Autumn breeze blowing
Wind of whispering sighs
I can't help knowing
You're blowing me a surprise
Wind of whispering sighs
I can't help knowing
You're blowing me a surprise
— The opening of the Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics of the classic 1976-93 Instrumental Theme Tune.
General Hospital is a long-running Soap Opera airing on ABC since April 1, 1963 in a Dramatic Hour Long format (originally a Dramatic Half-Hour).
The action, ostensibly, centers on the staff and patients at General Hospital in Port Charles, New York. Early characters of importance were Dr. Steve Hardy (John Beradino), his nurse wife Audrey March Hardy (Rachel Ames), Nurse Jessie Brewer (Emily McLaughlin), Dr. Lesley Webber (Denise Alexander), and attorney Lee Baldwin (Peter Hansen). Many current characters are children and grandchildren of these veteran characters.
Launched by former Search for Tomorrow writers Frank and Doris Hursley,note General Hospital was ABC's first daytime Soap Opera. After a modest start in the ratings, a sensationalistic 1971 storyline that saw Audrey accused of murder boosted the show all the way up to #2 (behind As the World Turns), but by 1978 the ratings had collapsed and the show faced cancellation. In a last-ditch attempt to save it, prolific Soap Opera veteran Gloria Montynote was hired as executive producer. Monty reinvigorated the show, introducing a bunch of memorable new characters (who still typically had some sort of connection to the hospital). The major turning point came when the beloved, but controversial, romance of Laura Webber Baldwin (Genie Francis) and Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary) took center stage. "Controversial" because the pairing was kicked off when Campus Disco manager Luke drunkenly raped his employee Laura after hours at the club in October of 1979. The rape was quickly retconned as a "seduction" (but was later re-acknowledged as a rape) and Luke and Laura became the original soap opera Super Couple.
The early 1980s were a heyday for GH. The hospital itself went on the back-burner, as storylines delved into international intrigue, involving Soviet spies, Aztec treasure, and megalomaniac Mikkos Cassadine (John Colicos) who attempted to freeze Port Charles and take over the world. Luke and Laura's wedding in November 1981 drew over 30 million viewers, and featured an appearance by Elizabeth Taylor as Mikkos's widow Helena Cassadine. The mid '80s brought super couple number 2 in Frisco Jones (Jack Wagner) and Felicia Cummings (Kristina Crump, who would later marry Jack Wagner in real life).
By the early '90s, the emphasis shifted more toward family-based drama, with the hospital moving back a little more into focus. The show got high marks for tearjerker stories such as Stone's death from AIDS, and young Maxie Jones receiving her cousin BJ's heart in a transplant, plus the realistic addiction problems of the Quartermaine family (Alan and painkillers, A.J. and alcohol, Emily's underage drug issues).
For most of this century, the dominant character has been Anti-Hero mob boss Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard). Sonny and his right-hand man Jason Morgan (Steve Burton) were divisive figures among the show's longterm fans, with accusations in the early 2000s that they symbolized how the show was focusing on increasingly dark stories and killing off veteran characters, supposedly to attract a younger audience. In 2012, with the show under threat of cancellation there was a radical change in showrunners. The new regime ended the show's mob focus (more or less), bringing back veteran characters who were written out and restoring the titular hospital and many of the show's core families to the forefront again. For a brief period the show was like most modern American soap operas again, with a mix between domestic/medical drama and outlandish adventure stories. However, in recent years the show has again become dominated by the mobsters, to the division of the fans, though more recent trends of stories centered on legacy characters and some Teen Drama plots involving the younger cast members have been praised.
GH has been the longest-running current soap opera on American television since the cancellation of As the World Turns in 2010, and after the cancellation of All My Children and One Life to Live (both of which it has crossed over with) in 2011, General Hospital is the last remaining soap opera airing on ABC, plus one of just four remaining soap operas on network television,note and the only one of those not on CBS, home of The Young and the Restless,The Bold and the Beautiful and, as of 2025 Beyond the Gates, which airs in the same timeslot as GH in most US markets.note The series has spawned two spinoffs: Port Charles (1997-2003), which began with a focus on interns at the hospital and eventually morphed into a Supernatural Soap Opera, and General Hospital Night Shift (2007-2008), a weekly primetime summer series on Soap Net.
Not to be confused with a 1972-1979 British series of the same name
.
General Hospital provides examples of:
open/close all folders
Tropes #-D
- Above the Influence: When Lulu is drugged at a photoshoot, Dante finds her and takes her back to his place to make sure nothing happens to her. She tries to initiate intimacy but Dante nobly declines.
- Absurdly Elderly Mother:
- Tracy Quartermaine gave birth to her son Dillon at 45, prompting a guest at her son's christening to ask if she was the grandmother.
- Alexis was initially this after giving birth to Molly in 2005. At the time, Alexis was in her late 40s. This trope wound up being temporary for Alexis. Only 4 years later, Molly and her sister Kristina received Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, changing them into teenagers, which is more consistent for Alexis's age.
- The 2022 revelation that legacy villain Heather Webber was the mother of college-aged Esme Prince led to some headscratching, since Heather had debuted on the show way back in 1976 as a 19-year-old nanny. The most generous back-of-the-envelope calculations would put her around 45 at the time of the birth.
- Actor Allusion:
- In a dream episode during Thanksgiving 2008, Maxie Jones meets Matt Hunter and asks him if she's sure they hadn't met before, even asking, "did we go to high school together?" Their portrayers Kirsten Storms and Jason Cook had previously played High-School Sweethearts, Shawn Brady and Belle Black, on Days of Our Lives. Additionally, Matt and Maxie met by bumping into each other, which is how Shawn and Belle first met.
- Similarly when Sam McCall and John McBain meet. Their actors Kelly Monaco and Michael Easton had played vampire lovers Livvie Locke and Caleb Morley on the supernatural spin-off of GH, Port Charles. Eventually they had Easton reprise his Port Charles character on GH, playing both Caleb and John, with the former sometimes impersonating the latter. Caleb also abducted Sam and attempted to brainwash her into being Livvie, who had died offscreen after Port Charles ended. A Running Gag with Easton's current character of Dr. Hamilton Finn is for someone to make some offhand comment about vampires to him, leading to a Double Take from Finn.
- Another example came in a scene involving Franco Baldwin and Kiki Jerome. Kristen Alderson, who originated the role of Kiki, announced her departure; her final scene was with Franco, whose actor Roger Howarth had worked with Alderson on One Life to Live as Todd Manning and his daughter Starr Manning respectively. As they had worked together since she was 6 years old, they were coworkers for the better part of two decades. As such, the dialogue of their last scene, written on the surface as Franco rambling after a dose of LSD, could also be interpreted as Todd saying goodbye to Starr and in turn, Howarth saying goodbye to Alderson.
- Kiki was originally claimed to be Franco's daughter, mirroring Starr and Todd. Eventually, it was revealed that she was actually the daughter of Silas Clay, the other character played by a former One Life to Live actor (Michael Easton) retained on General Hospital after the OLtL-original characters were written out.
- Valentin Cassadine mentioned Pine Valley to his friend and attorney Martin, and Martin shrugged and said he never heard of the place. note Pine Valley was the setting of All My Children, which starred both James Patrick Stuart (Valentin) and more famously, Michael E. Knight (Martin). Then a 2023 storyline established that Martin does in fact have strong connections to Pine Valley.
- Steve Burton playing a damaged warrior with a heart of gold, who was once a kind young man until a certain event changed them for the worse (or better?), works under a terrorist organization and has multiple love interests. Is that Jason Morgan or Cloud Strife?
- Kirsten Storms as Maxie tangling with Kimberly J. Brown as Marie Hopkins in 2021, which, if you're a fan of Disney Channel Fantastic Comedy movie franchises of The '90s, means Zenon Kar battling Marnie Piper.
- In 2024, Maxie's daughter Georgie dressed as Zenon for Halloween, but Maxie had never heard of her before.
- The writers managed to get Charles Shaughnessy to say the line "To hell with the nanny!" during his final storyline playing Victor Cassadine.
- Eva LaRue joined the show to play Blaze's mother in 2024, and, in a nod to her most famous previous role, they named the character Natalia.
- In 2024, Gio Palmieri was said to have played the national anthem on his violin before a huge Port Charles University football game. His portrayer Giovanni Mazza has performed the anthem by violin at many Real Life sporting events, including NBA playoff games.
- They had fun in 2025 when Erika Slezak showed up in a guest role, since, in his child actor days, series regular Chris L. McKenna (Jack Brennan) played Joey Buchanan, son of Slezak's One Life to Live character Victoria Lord, from 1990-93. Slezak's GH character Ronnie Bard says "Joey?" when she first sees Brennan at Bobbie's.Jack Brennan: Sorry to disappoint, my name's not Joey.
Ronnie Bard: No, I apologize, I thought you were someone I used to know.
Jack Brennan: Well, maybe we did know each other, in another life.
- Adaptational Nationality: An odd in-series case, enforced by Real Life Writes the Plot, happened in 2025. Anglo-Australian actor Charles Mesure suddenly quit the role of Jack Brennan, which he originated, and New York-born Chris L. McKenna took over, with no attempt to give Brennan an accent, effectively meaning that Brennan, who'd previously been identified onscreen as Australian, was now American.
- Affably Evil: Jerry Jacks, Anthony Zacchara, Helena Cassadine, cult leader Shiloh. Even Ryan Chamberlain had his moments. It's almost a prerequisite for a murderous villain on this show to have a jolly personality.
- Age-Gap Romance:
- One of the very first subplots of the series, with Nurse Jessie Brewer being seven years older than her husband Dr. Phil Brewer, only to have their marriage tested by his philandering.
- A defining trait for Laura Webber, with her first big storyline revolving around an affair with the much older David Hamilton, then going on to to marry Scotty Baldwin (five years older), then Luke Spencer (13 years older).
- The sordid 2024 hookup of Willow Corinthos and Drew Quartermaine, who, on top of being her uncle-in-law, is also 20 years older than she is.
- The Alcoholic: Noah Drake, and most notoriously Luke Spencer and former nephew-in-law, A.J. Quartermaine.
- Alliterative Name: Jasper Jacks, his parents John and Jane Jacks, his brother Jerry Jacks, and his daughter Josslyn Jacks. His wife was also 'Carly Corinthos' before they got married.
- Alpha Bitch: Helena Cassadine until her presumed demise; Ava Jerome has certainly taken Helena's position as the HBIC of Port Charles. Tracy Quartermaine in her prime (examples include running down Ned's wife Jenny with a car. Ironically, despite all the horrible things she'd done, this was genuinely an accident).
- Always Identical Twins: Mostly played straight with the Evil Twin and Backup Twin examples, but averted with the revelation that Willow Tait and the late Nelle Benson were actually long-lost twins and obviously fraternal.
- Amnesiac Resonance:
- Despite her amnesia, Esme Prince named her baby son Ace, which is the name she used when she would talk to her gestating child in the womb while being held captive by Nik Cassadine at Wyndermere (since she saw the baby as her "ace in the hole" for dealing with the Cassadines). She even commented how that name just suddenly occurred to her and seemed right. Of course, given her history of faking illnesses, some viewers took it as a sign that she was faking the amnesia as well (until her Regained Memories Sequence confirmed that it was real).
- The first crack in Ned's amnesia where he thinks he's his old rock star alter ego Eddie Maine comes when his ex-wife Lois mentions how his adopted son Leo knows the length of the Brooklyn Bridge, which causes Ned to Flashback to the famous 1995 sequence when he and Lois rushed to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge to celebrate after their wedding.
- Amoral Attorney:
- Scotty Baldwin. Even when he was not really a villain he's still pretty much every slimy lawyer stereotype. He's mellowed considerably though and is more of a harmless curmudgeon than an out and out bad guy these days.
- Diane Miller is portrayed as a serious, skilled lawyer, but her main client is Sonny Corinthos and she specializes in helping him avoid prosecution for his mob activities.
- Ancestral Name:
- Michael Corinthos Sr., who later changed his last name to Corbin, had a son named Michael Corinthos Jr. (better known as Sonny), who adopted his wife Carly's son Michael and renamed him Michael Corinthos III. Though to make things messy, Michael III had actually been named in honor of Sonny in the first place.explanation
- Played for Drama in 2024 after the Tragic Stillbirth death of Molly Lansing-Davis's daughter, whom her half-sister Kristina Corinthos-Davis was carrying as a surrogate. Deciding the baby needed a name for the funeral, Molly and her partner T.J. Ashford decided to call her Irene, after T.J.'s paternal grandmother. Kristina, who'd developed a strong attachment to the child, was offended that they didn't include her in the decision, then revealed to her brothers Dante Falconeri and Michael Corinthos that while the baby was in the womb, she'd named it Adela, after their paternal grandmother. Things came to a head at Irene's burial, when Molly overheard Kristina call her Adela, which caused Molly's simmering rage at Kristina (both for planning to keep the baby and for getting into a confrontation with Ava Jerome that resulted in the baby dying) to finally boil over into a tearful argument between the two.note
- And Now You Must Marry Me: In 1983, Stavros Cassadine kidnapped Laura and manipulated her into marrying him by telling her that Luke was dead. They had a son named Nikolas.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: The notorious Luke and Laura scene at the Campus Disco starts off like this. Luke, ordered by his mob boss Frank Smith to kill a politician on a crusade against organized crime, is convinced that he'll get killed by the politician's security guards if he pulls off the hit, but will also get killed if he disobeys Smith and doesn't do it. He gets drunk and vents about it to Laura, who tries to comfort him, but In Vino Veritas kicks in and he reveals that he's obsessed with her and is deeply jealous of Scotty for being married to her.Laura: I know...I know that you care about me.
Luke: Damn it, Laura! I'm in love with you. - Antagonist in Mourning: When Taggart came Back for the Dead, his longtime nemesis Sonny took it surprisingly hard, asserting that while he didn't like Taggart (and the feeling was mutual), he deeply respected him.
- Artifact Title: For a show called General Hospital, very few of the storylines are focused on Port Charles General Hospital. The first 15 or so years of the show were set almost exclusively in the hospital; however, much of the show's focus post Luke & Laura was on action/adventure and mafia storylines. As Wikipedia points out, the spin-off Port Charles initially focused on the hospital and medical-related storylines more heavily when compared to the mothership.
- Artistic License – Geography:
- Lorenzo Alcazar had a yacht on the Coast of Bolivia, a country that has been landlocked since 1883!
- The show mentions the I-55 running in their location, upstate New York, that goes to Canada. I-55 runs from Illinois to Louisiana. Connected to this was a 2022 storyline with Holly smuggling an extremely valuable diamond necklace, which implied that Port Charles was about an hour or so from "the Canadian border". New York's only land border with Canada is in the northeast part of the state,note while, as mentioned in Where the Hell Is Springfield?, most evidence points to Port Charles being in western New York.
- The 1977 hurricane storyline seems like a stretch for western New York, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. In 1954 Hurricane Hazel struck Rochester.
- Artistic License – Law:
- Among other examples, the sentencing of Michael Corinthos III for killing his stepmother Claudia Zacchara with an axe handle to the head. He acted on impulse because she was threatening his mother Carly and newly born half-sister Josslyn Jacks when he walked into the cabin, which makes it self-defense rather than murder, and although he was 18 when sentenced, he was younger than that when it happened and thus still a minor. Still, the judge gave him a full five years in Pentonville Penitentiary, claiming it was to straighten him out by separating him from the influence of his parents Sonny and Carly and showing him the consequences of the mob lifestyle. Dante managed to get him out within the first year, but not before Michael had suffered a Prison Rape.
- In the Surprise Incest cases of Kissing Cousins mentioned below, no one ever brings up that marrying a first cousin isn't actually illegal in New York State.
- Ric Lansing badgers Kristina Corinthos-Davis on the witness stand during Ava Jerome's 2024 murder trial, saying that Kristina herself is the one culpable for the death of the baby Kristina was carrying because she confronted Ava, in a deliberate attempt to provoke Kristina into an emotional breakdown. He gets one warning from the judge but doesn't let up, and then Alexis Davis is removed from the courtroom by the judge for speaking out about his behavior while Ric continues to savage Kristina verbally and lean way too close to her without being held in contempt of court. This would not be tolerated in a real courtroom. And this isn't even getting into the conflict of interest issue of Ric being the father of Molly Lansing-Davis, Kristina's half-sister for whom she was carrying the child, as well as being the uncle of Kristina through Sonny.
- In 2024, Nina Reeves has lawyer Martin Grey serve her daughter Willow's husband, the above-mentioned Michael Corinthos, with (unsigned) separation papers without Willow's knowledge or consent after Willow's affair with Drew Quartermaine is exposed and she moves in with Nina for time being. Any good lawyer should have told Nina she can't do that.
- In December 2024 - January 2025, Ava Jerome's divorce settlement from Nikolas Cassadine is taken back by the Cassadine estate to be held in trust for the then-toddler aged Ace Cassadine, which is legally impossible, especially without telling Ava and her lawyer Ric Lansing that proceedings have been initiated, with them only finding out when her check bounces at a restaurant. There is also no explanation of why Nikolas is no longer considered the Cassadine heir now that he's turned up alive and is in jail, since it was only his (faked) death that made Spencer and now Ace the heir. Ric tells Ava there's nothing to be done, when any competent lawyer should be fast at work punching holes in the very idea of "taking back" a divorce settlement. Alexis Davis mentions that Nikolas "gave away money that was not his to give away" in an attempt to justify it, but given that Nikolas was legally the heir at the time, that makes no sense.
- Conflict of interest is again not raised when Ric represents Willow in her divorce case against Michael in June 2025 despite Ric being the maternal half-brother of Michael's adoptive father Sonny Corinthos and thus legally Michael's uncle.
- While calling Sasha Corbin in to testify despite being eight months pregnant provided some nice soapy drama, in real life she could easily have asked the judge to excuse her on account of her condition, arguing that the stress might adversely affect the unborn child.
- Artistic License – Law Enforcement:
- In general, the Port Charles Police Department seems awfully small for an agency serving a city that's probably supposed to have around 150,000 or 200,000 people.note Specifically, one pair of detectives, Dante Falconeri and Harrison Chase, seem to investigate every high-profile crime in the city, from murders all the way down to a Dine and Dash. But they're both exposed to a whole bunch of potential conflict of interest issues, with personal connections to many prominent people in the city. One example was Chase being asked to investigate the shooting of Drew Cain in 2025, despite Drew being one of his in-lawsnote and the current boyfriend of Chase's ex-wife Willow Tait. Chase was also put in the uncomfortable position of officially questioning his wife Brook Lynn as part of the investigation. To the show's credit, they had police commissioner Anna Devane bring up his connection to Willow and ask Chase if he thought could still remain objective in the case, but still it's likely in the real world that he'd just be taken off the case completely. Dante being the adoptive brother of Willow's other ex-husband Michael Corinthos isn't a whole lot better under the circumstances either. Taken to new heights on October 7, 2025 when Chase was to be involved in a would-be search of the Quartermaine property for evidence related to Drew's shooting (prevented from happening only by a typo in the search warrant) despite living there.
- When Britt Westbourne returns to Port Charles in 2025 after, by her own admission, faking her death, she is not detained or questioned by the police despite faking one's death being illegal.
- Artistic License – Medicine: The show has interestingly gone both ways on the issue of doctors treating members of their own family, which isn't illegal, but is considered a thorny gray area in medical ethics because of some obvious conflict of interest problems, and usually discouraged:
- In 2019, Hamilton Finn directed his ex-fiancée Hayden to another doctor when she brought their daughter Violet in with a fever, saying it was against hospital policy for him to treat her.
- In 2023, Valentin Cassadine brought his troubled daughter Charlotte in for a psychiatric consultation with Kevin Collins, which Kevin readily agreed to conduct even though he's married to her grandmother Laura (and thus is Charlotte's step-grandfather).
- In 2024, Lucas Jones performed liver surgery on his half-sister Sam McCall because she trusted him more than any other doctor, but waivers had to be signed to make it possible.
- In 2025, Lucas was on call when his nephew Michael Corinthos III arrived to be treated for severe burns, but handed the procedure off to Dr. Isaiah Gannon as soon as possible. He treated Michael again just a few episodes later alongside Isaiah, but in that case Michael had suddenly gone into arrest and needed immediate attention from the nearest doctors. Similarly, Lucas happened to be on duty a few months later when his cousin Maxie Jones was brought into the ER after collapsing on live TV during a Deception Cosmetics home shopping segment.
- Artistic License – Politics: After being elected to the US House of Representatives in 2024, Drew Quartermaine commented to Nina Reeves that he'll have to campaign again in four years. House terms are two years (and Senate terms are six years, so the writers don't even have the excuse of mixing the two up).
- Ascended Meme: "Britch", a Malicious Misnaming for Britt Westbourne by fans, ended up getting used on the show and was ultimately embraced by Britt herself.
- As Himself:
- Richard Simmons, who appeared periodically from 1979-82 to lead aerobics classes at the Campus Disco and the Port Charles Community Sports Center, and returned for the Nurses' Ball in 2013, Adam Westing himself as a bossy prima donna.
- Blogger and celebrity gossip reporter Perez Hilton showed up in 2024 to interview Blaze and Kristina about Blaze's Forced Out of the Closet ordeal.note
- The Atoner:
- Franco. It turns out his psychopathic tendencies were all part of a tumor that he had removed, and after his surgery he changed into a gentle, sensitive man who, while not with out his edges, wouldn't purposely hurt a fly. And while he's found love with Elizabeth and acceptance with some (but not all) of Port Charles, people are still wary he will revert to his old ways, including Franco himself.
- Julian Jerome to a lesser extent. He can still be a jerkass, but he's pretty much stayed on the straight and narrow since being acquitted of his past crimes and now ekes a modest living as a bar owner/bartender.
- Back from the Dead:
- While it hasn't done this as much as Days of Our Lives, the show has had several examples over the years. In fact, this almost seems to be a rite of passage for the Cassadine family, with Helena, Stavros, Victor and Nikolas all showing up alive and well years after they supposedly died.
- Summer 2025 saw The Reveal that Britt Westbourne, who was murdered at the start of 2023 with a memorably poignant onscreen death scene, was actually still alive, leading to an odd situation where two characters who'd returned from presumed death (Britt and Jason Morgan) interacted and the question of how they survived was a big topic of conversation. Britt later explained that she was kidnapped by former associates of her father Cesar Faison after she lost consciousness and was nursed back to health.
- Backup Twin:
- As a standard Soap Opera trope, this has happened a lot, including John Colicos as Mikkos Cassadine's cousin Petros, Richard Fancy as Bennie Abrahms' twin brother Bernie and Natalia Livingston as Rebecca Shaw, the sister of Emily Quartermaine.
- The complex cross-show situation of Dr. Silas Clay, his rock star brother Stephen Clay, Dr. Hamilton Finn, Police Lt. John McBain (a One Life to Live character who immigrated to General Hospital when that show ended), and vampire king Caleb Morley from supernatural General Hospital spinoff Port Charles, all played by Michael Easton. Stephen and Caleb were supposedly the same person, but Port Charles and General Hospital differed on which was the real name and which was the alias (Port Charles had it that Caleb Morley was his true self and Stephen Clay just a persona, and his eventual resurfacing on General Hospital had it the other way around, though with a Stinger in his last appearance that indicated he really was a vampire). Lucy Coe, who had been a vampire slayer on Port Charles, mistook John for Caleb when they first met, and when Caleb/Stephen appeared on General Hospital later, Easton played both roles, with Stephen impersonating John at times until John finally killed Stephen - but he was shown to survive and leave town by the aforementioned Stinger. Later, John and the other One Life to Live immigrant characters were taken off the show but their actors remained in different roles, with Easton now playing Stephen's brother Silas. After Silas died, Easton played another doctor character, Finn.
- Bill Eckert (as mentioned below in Uncanny Family Resemblance) was originally a case of this, to allow Anthony Geary to return to the show as someone other than Luke Spencer. When it was decided to just bring Luke back, then have Luke and Bill interact in a storyline, Geary differentiated Bill's look by giving him longer hair, a beard and glasses, which amusingly made Bill resemble Philo, Geary's character in UHF.
- The utterly bizarre case of Jason Morgan and Drew Cain. It began as a simple recast, with Billy Miller replacing Steve Burton when The Bus Came Back with Jason in 2014. Then when Burton returned to the show as Jason in 2017, they handled it with The Reveal that the character everyone thought was Jason was his long-lost identical twin brother Drew (but no longer identical due to Magic Plastic Surgery), who'd had Jason's memories implanted into his mind so that even he thought he was Jason, a Mind Screw Plot Twist that allowed Burton and Miller to appear on the show together. They even extended things by having Burton as the actor for Drew's flashbacks to before the surgery in a case of Playing Their Own Twin. Miller left the show in 2019,note but Drew returned in 2021, recast with Cameron Mathison.
- Bad Guy Bar: The Highsider, which even gets called "a dive bar" on the show. Every series regular who goes there either ends up in a fight, or somehow causes a fight between other patrons.
- Bait-and-Switch: Stefan flips out when Nikolas becomes involved with Gia, but not because she's black, because she's a commoner. However, Gia believes that it is because of her race and is just as offended otherwise at the implication that she isn't good enough for Nikolas just because she isn't royalty.
- Beard of Evil:
- In the first decade of the show, Dr. Phil Brewer went from clean-shaven to having a full beard, alongside his evolution from a lying philanderer to a full-blown Heel capable of violence and fueled by obsession.
- Scotty Baldwin had one for a few years after his Face–Heel Turn, brought about by Laura rejecting him for Luke Spencer.
- In 2024, Drew Quartermaine grew some stubble just as his behavior started turning questionable (making an opportunistic run for Congress, including changing his last name from Cain to capitalize on the prominence of the Quartermaine family, then sleeping with his much younger niece-in-law Willow Corinthos, then getting into a fistfight with his twin brother Jason Morgan).
- International criminal mastermind and all-around Smug Snake Jenz Sidwell mixes this with Bald of Evil.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Most recently with Drew and Nina, the woman whose whistleblowing sent him to prison, where he was nearly murdered, with an argument between the two turning into Slap-Slap-Kiss sex, since they couldn't refuse a chance to do something that would drive Carly (Nina's enemy, who dumped Drew after Jason returned) up the wall if she found out.
- Best Woman:
- Brenda serves as both the best "person" and maid of honor at Ned and Lois' wedding, being the best friend to both of them.
- When Steve and Olivia were going to get married, Elizabeth served as the "Best Ma'am".
- When Carly and Jax got married, Alexis was Jax's Best Person and Jason served as Carly's.
- Betty and Veronica: Often invoked straight, and played with, in Love Triangle groupings.
- In The '90s there was Jagger Cates being torn between Karen Wexler (Betty) and Brenda Barrett (Veronica), while he also played the Veronica role, alongside Jason Quartermaine as Betty, for Karen.
- In Luke/Laura/Scotty, while Luke Spencer had the more edgy characteristics of a Veronica (as a bad boy gangster), he viewed himself as the Betty whom Laura Webber was passing up for the more preppy aspiring lawyer Scotty Baldwin.
- More recently there's been Spencer Cassadine (Archie), Trina Robinson (Betty) and Esme Prince (Veronica), which Esme was keenly aware of to the extent of attempting a Frame-Up of Trina to push her out of the way.
- Josslyn Jacks dumped Nice Guy Cameron Webber (Betty) for mob operative Dex Heller (Veronica), only to attract a new Betty in Troubled, but Cute college classmate Adam Wright, though he also straddled the Stalker with a Crush line, while Joss flirted with Florence Nightingale Effect after rescuing him from a prescription drug overdose.
- Big Brother Instinct:
- Michael Corinthos had this for his one-year-younger adoptive sister Kristina Corinthos-Davis when they were both teens, getting into multiple fights with men and boys who were menacing, insulting or manipulating her. In at least one instance, she returned the favor, unsuccessfully telling his girlfriend Abby Haver (who was both a Hooker with a Heart of Gold and several years older than Michael) to "get out of his life" if she cared about him.
- Sonny's bodyguards Max and Milo are also immediately eager to do something bad to Kristina's boyfriend Kiefer when Michael tells them Kiefer's been rough in his manner towards her, especially Milo.
- Big Eater: Carly. She even goes into labor during a clandestine trip to score forbidden french fries.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family:
- The Cassadines, a huge, extremely wealthy clan descended from European aristocracy, with a penchant for diabolical scheming.
- The Quartermaines in their prime were more in the Dysfunctional Family category, but also fit the parameters for this, with multigenerational troubles intermingling (Edward's scheming and shady past, the volatile Alan-Monica marriage, and A.J.'s penchant for mischief, with Emily's Troubling Unchildlike Behavior evolving into adult woes).
- A more low-key example is the Webbers, with a multigenerational history of illegitimate births and ill-considered romantic and sexual pairings, leading to several outright psychopaths ending up on the family tree.
- Bitch Slap: Nik got an epic one from Ava at the start of 2023 after she learned that he impregnated Esme (followed a little later by Sonny sucker-punching him after learning the same thing).
- Black Gal on White Guy Drama:
- Tom and Simone in the '80s. Her mother disapproved to the point of tampering with a paternity test to make it seem as though Simone's African-American lover was the father of her child in the hopes that she would leave Tom for him.
- Keesha Ward and Jason Quartermaine in the '90s. Their respective grandparents disapproved. His because of the frequent clashes that the two families had had over the years, hers because she feared that his family would eventually put their collective foot down and forbid Jason from seeing her. This never happened and both families warmed up to and accepted the relationship once they realized that each was a lovely person that anyone would want to be part of their family.
- Nikolas Cassadine and Gia Campbell in the '00s. His uncle Stefan disapproved, though he swore that it was not Gia's race that was the problem, but rather the fact that she was not a member of the aristocracy, an absolute must for a potential bride of Nikolas.
- Currently there's Trina Robinson and Spencer Cassadine, which got Ship Teased for a while before they became an Official Couple. The race angle is more of a subtext, but Trina's family is skittish about Spencer, partly because of his Troubled, but Cute tendencies, and partly because of the general shadiness of the Cassadine clan.
- Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: Kate Howard, when shot while getting married to Sonny.
- Book and Switch: In 2025, Cody Bell caught lovelorn Molly Lansing-Davis hiding a romance novel inside a copy of War and Peace.
- Bouquet Toss: The setup for a famous Wham Shot during the Luke and Laura wedding, when Laura tosses the bouquet and it's caught by her bitter ex Scotty Baldwin, who's crashed the wedding after having been off the show for a spell. He then gets into a fight with Luke, marking his Start of Darkness.
- Break the Cutie: Michael Corinthos's entire life has pretty much been this, and shows no signs of stopping. He was raped in prison and his girlfriend Abby died in a freak accident. Before that he accidentally shot his adoptive father Sonny Corinthos's fiancée Kate Howard and got shot himself by an assassin who was gunning for Sonny shortly after, leaving him comatose for a year. He also (supposedly) watched his biological dad A.J. Quartermaine die. Twice. The second time took.
- Brooklyn Rage: Sonny Corinthos, as a tough mobster originally from Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, easily counts. The various other members of the Corinthos, Falconeri and Cerullo families who hail from Bensonhurst tend to be feisty as well. Lois Cerullo even named her daughter Brook Lynn in honor of her home borough.
- Broken Pedestal: Luke and Laura to their son Lucky after he learns that, before their marriage, Luke raped Laura and she forgave him.
- Building of Adventure: Earlier in the series the show was set entirely in the hospital.
- The Bus Came Back:
- As a soap, this happens a lot, but the most notable case was Angie Costello (played by Jana Taylor), the Troubled Teen from the show's early years, returning briefly to visit Steve Hardy for the show's 30th anniversary in 1993, having last appeared in 1965.
- 2024 was dominated by the return of a whole bunch of major characters from the past: Jason Morgan (after Steve Burton and ABC made peace after his 2021 dismissal), Lucky Spencer (last seen in 2015), Ric Lansing (last seen in 2016) and, via recast, Jagger Cates (now FBI Special Agent John Cates) for the first time since 1995.
- Bus Crash: Luke Spencer departed in 2015 (with a brief return in 2017), but in early 2022 it was announced that he died in a cable car accident in Austria, which was implied to have actually been a hit set up by Victor Cassadine.
- But We Used a Condom!: Lulu and Dillon as well as Jason and Liz; the condoms (made by one of the divisions of ELQ, the Quartermaine family's corporation) turned out to be defective.
- Byronic Hero: Brooding, impulsive, sensitive Luke fit this type well in his heyday. Much of the Luke & Laura phenomenon happened because the novelty of having this type of character on a Soap Opera drew in viewers.
- Call-Back:
- Season 60 has had a bunch of these to the show's history. An amusing one was Lucy re-adopting her "mousy librarian" look from when she debuted on the show in 1986, after escaping from the safehouse where she was hiding with Anna and Valentin.Anna: What is this, mousy librarian or something?
Lucy: You like it?
Anna: No. It’s not altogether original. - In the "Vote" special episode where Trina Robinson and Josslyn Jacks go to the past and meet their ancestresses who were part of the women's suffrage movement, the time travel is faciliated by Lucy Coe lighting one of the Barrington family's heirloom magical candles that were featured in Port Charles.
- Season 60 has had a bunch of these to the show's history. An amusing one was Lucy re-adopting her "mousy librarian" look from when she debuted on the show in 1986, after escaping from the safehouse where she was hiding with Anna and Valentin.
- Canon Immigrant: Being (arguably) the central soap on ABC, this has happened a number of times:
- Several Night Shift characters made the jump to the mothership.
- Marco Dane, a villainous character on One Life to Live, was a regular for a year in the early 1990s.
- Skye (Chandler) Quartermaine moved to Port Charles from One Life to Live. Equally notable is that the character first appeared on All My Children.
- Likewise the previously thought dead Anna Devane and her identical twin Alexis Devane Marrik found themselves as notable residents of All My Childrem's Pine Valley for quite a while in the late '90s and early 2000s, even including the long-awaited emotional reunion of Anna with her beloved daughter Robin Scorpio on AMC and not GH.
- After One Life to Live was cancelled, GH moved a few of the characters from Llanview to Port Charles, notably Starr Manning, her father Todd Manning, and police lieutenant John McBain.
- When OLTL was rebooted online, GH removed those characters, but recast Todd, Starr and John's actors as different characters in General Hospital (Franco Baldwin, Kiki Jerome and Silas Clay, respectively), turning the role of Franco, which had been originated by James Franco, into a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Todd. Kiki was more of a bad girl than Starr, at least to begin with, but both were love interests of Michael Corinthos III (in Kiki's case, it was a Sibling Triangle, as she was introduced as his brother Morgan's girlfriend). Silas was the brother of his actor's Port Charles character, vampire king Caleb Morley, whom Lucy Coe had earlier mistaken John for.
- Then, despite the established shared universe of GH and OLTL, when Erika Slezak appeared on GH in 2025, it was not as her OLTL character Viki Lord, but as Veronica "Ronnie" Bard, the previously unknown sister of Monica Bard Quartermaine.
- Canon Welding: Back in the 60s, another soap on ABC, The Young Marrieds, took place in the suburb of Queen's Point; it was intended by the writers that Queen's Point be near the (then-unnamed) city that General Hospital took place in. TYM was canned after two years, so no crossovers ever materialized. However, it was established by the 80s that Queen's Point was in fact a Port Charles suburb (though the TYM cliffhanger was never resolved).
- Cartwright Curse:
- Any man who gets romantically involved with Maxie Jones does so at the peril of his life. Three of her former fiancés have kicked the bucket (Peter Harrell, Nathan West, Peter August; Spinelli managed to escape, and Nathan came Back from the Dead in 2025), and at least a half-dozen other former beaus have died as well (most recently Austin Gatlin-Holt).
- Michael Corinthos III also has a now-deceased ex-fiancée (Nelle Benson), plus late ex-lovers Abby Haver, Kiki Jerome and Sabrina Santiago. Hooker with a Heart of Gold Abby died in a particularly random way, with a crane load falling on her in Chicago while she was on the phone with Michael. Even Kristina's friend Ali, who had only wanted to date Michael, died when their bus to the ski trip slipped over a patch of ice and fell over a cliff. His then-wife Willow Tait was practically on her deathbed suffering from leukemia, before getting a life-saving bone marrow transplant from Liesl Obrecht.
- Meanwhile, Michael's maternal half-sister Josslyn Jacks has now had two serious boyfriends who died tragically: Oscar Nero-Quartermaine (from a seizure) and Dex Heller (murdered on duty as a police officer). So has her best friend Trina Robinson: Rory Cabrera (also a policeman killed in the line of duty) and Spencer Cassadine (drowned in the Seine in Paris, except they Never Found the Body).
- Cast Full of Rich People: The show started out as an aversion, since the main characters were doctors and nurses, but after it was revealed that Dr. Alan Quartermaine came from a very prominent family, this element came into play, with the extraordinarily wealthy Quartermaines, the aristocratic Cassadines, and the mobsters like Sonny Corinthos, Cyrus Renault and Anthony Zacchara who have tons of ill-gotten money to throw around being at the center of many storylines.
- Casual Kink: The Gambit Pileup situation that saw Alexis Davis, Kristina Corinthos-Davis and Ava Jerome decide to stash Ric Lansing away and chain him to a bed in 2025 after he recovered from a near-fatal Tap on the Head from Ava, to avoid getting the police involved (and the women getting in trouble for various misdeeds), revealed that Ava just happens to have a ball gag in her car's glove compartment. Fans had previously noted that Ava's tempestuous marriage to Nikolas Cassadine had hints of a BDSM component.
- Celebrity Paradox:
- The 2013 Nurses' Ball established that Dr. Noah Drake and Rick Springfield both exist in the show's universe, and apparently know each other (with Noah making the arrangements for Springfield to show up and perform "Jessie's Girl"). By contrast, that same year Jack Wagner performed his Real Life hit from The '80s "All I Need" in character as Frisco.
- For Halloween 2024, Maxie's daughter Georgie dressed up as Zenon, Girl of the 21st Century, a character played by Maxie's portrayer Kirsten Storms in three Disney Channel movies from 1999-2004. Ironically, Maxie had no clue who the character was.
- Chippendales Dancers: In 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2023, General Hospital's annual Nurses' Ball featured stripteases by Sonny Corinthos's bodyguard Milo Giambetti and other men as "Magic Milo and the Magic Wands". Besides Milo, who led the group each time, repeat performers were Felix DuBois (four times), Michael Corinthos III (three times), T.J. Ashford (three times), Lucas Jones (twice) and Nathan West (twice).
- Chronic Villainy: Manny Ruiz, an Ax-Crazy serial killer who terrorized Jason and Sam for months, is revealed to be suffering from a brain tumor that apparently caused his psychotic tendencies. When Patrick Drake removes said tumor, he's believed cured... but he soon returns to his villainous ways.
- Christmas Episode: As with most soaps, an annual occurrence, often with The Bus Came Back moments, and time honored tropes like Yet Another Christmas Carol (Luke was the center of such an episode in 2003). One longstanding tradition was Dr. Steve Hardy recounting the Biblical story of the first Christmas to a group of kids (with Alan Quartermaine taking over after Hardy died).
- Churchgoing Villain: Cyrus Renault's Turn to Religion after getting sent to prison, complete with random Bible quotes and unctuous piety, though because of his Faux Affably Evil history, most people treated the change with suspicion. The video surveillance footage showing him murdering Dex Heller at the end of 2024 seemed to confirm that he was a Falsely Reformed Villain.
- Citizenship Marriage: A bizarre version when the British Holly Sutton feared she would be deported and the Australian Robert Scorpio offered to marry her. How this would have helped her stay in the United States is never explained.
- City of Adventure: Port Charles, ostensibly a nice, respectable midsized city in New York State, often finds itself at the center of world intrigue, as a hangout for tycoons, crime bosses and even royalty (complete with a castle located on an island). Possibly justified if you consider that its location on Lake Ontario about 60 miles/100 km as the crow flies from Toronto would make it a convenient international shipping point.
- City with No Name: For the show's first 13 years the setting was never specified outside of being a sizable city in the northeastern US. It was finally identified as Port Charles, New York in 1976.
- Clingy Jealous Girl:
- Brenda Barrett would flip out if Sonny Corinthos so much as said "Hello" to Lily Rivera, and Carly Benson/Corinthos/Spencer has been known to verbally and physically assault any woman who dares to even talk to a man she's interested in or involved with.
- Oddly enough averted with Sonny's amicable ex Olivia Falconeri, who became very close friends and business partners with Carly.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Maxie sometimes gets called on to function as this for both Spinelli and Lucy. Spinelli also has Sam, and Lucy also has Anna.
- Cold Ham:
- Maurice Benard's portrayal of Sonny Corinthos qualifies, since he's generally calm, but is very fond of the Dramatic Pause and Dramatic Stutter, along with a blatant Verbal Tic of adding "uhh" before lines.
- Jeff Kober won a Daytime Emmy for his wonderfully oddball portrayal of crime kingpin Cyrus Renault at the intersection of Faux Affably Evil, Soft-Spoken Sadist and Evil Old Folks.
- Coming-Out Story: Lucas.
- Consummate Liar:
- As a veteran Con Artist, Holly Sutton is notorious for her constant deceptions to manipulate people.
- Natalia Ramirez used the exact trope name to describe Ava Jerome in 2024 (quoting Sonny Corinthos).
- Continuity Nod: Emma Scorpio-Drake coming up with the name Outback for the stray dog she found in 2025 seems a little random until you remember that her maternal grandfather Robert Scorpio was from Australia, as is her great uncle Mac Scorpio, who owned a Port Charles nightclub called The Outback for a while in The '90s.
- Convenient Miscarriage: Jessie Brewer and Audrey Hardy both had dramatic miscarriages in the show's first decade.
- Cowboy Cop: Dante is always very direct and unorthodox in his investigations, sometimes crossing swords with Chief of Detectives Mac Scorpio, with the added pressure of being the son of crime boss extraordinaire Sonny.
- Averted when Dante came back to the force; he cut his hair, began wearing formal suits and developed a more straight forward, all business police style. Scorpio actually told Dante he intends to recommend him to replace him as Chief of Detectives when he retires.
- Crazy-Prepared: After all the 1980s style adventure movie storylines, it was established that Luke and Laura Spencer both keep go-bags in their closet just in case they need to leave town suddenly for any number of reasons — being chased by an enemy, having to hare off to the wilderness to rescue a wayward child, whatever. The exact contents of these bags have never been fully revealed, but it's known that Laura's included $10,000 in various foreign currencies, a pipe wrench, thirty feet of surgical tubing, and 2000 rounds of hollow point ammunition, while Luke's contained a sealed canister of liquid nitrogen, a pound of beef jerky, a razor-sharp dagger, and a copy of the book The Way Things Work. Both bags contained ten rolls of duct tape, each.
- Creepy Crossdresser:
- Memorably with bar owner (and brief Luke Spencer love interest) Sally Armitage in 1980, who was actually a hit man employed by Frank Smith named Max Hedges, as revealed in a famous wig removal Wham Shot. Professional female impersonator Christopher Morley was convincing enough in the role that a lot of viewers were genuinely shocked.
- Mac and Kevin have both gone undercover this way. The fact that they managed to fool anyone is hilarious.
- Crossover: Mostly with Port Charles, but with other soaps as well.
- The late Gerald Anthony's many appearances as Marco Dane from One Life to Live cemented the fact that the two soap operas occurred in the same overall Verse, along with All My Children and Loving.
- And due to (what can now be called the "original") OLTL's cancellation, Todd Manning, his oldest child Starr, and John McBain headed to Port Chuck, with occasional appearances by Todd's ex-wives Blair Cramer and Téa Delgado. As part of the agreement between ABC and Prospect Park (the current licensee of OLTL), those characters were removed from the show in early 2013. However, their portrayers Roger Howarth, Kristen Alderson and Michael Easton wound up staying on the show as different characters (with Howarth taking over the role of Franco Baldwinnote , and Easton and Alderson as new characters Silas Clay and Kiki Jerome). Howarth and Easton are currently the only OLTL holdovers that still appear on GHnote .
- And in 2013, Luke and Holly went to Corinth, PA into the old Alden mansion - from another ABC soap, Loving, which ran from 1983 to 1995 (and was succeeded by The City from 1995 to 1997) - to hide and find an enemy. While there, Luke explains the infamous "Loving Murders", which was the final arc of the series and led into The City.
- Sydney Chase from The City showed up on GH, where we learned that she was an old friend of Tracy Quartermaine. Then Tracy moved over to The City and became a lead character in its final season.
- Almost a decade after All My Children ended, a 2023 storyline had Felicia and Lucy travel to Pine Valley, where they met Jackson Montgomery (with Walt Willey doing a Role Reprise), and Anna Devane's stint on AMC also figured into things, along with strong hints that Martin Grey (played by Michael E. Knight, who played AMC mainstay Tad Martin) has some deep connections to Pine Valley.
- Cross Promotion:
- A 2012 episode featured characters attending a screening of The Avengers and talking it up in front of posters for said movie. Hello, corporate synergy!
- An arc involving a relish contest in May 2013 involved a crossover with The Chew, a cooking talk shownote aired by ABC as a lead-in to GH.
- And as a further example of corporate synergy, the New Year's Eve-themed episode in 2015 featured a bar scene that featured a character expressing his preference to be at a bar on New Year's Eve to watch the College Football Playoff semifinals, December 31 on ESPN (for the first time of New Year's Eve!).
- An episode in 2018 leading up to the Nurses' Ball namedropped American Idol. While this could be excused as a typical cultural reference at the peak of the show's popularity, the fact that the show got Un-Cancelled by ABC turns this into subtle cross-promotion.
- On June 7, 2024 (a Friday episode) Dex and Gio briefly talked about the NBA Finals and how they were eager to watch game 2 on Sunday night, and indeed ABC aired game 2 on June 9 (they didn't mention the network, but obviously there was a reason for the specific reference in the first place). Presumably they shot some alternate takes mentioning different different game numbers and days of the week so the network could plug in the correct references when the episode aired.
- In case you forgot that General Hospital is now under the Disney umbrella, in 2024 Sonny gave Kristina a present for her unborn baby, a "stuffed animal" that was also her favorite toy as a kid—Mickey Mouse as the Sorceror's Apprentice. Similarly, the next year had a scene where Dante and Lulu drank from Mickey Mouse glasses and reminisced about a trip to Walt Disney World, then for Halloween, Kristina, Molly and Scout planned to watch the conveniently Disney-owned Hocus Pocus.
- A 2012 episode featured characters attending a screening of The Avengers and talking it up in front of posters for said movie
- Crying Wolf: The pregnant Esme, held captive at Wyndermere by Nikolas, twice fakes pregnancy complications in a bid to get sent to the hospital, but is forced to confess when Liz skillfully plays along, then calls her bluff by proposing extreme treatments (an emergency C-section after fake cramping, then pumping Esme's stomach after she appeared to have swallowed a whole bottle of prenatal vitamins; she really just threw them away). Thus, when she comes down with a case of Easy Amnesia after escaping Wyndermere by jumping from the parapet into freezing water, there's suspicion that she's faking once again. She's not, but the amnesia only lasts about a year, and then she does fake it for a while.
- Curse: The Cassadines are known to place these upon people, most famously Helena's curse on Luke and Laura, from the shadows while watching their happy wedding ceremony.
- Dating Do-Si-Do: Especially once Luke and Laura split up for good, the 2000s have seen some almost arbitrary pairings of the veteran characters (Luke/Tracy, Laura/Kevin, Scott/Liesl, Robert/Diane), plus some headscratching one-night stands (Luke/Felicia, Scott/Tracy).
- Dating Service Disaster: The 2022 storyline revolving around a dating app called Society Setups, mostly centering on Britt Westbourne's lousy experiences with it (getting stood up, then matching with sketchy loser Cody Bell), then the revelation that Spinelli is behind the app and engaged in some very illegal data mining to develop the app's database.
- Dead Star Walking: If a fairly big name joins the cast, but only as a recurring player and not on contract, there's a fairly good chance that Anyone Can Die gets invoked and they'll end up dead.
- The surprise when Franco Baldwin was shot and left for dead by Jason Morgan in 2012 was more that James Franco had stayed on the show for three years rather than Franco getting knocked off, only to lead to the bigger surprise of Franco returning via The Other Darrin the next year.
- 2025 had two cases of this, with Natalia Ramirez (played by Eva LaRue) and Henry Dalton (played by familiar TV face Daniel Goddard) both dying after alienating other characters (Natalia via accidental overdose, Dalton by murder).
- Deadly Closing Credits: The last scene of the November 19, 2025 episode had Jenz Sidwell casually shooting and killing Prof. Henry Dalton, the amoral professor and borderline Mad Scientist who was working on a top secret project for him, on You Have Outlived Your Usefulness grounds after Dalton stupidly got young Rocco Falconeri arrested on trumped-up charges for breaking and entering his lab, which, since Rocco's paternal grandfather is mob kingpin Sonny Corinthos and his maternal grandmother is Mayor Laura Collins, immediately put Dalton and his work under major scrutiny in Port Charles.
- Deadpan Snarker:
- Many characters, but mostly Luke Spencer, Tracy Quartermaine, Johnny Zacchara and Maxie Jones has her moments.
- Braedyn Bruner's portrayal of Emma Scorpio-Drake has added this element to the character.(Emma and Gio find a cute stray beagle at the park, who steals a glove from Gio's gym bag)
Gio Palmieri: The dog's a thief!
Emma Scorpio-Drake: (handing the dog to Gio) Gio, why don’t you make yourself useful and hold your tormentor.
- Determinator: Jason Morgan survived being shot stabbed, blown up etc and came away with very few scars and no crippling injuries, before ultimately being Killed Offscreen—maybe. Heather Webber was stabbed by her son in 2013 and buried alive, only to survive that and kidnap Carly Jacks in a few short months. She also swan-dived off the roof of General Hospital, something proven to have killed one man (Trevor Lansing) before. Esme Prince (later revealed to be Heather's daughter) twice survived a fall from the parapet of Wyndermere Castle into the waters of Lake Ontario (the second one an intentional jump), though she ended up with amnesia after the second fall.
- Dine and Dash: Britt Westbourne and Brad Cooper ended up doing this in 2025 after they had a lavish $2,000 dinner at the Metro Court restaurant but assumed the other was footing the bill for it, unaware that they were both broke. They eventually got arrested for it, but Jason Morgan ended up paying the dinner tab for them.
- Discriminate and Switch: Caucasian Stefan flips out upon discovering that his son/nephew Nikolas is dating the African-American Gia, angering them, but Stefan swears that it's not her race that's the problem, it's the fact that she isn't a member of the aristocracy, an absolute must for a potential bride of Nikolas'. True, considering that he was consistently nasty and disapproving of all of Nikolas' girlfriends who were commoners, but quite hypocritical, considering that his own love interests, like Nikolas's mother Laura, weren't of noble birth. And Gia is just as displeased at the implication that her socioeconomic status makes her unsuitable as she is at the racial one.
- Distaff Counterpart: Of all people, Spinelli got one in Winifred. He then got a new one in his new girlfriend, Ellie (Ellie Spinelli, get it?).
- Distressed Dude: Spinelli's usually the guy getting into trouble, and Jason is usually the one getting him out of it.
- The Ditz: The emphasized trait for Lucy Coe after she Took a Level in Kindness, which also puts her into Brainless Beauty territory. Typically her storylines will have her get into trouble because she overestimates her intelligence and does exactly what shouldn't be done, though she also displays Genius Ditz traits when it comes to organizing the Nurses' Ball or slaying vampires.
- Domestic Abuse: Kristina's former boyfriend Kiefer, and depending on what stance you take, Sonny when he was married to Claudia.
- Double Standard: Rape, Female on Male:
- The Jasper Jacks and Irina Cassadine incident
- Also, when Brook Lynn Quartermaine drugged Dante Falconeri because he wouldn't sleep with her otherwise. Almost worked - if not for Lulu walking in and tossing her out.
- Although Brenda Barrett did not really sleep with Michael Corinthos, she only made it appear that way to mess with her long-time rival, his mother Carly, no one ever REALLY brought up that it would have been rape if she had, since Michael was too drunk to consent.
- Nikolas Cassadine sleeping with Esme Prince happened while he'd been drinking, and he was unaware that she had an ulterior motive to seduce him (she'd been ordered by her father Ryan Chamberlain to break up Nik's marriage to Ava Jerome), but he never tried to claim it as an excuse, likely because the two-decade age gap between them and Esme being his son Spencer's girlfriend made him far less sympathetic in the matter.
- Double Subversion:
- The 2023 Quartermaine Thanksgiving mishap. After the kitchen catches on fire, they order a turkey dinner from the Metro Court's restaurant, and Nina brings over a bag and several containers, and it appears for all the world like their curse of eating pizza on Thanksgiving has finally ended...until some pizza boxes are brought in, and Nina explains that the restaurant doesn't have any spare turkey, but they have a new pizza oven they wanted to test.
- 2025 saw Chase cook a Thanksgiving dinner for the Quartermaines despite warnings about the family curse. After a close call when Outback the beagle got in the kitchen and was licking her chops upon seeing the turkey (but ultimately didn't touch it), they were ready to dig in, but Brook Lynn concluded that they were Tempting Fate and were overdue for a mishap, so she talked the family into donating the dinner to the General Hospital staff working on the holiday. Then pizza was delivered because Tracy, who was out of the country, thought ahead and pre-ordered it in the event of a dinner disaster.
- Dr. Jerk: Dr. Britt Westbourne has actually been referred to as "Dr. Westnile" (or "Dr. Bitch" by fans).
- The Dreaded Pretend Tea-Party: The show's resident young Girly Girl Violet Finn loved holding these, right down to having stuffed animals participate, with the otherwise curmudgeonly Tracy Quartermaine surprisingly being an enthusiastic frequent guest.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Michael Corinthos's girlfriend Abby Haver died in 2011 when a crane dropped its load while she was in Chicago on the phone with him.
Tropes E-H
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The show's first decade was heavy on Melodrama, with an exploitation-style focus on female suffering. Storylines dealt with miscarriages, rapes, divorce, unwanted pregnancies and even in-vitro fertilization. The "Nurse Audrey accused of murder" storyline in 1971 and the arrival of Dr. Lesley Webber in 1973 gradually moved it more toward grounded, character-driven stories, then Gloria Monty added adventure and Crime Drama to the mix when she took over as showrunner in 1978.
- Easy Amnesia: It's a Soap Opera, so, yes, quite often.
- Much of 2021 was dominated by a storyline where Sonny loses his memory after getting caught in a bridge collapse, then ends up in the small town of Nixon Falls, Pennsylvania. Nina happens to find him, but, for various complicated reasons connected to his dealings in Port Charles, doesn't try to help "Mike" regain his memory or let anyone know where he is. This earns her Carly and Michael's ire when Sonny finally regains his memory and returns to town and they find out that Nina knew where he was all this time.
- 2023 saw them juggle two amnesia storylines at once (Esme Prince conveniently forgetting her past misdeeds after surviving a jump from the Wyndermere parapet, and Ned Quartermaine believing himself to be his old rock star alter ego Eddie Maine after slipping into the Metro Court pool and injuring his head).
- But also home of probably the most famous aversion of this trope among soaps, since contrary to what you would expect, Jason Quartermaine never fully recovered his memory after suffering brain damage and adopted a new identity, Jason Morgan.
- Elevator Going Down: Both GH's and the Metro Court's elevator have been used for this purpose more than once.
- Embarrassing Slide: Variation in 2024, as Michael Corinthos III attempted to cast a livestream of a Port Charles University football game from his phone to a TV during a Quartermaine family party, only for his sports-hating great aunt Tracy Quartermaine to try to wrestle the phone away, leading a video he had of his wife Willow and uncle Drew Quartermaine having sex to end up on the TV for all to see.
- The End... Or Is It?: The Port Charles crossover storyline concludes with the seemingly dead Stephen Clay (aka Caleb Morley, lord of the vampires) reviving, attacking a morgue worker and taking his clothing.
- Ephebophile: Laura had an affair with David Hamilton, married Scotty, then became the object of Luke's obsession, all when she was only a teenager. Anthony Geary, Luke's actor, has explicitly stated that his rape of her also counts as child molestation since she was still underage.
- Sonny giving drugs to an underage Karen Wexler and engaging in "sex" with her back in 1993 also counts, and what he did was technically rape (as a drugged up underage teenage girl can't give consent). Sonny also asked Karen if she liked being molested (in reference to incidents where she was being molested as a child). Long forgotten, this particular misdeed of Sonny's was brought up again by FBI Agent John Cates (aka Jagger Cates, Karen's boyfriend at the time) when he gave Sonny a "The Reason You Suck" Speech in 2024.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Truly heartless supervillain Jenz Sidwell seemed to show genuine sadness in 2025 after learning that his ex-wife Natalia Ramirez had a fatal accidental overdose on alcohol and meds, and vowed revenge on Sonny Corinthos, whom he blamed for making her depressed (though Sonny being Sidwell's main obstacle in trying to seize control of the Port Charles shipping docks was pretty convenient to the whole situation).
- Everyone Has Standards
- As much as Martin would help Drew do something against Tracy Quartermaine, even he has limits that he wouldn't cross. In the 8/20/25 episode, he tells Drew that he's going too far with trying to get Michael arrested for "assaulting" him when he goaded Michael to punch him.
- Evil Brit: International gadfly Jenz Sidwell was originally presented as Non-Specifically Foreign, but when he held a Boxing Day party at Wyndermere in 2025, complete with small Union Jacks filling the living room, it finally established him as being British (as fits his being played by London-born Carlo Rota).
- Evil Is Hammy:
- Mikkos Cassadine in 1981 absolutely defined this trope, largely hissing his lines when he wasn't shouting, and popping his eyes at the appropriate moments.
- In his 2024 debut, Carlo Rota as warlord/blood diamond purveyor Jenz Sidwell stopped just short of twirling his mustache in lot of his scenes, making the character Obviously Evil from the moment he stepped on the screen. With the twist of Sidwell moving to Port Charles and trying to ingratiate himself into the community, Rota similarly leaned hard into a Faux Affably Evil posture.
- In the 2025 scene where sleazy Port Charles city councilman Ezra Boyle faced off against Emma Scorpio-Drake, Gio Palmieri and Tracy Quartermaine over his plans to demolish the Quartermaine family crypt, Daniel Cosgrove basically played Boyle as a live-action Scooby-Doo villain, complete with sneering and rubbing his hands conspiratorially at several points.
- Evil Matriarch: Helena Cassadine may well have been the show's most ruthless character, with countless criminal schemes and several outright murders on her rap sheet, coupled with powers like being able to place curses on people and resurrecting the dead.
- Evil Old Folks: The show has had quite a few aged villains, going back to Frank Smith and Mikkos Cassadine, with Helena Cassadine and Cesar Faison memorably picking up the torch, and currently there's Cyrus Renault and Gladys Corbin.
- Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Sonny Corinthos (although he's the least evil of the show's mob bosses) doesn't want his sons Michael and Morgan working for him, despite all their best efforts to join his business.
- Evil Twin: It's a Soap Opera, so naturally this has happened quite a bit, most prominently with Dr Kevin Collins and his Serial Killer twin Dr Ryan Chamberlain.
- Expy:
- Thanks to the Executive Meddling that removed Todd Manning from General Hospital, a new character was introduced in May 2013, still played by Roger Howarth, but with a slightly different appearance and a somewhat similar personality. Lampshaded in his debut appearance, when a stagehand calls upon a man named "Todd" to get paper towels to clean up after a Vomit Chain Reaction from poisoned relish on The Chew. "Todd" ends up being just a janitor. Eventually the new character was revealed to be a recast Franco Baldwin.
- As a rich, influential Dysfunctional Family, the Quartermaines are basically the Port Charles equivalent of the Kennedys. This connection was explicitly made by Edward Quartermaine himself in his last years, comparing his life to Joseph Kennedy Sr. You can especially draw a direct line between Alan and John F. Kennedy (handsome, charismatic, idealistic, but deeply flawed), A.J. and Ted Kennedy (troubles with alcohol, with a devastating car accident as his personal low point) and Lila and Rose Kennedy (the saintly Grand Dame who spent her last years in a wheelchair).
- Robert Scorpio started out as a Soap Opera version of James Bond. Tristan Rogers has even admitted to this.
- Sonny Corinthos is very obviously Vito Corleone (powerful mob boss) meets Michael Corleone (personal turmoil stemming from being deeply conflicted about his organized crime life, and his given name is even Michael) meets Tony Soprano (juggling mob activities with being trying to be an attentive father to his children).note He's even acknowledged many of these similarities on the show. Branching from that, you can also argue Kristina Corinthos-Davis for Meadow Soprano, as a Mafia Princess trying to assert her own identity under the shadow of her father, but also strongly tied to him.
- Face–Heel Turn: Most famously with Scott Baldwin, who, after losing Laura to Luke, changed from a Nice Guy to a bitter, scheming, corrupt Amoral Attorney. He even sported a Beard of Evil for a while to emphasize the turn.
- Faint in Shock: Liesl Obrecht understandably does this when she sees her daughter Britt Westbourne, who had died in her arms, arrive at GH Back from the Dead in 2025.
- Fake Shemp: While Edward and Lila Quartermaine were both cases of The Character Died with Him, body doubles only shown from behind played the roles when they returned to escort A.J. (in 2014) and Oscar (2019) into the afterlife, joined by a double for Alan in 2014 (though Stuart Damon was still alive at that point).
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: Stefan Cassadine is introduced as Nikolas' uncle, but dialogue between him and Nikolas' mother Laura reveals that he's actually his father. They agree to keep it secret so that Nikolas can keep his princely birthright, since Laura was married (against her will) to Stefan's evil brother Stavros and not to Stefan. But a few years later, it turned out Nikolas was Stavros' son after all—the brothers' sadistic mother Helena, who inexplicably despised Stefan and favored Stavros, knew of his affair with Laura and manipulated a blood test so that Stefan would think Nikolas was his, wanting Stefan to get his heart broken when the truth came out.
- Faux Affably Evil:
- Cyrus Renault is unfailingly polite to everyone he encounters, offering kind words and handshakes, and, after his alleged religious conversion in prison, blessings and Bible quotes. Not one person is fooled into thinking he is anything but a murderous drug dealing thug. The flip side of this is that the rare instances when Cyrus does get mad are a chilling example of OOC Is Serious Business.
- Charles Shaughnessy's version of Victor Cassadine has a lot of similarities to his signature irritable-but-good-hearted characters Shane Donovan and Maxwell Sheffield, it's just that with Victor the "irritable" leads to full-blown Cassadine sociopathy.
- Fictional Counterpart: If you assume that Port Charles is a fictionalized Rochester (discussed in Where the Hell Is Springfield? below), Pentonville Prison could be one for Attica, which is located not far from Rochester.
- Fille Fatale: Esme Prince, the classmate and girlfriend of Spencer Cassadine. She's a masterful schemer who causes all sorts of mischief in Port Charles, including faking a pregnancy to manipulate Spencer, then seducing his father Nikolas. She's even described In-Universe as "a vengeful Lolita".
- Flashback with the Other Darrin: The first full episode with Alexa Havins as Lulu Spencer in 2024 included a flashback scene of Havins and Jeff Kober re-creating an exchange between Lulu and Cyrus Renault from 2020, back when Emme Rylan was still playing Lulu.
- Forced Out of the Closet: Blaze in 2024, thanks to a complex Gambit Pileup. Her mother Natalia was recorded talking about her daughter's sexuality and making homophobic remarks by Ava (who egged her on, then edited out her own part of the conversation), then to get revenge on Sonny for kicking her out of his apartment,note (since Blaze is in a relationship with Sonny's daughter Kristina, and Sonny had been in a Ship Tease with Natalia), Ava passed the recording onto sleazy gossip columnist Adrian DeWitt, who, salivating over a salacious story involving rising singer/model Blaze, immediately published it with all the relevant details, even though Blaze had not come out publicly yet.
- Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics: The classic "Autumn Breeze" theme actually had lyrics (written by the tune's composer Jack Urbont), and the Folk Music group The New Christy Minstrels even recorded and released a vocal version of the song.
- Fourth Wall Psych: Twice in late May of 2025, characters were depicted having an emotional reaction to a moment by turning and facing the camera, to the point of briefly looking directly into it (before moving their head slightly to the side), making it feel they were making an Aside Glance: Lulu Spencer after Gio Palmieri's performance at the Nurses' Ball, setting the stage for her decision to confront Lois Cerullo to reveal that she knew who Gio's real parents were, then Nina Reeves after the bartender at the Brown Dog confirmed her suspicion that Sasha Corbin left the bar with Michael Corinthos the night she got pregnant, and not Jason Morgan like Sasha claimed. Nina especially lingered a bit and looked like she was about to make a comment to the audience.
- Frame-Up: In February 2026, Willow attempted to frame Michael for (her own) shooting of Drew by putting the key to Drew's house on Michael's keychain, where it was noticed by Chase, who was already mistakenly convinced that Willow was innocent and Michael was the shooter even before this. However, this backfired when Willow and Michael's son Wiley saw Chase handling the keys and told Ric about it, making it look like Chase had planted the key himself to frame Michael, meaning that Willow accidentally Trapped the Wrong Target.
- Friend to All Children: Brenda Barrett, who is a member of UNICEF and an Ambassador for ASEC.
- Friendly Local Chinatown: The Port Charles Asian Quarter, dominated by the fearsome Wu crime family, and its current head, the ruthless Selina Wu.
- Full-Name Basis:
- Luke consistently referred to the women in his life by their real names rather than the nicknames everyone else used—sister Bobbie as Barbara Jean, niece Carly as Caroline, friend Alexis as Natasha, and daughter Lulu as Lesley Lu.
- Liesl always refers to her daughter Britt as Britta.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Unusually Played for Drama on February 12, 2026, with Maxie Jones responding to her son James begging to go ice skating by saying "James Malcolm West, you are not going skating without a helmet!", which normally wouldn't be worth noting except it was the very first thing she said after waking up from a six-month coma, surprising James along with Maxie's daughter Georgie and her mother Felicia, who were all visiting her in a Boston hospital.
- Gay Best Friend: Brad Cooper for Britt Westbourne, a friendship that blossomed from GH doctor Britt getting lab tech Brad to doctor some test results for her.
- Generic Ethnic Crime Gang: The Five Families of Port Charles include The Mafia, The Mafiya and The Triads and the Tongs (via the Wu family), but also the multiethnic Five Points and Smith/Corinthos organizations. Sonny Corinthos himself is often assumed to be Italian, but is actually of Greek, Irish and Cuban descent (and played by Maurice Benard,note who's Nicaraguan-American).
- The Ghost: The Quartermaine family chef from 1985-2012, who was always referred to as Cook (not an Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" situation, but a Last-Name Basis one, since she was named Virginia Cook, though Meaningful Name and Prophetic Name might also have been in play). Never seen, but mentioned a lot, especially around Thanksgiving. Her prickliness about people being in her kitchen was a factor in many of the annual Thanksgiving stories that ended up with the Qs having pizza for Thanksgiving dinner.
- Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Josslyn Jacks is a fashionably-attired young blonde woman, but she's also athletic (particularly excelling at volleyball) and has a feisty personality.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Dante (Bad, but more into stern warnings than threats) and Chase (Good) sometimes fall into this dynamic when they question suspects together.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language:
- On February 25, 2025, Selina Wu visited the hospital and tried to strongarm her nephew Brad Cooper into quitting his job to work for her, addressing him in subtitled Chinese at a couple of points.
- Later in 2025, Anna Devane was kidnapped and held captive under the orders of Jenz Sidwell, and all of her dialogue with Sidwell's henchman Pascal is in subtitled French.
- Grief-Induced Split: Tony catches Bobbie kissing another man just minutes before they learn that their daughter has been fatally injured in a car accident. Despite them eventually reconciling after a year of counseling, he's still so emotionally drained that their marriage falls apart anyway.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Laura, with her long blonde hair and trusting disposition, always eager to either forgive or try to make things right, has long been a defining example as she made the journey from Naïve Everygirl to Mama Bear, to the point that, even in her 60s, Heather Webber could still dismissively call her a "goody two-shoes."
- Happily Adopted:
- Jason Quartermaine by Monica Quartermaine (he was the product of an affair her husband Alan Quartermaine had with Susan Moore, but he was legally adopted by Monica and raised by Monica and Alan). Until he became Jason Morgan and turned against most of his family. Being adopted wasn't a factor in that, though.note
- Emily Quartermaine (born Emily Bowen to the late Hank and Paige Bowen) by Monica and Alan, after the death of Emily's mother, whom Monica had befriended when they were both undergoing breast cancer treatment, though Emily didn't like the dysfunctional Quartermaines at first and ran away at one point.
- Lucas Jones (biological son of Julian Jerome and Cheryl Stansbury) by Bobbie Spencer and Tony Jones.
- Michael Corinthos III by Sonny Corinthos (after marrying Michael's mother Carly when Michael was very young and legally adopting him)... usually. There have been a few storylines putting them at odds since Michael became an adult, but it never lasts.
- Michael's son with Nelle Benson, Wiley Corinthos, is legally adopted by Michael's wife Willow Tait after their marriage and they are regarded as mother and son in every meaningful way (especially as Nelle not only has been presumed dead since Wiley was a baby but was a sociopath whom almost no one misses).
- After getting together, Dante Falconeri and Sam McCall raised their children Rocco Falconeri (Dante's son with Lulu Spencer), Danny Morgan (Sam's son with Jason Morgan) and Scout Cain (Sam's daughter with Drew Cain) together as a happily blended family, although they weren't married yet and hadn't officially adopted each other's kids. Sam dies from being given a lethal overdose of digitalis in the hospital after saving Lulu's life with a liver transplant, but Dante moves with the kids to the Quartermaine house to keep them together for the time being, since they've been siblings for the past several years.
- Has a Type:
- Cameron Webber briefly visited Port Charles for Christmas 2024 with his college girlfriend Gretchen, who bore a suspicious resemblance to his former girlfriend Josslyn Jacks (slim and poised, with long blonde hair parted in the middle), emphasized by one scene where both young women were in the same shot on either side of Cam, wearing similar outfits and even appearing to be the same height.
- More than a decade-and-a-half after his romance with Abby Haver, Michael Corinthos III has once again fallen for a blonde Hooker with a Heart of Gold, Jacinda Bracken.
- Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Quoted, word for word, by Luke as Faison pulls out a coin to decide whether to kill Luke or Nikolas.
- Heinousness Retcon: Soap operas are infamous for their never-ending character retcons, but Franco Baldwin on General Hospital is a particularly egregious example. Originally created as a means for James Franco (the actor) to have some fun with daytime TV, Franco (the character) was introduced as a sadistic serial killer gleefully messing with peoples' heads when he wasn't messing with their lives and bodies. After the character supposedly died and Franco (the actor) had had his fun, the writers decided to revive Franco (the character) as a series regular worthy of some audience sympathy. To that end, a lot of his supposed crimes were revealed to have either been acts of defense or simply not happened. The rest were explained away by a brain tumor, showing Franco really wasn't so evil and sadistic after all!
- Hereditary Wedding Dress: In 1995, when Lois Cerullo couldn't find a suitable wedding dress, her husbandexplanation Ned's grandmother Lila Quartermaine offered hers as a "welcome to the family" gesture, resulting in Lois wearing a gorgeous 1940s style gown. Then in 2024, Lois's daughter Brook Lynn announced that she wanted to wear Lila's dress for her wedding to Chase, which thrilled Lois, but the dress was now in the possession of Lila's daughter (and Brook Lynn's paternal grandmother) Tracy Quartermaine, who was reluctant to agree to the idea because of the connection to Lila and because of her longstanding loathing of Lois (not wanting to give Lois a victory), but finally Tracy's Jerk with a Heart of Gold instincts kicked in and she gave Brook Lynn the dress.
- Heroic Sacrifice: At the start of 2023, Britt Westbourne, on her way out of Port Charles after her New Year's Eve/birthday party, saves Joss by fighting off the Port Charles Hook when the Serial Killer targets Joss, but gets slashed in the process and dies from the poison the killer laced their metal hook with.
- Hitman with a Heart: Jason Morgan, referred to sarcastically on Television Without Pity as "the holy hitman".
- Hollywood Hacking: The whole point of introducing Spinelli was to have a character who could do this, to allow the show to add computers into its storylines, but eventually his quirky personality became his character focus instead.
- Honorary Uncle: Gio Palmieri, a college-aged Cerullo cousin from Bensonhurst introduced in 2024, refers to Sonny Corinthos as "Uncle Sonny", who helped pay for his education. Neither of them is aware that Gio is actually Sonny's grandson, since he was the child Brook Lynn gave up for adoption after a Teen Pregnancy following sex with Dante when they were young and at camp, which only Lois is aware of.
- Hospital Hottie: Robin Scorpio, Sabrina Santiago, Britt Westbourne, and a few others.
- Hypocrite:
- Sonny cheated on Carly numerous times during their marriage. This included Alexis and Sam, both of whom became pregnant with Sonny's children, and he did some emotional cheating with Brenda. Carly forgave Sonny for all of these indiscretions. But when Sonny found out that Carly had known that Alexis's daughter Kristina was his daughter as well, he immediately demanded a divorce and railroaded her for her betrayal, even vowing he would get sole custody of their sons Michael and Morgan (the former of whom isn't even biologically his) just to hurt her.
- Mob hitman Jason lecturing his stepmother Monica about "doing the right thing" and confessing to being responsible for Sam's hit-and-run. More frustrating was that he only cared about Monica telling the truth because Elizabeth had been the prime suspect and he was more worried about clearing her name.
- Carly herself. Aside from being an all-over horrible person, she slept with Jason for weeks without even knowing his name, seduced her stepfather Tony then cheated on him, married A.J., then cheated on him with Sonny—she's probably cheated on every man she's ever been married to or involved with. But she verbally and physically assaults any woman who dares to so much as TALK to a man she's interested in, branding them a "slut" or "tramp" (except Olivia Falconeri, Sonny's old flame from Bensonhurst, whom she oddly gets along with and they become co-owners of the Metro Court Hotel). As well, she spent nine months passing off a child who she knew might not be Tony's off as his, then spent years keeping A.J.'s son away from him—but blasted Liz for doing the same thing with Jason.
Tropes I-L
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Several times in their brief marriage, Lily offers Sonny the chance to be with his true love Brenda (she had asked her father to engineer the marriage in exchange for keep Sonny out of prison)—even at their wedding itself. When she learns that she's pregnant shortly after being forced to finally accept how miserable he is, she even willingly leaves him on her own, only to have Sonny chase her down, apologize for how badly he's treated her and ask if they can start over.
- Identical Stranger: In 2005, it was revealed that Sam McCall looked exactly like a shady European heiress named Alicia Montenegro, and was drafted to pose as her by Alicia's mother, while Alicia in turn had some dealings with Jason Morgan.
- Improbable Age: Several. Robin came back as a neuropathologist at 27 years old and Patrick was introduced as a well known neurological surgeon despite being 27 years old.
- In Love with the Mark: Sonny Corinthos got two FBI agents to fall for him, and Spinelli got a third smitten.
- In the Style of: Sonny shooting Dante in 2010, followed by Olivia revealing to Sonny "You just shot your own son!", is intercut with the christening of Josslyn in a very obvious stylistic homage to The Godfather, not only in how it juxtaposed mob violence with a ceremony, but in its use of the Twisted Echo Cut.Dante: (to Sonny) I despise you!
Father Coates: (back at the chapel) I baptize you.
(later)
Father Coates: (in voiceover as Dante collapses from Sonny's gunshot) Go in peace, and may the Lord be with you. - Instant Birth: Just Add Labor!: Being a show with a large number of characters who are medical professionals, it's done this a few times.
- Felicia Jones went into labor at Luke's jazz club in 1995 and insisted there was no time to get to the hospital, delivering her daughter Georgie right there on the floor — after laboring for a considerable amount of time in which she could have done exactly that.
- Carly had a Dream Sequence where she felt the first twinge of labor pains at a restaurant and delivered on the floor.
- The messy Michael Corinthos-Willow Corinthos-Drew Cain-Sasha Corbin-Cody Bell Love Dodecahedron had a fittingly crazy climax in 2025 during the custody hearing between Michael and Willow, when Sasha, forced to admit under oath that she'd had a one-night stand with Michael and was pregnant with his child, went into labor on the witness stand. With Willow putting everything else aside since she was the nearest available nurse, she assisted Sasha on the courtroom floor, with Sasha seemingly going from labor pains to water breaking to giving birth to her daughter Daisy in the matter of a few minutes.
- Insult Friendly Fire: The current masters are Diane, Tracy, and Maxie.
- Instrumental Theme Tune: Several over the decades. The first few years had some light piano pieces for the opening. In 1976, the familiar Bacharach-esque "Autumn Breeze" by Jack Urbont was created for the show and served as the theme for its most famous era (though, as mentioned above, it has Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics). For the 30th anniversary in 1993, the show commissioned a new theme by Smooth Jazz saxophonist Dave Koz (who was born in 1963, the same year the show debuted) called "Faces of the Heart". However, it used a lot of the same chord changes as "Autumn Breeze", and many viewers probably just took it to be a rearrangement rather than a new song. In 2004 they abandoned it for a modernized "Autumn Breeze", but Paul Glass wrote an entirely new piece in 2012 that's still in use. However, it has a subtle nod to "Autumn Breeze": the final sting consists of the same three notes that begin "Autumn Breeze", and Urbont still shares a writing credit for the theme because of that.
- Intergenerational Friendship:
- Nikolas Cassadine broke off his engagement to Britt Westbourne, but she still stayed close to his son Spencer, as he became her Morality Pet while her character was softened up a bit.
- Hamilton Finn and Tracy Quartermaine, who's a couple decades his senior, based in part on a shared fondness for Backgammon.
- Intimate Lotion Application: During the Ric / Sam / Jason Love Triangle, Sam is hanging out with Ric in a beach house after breaking up with Jason. She asks Ric to put lotion on her back, but then she starts enjoying his touch too much, and suddenly bolts out of the house, feeling guilty for being attracted to Ric.
- Involuntary Cheating: Kristina is outraged when she learns that her parents Sonny and Alexis got her into Yale through bribery, and responds by letting her friend Trey make a reality show about her and her family's lives called Mob Princess to get back at them.
- It's a Wonderful Plot: In the November 12, 2018 special episode "What If Sonny...", Sonny has a dream where he didn't shoot Vincent Marino on Joe Scully's orders when he was a boy, married Olivia Falconeri and lived his life as an honest NYPD cop and the circumstances, both good and bad, that occurred without him as the town mafia boss.
- It's Not You, It's My Enemies: This was Jason's reason for leaving Sam. Many Jason/Sam shippers are still rather pissed. Jason also broke up with Elizabeth due to this same excuse.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Tracy, especially in recent years.
- Jerkass Ball: For May Sweeps 2025, Dante Falconeri angrily accusing Gio Palmieri of almost letting Dante's son Rocco die after (underage) Rocco drank so much booze at a beach party he got alcohol poisoning, even though Gio had nothing to do with Rocco's drinking,background seemed to come out of nowhere, and not only was way out of character for Dante, but he'd been shown to get along just fine with Gio before that, making his sudden antipathy toward Gio and denouncing of him as having being coddled all his life all the more bizarre. But it had been established for a while that Dante and Gio weren't aware that they were actually father and son, and that storyline seemed headed toward a climax, so fans accused the writers of contriving a conflict between the two to raise the dramatic stakes before the inevitable Reveal. It was even odder taking into consideration that Gio had been well established as a Nice Guy and Rocco, rather than go into a coma or otherwise stand on the brink of death, basically just spent one rough night at the hospital before recovering, making Dante going after Gio seem even more irrational and petty. Dante's portrayer Dominic Zamprogna admitted that even he was shocked by Dante's sudden turn when he first got the script, and had to figure out a good motivation for it (centered on Dante still having raw emotions over the murder of his fiancée Sam McCall, making him more sensitive to any possible threat to Rocco's life).
- Jerkass Has a Point: While Drew has been repellant and manipulative ever since he began an affair with Willow, he has a point in the 6/16/25 episode when he says that Jason is always more concerned with Carly, Sonny and Michael's family than with his own kids Jake and Danny, a criticism many fans have made as well.
- Kick the Dog: When Kristina needed a transplant and Alexis found out Sam's unborn child with Sonny was a perfect match for a donor, she railroaded the other woman to induce premature labor. She was successful but Sam suffered a miscarriage—and, adding insult to injury, Sonny decided (against Jason's wishes) to okay the transplant while Sam was still unconscious. Later on, as Sam is still reeling from the loss of her baby, Alexis visits her and positively gushes about how successful Kristina's operation was. Completely disregarding the fact that Sam's baby had to die for it.
- Kissing Cousins:
- There was a plotline where Michael Corinthos III and Kiki Jerome were angsting about their attraction to each other because they'd learned Kiki was supposedly the daughter of Franco Baldwin, who was supposedly the son of Alan Quartermaine and Susan Moore, making Michael and Kiki biological cousins since Michael's Disappeared Dad was Alan's son A.J. Quartermaine. Fortunately, it turned out neither supposed relation was true (Kiki's father was actually Dr. Silas Clay, and it was Drew Cain, not Franco, who was Alan and Susan's long-lost son and the twin brother of Jason Morgan).
- In 2024, when Holly Sutton learns that her daughter Sasha Gilmore is dating Mac Scorpio's son Cody Bell, she reveals that Mac's brother Robert Scorpio is Sasha's biological father in order to prevent Sasha from committing Surprise Incest. Although given that Holly is a Consummate Liar, Sasha is immediately skeptical.
- The January 29, 2026 episode saw a shocking, out of the blue kiss between teens Charlotte Cassadine and Danny Morgan, who are second cousins once removed in the Cassadine bloodline.explanation
- Lady in a Power Suit: Diane Miller definitely dresses the part of "high-powered defense attorney".
- Lampshade Hanging:
- Spinelli has done this a few times, putting him on the road to Meta Guy status. In his detective alter ego he said "Have you ever noticed that there are no doorbells in this town? Everybody knocks!" He also realized how much Sonny Corinthos is an Expy for various members of the Corleone family, referring to him as "The Godfather" and "the Pacino-esque dude."
- Ava has recently had some moments of this. She noted the tendency of falls from Wyndemere Castle's parapet to be extremely dramatic but ultimately non-fatal after Esme Prince fell over it during a fight with her, reminding Nikolas that she herself had survived the fall in the recent past (and Esme indeed would survive the fall as well). When Kevin Collins convinced her to help the police by talking to Ryan Chamberlain, she was a little perturbed that Kevin wasn't joining her for the conversation (because Ryan is Kevin's Evil Twin and Jon Lindstrom was already on the set as Ryan).
- The Quartermaines eventually started trying to be proactive to prevent having to end up ordering pizza on Thanksgiving, but Failure Is the Only Option. The 2022 edition had Olivia making elaborate plans for a French company called Dinde Vivante to prepare a full Thanksgiving meal for them, unaware that Dinde Vivante means "live turkey". Then while they debate what to do with the live turkey, young Leo lets it out of the cage and Hilarity Ensues.
- Large Ham: Mikkos Cassadine, to name one. Stavros has shown that it runs in the family.
- Last-Name Basis:
- Dr. Hamilton Finn prefers to be called simply "Finn" by his friends and family. His half-brother, Detective Harrison Chase, arrived in town a few years later and also prefers "Chase". Hardly anyone refers to Damian Spinelli by his first name.
- The trainer and handler for Josslyn Jacks after she becomes a WSB agent is called Vaughn, but it's later revealed to be his last name, and his first name is still a mystery (aside from Anna stating briefly that his first initial is S).
- Latex Perfection: In 2022, Holly, reluctantly working for Victor Cassadine, helped frame Anna by (non-fatally) shooting Lucy wearing a very lifelike prosthetic Anna mask.
- Law Enforcement, Inc.: The World Security Bureau, an apparently extra-governmental international spy organization with an unlikely major presence in Port Charles. They often get involved with investigating crimes, as well as doing battle with the rival Sinister Spy Agency DVX. An odd consequence of the WSB's Port Charles operations is that many agents have settled in town and left the group to participate in local law enforcement—former star agent Robert Scorpio is currently the district attorney.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- The show has a habit of tying in Milestone Celebration episodes with an in-universe anniversary, even if it leads to a Retcon on the previously established timeline. The opening episodes in 1963 made it clear that General Hospital had existed for a while and Dr. Steve Hardy had worked there for a few years, but the 30th anniversary in 1993 was tied in with Hardy's 30th anniversary of working at GH, while the 60th anniversary storylines for 2023 are being based around the idea that GH itself opened up in 1963 (which allows everyone to use the phrase "the 60th anniversary of General Hospital" in-universe).
- "We both know that people on TV don't sound like me," says Emmy-winning TV character Lois Cerullo, fretting to Gio Palmieri after a caller on her Deception cosmetics home shopping appearance mocked her Brooklyn accent in 2024. Doubly funny since Lois' accent was seemingly inspired by Fran Drescher's.
- Dr. Austin Gatlin-Holt, played by Roger Howarth, debuted in May of 2021, just weeks after Howarth's longtime character Franco Baldwin was killed off, but the new character never really clicked with fans, many of whom saw him as a contrived excuse by the producers to keep Howarth on the show. After the revelation that Austin was moonlighting, against his will, as an operative for evil crime lord Cyrus Renault, Austin was mysteriously killed in November of 2023. In one of his final scenes he was questioned by Detective Dante Falconeri about his role in the kidnapping of Ava Jerome, and one statement by Austin in particular seemed like it was also meant as a message from Howarth to the show's viewers about the character.Austin Gatlin-Holt: I know you don't like me, Dante. I get it. I can see why. But I'm not a bad guy. I'm just a guy who's been coerced into doing a lot of things that I knew were wrong.
- Anna Devane saying "I'm not sure that I recognize you anymore" to her granddaughter Emma Scorpio-Drake in 2025 was in reference to Emma's newly found Soapbox Sadie personality, but could also be taken as a sly acknowledgment of Braedyn Bruner having recently replaced Emma's longtime portrayer Brooklyn Rae Silzer (plus Bruner's being six years older than Silzer).
- This exchange between Laura and her daughter Lulu about Monica Quartermaine at Monica's funeral in 2025 was a seeming nod to both Genie Francis now being the show's longest-tenured cast member after Leslie Charleson's passing and the massive ratings that the Luke and Laura Wedding Episode got in 1981.Lulu: Other than Monica's family, you were the longest.
Laura: Yeah, we did go way, way back. Further than I'd like to admit. Before I even met your father. She came to our wedding.
Lulu: Along with the rest of the world.
- Let Them Die Happy: Averted when Robin told her boyfriend Stone (who was dying from AIDS) that she contracted HIV from him. Sonny and Luke discuss whether it would have been better for Robin to lie to Stone for however long Stone had left or if it would have torn her apart to be dishonest with Stone during his last days. No one knew that Stone only had a couple days left.
- Limited Wardrobe: Jason Morgan in his younger days. Anytime you got him out of the leather jacket was cause for celebration. More recently he favors all-black t-shirt and jeans combos, but the leather jacket still shows up in the rotation once in a while.
- Littlest Cancer Patient: A show with both a hospital and child characters naturally can't go forever without doing this, most famously in 1994 when both Maxie Jones and her cousin BJ were GH patients at the same time: Maxie with heart trouble, BJ brain-dead after a bus accident, with Maxie receiving BJ's heart after BJ gets taken off life support.
- Locked in a Freezer: Maxie and 3 (Cooper) bonded while locked in the vault.
- Long Bus Trip: Keesha Ward.
- In fact, pretty much anyone who falls out of the writers' favor. Laura's been overseas for awhile, and Brenda was on said trip until her recent return.
- Long Runner: The longest running Soap Opera currently on American television. The series aired its 15,000th episode on June 21, 2022 and April 1, 2023 marks its 60th anniversary. John F. Kennedy was the President of the US when it debuted, and there have been 11 more presidents since then.
- Long-Runner Cast Turnover: A given with the show running for almost six decades, but also some big exceptions, with the famed "Class of '77" (Genie Francis, Kin Shriner, Jackie Zeman, Leslie Charleson)note having played Laura, Scott, Bobbie, and Monica, respectively, since 1977 with no recasts (apart from Time-Shifted Actor flashbacks and brief fill-ins), though they've all taken frequent sabbaticals from the show.
- The Lost Lenore: Sonny has two—his wife Lily (killed by a car bomb meant for him), and Brenda (presumed dead in a separate incident, but he blames himself anyway). So much so that when Hannah Scott came to town, he fell for her because of her eerie resemblance to both women. He's infuriated to learn that she's an undercover FBI agent and that she no doubt used the way she looked to get to him.
- Lovable Alpha Bitch: Carly and Tracy. Both were mean-spirited schemers for most of their stint on GH, but over the years, they have become nicer and kinder towards people, while still retaining their ruthless and bitchy Alpha Bitch qualities.
- Lovable Rogue:
- Luke Spencer pretty much embodies this trope.
- Duke Lavery, even when he was clearly up to no good he was just so charming about it.
- Holly Sutton is a female example. Her history as a Con Artist, Gold Digger and Consummate Liar are well-established, but with Emma Samms in the role she's always charming, and can usually be counted on to do the right thing in the end.
- Love Martyr: Nurse Jessie Brewer took this to rare heights, even by soap standards, in the show's first decade. She started out in a Relationship Revolving Door with dishonest philanderer Dr. Phil Brewer, then her second husband Dr. John Prentice killed himself shortly after they were married (after he learned that he had a terminal illness), then her second marriage to Phil ended when he died in a plane crash, only to have her next marriage, to Dr. Peter Taylor, invalidated when Phil showed up Back from the Dead, but then her third marriage to Phil (unsurprisingly) crumbled. After that, she suffered the indignity of her boyfriend Teddy Holmes dumping her for her teenage niece Carolyn (after Teddy learned that Carolyn would get a huge inheritance when she turned 18). All the while, there was also Unresolved Sexual Tension between Jessie and Dr. Steve Hardy.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: As they prepare to escape from Spring Ridge Prison along with Heather, Ryan, having just murdered a guard, tells the now-amnesiac Esme, who's completely frightened, that she's his daughter. Esme reacts basically the same way Luke Skywalker did.
- Luke, You Are My Father:
- In 1998, after seeing Bobbie bond with her baby son Michael, Carly blurted out that they were mother and daughter. Considering Carly had single-handedly ruined Bobbie's life — such as stealing her husband and suing her for custody of Lucas on the anniversary of BJ's death, just to name a few things — Bobbie is less than pleased with this news.
- After almost two years of lying about it, while watching the 4th of July fireworks together in 2024, Cody Bell just abruptly blurted out "I'm your son" to Mac Scorpio, then explained that he covered it up for purely selfish reasons.explanation Mac responded with an understandable "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
Tropes M-P
- Mad Scientist: Mikkos Cassadine, Liesel Obrecht, Cesar Faison...
- Mafia Princess:
- Kristina Corinthos-Davis, the oldest daughter of Sonny Corinthos, has always been defined as having benefitted greatly from being the beloved daughter of a mob boss. She even starred in a Show Within a Show Reality Show called Mob Princess at one point, although she did that to piss her parents off.
- Lily Rivera, daughter of Puerto Rican mob boss Hernando Rivera, deconstructed this to a certain extent, since when she was introduced she was estranged from him after he put a hit out on her boyfriend and kidnapped her baby. But she made up with Hernando after he came down with pneumonia, then fell in love with and married Sonny.
- Magic Plastic Surgery: Jerry Jacks; turned him from Julian Stone to Sebastian Roché...which was good enough for him to sneak back into town under an alias. Didn't fool his mother Lady Jayne Jacks though.
- Magic Realism: While it's a typical soap dealing with day-to-day concerns, sometimes it has elements of this, particularly the Cassadines and their powers to cast spells or even resurrect the dead. The scenes of dying characters getting escorted into the afterlife and things like the grown spirit of the long-dead B.J. showing up for Bobbie's funeral (and played by the same person who'd played her as a child actress in The '90s) also count.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: About five or six extended families seem to be connected to every single event that happens in Port Charles. Exemplified by the fact that both Luke and Laura have served as mayor.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Averted in 2025, as Michael Corinthos and his new sorta-girlfriend Jacinda Bracken (a reformed High-Class Call Girl) were about to have sex in Nina Reeves' office, only for Nina to walk in on them.
- Marital Rape License: Back in the Melodrama-heavy 60s, Jessie (with Phil Brewer) and Audrey (with Tom Baldwin) both saw attempts to reconcile with their estranged husbands end in rape, resulting in pregnancies in both cases.
- Marriage Before Romance: Robert and Holly have a marriage of convenience, while Scott and Dominique have an accidental one. Both couples end up falling in love.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: When characters who had been on Port Charles were brought back on General Hospital in 2013, Lucy Coe, Alison Barrington and Caleb Morley / Stephen Clay all remembered the explicitly and undeniably supernatural events of that show, but psychiatrist Kevin Collins did not. Kevin claimed Stephen was just a rock musician who had lost his mind, become a Serial Killer and pulled others into a "shared delusion" of Stephen being a vampire. Kevin even claimed that his own daughter Livvie Locke, who had been Caleb's lover on Port Charles, never existed, although the others remembered her. It was left ambiguous which version of events was correct but mostly played as though Stephen was delusional (with fake fangs even being removed from his body after John McBain killed him) - until the very end of the storyline, when his magic ring started glowing and he rose from the dead and left town, indicating he really was a vampire all along.
- Meaningful Name: The Mook that Sonny brings in to torture Dex into talking by threatening him with knives is named Carver (though it might also be a case of Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep").
- Meaningful Rename:
- Jason Quartermaine became Jason Morgan after his brain injury, in honor of his grandmother Lila's maiden name, since Lila was the only part of his former life he could remember.
- Michael Corinthos began using the Quartermaine name for a while after his adoptive father Sonny Corinthos killed his biological father A.J. Quartermaine, but eventually reverted back to Corinthos after forgiving Sonny.
- Ned Ashton legally changed his last name to Quartermaine (his mother Tracy's maiden name) in 2017 to distance himself from his Con Artist father Larry Ashton and to signal his embrace of the Quartermaine family legacy. His daughter Brook Lynn changed her name from Ashton to Quartermaine as well.
- After her fourth divorce from Sonny in 2022, Carly decided to drop Corinthos as a surname and adopt the name Spencer (as opposed to her original surname Benson from her adoptive family) to signal her love for her biological mother Bobbie Spencer.
- Drew Cain decided to adopt his birth father Alan Quartermaine's surname in 2024 for name-recognition purposes after announcing his run for Congress. In 2025, in light of Drew's estrangement from the rest of the family due to his affair with Michael's wife Willow, his aunt Tracy Quartermaine tried to get a cease-and-desist order to forbid Drew from using the name, which was eventually successful.
- Medical Drama: The genre the show started out in, with medical plotlines still popping up on occasion.
- MegaCorp: ELQ, the Quartermaine family company, whose assets include a bank, a brand of pickle relish, clothing, cosmetics, condoms, a summer camp (Lila's Kids) and even a record label at one point.
- Morality Pet:
- Michael to Jason. Jason to Sonny. Spinelli to Jason.
- Robin to just about everybody.
- Charlotte to Valentin. For all his faults he prides himself on being a doting, loving father. When Charlotte started acting out and showing sides of sociopathy (e.g. telling Valentin how proud she was of her papa for throwing Ava out the window), he was devastated and blamed himself.
- Musical Episode: Episodes rather. The annual Nurses' Ball features musical performances from the cast.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Sonny is shocked to learn, seconds after shooting the undercover cop "Dominic Pirelli" he'd discovered was an infiltrator in his organization, that Dominic was really Dante Falconeri, son of his childhood sweetheart Olivia Falconeri, and furthermore that Sonny himself was his father. Fortunately, Dante survived the experience after being rushed by Olivia and Sonny to the hospital.
- This is Dante's reaction when his convincing Michael to tell the truth about Claudia's death results in Michael receiving an unreasonably harsh prison sentence from the judge. Dante (who at this point was determined to bring Sonny down) had originally thought that Sonny killed Claudia, and located Michael and brought him back to Port Charles to give testimony in the belief it would secure Sonny's conviction. Even when he learned otherwise, and Sonny was allowing the suspicion to fall on himself in order to protect Michael, Dante encouraged Michael to tell the truth in the belief it was the right thing to do and that he would get a slap on the wrist given the extenuating circumstances. The realization that by trusting in the system he had just gotten his teenage brother five years in Pentonville led Dante to become focused on doing whatever he could to get Michael out. This hits him again a year later when Michael admits he suffered Prison Rape in Pentonville.
- My God, You Are Serious!: In 2004, when Jason tells Sonny that Sam McCall is the daughter of Alexis Davis, Sonny laughs and assumes Jason is kidding, but then has an Oh, Crap! reaction once he realizes that's not the case, along with some Heel Realization over having (unknowingly) slept with both a mother and her daughter (and impregnating both).
- My New Gift Is Lame: Unusually Played for Drama in 2025. At a Surprise Party for Trina Robinson's birthday, Emma Scorpio-Drake gives her an art book, but Trina is visibly not thrilled with the present. It's later revealed that her late boyfriend Spencer Cassadine had previously given her the exact same book as a romantic present, and getting a second copy of the book brought back painful memories of his untimely death.
- My Own Private "I Do": Sonny and Nina in 2023 did the Plan Now, Elope Later variation, cutting short the planning for their elaborate wedding to run off to his private Puerto Rican island with a handful of family members as guests and a local priest to conduct the ceremony.
- Naïve Everygirl: Laura Spencer, Georgie Jones.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Brad Cooper's name is meant as a somewhat absurd metajoke on the name of Bradley Cooper, particularly since "Brad Cooper" is an unlikely name for a gay Chinese-American character to begin with.
- Naturalized Name: Sonny Corinthos's father, Mike Corinthos Sr, changed his last name to Corbin some time after walking out on Sonny and his mother Adela. Mike's cousin Gladys and her son Brando also use "Corbin".
- Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters: Sonny easily counts for this, being a major donor to the hospital, plus his steadfast refusal to get involved in drug trafficking. In fact, in defending him to Tracy Quartermaine in 2025, Laura's argument boiled down to the contention that Sonny's relatively benign crime-bossing was the only thing preventing Port Charles from falling into the hands of a truly vicious organized crime enterprise.
- Nephewism: In 1972, Jessie Brewer's widowed brother died and she suddenly became the guardian of his two teenage kids, Kent (played by Mark Hamill) and Carolyn.
- Never Found the Body: Jason Morgan, Jerry Jacks, Ceasar Faison, various Cassadines throughout history
- Never My Fault: Sonny, who seldom accepts responsibility for his actions, particularly when it comes to the mob violence that ensues due to his role as a mob boss. Sonny has been responsible for shooting his eldest son Dante (a police officer) in the chest before learning they were related, causing his adopted son Michael to get shot in the head in an act of retaliation over Sonny kidnapping and torturing Johnny Zacchara, and nearly killing his daughter Kristina with a car bomb, but both Sonny and his enablers overlook his actions and act as if he is a good father despite nearly killing his children. Sonny refuses to accept that his occupation endangers the people around him, even when his family and his love interests get hurt or killed because of it, which was brought up when Michael wanted to protect Sonny's newest child Avery Corinthos-Jerome from his dangerous lifestyle and tried to get custody of her.
- Sonny murdering A.J. also led to both Sonny and Carly refusing to allow Sonny to accept responsibility for his actions, instead blaming A.J.
- Jason Morgan's role as a mobster directly and indirectly leading to the deaths of many Quartermaines.
- Never the Obvious Suspect: A favorite soap trope, used often.
- The page image for this trope is when Nina was caught holding a bloody knife over the dead body of Silas in 2015, but the murderer ended up being her mother Madeline instead.
- It was the basis of the show's most famous early story arc, when Audrey Hardy was the main suspect in the murder of her son's nanny in 1971, especially when it came to light that the nanny had threatened to blackmail Audrey; it was actually the nanny's ex-husband.
- That storyline got something of a rehash in 1974 when Nurse Jessie Brewer was discovered cradling her dead ex-husband Phil in her arms at the hospital saying "I'm sorry" over and over, so naturally she was immediately fingered for the murder, but things got convoluted when Diana Taylor falsely confessed because she wrongly thought her husband Peter did it, though Phil had plenty of enemies at the hospital to begin with. Finally another nurse was identified as the culprit.
- More recently, practically everyone in Port Charles assumed that Esme Prince was the Hook during their 2022-23 killing spree, but it was actually her mother Heather Webber, targeting Esme's rivals.
- New Job as the Plot Demands:
- Over the years, Laura has been a nightclub waitress, a model, Edward Quartermaine's secretary, Luke's partner in freelance adventures, part owner of enterprises like a nightclub, a spa and a cosmetics company, and was elected mayor of Port Charles in 2019.
- Lucy Coe debuted as a librarian, and has since worked as a writer, a tour guide, a daycare manager, a real estate agent, a co-owner of a blues club (with Luke) and a cosmetics magnate, alongside her role as the organizer and MC of the Nurses' Ball and, unofficially, helping Anna and Felicia in their investigations.
- The Nicknamer: Spinelli, obsessively.
- Nightmare Sequence: Trotted out once in a while to delve into a character's psyche.
- The most famous one was when Edward Quartermaine napped before Thanksgiving dinner in 1996, and dreamed that everyone behaved the opposite of how they usually acted. It started off well, with the Quartermaines being excessively cheerful and close-knit (Edward compares them to The Waltons), but Sonny, Jax and Jason show up to give him a hard time, then everyone else turns against him.
- 2022 saw almost back-to-back cases, with Willow Tait dreaming that Nelle Benson showed up Back from the Dead to torment her (with Nelle later appearing as a ghost to Nina Reeves), while Spencer Cassadine got a spectral visit from Esme Prince (missing and presumed dead at that point), who taunted him about her sleeping with his father Nikolas.
- In 2023 this was crossed with Dream Within a Dream, with Ava Jerome dreaming that Nikolas Cassadine (whom she thought she'd accidentally killed with a Tap on the Head) was alive and in bed with her, then waking up alone, but with a puddle of blood in the bed (so she literally has his blood on her hands), then waking up alone again to realize that the first wakeup was part of the nightmare.
- In 2025, after she faced a blackmail threat from Jenz Sidwell, Laura fell asleep on her couch and dreamed that Cyrus Renault (her criminal half-brother) and Esme Prince (the evil mother of Laura's grandson Ace) both showed up from the dead to taunt her.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed:
- In the mid-'90s, the show introduced the Ward family, whose matriarch, Mary Mae, ran a foster home for abandoned children, many of whom were also born addicted to drugs or with HIV. This was based on the work of a New York City woman named Clara Hale, known as Mother Hale, who ran such an institution out of her Harlem brownstone. Right down to Mary Mae's home being known as Ward House, just as Clara Hale's place was Hale House. In fact, given that the Wards were brought on two years after Ms. Hale's death, this could even be seen as a tribute.
- Hank Archer, aka Shiloh, the head of the Dawn of Day group that was involved in some 2018-19 storylines, was obviously one for NXIVM founder Keith Raniere, having also gone from a self-help guru to a sinister cult leader, who sexually exploits his young female followers and evens subjects them to branding.
- In the mid-'90s, the show introduced the Ward family, whose matriarch, Mary Mae, ran a foster home for abandoned children, many of whom were also born addicted to drugs or with HIV. This was based on the work of a New York City woman named Clara Hale
- Noisy Shut-Up: Robin did this with a machine gun on Cassadine island to break up a fight Robert and Anna had gotten into.
- Nom de Mom:
- Tracy Quartermaine's sons Ned Ashton and Dillon Hornby both changed their last names to Quartermaine permanently, given the villainous actions of their fathers Larry Ashton and Paul Hornby.
- When Carly shed the Benson (from her adoptive family) and Corinthos (from her ex-husband Sonny) names, she decided to go with Spencer, for her biological mother Bobbie Spencer, rather than Durant for her biological father John Durant.
- Valerie Spencer (the daughter of Luke and Bobbie Spencer's sister Pat Spencer) and Brando Corbin (the son of Mike Corbin's cousin Gladys Corbin) use their mothers' family names, although it's never specified who their fathers are and why they're not using their names.
- "No Peeking!" Request: Luke first met Holly when he caught her Skinny Dipping in a lake at night. Indignant, she ordered him to turn around and hand over her clothes and he complies. She dressed quickly and sneaked away while his back was still turned.
- Obfuscating Disability:
- Anthony Zacchara regained use of his limbs but pretended to still be paralyzed out to throw his enemies off.
- Edward Quartermaine pretended to be in a coma during one of ELQ's corporate power struggles and feigned senility to fight off lawsuits related to the Port Charles Hotel fire.
- Ryan Chamberlain pretended to have locked-in syndrome in his last years.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Tracy's utterly frightened expression after Edward says "don't TOUCH me!" after the whole Secret Test of Character where he pretended to die when she refused to give him his heart meds in 1980, finally realizing that her father's disgust with her was completely serious and genuine and she couldn't talk her way out of it.
- Sonny's expression after Olivia tells him that the undercover cop "Dominic" he just shot was actually his own son Dante, whom he didn't know about up to that point, in 2010. It's an equal mix of Stunned Silence and My God, What Have I Done?, immediately deflating the tough guy You Have Failed Me posturing he'd been reveling in during their confrontation.
- Sasha Corbin, during the Michael & Willow Corinthos custody hearing in 2025, forced by Ric Lansing to admit under oath on the witness stand that she'd had sex with Michael and was carrying his child, not only had a deer-in-the-headlights look, but began trembling before she reluctantly confessed.
- On the Next: Every episode ends with scenes from the next episode playing alongside the Credits Pushback, opening with a rotating set of "On the next General Hospital" voiceovers done by cast members.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Whenever Winifred and Maxie were on the same screen, she would always remind her that Winnie was the one who put Spinelli in prison (as part of her job as an FBI agent).
- Anytime Monica reminds anyone that the Quartermaine mansion is "HER house" someone else (originally Alan and/or Tracy but now someone else) would remind her that Alan gave it to her.
- One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Very much in the grand soap tradition, often with alcohol involved.
- The General Hospital wiki notes that Michael Corinthos was "the product of a one-night stand between two people who hated each other," specifically A. J. Quartermaine and Carly Spencer, which then developed into a complex Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe situation with her other paramour Tony Jones, including getting Jason Morgan to pose as Michael's father and later Sonny Corinthos to adopt him. Then a grown Michael fathered Daisy Gilmore after a drunken one-night stand with Sasha Gilmore (as explained in Sex for Solace).
- Ace Cassadine was the product of a drunken tryst between Nikolas Cassadine and Esme Prince, the girlfriend of his son Spencer (which Esme initiated as part of a convoluted scheme cooked up by her father Ryan Chamberlain to split up Nikolas and his wife Ava Jerome).
- One-Steve Limit: Ways to get around similarly named characters? Give the namesake son a nickname (as Luke Spencer did with his son "Lucky" Spencer, and as Mike Corbin did with his son Michael "Sonny" Corinthos), use a more formal name (Mike Corbin vs. his adoptive grandson Michael Corinthos (III); Luke Spencer vs. Lucas Jones), or use the last name (Spinelli's first name is Damian, which was previously the name of notorious 90s villain Damian Smith.)
- John Zacchara and John McBain. The former typically went by "Johnny" and the latter was usually on a Last-Name Basis with other characters. Meanwhile, Jagger Cates' actual first name is John, but it didn't get regularly used onscreen until the character's 2024 return (when he insisted that he was Outgrowing the Childish Name). An odd consequence of that is that John Brennan, the crooked former WSB head introduced toward the end of 2023, suddenly started to get called "Jack" after John/Jagger's return.
- Averted in 1982 with Laura Templeton (Janine Turner), who debuted while Laura Spencer was missing and was specifically intended as a semi-Doppelgänger, even getting involved romantically with Luke and Scotty Baldwin, and one storyline even hinged on her getting mixed up with the other Laura.
- The head of the Wu crime family was originally named Nina, but when Nina Reeves was introduced the character's name was changed to Selina.
- Olivia Falconeri Quartermaine debuted in 2008, 18 years after Olivia Jerome was Put on a Bus, but then Olivia Jerome briefly returned in 2017.
- Maxie named her daughter Georgie in honor of her late sister.
- Robin Scorpio hasn't appeared onscreen since 2021, but the vocal coach played by Sarah Sherman who popped up in two 2024 episodes to help Lois Cerullo lose her Brooklyn accent had the avian-tinged name Robin Finch.
- The Oner: The celebrated 1980 scene where Alan weaves through the crowd at his son A.J.'s christening while racing against the clock to save his wife Monica and her lover Rick from a roof he'd rigged to collapse, after having second thoughts, alternates between a camera following an anxious Alan around as the guests congratulate him, and quick cutaway shots of clocks and the roof beams.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: An odd inversion for Lulu Spencer. The family's first thought was to formally name her Lulu, in honor of Lulu Thornhill, an alias that her mother Laura used while she was on the run with Luke, but it was deemed to be too casual. Then Luke pondered giving her a name that they could then shrink down to Lulu, Laura mentioned wanting to somehow honor her mother Lesley, and their son Lucky took those suggestions and coined her full name Lesley Lu Spencer.
- Only Sane Man: Currently it seems like Dante and Chase (among the men) and Maxie and Sam (among the women) are the levelheaded characters whose jobs are to raise red flags or call out the irrational behavior of everyone else.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Mac Scorpio's already dodgy Australian accent was pretty much dropped entirely within a few years of his first appearance. His brother Robert had a full Aussie accent right through. Mainly because Tristan Rogers (Robert) really is Australian, while John J. York (Mac) is not.
- Outgrowing the Childish Name: When he returned as an FBI agent in 2024, Jagger Cates was very insistent that he goes by John Cates now.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Carly snuck out of Port Charles to visit Valentin Cassadine in prison in Switzerland in 2025, posing as a lawyer named "Barbara Saunders" and wearing a long brunette wig and thick glasses (some fans joked that she looked like Daria Morgendorffer).
- Parental Incest: Kevin recalls that when growing up, he was always jealous of the favoritism that his mother showed his twin brother Ryan. Not until he pretended to be Ryan during one of their special occasions and his mother made an advance to him did he have a horrified realization of what her favoritism really was.
- Parental Substitute: Laura is, for all extents and purposes, Liz's mom despite being her former mother-in-law via her son Lucky. This extends to Elizabeth's kids, who all see her as their grandmother whether she is by blood or not.
- Passed in Their Sleep:
- Gregory Chase, terminally ill from ALS, in 2024, after getting his wish to live long enough to see the wedding of his son Chase to Brook Lynn, plus having a meaningful last conversation with his other son Finn and saying good night to his granddaughter Violet. Accompanied by a Really Dead Montage.note
- Monica Quartermaine in 2025, with Jason Morgan finding her body in bed when he went to tell her about Drew Cain getting shot.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Do we ever find out what Sonny smuggles into Port Charles?
- Do we ever find out what any mobster on this show smuggles into Port Charles?
- Lorenzo Alcazar was briefly an international arms dealer.
- Sonny trafficked in guns, and Todd Manning used one of Sonny's guns to threaten his life.
- Johnny recently tried the organ trade but Sonny shut him down.
- Mob? What Mob? Sonny isn't a Mobster, he's a Coffee Importer!
- Do we ever find out what any mobster on this show smuggles into Port Charles?
- Platonic Prostitution: Nina Reeves and Portia Robinson hired an escort named Jacinda (who initially assumed they were hiring her for a threesome) to spike Drew Cain's drink with ketamine. Drew then went completely bonkers under the influence of the drug, taking Jacinda to The Savoy (a nightclub he'd been banned from), laying her on the bar, then doing body shots from her stomach, before spending the night with her at home, though Jacinda later confirmed to Nina and Portia that she didn't have sex with him. She just let a zonked-out Drew fall asleep in his bed while she slept on the couch. Then she got wrapped in an even messier case of this, since the alibi for Michael Corinthos on the night Drew was shot just happens to be that he was chatting with Jacinda at a bar, so Michael has enlisted her to pretend to be his girlfriend to make the alibi more believable.
- Police Are Useless:
- A competent and efficient Port Charles Police Department wouldn't allow for very many convoluted, dramatic, drawn-out plotlines, so basically the circumstances of being on a Soap Opera dictate that they have to be corrupt bunglers. Murderers escape justice, organized crime operates unimpeded (not helped by one of the department's top detectives being Dante Falconeri, son of crime boss Sonny Corinthos, who maintains a friendly relationship with his father despite their occupations), the innocent are often arrested, and they have a long history of allowing inmates to escape custody via botched prison transfers.
- Security at General Hospital itself is horribly lax. It seems really easy for people to just walk in off the street and head into patients' rooms to try to kill them, or for non-staff members to wander into places like the surgical locker room.
- Posthumous Character: Most prominently Adela Corinthos, the mother of Sonny Corinthos and Ric Lansing, who died at some point in The '80s (before either of her sons were introduced on the show) and has only been shown in hallucinations and flashbacks.
- Pregnant Hostage: Claudia, when confronted by Sonny at her birthday party, takes a very pregnant Carly hostage to escape.
- Pretentious Latin Motto: The WSB has aperi oculos tuos ("open your eyes").
- Previously on…: The show doesn't usually do this, but there was an unusual variation on the May 23, 2025 episode, which opened with a scene from the previous day's show repeated in its entirety, showing Gio Palmieri's breakdown at the Nurses' Ball, when he interrupted his violin performance to reveal to the attendees that he'd just learned that Dante Falconeri and Brook Lynn Quartermaine were his birth parents.
- Prison Rape:
- Michael Corinthos. Not shown but very heavily implied, and finally confirmed a year later.
- When Elizabeth confronts her rapist, she taunts him about the possibility of this happening to him.
- Product Placement: In recent years, GH has occasionally had blatant plugs for real-world products, especially in the Nurses' Ball episodes, where it almost became a Running Gag of sorts:
- A 2011 episode had a very awkward scene that shilled Hershey's Chocolate Syrup. Said scene was followed by a commercial break led by an ad for said product.
- The Nurses' Ball in 2014 was sponsored by Yoplait Greek Yogurt, in-universe. Cue scenes of photo ops in front of a giant Yoplait logo. In 2015, it was proudly presented by Aveeno Active Naturals lotion.
- The 2017 Nurses' Ball had several plugs for Burt's Bees cosmetics.
- The July 6, 2018 episode literally featured Colonel Sanders trying to defend his secret recipe from hackers.
- A 2011 episode had a very awkward scene that shilled Hershey's Chocolate Syrup
- Puppy Love: An amusing mix of this with Love Dodecahedron in 2015, involving the still pre-teen quartet of Emma Scorpio-Drake, Cameron Webber, Spencer Cassadine and Josslyn Jacks. Emma and Cameron are "dating", Joss has a crush on Cam, and Spencer has a crush on Emma, so Spencer and Joss work out a scheme where Spencer pays Joss to make it appear like they're a couple, hoping to elicit a Green-Eyed Epiphany in their intended partners.
- Put on a Bus: Frequently, as per soap conventions, with a lot of the criminal characters getting sent away to prison until they're needed for another storyline.
Tropes Q-U
- Raised by Rival: Michael Corinthos III is raised by his mother Carly and his adoptive father "Sonny" Corinthos (Michael Corinthos Jr.), the reigning mob boss of Port Charles. Both of them despise Michael's biological father A.J. Quartermaine, the drunkard screwup scion of the elite Quartermaine family, and A.J. despises both of them as well. Carly and Sonny do everything in their power to thwart A.J.'s attempts to make a claim on Michael through the years, legal and otherwise, and finally Sonny kills A.J. after A.J. is framed for killing Connie Falconeri by Ava Jerome, which turns Michael against Sonny for a while but he ultimately forgives him for.
- Rape as Backstory: When her mother's sleazy ex-boyfriend comes back to town, Karen Wexler begins having frightening flashbacks of him approaching her bed and remembers that he molested her when she was a child.
- Rape as Drama: A lot of examples over the years. Most notably Luke and Laura at the Campus Disco.
- Rape Discretion Shot: Luke and Laura at the disco is one of the most famous examples, with Luke dragging a tearful Laura down to the floor, then the handheld camera panning over to the lights and cutting to other fixtures at the disco as Herb Alpert's "Rise" plays, before we see her laying there as he stands over her with his clothes undone.
- Rape Portrayed as Redemption: A lot of this too. In particular, the initially bratty and bitchy Elizabeth Webber became one of the town heroines after her attack.
- Real Fake Wedding: Ned Ashton was madly in love with Lois Cerullo, who knew him as "Eddie Maine", but being blackmailed into marriage by Katherine Bell. He promptly enticed Lois to run off with him to Las Vegas and marry him, holding his hand over the marriage license so that she couldn't see his real name written down and ensuring that he would at least be legally married to her instead of Katherine.
- Real Life Writes the Plot:
- Edward Quartermaine's disappearance and presumed death in 1989 came about because David Lewis was having health problems and had to scale back his acting. He still showed up for tapings to record Edward's voice for the scenes where Lila carried on conversations with his portrait, before returning onscreen in 1991.
- Nicholas Alexander Chavez left the show in 2024 to play Lyle Menendez in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, so his character Spencer Cassadine fell overboard from a yacht on the Seine in Paris and is presumed dead. Chavez has said he's open to returning at some point, and considering that Back from the Dead is a well-established phenomenon on this show (especially among the Cassadine family), Spencer returning (either via recast or Chavez back in the role) in the future seems like a good bet.
- Lucky Spencer's sudden departure in 2025 was in part because his portrayer Jonathan Jackson decided it was no longer convenient to commute from his home in Nashville to L.A. for the tapings.
- Kevin Collins was quietly Put on a Bus in December 2024, including a reported work-related trip to Ireland, after Jon Lindstrom took a role on Beyond the Gates, which tapes in Atlanta. After Lindstrom worked out a way to coordinate his schedules between the two soaps, Kevin reappeared almost exactly a year later in December 2025.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- Sonny Corinthos lays an epic one out to Claudia Zacchara at her birthday party after he finds out she was involved in the assassination attempt on him that resulted in his son Michael being shot instead and spending a year in a coma.
- Nina delivered an emotional one to Carly at the start of 2023 after the latter reluctantly admitted that she had DNA test results proving that Nina was Willow's mother, but withheld them from her largely out of spite to punish Nina for similarly withholding the news that Sonny was in Nixon Falls back when he had his amnesia problems (and more generally Nina stealing Sonny from her). This not only deprived Nina of the knowledge that she still had a living daughter after the death of Nelle, it meant that Nina and her relatives weren't investigated at first as possible donors when Willow needed a bone marrow transplant (she ended up being saved by one from Nina's aunt Liesl). It climaxed with Nina telling Carly (in the hospital chapel, mind you) "Go to hell, you selfish bitch!" Then, almost a year to the day later, the tables turned when Nina reluctantly admitted to Carly that she was the one who ratted Carly and Drew out to the government for insider trading, which got Drew sent to prison (Nina had intended Carly be the one sent to prison, but Drew fell on his proverbial sword for her). Carly essentially gave the same speech back to Nina, climaxing with "You are nothing but a selfish bitch, and I hope you rot in hell!"
- Reassigned to Alaska: Hannah Scott, because the actress married Jonathan Jackson. (Lucky Spencer #1/#4)
- Recovered Addict: Lee Baldwin was introduced as a reformed alcoholic who was a volunteer addiction counselor at the hospital, before being the show's resident lawyer became his main role. He occasionally fell of the wagon in later years.
- Regained Memories Sequence: Esme Prince had a memorable one right before Christmas 2023, starting when decorating a Christmas tree with her infant son Ace suddenly led her to flash back to the previous Christmas, when Nikolas Cassadine was keeping her prisoner at Wyndermere while she was pregnant with Ace, and she had a dinky tree decorated with a toilet paper garland. Then on Christmas Eve she broke into Wyndermere, which triggered all of her memories to return in a series of flashbacks, ending her amnesia.
- Rejected Marriage Proposal: Lucky Spencer asked Elizabeth Baldwin to (re)marry him in 2025 (they'd previously been married from 2005-07), but she said no, telling Lucky it was for his own good, since he has an urge to roam the world and wouldn't be happy settling down.
- Relationship Revolving Door:
- Jessie and Phil Brewer were married three different times between 1963 and 1974 (the third marriage happening after Phil showed up alive and well after his reported death).
- Surpassed by Sonny and Carly, who have married and divorced each other four times since 2000.
- The ongoing theme of Scott Baldwin's love life. He briefly remarried Laura 32 years after their first marriage ended, got back together with ex-fiancée Bobbie Spencer years later, and has been on-again-off-again with Lucy Coe since The '80s, even after they married and divorced toward the end of The '90s.
- The Reliable One: Ned is this to the Quartermaines. A levelheaded Only Sane Man for decades, he is generally the one to mediate family squabbles.
- Repressed Memories: Several characters have learned that they repressed the memory of accidentally killing someone in their teen years—Laura killing Theresa (the adulterous lover of her adoptive father Rick Webber), Liz killing Reiko (the adulterous lover of her father Jeff Webber), Luke killing his mother Lena (while defending her from his abusive father Tim). Subverted with Karen, whose memories weren't fatal, but of one of her mother's boyfriends sexually abusing her.
- Required Spinoff Crossover: Characters from this show occasionally made appearances on Port Charles.
- Rescue Romance: Willow's crush on Drew began when he risked his life as part of a mission to Greenland to save her great-aunt Liesl (and others) from the clutches of Victor Cassadine and bring her back to Port Charles in time to give Willow a life-saving bone marrow donation.
- Retool: It debuted in 1963 as a 30-minute live show, almost entirely set in the hospital itself. After a while it switched to "live to tape" (i.e. it was produced as though it was live, complete with strictly-timed gaps for commercial breaks, but aired later), then in 1977 it got extended to 45 minutes (with airings starting at 15 minutes past the hour). When she took over as producer in 1978, Gloria Monty got it changed to an hour show with a more relaxed production timetable, coupled with a faster pace, a bigger budget and more outlandish storylines.
- Revenge by Proxy:
- One of the guards at Pentonville roughed Michael Corinthos up because his father Sonny's goons had beaten that guard's brother for failing to pay protection money.
- When Jagger Cates returns to town as an FBI agent in 2024 with a vendetta to take Sonny down once and for all, he makes it clear that if he can't strike at Sonny directly, he'll take any opportunity to hurt him through his loved ones unless Sonny turns himself in, such as by persecuting Sonny's daughter Kristina after her confrontation with Ava Jerome and Tragic Stillbirth, with other characters speculating that Cates would surely have eventually gone after Sonny's sons Michael and Dante as well if Sonny hadn't killed Cates.
- Reverse Whodunit:
- At the end of summer 2024, the audience got to see Sonny Corinthos shoot and kill John "Jagger" Cates in retaliation for his using his FBI badge to persecute Sonny's daughter Kristina Corinthos-Davis in order to get at Sonny. But thanks to a coverup Sonny and his son Michael Corinthos initiated immediately afterwards, the Port Charles police had few leads to go on when they started the investigation, and a long list of possible suspects, since Cates made a lot of enemies after he returned to town. Kristina's half-sister Molly Lansing-Davis suspected Kristina of the murder, while their mother Alexis Davis was arrested for the crime but later exonerated.
- The next year, we similarly saw Jenz Sidwell shoot and kill Henry Dalton, but as far as the PCPD is concerned, Dalton just skipped town suddenly, along with the connected plotlines of Sidwell attempting to frame Laura Collins by planting Dalton's body in her car's trunk (which Sonny and Jason Morgan quietly dispose of for her), and Britt Westbourne, who witnessed the shooting, unable to come forward since she's an accomplice (albeit a reluctant one) of Sidwell.
- Rich Bitch: Tracy Quartermaine, though she evolved into more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold as she got older.
- Rockers Smash Guitars: Or Classical Musicians Smash Violins. Gio Palmieri was about to go on at the 2025 Nurses' Ball to accompany Anna Devane and Harrison Chase as they danced a tango, but overheard Lulu Spencer revealing to Lois Cerullo that she knew Lois had covered up the true identity of Gio's parents: Brook Lynn Quartermaine and Dante Falconeri. Crushed and devastated, Gio interrupted the dance to sarcastically dedicate the performance to Dante and Brook Lynn, accuse them of abandoning him, then angrily smash his violin before storming offstage.
- Rule of Pool: Odds are quite good that a dramatic scene at the Metro Court's rooftop pool will end with someone getting pushed into the water. It's even become something of a Running Gag for Josslyn whenever anyone ticks her off.
- Running Gag
- The Quartermaine family inevitably has to fall back on having pizza for Thanksgiving dinner due to various circumstances, including the oven not working, someone being The Klutz and knocking the table over, the oven catching on fire, and so on. Always accompanied by an ironic performance of the hymn "We Gather Together" as they clean up whatever mess was caused by the mishap.
- Any time there was a typical Quartermaine family argument in which Edward would declare the Quartermaine mansion to be his house, Monica would instantly contradict him, saying "It's my house!", followed by Alan just as quickly reminding her, "I gave it to you!". Following Alan's death, it fell to his sister Tracy to be the one to remind her, "Alan gave it to you!" Or if Tracy calls it "my house", someone will remind her, "It's Monica's house, Alan gave it to her." When Tracy asked young Violet Finn in August 2024 who told her to say that to her, she replied, "Everyone."
- Lucy Coe having a Wardrobe Malfunction at the end of the Nurses' Ball. The 2025 ball broke this trend.
- Secret Test of Character:
- In 1980, Edward Quartermaine informed his daughter Tracy that he was cutting her out of his will, then suddenly had a heart attack, begging Tracy to give him his heart medication to save his life, but Tracy refused, saying he'd need to agree to put her back in the will before she'd give him the meds. Then after she thought he was dead, Edward jumped back up and revealed he was faking all along, and the whole meeting was a ruse to give her one final chance to prove her loyalty and scruples to him (of course, the whole thing also revealed quite a bit about Edward's own lack of scruples). Since she failed the Secret Test so miserably, Edward basically banished Tracy from the family for the next few years.
- In training to be a WSB agent in 2025, Josslyn Jacks bumped into her trainer (with whom she has Belligerent Sexual Tension) Vaughn at a coffee shop on her day off and sees a mysterious woman hand a package off to him. Later, meeting with Vaughn and WSB bureau chief Jack Brennan, Joss rats Vaughn out to Brennan, suggesting Vaughn might be a Double Agent, with Vaughn strenuously denying any wrongdoing, only for Brennan to ask to see the package, which has an incriminating memory card in it. Then both men congratulate her on passing the test; it was all a setup to see how well her Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! instincts were.
- Self-Made Orphan: Revealed in 2015 as the backstory of Luke Spencer, in a Pensieve Flashback episode where Luke went back to his old house and observed the events of April 1, 1963. 15-year-old Luke got into a big family fight instigated by his alcoholic, physically abusive father Tim. Using a baseball bat to protect his mother Lena, Luke accidentally struck her, then later used the bat to kill Tim in a fit of rage after learning that Lena died at the hospital (after Tim's Never My Fault rant blaming Luke solely for the death).
- Self-Proclaimed Love Interest: After being forced to admit under oath at the start of 2026 that he paid High-Class Call Girl Jacinda Bracken dozens of times for sex, Port Charles city councilman Ezra Boyle met with her at the Metro Court restaurant and at several points said that he was happy that "our relationship" was now out in the open, implying that he delusionally thinks she's really his girlfriend. Jacinda clearly views him as an Abhorrent Admirer.
- Serial Killer: Port Charles has more than its fair of these, most famously Ryan Chamberlain, but also several mysterious figures like the Text Message Killer (revealed to be Diego Alcazar), and, most recently The Hook (aka the Port Charles Hooker, with Heather Webber confessing to the murders). There are also the cases of villains who manage to rack up body counts alongside their other misdeeds, like Franco Baldwin and Helena Cassadine.
- Series Continuity Error:
- In 2023, Bobbie told Spencer Cassadine that he was named for Luke Spencer, but when the character was born in 2006 his father Nikolas specifically explained that he chose the name to honor his half-siblings Lucky and Lulu Spencer (since they're Luke's kids, Bobbie was right that the name ultimately derives from Luke, but not directly).
- Speaking of Bobbie, she was always implied to be around four years younger than her brother Luke, which suggests a birth year of 1951 or 1952, but the 2015 flashback scenes to 1963 to illustrate Luke's backstory had her around 9 or 10, putting her more in line with her (adult) portrayer Jackie Zeman (born 1953). But Bobbie's funeral in 2024 featured a sign listing her birth year as 1958.
- A 2022 sequence with Holly Sutton and Sonny Corinthos implied that they were good friends even though they'd never met onscreen before. Apparently acknowledging this inconsistency, a 2024 meeting between the two had Holly explicitly state that she didn't know Sonny too well, outside of having a mutual acquaintance in Luke Spencer.
- The October 15, 2025 episode opened with a Daydream Surprise bit that had Ric Lansing fantasizing that Elizabeth Baldwin would rescue him from the cellar where Alexis, Ava and Kristina were holding him captive, after Outback the beagle picked up his scent. Many fans pointed out that Ric hadn't been in a scene with Outback before, and probably didn't even know the dog existed, let alone her name.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Spinelli practically goes out of his way to express simple ideas with pompous verbiage.
- Sex for Solace:
- A recurring theme for Josslyn Jacks. A mere hour or so after nearly getting murdered by the Port Charles Hook at the end of 2022, Joss fell into bed with Dex Heller (who helped save her). Then in 2024, it happened twice more with her and Dex, but the first time she had been the one coming off of a heroic deed (saving Kristina's life after Kristina fell from the window of Ava's Metro Court suite into the pool), but she was still so stressed out she visited Dex and ending up spending the night at his place, while they hooked up again a few months later to relieve the stress after learning that Heather Webber (who had been the Port Charles Hook) was being released from prison. Then in 2025, Joss and her WSB handler Vaughn got intimate after several stressful moments during their assignment in Croatia, including when they killed and disposed of the body of a would-be assassin and later survived an explosion.
- Around Halloween 2024, the almost simultaneous gut punches of Sasha Corbin learning that her boyfriend Cody Bell was really her cousin and Michael Corinthos learning that his wife Willow harbored romantic feelings for his uncle Drew Quartermaine (with the pair kissing twice) led the two, who had previously been engaged, to the Brown Dog bar, where they bumped into each other and ended up going to a hotel room for a drunken one-night stand. Then, the almost simultaneous gut punches of Willow's relationships with Michael and her former best friend Sasha deteriorating over the situation (without even knowing about the Michael-Sasha fling, since Willow deduced Sasha must have told Cody about the Willow-Drew kiss, which led to Michael finding out), and Drew learning about the death of Sam McCall, the mother of his young daughter Scout, led them to have impulsive intercourse as they comforted one another. Which Michael then saw thanks to the baby cam in the room where they did it.
- She Cleans Up Nicely:
- Sabrina Santiago for the Nurses' Ball.
- At her wedding to Michael Corinthos while she was still stricken with leukemia, Willow Tait shed her Delicate and Sickly look and was quite stunning.
- Shipper on Deck: Olivia Falconeri is very invested in her son Dante Falconeri's relationship/marriage with Lulu Spencer.
- Ship Sinking: The legendary couple of Luke and Laura of all people were subjected to this. Starting in 1995 when the couple first became estranged when she couldn't deal with his involvement with the mob anymore, then kicking into high gear in 1998 when they were forced to deal with the fact that he'd raped her 19 years earlier, the writers threw one problem after another at them until they finally divorced in 2001. When Luke briefly returned to the show, it was to escort Second Love Tracy out of town so that they could go running around the world together—with Laura's blessing!
- Shout-Out:
- Way back in 1981, during the "Ice Princess" storyline, there was a Shout-Out that likely few regular General Hospital viewers of the time would have understood. Secret agent Robert Scorpio, having gone to his agency for help against the Cassadine plot to freeze Port Charles, comes back after being told he was on his own. Scorpio calls Luke Spencer on a payphone, and when Luke answers, Scorpio says, "Dark side of the moon, side two, song two," to which Luke responds, "I figured it would be like that." Then they hang up. The line is a reference to the Pink Floyd song "Us vs. Them", the second song on side two of their legendary album, "Dark Side of the Moon".
- A character named Alan Quartermaine.
- The perp In the Hood terrorizing Port Charles with a fishing hook in 2022 borrowed their outfit and weapon choice from I Know What You Did Last Summer.
- An asylum named Arkham....errr, make that D'Archam.
- Recently an Italian restaurant called Beradino's has shown up in a few storylines, named after the late John Beradino (Dr. Steve Hardy), with its sign listing its founding date as 1963 (same as the show itself).
- The 2023 storyline of Victor Cassadine getting hold of a necklace made from the Ice Princess diamond so he can complete the original plans of the Cassadine brothers from 1981 (before Mikkos went rogue and tried to freeze the world) basically saw him seeking to apply the philosophy of Thanos to combat climate change (kill off half the world's population to restore balance with nature).
- A Recurring Character at the hospital is a nurse with the rather familiar name of Deanna Sirtis.
- The 2023 investigation of the murder of Austin Gatlin-Holt saw the PCPD work with a detective from the Pautuck Police Department named Briscoe.
- Luke and Laura on the road during the "Left-Handed Boy" storyline in 1980 borrowed a lot from It Happened One Night, with Luke even using a blanket to divide their shared room and calling it "The Walls of Jericho".
- The similarity in names between snarky, effete gossip columnist Adrian DeWitt, introduced in 2024, and snarky, effete drama critic Addison DeWitt from All About Eve seems intentional.
- The recurring male stripper act at the Nurses' Ball is called "Magic Milo and the Magic Wands".
- Talking to her lawyer Ric Lansing about the excessively cordial and sympathetic manner he used as he was cross-examining the prosecution witnesses during her trial in 2024, Ava Jerome referred to it as "your Mr. Rogers act."
- One of the derisive nicknames Britt Westbourne acquired was "The Wicked Witch of the Westbourne".
- After he moved into Wyndermere with his boyfriend (and Jenz Sidwell's son) Marco Rios, only for Sidwell's Mook Pascal to constantly hover over them, Lucas Jones refers to Pascal as "Mrs. Danvers".
- Shown Their Work: Ace Cassadine, last seen as a toddler, returned onscreen as kindergarten-aged in late 2025 with light blond hair, which struck some viewers as a case of Hollywood Genetics, since his father Nikolas Cassadine is dark-haired and swarthy, while his mother Esme Prince had chestnut brown hair. However, Ace's two grandmothers Laura Collins and Heather Webber are both blondes, so Ace would've inherited recessive blonde genes from both sides of his family.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Many couples over the years have counted as this, but none more so than Alan and Monica Quartermaine, who ultimately ended up back together despite divorces and even murder attempts. In a 1981 interview, Alan's portrayer Stuart Damon noted "I've just played some scenes with Monica in which you couldn't be sure whether I'd kill her or screw her."
- Slipping a Mickey: A very common method for villains to incapacitate victims.
- A signature move for Heather Webber, most famously with the glass of LSD-soaked iced tea she planned to give Diana Taylor, but which she accidentally drank herself.
- Seemingly a genetic trait, since Heather's daughter Esme Prince knocked out Trina Robinson and Oz Haggerty with spiked drinks.
- As revenge for his forcing Holly Sutton to commit crimes against her will, Selina Wu drugged Victor Cassadine's drink with some sort of toxin that apparently causes permanent erectile dysfunction.
- In revenge for their various grievances against him, in 2025 Nina Reeves asked Dr. Portia Robinson to procure some ketamine, then they arranged for it to be poured into Drew Cain's drink, to manufacture a public intoxication scandal that would ruin his reputation.
- Small Town Rivalry: There's a bit of one between Port Charles and nearby Pautuck, although Port Charles is portrayed as a mid-sized city and Pautuck as a rural community.
- Smug Snake:
- Lisa Niles, bonus points for being a total psycho.
- Being extremely cocky and always smirking were two of Scotty's main traits in his full-on villain phase.
- Snow Means Cold: Mikkos Cassadine instantly created a blizzard in Port Charles during the middle of the hot summer of 1981 with his weather-controlling machine. Got a Call-Back in 2023 when a backup computer Mikkos had programmed suddenly booted up in the Cassadine family's Greenland lair, leading to a springtime flurry in Port Charles until Laura remembered the formula to stop it.
- Soap Opera Organ Score: In the early years it often used piano or violin based music cues that were in the same as vein as this, but, as heard in the scene where Dr. Steve Hardy proposed to Nurse Audrey March in 1964, it used the classic organ score as well.
- Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Quite a bit over the years, with the champ probably being Tom Hardy (son of Audrey and adopted son of Steve), who was born in 1971 and graduated medical school in 1987. But also the home of the most famous Soap Opera aversion of it, with seven-year-old Robin Scorpio-Drake debuting in 1985 and aging at the same rate as her sole portrayer Kimberly McCullough over the next few decades.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse
- Laura Webber's beauty has led to her gaining the attention of, and being raped, by her desperate boss, friend, (and in a weird twist her eventual True Love) Luke Spencer, and later abducted and forced into a false marriage with Stavros Cassadine, the menacing son of her nemeses, Mikkos and Helena Cassadine.
- Likewise, the lovely secret agent Anna Devane found herself being lusted after by insane serial killer Cesar Faison, which led to her being kidnapped, and later seemingly killed alongside her husband Robert Scorpio in a boat explosion.
- Felicia Jones fell victim to this too, also being lusted after by Faison. Earlier still, psycho doc Ryan Chamberlain became positively obsessed with her, resulting in her stabbing him in self-defense. When she was sent to prison (he survived, but twisted things around to make her look like the crazy one), she had to fend off a lecherous guard who nearly raped her.
- Special Guest:
- Most famously Elizabeth Taylor as Helena Cassadine, and similarly James Franco as Franco Baldwin. Also Ricky Martin as Miguel Morez and Rick Springfield as both Noah Drake and Eli Love. Jack Wagner at the height of his singing career playing Frisco Jones might also qualify.
- Jennifer Smith (Luke's ex-fiancée and daughter of his old mob boss) was played by Roseanne Barr in 1994 and Sally Struthers in 2002. In connection with Barr's stint, Anthony Geary and Genie Francis made cameos on Roseanne as Luke and Laura.
- Morgan Fairchild has appeared intermittently as home shopping host Haven de Havilland since 2022.
- From another branch of the ABC/Disney family, ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith plays Recurring Character Brick, a surveillance expert who shows up periodically to advise Sonny on various matters.
- Connecting GH and that other long-running ABC show about a hospital, Chandra Wilson has popped in for
three different minor roles since 2014: a doctor, a patient, and a fashion journalist. - Micky Dolenz as an anger management counselor who has a less-than-fruitful session with Luke in 2002. His daughter Ami Dolenz had previously played Nurse Melissa McKee from 1987-89.
- Dee Wallace as Patricia Spencer, sister of Luke and Bobbie, in 2015.
- Saturday Night Live's Sarah Sherman as a vocal coach hired by Tracy Quartermaine to help Lois Cerullo lose her Brooklyn accent in 2024.
- Special Person, Normal Name: Given the show's tendency toward villains with exotic names (Mikkos Cassadine, Cesar Faison, Cyrus Renault), it's amusing that the mob boss who owned the Campus Disco and brought in Luke to run it was named simply Frank Smith.
- Spin-Off: Port Charles and General Hospital: Night Shift.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Several phases of this over the years. Lesley Webber showed up in 1973 and effectively took over the show for the rest of the decade. Around 1981 it shifted into "The Luke & Laura Hour". By 2010 Sonny and Jason dominated things, and currently Sonny and Carly always seem to find some way to get involved in every single storyline.
- Stage Mom: Blaze, the rising pop star managed by Brook Lynn, has one in Natalia (played by Eva LaRue), who micromanages every part of her daughter's life and career that she can, though she was blindsided by the revelation that her daughter was in a relationship with a woman (Kristina Corinthos-Davis) and has been treating her with passive-aggression over it.
- Stage Name: Blaze is one for Alison Rogers-Ramirez, which wasn't revealed until a while after the character's debut, and might lead viewers who missed The Reveal to wonder why her girlfriend Kristina Corinthos-Davis calls her "Ali".
- Stalker Without a Crush: Franco in regards to Jason. It turns out to be because he thought they were fraternal twins.
- Starfish Character: In 2014-15, Luke Spencer's dark side broke away and became a separate character, usually called Evil Luke, but fans also called him Luke-Alike and Fluke ("fake Luke").
- The Stoic: Jason.
- The Stoner: A Running Gag in recent years is that Lucy Coe is an enthusiastic fan of cannabis gummies.
- Stylistic Suck
- Suicide by Cop
- Suicide Dare: In 2015, when Luke was visited by the ghost of his despicable father Tim.Tim Spencer: You're old, Luke! You're old and miserable and alone! So why don't you just do it? Kill yourself. Come on! Come join Daddy in Hell, boy!
- Summer Campy: Lila's Kids, the camp that the younger characters attended throughout much of the 2010s. For starters, it's a fully-owned for-profit venture of ELQ. And the personal lives of the campers' parents always seem to spill over and affect the kids in some way.
- Supernatural Soap Opera: Particularly with the "Casey the alien" story in 1990.
- Port Charles in its last two years.
- The Caleb the vampire storyline, an homage to the above series.
- Surprise Incest: The budding romance of Cody Bell and Sasha Corbin was stopped cold after Sasha learned that her father was Robert Scorpio, which coupled with Cody previously learning that his biological father was Mac Scorpio (Robert's younger brother), means that they're paternal first cousins. The fact that their attempts to get intimate always seemed to get interrupted might've been a hint that they were never meant to be.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
- As mentioned above, when Roger Howarth took over as Franco Baldwin, he was basically just playing Todd Manning under a new name.
- Nurse Amy Driscoll, who debuted in 2016, is for all intents and purposes an updated Nurse Amy Vining (who'd last appeared in 2002), both being nosy blonde gossipers named Amy.
- Ned shifting into a modern-day version of his grandfather Edward Quartermaine (particular his feisty, scheming side shown in the ELQ-related storylines) has even been commented on In-Universe.
- Some viewers regarded Dex Heller as a next-generation Jason Morgan when he was acting as Sonny's right-hand man, being a fellow stoic, handsome blond mob enforcer with conflicting loyalties. Jason's return in 2024 meant that Dex had to undergo some retooling as a character (alienating Sonny and then becoming a cop).
- Switched at Birth: The future Dr. Lesley Webber had an affair with her college professor Gordon Grey that produced a baby who died soon after birth...or so she thought. In 1974, a nurse named Doris Roach gave a Deathbed Confession to Lesley: Lesley's father paid the nurse to switch her very alive baby with a dead one, and Lesley's real daughter was somewhere in town. After some sleuthing Lesley tracked down her daughter, Laura Vining.
- Tangled Family Tree: Particularly because the show loves Half-Sibling Angst, the relationships between everyone can get quite convoluted. A notable example is that Kristina Corinthos-Davis and Molly Lansing-Davis are both maternal half-sisters (sharing Alexis Davis as a mother) and paternal cousins (because their respective fathers Sonny Corinthos and Ric Lansing are maternal half-brothers). Speaking of Kristina, her other maternal half-sister Sam McCall and her paternal half-brother Dante Falconeri were engaged up until Sam's murder. Molly has even lampshaded this on the show.Molly: (to Carly) You're Kristina's stepmother for years, and my aunt by marriage, which shows you just how convoluted our family ties are.
- In addition to Kristina, Dante and Sam also share another half-sibling on the other sides of their family trees (Leo is Dante's maternal half-brother and Sam's paternal half-brother). And even when Dante was earlier married to Lulu Spencer, he and his wife shared Michael and Morgan Corinthos as relatives (Dante's adoptive brother and biological half-brother through Sonny, Lulu's biological cousins once removed through Carly).
- Thanksgiving Episode: An annual event, usually spread out over two or three episodes (and often airing in the week after Thanksgiving), with the Running Gag of the Quartermaines always ending up dining on pizza being a major part of the tradition.
- That Man Is Dead: After Jason becomes Jason Morgan, he tells Monica that Jason Quartermaine is dead.
- Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Molly Lansing-Davis was like this as a child, which her mother Alexis called out in so many words at one point. She would talk about soulmates and wax elonquent about how romantic the stories of couples like her half-sister Sam McCall and Jason Morgan or her cousin Michael Corinthos and Abby Haver were.
- This Cannot Be!: The absolutely epic courtroom meltdown of Willow Tait after her ex-husband Michael Corinthos was awarded full custody of their two children in 2025, beginning with an utterly shocked and crestfallen expression, followed by an exchange with her lawyer Ric Lansing, a crazed rant (which included her grabbing and shaking Ric), then Willow passing out and ending up in the hospital in a state of shock.Willow Tait: I don't understand. What's happening?
Ric Lansing: We lost, Willow.
Willow Tait: No! No! That can't be right! Tell the judge she has to reconsider!...All I have done is love my children and tried to do what's best for them! This isn't right! IT. IS. NOT. RIGHT!! - Three-Month-Old Newborn: Willow's baby Amelia in 2023 was an especially blatant example, since it was supposed to be an emergency premature birth.
- Took a Level in Idealism: Trina Robinson started off as a troublemaker, exerting her Toxic Friend Influence on Josslyn. Once she became a regular character she softened up considerably, and is now the resident Ingenue among the young adult characters. She even pushed for the release of amnesia-stricken Esme, the one who tried to frame her for making and distributing a sex tape of Joss and Cameron.
- Took a Level in Kindness:
- Luke Spencer began as a cruel, selfish rapist with mafia ties. Over time, while he never did lose his edge, after an incredibly popular, and also just as controversial, love story with the woman he raped, Laura, the show made it clear despite all his faults, he was ultimately a good person, and one of the show's heroes.
- The same could be said of Lucy Coe. Starting the show as a scheming, gold digging Femme Fatale wannabe. However, after experiencing the kindness of the people of Port Charles, she ultimately proved to be a loving and warm hearted woman, who annually ran the Nurses' Ball to raise money for AIDS research, and eventually the Big Good, and a vampire slayer, on spin-off Port Charles.
- Dr. Britt Westbourne started off as a scheming villainess (as befits her being the daughter of villains Cesar Faison and Liesl Obrecht), but as with Luke, she became a fan favorite, so she got mellowed out a bit, even getting a Morality Pet in young Spencer Cassadine and sympathy for her My Beloved Smother relationship with Liesl. She would evolve into a Lovable Alpha Bitch whose main flaws were her self-centeredness and her ego.
- Ava Jerome in spades. Especially via her very close mentorship and friendship with Trina Robinson. Initially her marriage to Nikolas Cassidine had this effect on her as well to the point where when Nik turns out to be a sleazy douchebag, pretty much all consensus is Nik isn't good enough for Ava.
- Cody Bell was introduced as Britt Westbourne's Dating Service Disaster match, a dim-witted epitome of The Slacker who was also underhanded, slovenly, and had criminal ties and greedy ulterior motives, most infamously lying about DNA test results when it looked like he had a chance to inherit an expensive necklace. But after Britt's death he began undergoing a Heel–Face Turn, tied to helping Sasha Gilmore in her struggle against her unscrupulous mother-in-law Gladys Corbin, which culminated in Cody getting himself committed to the mental hospital that a drugged Sasha was being held at against her will, just so he could help her escape.
- Totally Not a Criminal Front: One reason why Sonny Corinthos eludes the authorities so well is that the economy of Port Charles would probably collapse if he were caught, with all the front businesses he controls, including Corinthos Coffee, Pozzulo's Restaurant, Xtreme Motors and Volonino's Gym.
- Trademark Favorite Food: BLT sandwiches for Heather Webber.
- Tragic Stillbirth:
- Sam McCall's baby girl Lila (fathered by Sonny Corinthos, but intended to be raised with Jason Morgan and named for his grandmother) was stillborn due to pregnancy compilations (placental abruption specifically) in 2004.
- Sam's two half-sisters were affected by this in 2024 when Kristina, who was acting as a surrogate mother for Molly and Molly's partner TJ, fell into the Metro Court pool during an altercation with Ava Jerome, then was subject to an emergency C-section at the ER, with the baby dying a few minutes after birth. She was named Irene by Molly and TJ, though Kristina called her Adela.
- Trailers Always Spoil:
- The prime time General Hospital: 60 Years of Stars & Storytelling special, which aired on January 4, 2024, ended with a trailer where Kelly Monaco and Laura Wright introduced Steve Burton, who made a short announcement revealing that he would be returning to the show. Since this made it a foregone conclusion that Jason Morgan would soon be showing up Back from the Dead, the Foreshadowing over the next two months and the eventual Wham Shot revealing Jason's return on March 4 had their impact blunted.
- News reports in 2024 that Monaco would be leaving the show after 21 years while Alexa Havins was joining the cast to play Lulu Spencer largely spoiled the major plot twists that Sam McCall would die after donating a liver to Lulu, followed by Lulu waking up from her coma (Sam's fate was still a bit up in the air after the surgery, with some fans guessing that she'd end up in a coma after Lulu woke up).
- Transferable Memory: One of the series's weirder storylines involved some characters turning out to have been subjected to this, through secret experiments that allow the transfer of memories between identical twins. This is why everyone including Drew thought that Drew was Jason for a while, and why Anna Devane and Peter August initially thought the former had given birth to the latter (his mother was actually her Evil Twin Alex Devane).
- Transplant: Several One Life to Live characters came to Port Charles after that show was canceled: John McBain, Todd Manning and Starr Manning among them (Blair Cramer & Tea Delgado had brief guest spots).
- Troubled, but Cute: The show is currently playing up this angle with Spencer Cassadine, who's undeniably handsome, but struggles with his uncomfortable relationships with his father Nikolas and stepmother Ava, came under the bad influence of his evil girlfriend Esme, and is in unrequited love with Trina.
- Troubled Teen: A staple character type for the show. In fact, the very first character to appear on the very first episode in 1963 was 18-year-old Angie Costello, a patient with severe facial cuts after a car accident, whose fears of being permanently disfigured lead to her act out aggressively against the hospital staff.
- Troubled Toybreaker: An infamous adult example in 2013, when Emma handed her baby doll Ariel to her prospective stepmother Britt at a Fourth of July cookout, only to have the doll wet on Britt, causing her to angrily throw it onto the barbecue, where it was incinerated. This incident played a role in Patrick's breakup with Britt.
- Uncanny Family Resemblance:
- Luke's lookalike cousin Bill Eckert was briefly a major character in 1991, then got Put on a Bus, but reappeared a few other times afterwards. Anthony Geary also played Luke's father Tim in flashbacks and as a ghost in 2015 (though Luke's father and a cousin from his mother's side of the family looking alike is a bit strange).
- Laura Wright (Carly) has played Carly's grandmother (and Luke's mother) Lena Eckert Spencer (in flashbacks and as a ghost in the aforementioned 2015 segment) and great-grandmother Beatrice Eckert (in a 2020 Time Travel sequence).
- Also in 2020 this got mixed with Time-Shifted Actor with a flashback where Eden McCoy, who plays Carly's daughter Joss, plays young Carly.
- Undercover as Lovers: Sent on a recon mission by the WSB to a resort in Croatia in 2025, Josslyn and Vaughn are ordered to pose as newlyweds named Christopher and Kelsey, which, among other things, forces a There Is Only One Bed situation, and adds to their Belligerent Sexual Tension.
- Undercover Cop Reveal: In 2010, Sonny's favorite new gang member Dominic Pirelli turns out to be undercover cop Dante Falconeri.
- The Un-Favorite: A.J. compared to Jason, Elizabeth compared to Sarah, Stefan compared to Stavros, etc.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: The major subtext of the show's early years, with Dr. Steve Hardy and Nurse Jessie Brewer having obvious chemistry and affection for each other, but never pairing up, even with Jessie's Love Martyr issues and Steve's rocky marriage to Audrey.
- Unseen No More: Dr. Portia Robinson began as Trina's never-seen mother who she would mention from time to time, before she was brought on-screen as a regular character in 2020.
- Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Lucy and her pet duck Sigmund were featured in several Thanksgiving episodes in The '90s.
- Unwanted Harem: Lulu Spencer. She even had three boyfriends. At once.
- Caused by there being only one or two other girls in her age range being featured on the show at the time (the others being Maxie and Georgie).
Tropes V-Z
- Ventriloquism: Mac performed at the Nurses' Ball with his dummy Mr. Marbles, described by Lucy as his "bad boy alter-ego." Most memorably he used Mr. Marbles to deliver a Stealth Insult volley toward Frisco when he showed up to reclaim Felicia.
- Very Special Episode:
- After Karen finally confessed to Jagger about having been sexually abused as a child, the footnote of the episode was of her actress, Cari Shayne referring viewers to a hotline where they could get help.
- There was an unusual 2020 episode honoring the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote via the 19th Amendment, featuring only the female cast, centering on Josslyn and Trina making a Time Travel journey back to 1920 (via a special candle that Lucy lit by accident, from the collection of magic candles first featured on Port Charles).
- Video Wills: Victor Cassadine had one played after his death in 2023, with Laura, Alexis, Ava and Spencer invited to watch it.
- Vice City: Given all the mob activity, various shenanigans among government officials and somewhat ineffective law enforcement, Port Charles might count as this. It's even been mentioned on the show that the city's wider In-Universe reputation is as an organized crime hub.
- Villainous Lineage: The well-established ruthless history of the Cassadine family casts a pall over its younger members, even the ones who tend toward White Sheep. The first member we were introduced to, Mikkos Cassadine, tried to hold the globe hostage with a Weather-Control Machine in 1981, and later his Crusading Widow Helena tried to get revenge on Luke and Laura through various acts of kidnapping, murder, Black Magic, and making their son Lucky Brainwashed and Crazy. It speaks volumes that Portia Robinson could just casually toss out the phrase "I don't think he's interested in world domination" when discussing her concerns about Spencer Cassadine being in a relationship with her daughter Trina.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Robert Scorpio and Luke Spencer. Even in their 60s they continue to get in trouble together, bickering all the while.
- The Voice: During the period that Edward Quartermaine was believed to be dead (1989-91), his voice was still heard when Lila would talk to his portrait and would imagine his responses.
- Voiceover Letter: Crossed with The Bus Came Back in 2023 when, several months after the character was killed, we hear Victor Cassadine's voice narrate the letter he sent to his granddaughter Charlotte when she was at a Swiss boarding school (in which Victor basically tries to turn Charlotte against her father Valentin's lover Anna and implicitly urges Charlotte to take up the mantle of her late, evil grandmother Helena).
- Wardrobe Malfunction: During the years of the annual Port Charles Nurses' Ball (1994-2001, 2013-), a Running Gag was that Lucy Coe would somehow always wind up onstage in her underwear at the end of the show ... often because of a rival's plotting. One year, several characters were even seen taking bets on if/when this would happen. It's not a coincidence that Lucy Coe returned as the hospital rebooted the Nurses' Ball, and she wound up in her underwear. Again. She even brought this up in 2022 as she defended her own resilience and toughness during an argument with Anna Devane.Lucy: I have gone toe-to-toe with Bobbie Spencer, with Tracy Quartermaine, and everybody else in town, it feels like! I have ended up in my underthings, thrust out on the Nurses' Ball stage in front of everybody, I don't know how many years! Actually, one year, I ended up hanging upside down in my underwear!
- Water Source Tampering: Jerry Jacks does this to Port Charles water supply with a hydrochemical disease and demands a large ransom in return for the cure.
- Waxing Lyrical: On February 10, 2026, Tracy Quartermaine tries to ease Cody Bell's anxiety over Molly Lansing-Davis basing the Lovable Rogue in her latest romance novel on him by pointing out how the character gets redeemed by love."It's a tale as old as time. Look at Beauty and the Beast."note
- Weather-Control Machine: The "Ice Princess" storyline in 1981 centered on Mikkos Cassadine building one of these, which could freeze the world via "carbonic snow".
- Wedding Episode: Many examples, dating back to Steve and Audrey Hardy in 1965, but the Two-Part Episode devoted to Luke and Laura's wedding (November 16-17, 1981) is easily the most famous episode of the whole series. Things went full circle in 2023 when Laura officiated the wedding of Curtis and Portia. May Sweeps 2024 included a three-part episode for the wedding of Chase and Brook Lynn.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy:
- As a teen, Michael Corinthos has this with Sonny SO much. Basically everything the poor kid does is a misguided attempt to prove he's "tough" enough to earn his mobster adoptive father's respect. However, Michael already has Sonny's love and approval, the latter just doesn't want him to follow in his footsteps as the head of his criminal empire. Which Michael interprets as Sonny not thinking he's up for the task.
- And Sonny and Carly's second (and biological) son Morgan is bringing up the rear, largely because he's convinced he's The Un-Favorite compared to Michael.
- Wham Episode: November 20, 1978, not just for GH but arguably the entire Soap Opera genre. A bitter Bobbie Spencer finally decides to get Laura Webber out of the way so she can have Scotty Baldwin to herself, and calls up her semi-estranged brother Luke to ask for his help, then he makes his first appearance meeting Bobbie at a nightclub, marking the start of the Luke and Laura saga that turned the show into a phenomenon.Bobbie: What do you say? Will you help me make her sorry she ever crossed a Spencer?
- Wham Line: On October 16, 2024, Holly Sutton visited Sasha Corbin at the Quartermaine mansion. It was the first time their characters had ever shared a scene together, despite Holly being on the show since 1982 and Sasha since 2018. As soon as she saw her, Sasha asked Holly, "What are you doing here, Mother?" Again, there had never been any indication that there was any sort of connection between Sasha and Holly the couple of times the latter had visited Port Charles in the past few years while Sasha was living there, so this line completely blindsided the show's fans, then the subsequent revelation that Sasha was the daughter of classic Super Couple Holly and Robert Scorpio caused extra whiplash, since it requires a major Retcon to even work as a Plot Twist.Explanation
- What Does He See in Her?: The long line of guys willing to practically ruin their lives for Willow Tait (Chase, Michael, Drew) fall into this category. Yes, Willow is quite attractive, but also gives off high maintenance vibes and has a United Nations headquarters-worthy collection of red flags stemming from her having grown up in a cult (the root of her clinginess and her vindictive side).This has even been discussed on the show, with the explanation that men get wooed by her vulnerability, and she uses this to her advantage.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Remember when Laura and Lucy were going to open the Deception spa? And Milo quit his job for it?
- Where da White Women At?:
- Hannah and Taggert. His ex Dara was jealous and disapproving.
- Currently there's T.J. Ashford and Molly Lansing-Davis, whose relationship has been tested by her infertility and several disastrous attempts at a surrogate child.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Port Charles is officially somewhere in New York State, in an area that's about a six-hour drive from New York City, but beyond that the location hasn't been too explicitly defined. Several location scenes were shot in and around Rochester in the 1990s, leading to speculation that it's a Fictional Counterpart to the citynote , but Rochester itself exists in the show's universe. Some fans still view Port Charles as having the same relation to Rochester that Metropolis and Gotham City have to New York City; another popular theory has Port Charles situated on Lake Ontario, about midway between Rochester and nearby Buffalo. If Port Charles=Rochester, the nearby smaller town of Pautuck that occasionally figures into storylines could be a Fictional Counterpart to a number of real towns (Batavia, Canandaigua, Geneva, Seneca Falls).
- In 2024, Drew Cain-Quartermaine announced a run for US Congress in New York's 28th district. In Real Life, the 28th district doesn't exist anymore (New York is down to 26 seats, losing two after the 2010 census and a third after 2020), but in its final configuration it spread along the shore of Lake Ontario between Niagara Falls and Rochester, going along with those earlier hints about the location.
- But a point against Port Charles being in the vicinity of Rochester or Buffalo is that the area's federal courts would be part of the Western District of New York, but when Sonny got busted by the FBI in 2023, the case was filed in the Northern District of New York, which only goes as far west as Ithaca. Going with the idea that Port Charles is on Lake Ontario, that might put it on the lake's eastern shore, perhaps near Oswego or Watertown.
- White Sheep: While most of the Cassadines are diabolical, a few members of the family (e.g. Alexis, Nikolas, Alexis's daughters, Nikolas's son Spencer) are generally decent people. Even Stefan and Valentin were mostly considered an Anti-Villain at worst, as their misdeeds pale in comparison to the rest of their family. More recently, Valentin has been working to take down his evil father Victor, though he remains morally grey at best (as shown by his running mercenary group Pikeman Security and interfering with Sonny's bipolar meds after the latter refuses to make a deal with them).
- The Wildcats: Port Charles University's sports nickname is the Tigers, and their archrival Llanview University is nicknamed the Bobcats.
- Womanchild:
- Much of the character establishment for Nina Reeves centered around the fact that she'd just awoken from a 22-year coma, so she was mentally a 22-year-old woman in a 44-year-old body, which accounted for her impulsive and selfish nature.
- Even well into middle age, Lucy Coe behaves like a flighty, self-centered 16-year-old girl, flat-out going into Bratty Teenage Daughter mode when she interacts with Anna Devane.
- Despite being in her 70s, Tracy Quartermaine's Rich Bitch habits can see her regress into a Spoiled Brat from time to time. Witness her in the examination room at the police station after her 2025 arrest, which saw her turn the arrest warrant into a paper airplane and even pull the old Ignoring by Singing gambit at one point.
- Woman Scorned: Lisa Niles.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Ryan is established as a Serial Killer with a fetish for blondes after Felicia nearly becomes one of his victims. But after his twin brother Kevin comes to town and reveals the horrific abuse Ryan endured at the hands of their mother (physical, mental, sexual), he becomes a hell of lot more sympathetic, despite his horrible actions.
- Workaholic: This was Dr. Steve Hardy's defining trait in the show's early years. His devotion to his work at the hospital was the beginning of the strain in his marriage to Audrey.
- Workout Fanservice: The aerobics classes at the Campus Disco in the 1979-81 period, spearheaded by Dr. Lesley Webber and attended by much of the female cast in leotards.
- Written-In Absence: Jackie Zeman (Bobbie Spencer) died during the 2023 Writers Guild strike, when the show was being written by temporary fill-in writers. The show's producers decided to make Bobbie a case of The Character Died With Her, but didn't want to address the death onscreen until they had their regular writing team back, so for the duration of the strike Bobbie was said to be in Amsterdam closing out the business affairs of her late brother Luke. After the strike was finished, Bobbie was finally announced as having died suddenly on New Year's Eve.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: The local mob-controlled garage is called Xtreme Motors.
- Yandere: Lisa Niles, again. She first tries to kill Robin then she tries to kill Patrick.
- Your Son All Along:
- Alan and Monica Quartermaine spent several years believing that their son A.J. was the result of Monica's affair, before finding out that he was Alan's son after all. Unfortunately, crucial bonding time had been lost between the two, resulting in years of A.J. being The Un-Favourite (to Jason, the son conceived during Alan's affair but Happily Adopted by Monica, which makes Alan pretty hypocritical) and an alcoholic failure.
- Decades later, A.J. (correctly) suspected that he was the biological father of Carly Benson's unborn child (later christened Michael Corinthos III), but she lied and told him that his brother Jason was, fearing that either A.J. or her boyfriend Tony Jones would take the child away from her. Years later, Jason's girlfriend Robin Scorpio finally told A.J. the truth.
