General Hospital's most shocking character deaths, ranked: one of them literally gave her heart to her cousin
Port Charles has been killing beloved characters for four decades, but a few exits were so brutal that fans still bring them up like personal grievances — and the worst one involves a school bus.
General Hospital kills people the way other shows do costume changes, but a handful of deaths broke containment — the ones fans still argue about on Reddit decades later. Ranked from devastating to "why is this show legal," a warning: Maxie Jones appears in this list an actuarially improbable number of times.
The rankings
- 5. AJ Quartermaine (2014). The family black sheep came back, got sober, started rebuilding — and got shot by Sonny, who heard a dying woman whisper "AJ" and never considered it might mean Ava Jerome. Killed by an initials mix-up. Quartermaines can't have anything.
- 4. Alan Quartermaine (2007). Nearly three decades on the canvas, freshly recovered, vows renewed with Monica — then a heart attack mid–Metro Court hostage crisis. The show kept him around as a ghost only Tracy could see, which was both a consolation and a taunt.
- 3. Nathan West (2018). The one good cop in Port Charles, weeks from fatherhood, shot by his own father, Cesar Faison, and dead hours later with his pregnant wife Maxie at his side. Keep a running tally of what this show does to Maxie.
- 2. Georgie Jones (2007). Maxie's little sister intercepted a text meant for Maxie, went to the park to protect her from the Text Message Killer, and was strangled for it. She wasn't even the intended target — shock-value plotting that fans have never forgiven, no matter how many ghost cameos she gets.
- 1. BJ Jones (1994). Seven years old. A school van crash left her brain-dead, and her father, Dr. Tony Jones, made the decision that still wrecks everyone: donating BJ's heart to her dying cousin. Yes — Maxie. The scene where Tony rests his head on Maxie's chest to hear his daughter's heartbeat remains daytime television's most efficient emotional weapon.
Thirty years later, still radioactive
The BJ storyline has outlived networks, recasts, and most of its original audience's blood pressure. When the show brought Brighton Hertford — the original child actress — back as BJ's spirit at Bobbie's funeral, the wound reopened on schedule. The Reddit consensus hasn't budged in three decades:
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"One of the absolute best story lines this show ever had!"
The pattern worth noticing: the deaths that rank highest aren't the goriest — they're the ones where the victim was doing something kind. Port Charles punishes decency with a consistency its villains can only envy.
And Maxie Jones, carrier of her cousin's heart, survivor of her sister and her husband, is still on the show. Somebody check on her.
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