Daytime Soaps' Wildest Storylines!

Demonic possessions and aliens and corsets, oh my!

If there has been one constant over the past four decades of daytime soap operas it has been the genre's propensity to go big — sometimes meaning bats–t! — with storylines, if only to generate some buzz/ratings. And to think that the fad started in earnest with a very ugly piece of black rock aka General Hospital's infamous Ice Princess!

Since daytime's doings have calmed down a bunch since the 1980s/90s heyday, TVLine decided to dust off our proverbial VHS tapes and reflect back on when serials scrambled to one-up each other, pitting space aliens against premature funerals, unearthing underground cities, or bringing Reva back from the dead (again) in a(nother) stupefying way.

These here are no well-told tales of evil twins. No, these are bigtime, bold plays — for better or for worse, but always memorable.

Check out the 21 wild storylines we singled out below, then chime in with the tall tales you remember best!

All My Children: Plane Crazy Geography!

The biggest leap of logic concerning the crash of TGA Flight 149 was not that Maria Santos-Grey, after tumbling off a cliff with the plane wreckage, years later returned from the dead — but that her presumed watery grave was the ocean in landlocked Pennsylvania! (Watch Parts 1 and 2 of the crash/Maria's "death.") 

General Hospital: Casey the Alien, Phone Home

What better way for the Devane family to bounce back from the second "death" of Anna's "late" husband, Duke Lavery, than to lighten things up with the arrival of a hunky space alien from a star called Lumina? On the hunt for crystals that would allow him to return home, "Casey" first befriended young Robin, but was eventually accepted by Anna, Frisco and other gr'ups. (Watch an amusing Casey/Frisco sequence.)

Port Charles: Vampires Rock!

Sinking its teeth into and ripping out a page from the Dark Shadows playbook, General Hospital's spinoff aimed to pump fresh blood into its low profile by revealing that Father Michael Morley (played by Michael Easton) had an alternate identity, Caleb, who was a legit (if brooding) vampire obsessed with his late love's doppelganger, Livvie (played by Kelly Monaco). What's more, Caleb turned out to have his own second personality, rocker Stephen Clay!

General Hospital: The Ice Princess Diaries

At the height of Luke-and-Laura fever, the supercouple got wrapped up in the hunt for the Ice Princess, the world's largest uncut diamond which had been spray-painted black and mounted as a statue. Making the acquaintance of WSB superspy Robert Scorpio along the way, Luke and Laura came to realize that the Ice Princess also housed the formula for carbonic snow, a key part in the Cassadine family's plan to rule the world using a weather machine! Luke saved the world, but not before Port Charles endured a summertime blizzard.

One Life to Live: We Must Go Back to the Future!

When a blind Clint Buchanan got thrown from his horse during a 100-mile race through the deserts of Arizona, he woke up 100 years in the past, where he encountered Old West counterparts of his dad Asa, his son Cord and his wife Viki (in the form of mousy school marm Ginny). Viki eventually found her own way to 1888 to rescue Clint, only to catch her husband about to exchange vows with Ginny! Viki and Clint made sure that Ginny wound up with Randolph Lord (lest Viki never be born!), then with the help of a Native American named Clear Eyes returned to the present day. No DeLorean required!

Guiding Light: Attack of the Clone

When Reva was presumed dead (again, in a plane crash orchestrated by archenemy Annie Dutton), a bereft Josh hired Dr. Michael Burke to clone his late wife from the eggs she'd left behind. Thanks to a rapid-aging serum, "Dolly" quickly grew from infant to teen (played by Bethany Joy Lenz) to adult — at which time, the real Reva resurfaced, only to get imprisoned by her life-stealing lookalike. Josh eventually (though honestly, not quickly enough) got wise to what was up and reunited with his wife, after which Dolly purposely OD'd on aging serum, shriveling up into a wrinkly corpse. 

One Life to Live: Heaven Cannot Wait

During a 1987 brain surgery to treat an aneurysm, Viki "traveled" to Heaven, where she was led by a guardian angel named Virgil and encountered many faces from her past, including first love Joe Riley (again played by OLTL alum Lee Patterson) and numerous nemeses, including her abusive father, Victor Lord.

Guiding Light: Hit and Amish

While suffering from post-partum depression after the birth of her son Shayne, Reva drove her car off a bridge in Florida... but later turned up, with amnesia and following a coma, in the Amish community of Goshen, Indiana, where she went by the name Rebecca. After "Rebecca" accidentally ran down Alan Spaulding with her buggy, she eventually regained her memory and was brought home to Springfield.

But wait, there's more crazy! Reva eventually realized that in the immediate wake of her Florida car accident, she ended up in San Cristobel, where she took the name Catherine and married the local royal, Prince Richard, and bore him a son!

Days of Our Lives: Miss Swamp Thang

What if Swamp Thing was, you know, a hottie? During a visit to the bayou that his Fancy Face, Hope, once called home, Bo Brady crossed paths with "Swamp Girl," a mystery woman who covered her scarred face with the cheapest mud pack available. When it was gleaned that Swamp Girl was in fact a royal — Greta von Amberg, daughter of the infamous Princess Gina — Stefano treated her to top-shelf plastic surgery to erase her scars. 

Days of Our Lives: The Dead Live on Melaswen!

The big twist in 2004's Salem Stalker storyline wasn't that Marlena was outed as the elusive killer (because in actuality, she was framed), but that the many beloved victims in fact were quite alive. Their "corpses" swapped out with lookalikes, the Salemites had been relocated by the sinister DiMeras to an island called Melaswen (New Salem, backwards), where they lived in perfect replicas of their houses back home and sported caz resort wear.

The Bold and the Beautiful: Brooke and the Boinkberries!

Stranded in the tropics, a starving Brooke and stepson Thomas availed themselves of the native fruit — nicknamed by fans "boinkberries," owing to the hallucinogenic properties that made the duo believe that they'd succumbed to, ahem, island fever. (Rumor has it that All My Children's Dr. David Hayward used the berries as the base for his Libidozone formula. Kidding!)

Loving: Dance With the Devil

John O'Hurley originally joined the ABC sudser as Jonathan Matalaine, a lady killer who wound up, well, killed — pitched off of the Golden Gate Bridge. But due to O'Hurley's popularity with fans, he was brought back as Keith Lane, Jonathan's much kinder twin. Jonathan himself, though, was "resurrected" to entrap and torment his twin, seeing as he was the Devil incarnate... or at least a facsimile, due to ABC being skittish about offending viewers' religious sensibilities. 

Passions: Charity Goes to Hell

Desperate to have Miguel all to herself, Kay banished his girlfriend Charity to the bowels of Hell via a portal in her bedroom closet. When this plot failed, Kay moved on to Plan B, trapping Charity in a block of ice and replacing her with an evil zombie look-alike.

Passions: Mermaid to Order

In an attempt to keep Miguel from pursuing Kay, baby witch Endora conjured up a sexy distraction in the form of a mermaid named Siren. But when Endora's fishy friend went rogue and slept with the wrong guy, Endora turned Siren into a doll, dropped her in a fish tank and made her disappear forever.

Passions: The Tale of the Upside-Down Penis

Julian's son Vincent — who had fully functioning male and female reproductive organs — disguised himself as "Valerie," seduced Julian, and gave birth to their child (who was also his brother. Take that, Chinatown!). Vincent then drugged Dr. Russell before she operated on Julian's severed penis, causing her to reattach his unit backwards.

Ryan's Hope: Gorilla Warfare

Four years after the 1976 blockbuster King Kong scaled the box office, the ABC soap aped the premise of a gorilla with a crush by having Prince Albert (played by a man in a costume) kidnap Delia Coleridge. "Everyone always cites Prince Albert the ape story as a mistake. But I'd do that again," late head writer Claire Labine said. "I loved those scenes. It was a story about alienation."

Dark Shadows: Soaps' First Bite of Crazy

After an anemic start in the ratings, ABC's gothic soap opera became a monster smash by releasing from his coffin vampire Barnabas Collins, played by Jonathan Frid. In response to the fangdemonium, the suddenly supernatural sudser went on to introduce werewolves, zombies, ghosts, witches and the only severed hand to ever get more screen time than The Addams Family's Thing.

Passions: A Precious Romance

Precious, an orangutan hired as an in-home caretaker for Beth's elderly mother, fell in love with Luis, resulting in a series of elaborate fantasy sequences. Heartbroken over her unrequited affections, Precious eventually left town, tossing a picture of Luis from the window of her train car to symbolize that she had finally decided to move on.

Days of Our Lives: Buried Alive!

Rather than simply kill her nemesis, Vivian Alamain opted to instead fake Carly Manning's death and then bury the heroine alive. And as if that wasn't truly wicked enough, Vivian left inside the coffin a two-way radio by which to taunt Carly during her final, subterreanan days. Learning of his off-kilter aunt's treachery, Lawrence Alamain saved Carly just as she about run out of air.

Days of Our Lives: The Devil Inside Her

When resident supervillain Stefano DiMera decided to prey on Marlena while she slept, hynpotizing her into "opening her soul" to join him in a fantasy world, the exercise wound up making Marlena susceptible to demonic possession — floating above the bed sheets and all! Luckily, beau John Black, a sometime priest, was able to dismiss the devil inside his Doc.

One Life to Live: The Underground City of Eterna

The discovery of a secret city (basically a giant bomb shelter) hidden inside Llantano Mountain and well-stocked with fabulous jumpsuits brought with it many other far-out reveals — including the fact that onetime inhabitant Roger Gordon years prior had escaped Eterna and met/fallen in love with Viki, who (unbeknowst to her, don't ask!) bore him a daughter. After Eterna's collapse, Viki and said grown-up love child, Megan, buried their animosity and established a mother/daughter relationship that... uh, rocked.