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10 Soap Opera Characters Who Died… and Died and Died… and Still Made Killer Comebacks
Candace Young & Rolla Bahsous & Christine Fix & Amy Mistretta
Thursday, July 23rd, 2020
Soap opera characters notorious for popping back up when presumed deceased.
On the anniversary of Days of our Lives’ Carly Manning (Crystal Chappell) being buried alive by none other than Vivian Alamain (Louise Sorel) and Vivian faking her own death to keep herself out of prison, we got to thinking about the numerous other soap opera characters whose deaths have been greatly exaggerated on Bold and Beautiful, Days of our Lives, General Hospital, and Young and Restless…
While Days of our Lives is the most notorious soap for bringing back characters from the dead – Salemites don’t even blink an eye at a deceased person suddenly standing before them anymore – all four of the remaining daytime dramas have been known to bring back characters from the great beyond.
Some of the most iconic characters on soaps have come back from presumed death or faked their own deaths, numerous times. Days’ Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo); there was a reason he was called ‘The Phoenix’, and Young and Restless’ Victor Newman (Eric Braeden) has been mourned repeatedly. General Hospital’s Helena Cassadine (Constance Towers) is certainly high on the list, as is the villainous Cesar Faison (Anders Hove) and Bold and Beautiful’s Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown).
More: 4 times Kate Roberts almost died on Days
The fact that soap characters are so easily brought back from the dead is a bit of a double-edged sword – audiences tend to get jaded on one hand, but also have an eternal hope that their favorite character could be resurrected (even if they return as a recast). Fan campaigns, new head writers, and actor’s annual vacations are all reasons for such comings and goings. Even if the character dies before viewers’ eyes, it can always be reversed by writing in that it was someone’s bad dream, just like Dallas’ infamous move with the Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy, Stephen Logan, Bold and the Beautiful) character.
Check out our gallery, which includes just a handful of the many soap characters who have returned from the dead on Bold and Beautiful, Days of our Lives, General Hospital, and Young and Restless, then take a moment to sign up for Soaps.com’s newsletter to get more features, photos, and soap news delivered straight to your inbox.
A version of this article was originally published in July 2016 by Rolla Bahsous, and refreshed by Candace Young July 22, 2020.
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
1/30
<p>In 2015, we were told that we could stop holding out for a hero, because Hope Brady’s one true love had succumbed to an inoperable brain tumor. Heck, we even <em>saw</em> him succumb. But we were once again foolishly underestimating the inventiveness of the DiMeras. Seven years later, <em>Beyond Salem</em> revealed that Stefano’s obsessed daughter Megan had managed to resurrect her high-school boyfriend. Who, after all that time, had <em>better</em> have had one hell of a promposal at the ready!</p>
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2/30
<p>Words Spencer’s father has never uttered: at the risk of repeating myself. He doesn’t give a damn if he does the same thing over and over. So, while it may have scarred his son for life, Nikolas spent 2019 faking his death not once (via a fall from a Wyndemere window) but twice (after being shot by Uncle Valentin).</p>
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3/30
<p>See the skeptical look The Mustache is working in this photo? That’s the kind you — and anyone who knows him — oughta wear whenever he “passes away” again. Twice, the mogul was presumed dead; once, he was <em>declared</em> dead (but was actually in hiding); and once, he faked his own death.</p>
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4/30
<p>Victor’s chip off the ol’ block was first believed to have kicked the bucket after a confrontation in a car with Billy Abbott led to a wreck and fiery explosion. After Adam returned with a new face, he was presumed doomed again following a cabin explosion courtesy of Chloe Mitchell. Needless to say, he was no deader than you or we are.</p>
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5/30
<p>You know the saying about how you can’t keep a good man down? The same is true for a bad woman. Consider: Back in 2015, Ava was shot by Carlos Rivera and plunged from a bridge. But rumors of her death were exaggerated: She survived, only to succumb to cancer. Or so we briefly thought. She kicked the big C’s butt, too, and returned to Port Charles to pick up right where she’d left off stirring the pot.</p>
Image: Gilles Toucas/CBS
6/30
<p>Word to the wise: Don’t ever count out Steffy and Thomas Forrester’s mom. In 1994, she was presumed dead following a plane crash (though the amnesiac was really living <span style="text-decoration: line-through">it up</span> with Prince Omar in Morocco). Taylor gave sometime hubby Ridge a sense of deja vu in 2002 when she died in his arms after being fatally shot by Sheila Carter. Sorry — “fatally.”</p>
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7/30
<p>Third time’s the charm? Not quite. Jack has thrice been presumed dead: once at the hands of the Salem Stalker, once in the jungle and once following an elevator fall. (It could happen!) He’s also disappeared now and again, only to resurface and reunite with true love Jennifer Horton.</p>
Image: CBS screenshot
8/30
<p>We saw the body. There was a whole murder mystery built around the vixen’s demise. But it was all much ado about nothing: In 2022, she revealed that, with Deacon Sharpe’s help, she’d faked her own death, then waited years (<em>and</em> years) to buy Jack Abbott’s dead son’s house in hopes of convincing her old flame to help her explain the mess she’d made to their son.</p>
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9/30
<p>After introducing Julian Jerome to his maker in 2020, the Teflon don was sent up the river in a whole new way when a bridge collapsed beneath him. But while his loved ones mourned his passing — and his rivals circled his turf like vultures — Sonny was enjoying a whole new life canoodling with Nina Reeves as Nixon Falls’ sweetheart “Mike.”</p>
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10/30
<p>Hope Steffy didn’t cash in on her husband’s life insurance policy, ’cause only a month after he was killed — by his gun-crazy biomom, no less! — it was revealed that his adoptive mother was keeping his heart tick-tocking on the off chance that he might bounce back. And by “on the off chance that he might bounce back,” we mean obviously “with a soapy certainty that he would bounce back.”</p>
Image: Jill Johnson/JPI
11/30
<p>Ordinarily, when a person’s heart is removed and transplanted into someone else, it’s “Game Over” for them. Unless, that is, they live in Salem, the setting of as much science fiction as daytime drama. In <em>that</em> case, as happened to Stefan, they might be kept alive-ish with a fake ticker until their twin brother Jake croaked, at which point — voila! — a new heart became available, and everybody just sorta forgot that the character was ever brain dead.</p>
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12/30
<p>If we had a nickel for every time somebody had tried to off the Cassadine clan’s malevolent matriarch, we’d be as rich as she was. Or should we say <em>is</em>? Sure, she’s supposed to be <em>dead</em>-dead these days, having been poisoned by grandson Nikolas, but we’ll believe it when we… Actually, ya know what? We did see it, and we still don’t believe it!</p>
Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI
13/30
<p>When queen bee Stephanie says, “You ain’t dying,” face it, ya just ain’t. So although we watched her daughter succumb to cancer, the Forrester matriarch wasn’t having it. She spirited away Felicia, with the faintest of heartbeats, to a private clinic, got her a liver transplant and willed her to live.</p>
Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI
14/30
<p>More than two decades after the mobster was said to have blown his last “shot” in a struggle over a gun, he turned up alive and, well, handsomer than ever. Which is why, regardless of the fact that we saw the body — in its bad, no less! — we remain suspicious that his subsequent death in 2020 was only a “death.”</p>
Image: Jill Johnson/JPI
15/30
<p>“It’s the Grim Reaper? Eh, put him on hold.” Salem’s favorite shrink doesn’t answer to him. Sure, back in the late 1980s, she died and stayed dead for a few years (damn you, Orpheus!). But she was no more pushing up daisies then than she was decades later when she was “fatally” shot by the police at the climax of her reign of terror as the Salem Stalker.</p>
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16/30
<p>Keeping up a long-held family tradition of “dying” in air quotes, Nick was thought to have shuffled off this mortal coil back in 2007 when his plane went down. Though no body was recovered, his nearest and dearest still leapt to the conclusion that he was toast.</p>
Image: Jill Johnson/JPI
17/30
<p>Ah, ya never forgot your first “death,” right, kid? The year was 2011, and the son of Elizabeth Webber and <span style="text-decoration: line-through">Jason Morgan</span> Lucky Spencer was accidentally “killed” by his drunk-driving grandpa, Luke. Afterwards, there were tears. There were accusations. And, eventually, there was the reveal that Jake had actually been kidnapped by Helena Cassadine, which at some point should have become all of Port Charles’ go-to guess whenever anybody croaked.</p>
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18/30
<p>The soap-hopping villainess was presumed dead not once but twice on <em>Young and Restless</em> and both times turned up back on <em>Bold & Beautiful</em> to wreak more havoc. Along the way, she’s also disappeared and had extensive plastic surgery — anything to keep her enemies looking over their shoulders!</p>
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19/30
<p>In 1989, the sharp-dressed made man testified against his “associates,” then played dead to keep them from, let’s say, making his performance <em>extra</em> believable. Soon, he resurfaced with a new face and was killed for real. Or so we thought for more than 20 years. Turned out, the Duke who’d kicked the bucket was a fake. Anna Devane’s <em>true</em> love wouldn’t take the highway to heaven until 2015, when he was fatally shot by hitman Carlos Rivera.</p>
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20/30
<p>When Sheila Carter stares down at the burning wreckage of an enemy’s car following a life-or-death-but-mostly-death chase, you can generally assume that that character is toast. So, for a while in 2022, we thought that Finn’s adoptive mother had become just the latest in the long line of his biological mother’s victims. “Gotcha!” said the soap. Not only had Li survived, she’d been chilling in the back alley of a restaurant for who knows how long before she was discovered with a “smokin’” new ’do by Bill Spencer.</p>
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21/30
<p>Stone Cold really <em>was</em> stone-cold for a hot minute in 2012 after he was shot dead by <span style="text-decoration: line-through">Duke Lavery</span> Cesar Faison. But shortly after everyone had gotten done crying over his passing, he turned up with a new face and the same old black T-shirts. <em>That</em> Jason, however, turned out to be his surprise twin brother, Drew Cain. The real one returned again in 2017, only to be killed in a tunnel collapse. Or so we’ve been told…</p>
Image: Peacock screenshot
22/30
<p>From 1985-2022, Hope Brady slept a little easier thinking that Stefano DiMera’s psycho daughter — well, his <em>other</em> psycho daughter — was dead and buried. But all that time, Bo Brady’s Fancy Face should’ve been sleeping with one eye open. Daddy Dearest, resourceful as ever, hadn’t let Megan’s body grow cold, he’d simply kept it on ice until medicine became modern enough to save her from the injuries that she’d sustained in the exploding hot tub that she’d rigged to kill her romantic rival.</p>
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23/30
<p>Though in 2019, the muscle-bound hero was thought to have perished in a plane crash, he was alive and well. Well, except for the whole being-imprisoned-by-Peter-August thing and that one eensie boo-boo.</p>
Image: John Paschal/JPI
24/30
<p>It looked grim for the heroine in 1990, when she was suspended over a vat of acid as an explosion rocked the cage in which Ernesto Toscano was holding her prisoner. In fact, it looked so grim for her that true love Bo moved on from his Fancy Face, only to learn years later that she had in common with the proverbial cat more than just one measly life.</p>
Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI
25/30
<p>“Lily, whatever you do, avoid bridges!” It was while driving over one in Kenya that it collapsed, sending the ab-fabulous photographer to the kind of death that only lasts a couple of years before you get to come back mad that people didn’t search for you harder or longer.</p>
Image: Paul Skipper/JPI
26/30
<p>Don’t bother asking Monica Quartermaine if she can keep a secret: She can. For nearly a decade, she spoke not a word about the fact that, after son A.J. was smothered to death by Dr. Asher Thomas in 2005, she helped revive him and hide him away to avoid prosecution for… Well, let’s be real. A.J. was <em>always</em> guilty of this or that. Ironically, less than two years after he was revealed to be alive, he was killed again, this time by Sonny Corinthos, the mobster who’d so forcefully adopted his son, Michael.</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
27/30
<p>Talk about a splashy “exit”! Sick of being hit on by her sometime stepbrother, Hope Logan “helped” him into a vat of acid in 2019. But a relative rookie at playing dead, he didn’t make her freak out for too long before revealing that he had not only survived his dive, he’d done so without the chemicals leaving him scarred for minutes, much less life.</p>
Image: Paul Skipper/JPI
28/30
<p>Since only the good die young, the scourge of Port Charles lived to a ripe old age, “dying” twice in boat explosions before treacherous son Peter August ensured that he never recovered from the gunshot wound inflicted by hitman Jason Morgan.</p>
Image: ABC screenshot
29/30
<p>Like father, like son. Taking after pop Faison, Peter was thought to be so dead that he was stuck in a freezer following a tumble down a flight of stairs. Needless to say, he wasn’t permanently iced, just temporarily chilling. To put him down for good, he had to be whacked by babymama Maxie Jones’ mother, Felicia. Side note: Thanks, Felicia.</p>
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30/30
