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| The Shards: Are The Trawler and Riders of the Afterlife Inspired by Real Crimes? |
One of the biggest talking points surrounding FX's The Shards is not its romance, teenage friendships or psychological tension. Instead, viewers cannot stop asking whether the terrifying figures stalking the series are rooted in real history. With The Trawler leaving a chilling trail of violence and the mysterious Riders of the Afterlife spreading fear through ritualistic attacks, many fans have been searching for the real-life inspiration behind the show's darkest villains. The answer is both simpler and more fascinating than many expected.
Although The Shards borrows elements from author Bret Easton Ellis' own teenage years in early-1980s Los Angeles, neither The Trawler nor the Riders of the Afterlife ever existed.
Both were created specifically for Ellis' novel before making the leap to television through the adaptation developed alongside Ryan Murphy. That has not stopped audiences from spotting familiar echoes of real criminal cases that once terrified America.
At first glance, The Trawler feels unsettlingly believable. His habit of targeting family pets before attacking his victims, alongside the disturbing public displays left behind after each crime, creates the impression that he has stepped straight out of a true crime archive.
Thankfully, he has not. Ellis deliberately invented the character to capture the atmosphere of fear that surrounded serial killers during the late 1970s and 1980s rather than recreating any single criminal.
That period left a lasting impression on American society. News reports regularly featured stories about violent offenders, and public anxiety seemed to grow with every headline.
Ellis has previously admitted those fears stayed with him, making it hardly surprising that The Trawler embodies the paranoia hanging over Los Angeles during that era. Sometimes fiction borrows the mood instead of the actual case files.
Many viewers have connected The Trawler to the infamous Hillside Stranglers, and the comparison is understandable. The criminal pair, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr., terrorised Los Angeles between 1977 and 1978 through a series of murders that shocked the city.
Ellis himself has acknowledged that the case frightened him when he was younger, making it one of the defining memories of his adolescence.
Despite those similarities, The Trawler is not a fictional version of either man. Instead, he represents the broader cultural fear generated by serial killers during that period.
Rather than recreating one investigation, Ellis channels the uncertainty, panic and suspicion that became part of everyday life for many Americans. It is less a biography and more a nightmare assembled from the headlines of an anxious decade.
There is another layer to the character that makes him even more intriguing. Ellis has described The Trawler as a twisted reflection of the writer himself. In interviews, he has explained that the killer functions as an "evil double" of an author, someone who pieces together bodies in much the same way a novelist constructs a story from scattered ideas.
It is certainly not the sort of writing advice anyone expected, but it perfectly fits Ellis' fascination with blurred morality and unreliable perspectives.
That creative approach will already feel familiar to readers of American Psycho. Ellis' notorious character Patrick Bateman also serves as a symbolic critique of the world around him rather than simply existing as another fictional murderer.
Both characters reflect society's darker instincts, although The Trawler trades corporate offices for suburban nightmares and leaves viewers questioning what is real and what exists only inside frightened minds.
If The Trawler represents one type of fear, the Riders of the Afterlife explore another entirely. The secretive cult is also completely fictional, despite its unsettling resemblance to real groups that dominated headlines decades ago.
Within The Shards, the organisation combines ritualistic symbolism, mysterious disappearances and organised violence, creating an atmosphere that feels pulled straight from urban legends whispered after midnight.
Ellis has openly admitted that stories about mysterious cults fascinated and frightened him during his youth. He recalled hearing rumours about young boys disappearing into secret groups before communities organised desperate searches to bring them home. Whether entirely accurate or fuelled by neighbourhood gossip, those stories clearly left their mark and eventually became fictional material inside The Shards.
The cult also reflects the wider cultural climate of the 1980s, when fears surrounding secret ritual groups spread rapidly across America during what later became known as the Satanic Panic.
Rumours often travelled faster than evidence, creating an atmosphere where almost every unexplained event seemed capable of becoming another frightening conspiracy. Looking back today, some of those claims appear wildly exaggerated, proving that panic has always enjoyed excellent publicity.
Naturally, many viewers immediately spotted similarities between the Riders of the Afterlife and the notorious Manson Family. Led by Charles Manson, the cult became one of America's most infamous criminal groups after the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders.
Ellis has never hidden the fact that those crimes haunted him while growing up, even admitting they appeared in his nightmares long after the headlines disappeared.
Even so, the writer has never confirmed that the Riders of the Afterlife are meant to be a direct recreation of the Manson Family. Instead, the real organisation appears to have served as one of several influences shaping the fictional group's atmosphere.
The cult in The Shards ultimately follows its own storyline, allowing Ellis and the television series to explore psychological horror without becoming tied to historical events.
That balance between reality and invention is exactly what makes The Shards so effective. It borrows genuine fears from a turbulent period in American history but reshapes them into something entirely original. Rather than asking audiences to solve a true crime mystery, the series invites them to explore paranoia, memory and the way fear can distort even the most ordinary moments.
Fan reactions have been split ever since the series introduced its sinister figures. Some viewers love hunting for real-life inspirations, convinced every disturbing detail must connect to an actual criminal case hidden somewhere in history.
Others appreciate that Ellis chose not to retell familiar stories, arguing the fictional approach makes The Trawler and the Riders of the Afterlife even more unpredictable because nobody already knows how their stories end. A few fans have even joked that after watching the series, every strange noise outside suddenly sounds like the beginning of another chapter.
Whether audiences see The Trawler and the Riders of the Afterlife as symbolic creations or chilling reflections of America's darkest decades, one thing is certain: The Shards succeeds because it constantly blurs the line between reality and imagination. That uncertainty keeps viewers questioning every clue long after the credits roll. So what do you think—are these fictional villains even scarier because they are not based on one real killer, or would the story have been stronger with a direct historical connection?