Characters don’t come more iconic than General Hospital‘s Luke Spencer. The same cannot be said for his lookalike cousin or, for that matter, any of the Eckerts who came to town in 1991. It was both ironic and weirdly appropriate that two years later, Bill would die in the arms of his newly returned cuz.
Although she hit Genoa City with a legendarily malevolent husband, adorable moppet and lust-filled backstory, Elizabeth Leiner’s Young & Restless alter ego was soon reduced to a Kyle-obsessed vixen who wasn’t really all that vixenish.
Yes, this is a two-for-one offering. If you looked at the photo and instantly thought “Greg and Jenny,” consider yourself forgiven… especially since that’s clearly what All My Children‘s writers hoped would happen. Ultimately, the pairing didn’t even prove worthy of an interesting exit — no exploding jet ski death for her! Instead, they just married and relocated to Paris.
Truth be told, you’re probably more likely to remember the endlessly discussed elephant statue sought by the ex-girlfriend of Days of Our Lives‘ Eric Brady than you are the character played by Melissa Archer, who’d been so popular as One Life to Live‘s Natalie.
Long before finding fame as Jane the Virgin, Gina Rodriguez played a young woman befriended by Bold & Beautiful‘s Stephanie Forrester. For a hot second, Beverly — who never got a last name — became the focus of a Afterschool Special social-issues storyline regarding kids who age out of the foster-care system before disappearing entirely.
For some reason, the audience never really took to Another World‘s body-borrowing, time-travelling, heroine-kidnapping hunk who would eventually — we kid you not — be sucked into a rip in the space/time continuum located in a secret garden on the Cory estate. On the plus side, the part perfectly prepared portrayer David Andrew Macdonald to play Guiding Light‘s maniacal Prince Edmund Winslow, who was downright stable by comparison.
Soon after arriving in Port Charles, the never-before-mentioned sister of General Hospital‘s Emily Quartermaine grew tired of everyone comparing her to her late twin (whom Natalia Livingston had played for five years). Less than a year later, that stopped being an issue when the character was shipped off to Paris, never to be mentioned again.
Soap-hopping bad girl Sheila Carter is currently telling anyone who’ll listen that she deserves to be part of son John “Finn” Finnegan’s life on The Bold and the Beautiful. Oddly, not once during the nurse-turned-waitress’ current stint has she mentioned her Young & Restless daughter, who most definitely wasn’t as popular — even in a love-to-hate-her way — as Mommie Fearest. (For that matter, Sheila also hasn’t mentioned Daisy’s twin brother, Ryder, or their half siblings, Mary and Diana… )
Sexy? Check. Great hair? Check. Welcomed by fans as a new member of Ryan’s Hope‘s titular clan? Not so fast. Turns out viewers weren’t thrilled with the idea of beloved patriarch Johnny having an illigitimate son. If they’d had their druthers, the Johnny’s-offspring-come-lately (far left) would have been edited out of the family portrait.
Maybe it was the fact that she and brother Rex were introduced as aluminum-foil-wrapped aliens. Maybe it was that she very nearly bedded half brother Lucas Horton. Whatever the reason, by the time Cassie’s supposedly dead body fell out of a pinata, viewers were pretty much over her. Though she — like the other Salem Stalker victims — later turned up alive, the character’s days were numbered, and she left town soon after.
As often happens with have-nots on Bold & Beautiful, this firefighter’s story went up in smoke relatively quickly. But he did not go alone when he left: Babymama Samantha Kelly (soap vet Sydney Penny) and her manipulative mom Priscilla (Linda “Sue Ellen” Grey) also proved to have incredibly short shelf lives.
She may have been introduced as Brady Black’s literal dream girl on Days of Our Lives, but the daughter Maggie Horton had given up for adoption years earlier proved something of a nightmare for the residents of Salem.
Introduced in 2014, Linda Elena Tovar’s General Hospital character was blackmailed by several characters because of a dark secret from her past. Although we’d eventually find out she and Brad Cooper had married in order to avoid having to testify against one another, Rosalie vanished and the story was dropped before we ever found out what crime they’d committed!
Vail Bloom. Jennifer Landon. Eden Riegel. It didn’t much matter who played the part of Paul’s daughter on The Young and the Restless, the audience never took to the character (or her romance with Adam Newman). When even the actress who was beloved as All My Children‘s Bianca can’t give viewers a heroine addiction, you know something’s not working.
“I prefer to be addressed as madame or Countess,” said this doppelganger of Another World’s Rachel Cory upon her introduction. But by the time she’d kidnapped Rachel, been hit by a train and terrorized half of Bay City, viewers were pretty much addressing her as “that over-the-top crazy chick.”
For some reason, Bold & Beautiful fans didn’t want to see Phoebe Forrester hook up with an unemployed, homeless dude who hoped to blackmail her mom with the knowledge that she’d run down Darla Forrester. Six months later, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound following a struggle for the weapon with Ridge Forrester (then Ronn Moss).
Despite only being on air for about three months, the secret daughter of General Hospital‘s Helena Cassadine was known as The Woman in White, Cassandra and Irina… yet still managed to be the least interesting member of her legendary family right up until the moment Mom had her murdered.
After being runner-up on the third season of American Idol, Diana DeGarmo hit Young & Restless as a songbird whose mafioso pop forced Kevin Fisher to marry his talent-free daughter. The audience was almost as thrilled by this story as Kevin clearly is in this photo.
How can you tell that the brother of As The World Turns‘ Mike Kasnoff wans’t as popular as his sibling? While Mike would have a long list of lovers and be played by three different actors over a period of nearly 15 years, poor Mark had basically one love interest and exited Oakdale after two years.
Entrances don’t get much splashier than the one made by this General Hospital character who, at Sonny Corinthos’ behest, rose from the grave just in time to prevent hubby Jasper “Jax” Jacks from becoming a bigamist by marrying Brenda Barrett. Yet a year later, she was pretty much dead to viewers and left town without anyone much caring.
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