who filed the admissions paperwork for Pepper and assigned her to library duties at the Asylum. Dr. Arden (James Cromwell) from Freak Show was also a call back to Asylum's Nazi doc Hans Gruper, Arden's given name, who'd mutilated poor Elsa Mars' legs much the same way he goes on to torment Shelley.

Marcy the realtor (Christine Estabrook) continued the trend of recurring cameos by reprising her Murder House role in Hotel, selling off yet another disaster abode (in the latter case, the Cortez Hotel) to an unsuspecting buyer. Unfortunately for her, she met her end at the Cortez, and even mentioned that the little dog she adopted from the Harmons' Murder House was a goner by then.

In Hotel, Dr. Charles Montgomery (Matt Ross) and the Murder House itself got brought back for a crucial scene in Hotel—he botched an abortion effort on the Countess (Lady Gaga), essentially giving birth to her maniacal fetal child Bartholomew, who was possibly even worse than his own Frankenstein-ish child resurrection, Infantata. Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) from Coven also cast her spell on Hotel but didn't live to talk about it; and Billie Dean Howard (Sarah Paulson), the psychic and TV personality hopeful from Murder House, came along for the ghostly Hotel ride, having already established her own small screen popularity by the time she uses her skills as a medium to meet some real maniacs at the Cortez meal table.

Twisty the Clown has become so notorious by AHS: Cult that he's been immortalized into comic book form, with his murder sprees informing the actions of a new generation of clown killers.