The Most Bizarre Plot Lines On General Hospital
Soap operas are meant to be fantastical and larger than life, even in their most intimate and realistic stories. The genre takes romance to new heights, as well as the typical angst that comes with love that soaps are known for. "General Hospital," the longest-running daytime drama still on the air today, having premiered in 1963 (via TV Insider), is no exception to this rule. From heartbreaking portrayals of gritty storylines like a teenager dying from AIDS back in 1996 to losing a newborn due to a placental abruption just in time for the 2021 holiday season, "GH" has brought viewers to tears time and time again.
That doesn't mean the soap also hasn't made people shake their heads in disbelief and laugh at the absurdity of some stories, while also being engrossed and entertained. "General Hospital" is no stranger to bizarre plotlines and even pioneered them as the 1980s began.
The Cassadines nearly freeze the world with a weather machine
The year was 1981 and Luke and Laura were the most popular pairing "General Hospital" and soaps have ever seen. After spending time on the run from mobster Frank Smith and realizing they had fallen in love, another adventure awaited their couple before their November wedding when the crazy Cassadine clan, led by Mikkos Cassadine, thought it found the key to freezing the world with a weather machine in order to achieve world domination, according to Soaps In Depth.
It was soaps' first science fiction plot and Luke and Laura were able to thwart the Cassadines in what became known as the Ice Princess story. The Cassadines then became a major family on the soap off and on for the next four decades, with a 2021 resurgence as "The Nanny" and "Days of Our Lives" alum Charles Shaughnessy was cast as Victor Cassadine (via Soap Opera Digest) and fans learned he was involved with another bizarre plot that involved brainwashing.
Robin Scorpio encounters Casey the Alien
Robin Scorpio may have been involved in one of the most realistic stories in soap opera history in the 1990s when her teenage self fell in love with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, had unprotected sex, and learned the boy, Stone Cates, had AIDS (via Soaps.com). Before Stone died, Robin learned that she was HIV positive and the character, who still shows up in Port Charles and on "General Hospital" every few years, has been living a full life with HIV ever since.
However, before Robin reached her teen years with such a gut-wrenching story, she was involved with one of the soap's most infamous bizarre plots. A child Robin, always played by Kimberly McCullough since 1985 (via IMDb), encountered a strange man named Casey (Bradley Lockerman) and learned he was an alien who needed to get back to his home planet. In order to do so, Casey needed to find a special crystal that would get him there, according to Screen Rant. With the help of Robin, he did, returned to Lumina.
Charlotte Cassadine is conceived via stolen eggs
It was only 2014 when Stavros Cassadine (Robert Kelker Kelly) kidnapped Lulu Falconeri (Emme Rylan) and extracted her eggs to try to create a child with her. After Lulu was rescued, she tried not to think about it until she wanted another child and knew she couldn't carry one to term. That's when she learned one of her eggs became an embryo and then became a little girl named Charlotte, who Lulu met in 2017 through the magic of soap opera aging.
How Charlotte really came to be ended up being more bizarre when Lulu learned the whole story. Apparently, Helena Cassadine (Constance Towers) took Lulu's egg and created a child using Valentin Cassadine (James Patrick Stuart) as the father and a random woman named Claudette (Bree Williamson) as the gestational host (via Soaps In Depth). "General Hospital" tried to normalize the story and succeeded with excellent casting and dialogue, and as of the 2021 holiday season, the magic of soap opera aging took over once again when Charlotte suddenly became an adolescent.
Franco Baldwin has Drew Cain's memories
In 2019, "General Hospital" took all of their twin characters and told the audience each of them had a piece of their siblings' memories in a science fiction-level memory mapping plot. In fact, two different people had Jason Morgan's (Steve Burton) memories. Jason had all the memories he made since the time he was brain damaged as a college student in the 1990s, but so did his twin brother, Drew Cain (then played by Billy Miller, now Cameron Mathison). But, where were Drew's memories? On a flash drive, of course, because this is a bizarre "General Hospital" plotline so where else would they be? (via Soap Dirt.)
Somehow, Drew's BFF Franco Baldwin (Roger Howarth) ended up in a hostage situation in which a mad scientist implanted Drew's memories into Franco, turning him into DrewCo (in the Twitterverse). Poor Franco's family members were beside themselves as Franco walked around town thinking he was a Navy SEAL named Drew and wanting to live his past life with lost love, Kim Nero (Tamara Braun), according to Soaps In Depth. Franco finally did get his own memories back, only to be killed by Peter August (Wes Ramsey) in 2021.