History Series / TheBoldAndTheBeautiful

* AbsenteeActor:
** Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke Logan) took a sabbatical from the show in the fall of 2014 so she could compete on ''Ballando con le stelle'', the [[MarketBasedTitle Italian version]] of ''Series/DancingWithTheStars''. Unlike Ronn Moss (Ridge Forrester #1), who competed two years earlier on that same show, Lang chose to temporarily set up residence with her family in Italy, resulting in Brooke being written off as going there as well. She returned in January 2015, after she was eliminated from ''Ballando con le stelle''.
** Lindsey Godfrey (Caroline Spencer) was written out of the show temporarily twice within the course of a year for two different reasons: In June 2014, Godfrey gave birth to a daughter (with then-boyfriend and later, briefly, fiancée [[Series/TheYoungAndTheRestless Robert Adamson]]); the pregnancy was not written into the show, even though her character was married to Rick Forrester (played by Jacob Young) and even contemplated having children with him. The second incidence, resulting from a near-fatal auto-pedestrian accident, is detailed under [=Written-In Infirmity=] in the [=YMMV=] page.

* TheLoinsSleepTonight: In a 2021 storyline, Eric’s issues with erectile dysfunction spur an affair between Quinn and Carter. After initially filing for divorce, Eric changes his mind and asks Quinn to come home, later confessing that he can’t perform his husbandly duties. Although Quinn chose to stand by him and get him the medical help he needed, Eric insists that Quinn have her sexual needs met by Carter, while keeping Quinn around because of his fear of loneliness. Eric later asks Quinn to end the sex surrogacy arrangement with Carter, and discovers that Quinn may be the source of his issues (which she admits may be the case due to discord between them for her past misdeeds), when his issues don’t occur while around Donna but not Quinn; [[spoiler:several months later, it’s revealed that Eric and Donna have been carrying on an affair behind Quinn’s back.]]

** In the running for the show's most egregious example of the trope, Thomas Forrester. As an adult (as played by Adam Gregory and Pierson Fodé), Thomas was a standard Bad Boy Lothario, but the version played by Matthew Atkinson has seen the character devolve into a full-blown sociopath, fueled by an obsessive infatuation with Hope that developed amid his grief over the off-screen sudden death of Caroline from a blood clot hemorrhage in the Spring of 2019, causing him to rack up a large amount of amoral actions rivaling those any other soap baddie has committed in such a relatively short timespan. Over the last eight months of 2019 alone, he found out and hid the true identity of Liam and Steffy's adopted daughter Phoebe, who was really Hope and Liam's thought-to-have-been-stillborn daughter Beth, and manipulated multiple people involved in Dr. Reese's cover-up of the faked miscarriage (including Flo and Zoe) in order to prevent Hope from getting back together with Liam; manipulated and basically mentally abused his young son, Douglas, to get closer to Hope and to keep him from revealing the Beth secret; used Brooke accidentally pushing him off a cliff (an incident he survived) after she catches him manhandling Hope, during a failed effort to convince Hope to forgive him for keeping Beth's identity a secret, to drive a marriage-ending wedge between Brooke and Ridge, whom he manipulated into believing he's changed; faked a [[{{McLeaned}} McLeaning]] into a vat of acidic chemicals during an incident with Hope, leading her to briefly believe that she accidentally killed him; tries to coerce Hope into having sex with him in exchange for receiving custody of Douglas; drugged Liam and planned to drug Hope; and... oh yeah... caused a '''''vehicular homicide''''' by running Emma off the Pacific Coast Highway to keep her from revealing the truth about Beth. Along with the mental health issues related to Caroline’s death, it is later revealed that his behavior and hallucinations were also caused by bleeding in his brain that necessitated surgery.

** In the running for the show's most egregious example of the trope, Thomas Forrester. As an adult (as played by Adam Gregory and Pierson Fodé), Thomas was a standard Bad Boy Lothario, but the version played by Matthew Atkinson has seen the character devolve into a full-blown sociopath, fueled by an obsessive infatuation with Hope that developed amid his grief over the off-screen sudden death of Caroline from a blood clot hemorrhage in the Spring of 2019, causing him to rack up a large amount of amoral actions rivaling those any other soap baddie has committed in such a relatively short timespan. Over the last eight months of 2019 alone, he found out and hid the true identity of Liam and Steffy's adopted daughter Phoebe, who was really Hope and Liam's thought-to-have-been-stillborn daughter Beth, and manipulated multiple people involved in Dr. Reese's cover-up of the faked miscarriage (including Flo and Zoe) in order to prevent Hope from getting back together with Liam; manipulated and basically mentally abused his young son, Douglas, to get closer to Hope and to keep him from revealing the Beth secret; used Brooke accidentally pushing him off a cliff (an incident he survived) after she catches him manhandling Hope, during a failed effort to convince Hope to forgive him for keeping Beth's identity a secret, to drive a marriage-ending wedge between Brooke and Ridge, whom he manipulated into believing he's changed; faked a [[{{McLeaned}} McLeaning]] into a vat of acidic chemicals during an incident with Hope, leading her to briefly believe that she accidentally killed him; tries to coerce Hope into having sex with him in exchange for receiving custody of Douglas; drugged Liam and planned to drug Hope; and... oh yeah... caused a '''''vehicular homicide''''' by running Emma off the Pacific Coast Highway to keep her from revealing the truth about Beth. It takes his own near-McLeaning off a cliff by Brooke (while intervening in an argument between him and Hope) to realize the error of his ways.

** In the running for the show's most egregious example of the trope, Thomas Forrester. As an adult (as played by Adam Gregory and Pierson Fodé), Thomas was a standard Bad Boy Lothario, but the version played by Matthew Atkinson has seen the character devolve into a full-blown sociopath, fueled by an obsessive infatuation with Hope that developed amid his grief over the off-screen sudden death of Caroline from a blood clot hemorrhage in the Spring of 2019, causing him to rack up a large amount of amoral actions rivaling those any other soap baddie has committed in such a relatively short timespan. Over the last eight months of 2019 alone, he found out and hid the true identity of Liam and Steffy's adopted daughter Phoebe, who was really Hope and Liam's thought-to-have-been-stillborn daughter Beth, and manipulated multiple people involved in Dr. Reese's cover-up of the faked miscarriage (including Flo and Zoe) in order to prevent Hope from getting back together with Liam; manipulated and basically mentally abused his young son, Douglas, to get closer to Hope and to keep him from revealing the Beth secret; used Brooke accidentally pushing him off a cliff (an incident he survived) after she catches him manhandling Hope, during a failed effort to convince Hope to forgive him for keeping Beth's identity a secret, to drive a marriage-ending wedge between Brooke and Ridge, whom he manipulated into believing he's changed; faked a [[{{McLeaned}} McLeaning]] into a vat of acidic chemicals during an incident with Hope, leading her to briefly believe that she accidentally killed him; tries to coerce Hope into having sex with him in exchange for receiving custody of Douglas; drugged Liam and planned to drug Hope; and... oh yeah... caused a '''''vehicular homicide''''' by running Emma off the Pacific Coast Highway to keep her from revealing the truth about Beth.
* FrameUp: [[spoiler:Vinny ends up framing Liam for his own suicide by jumping in front of his car]].

* MurderInTheFamily: In a 2022 storyline, Sheila fatally shot Finn, her biological son and Steffy’s husband, while intending to kill Steffy for trying to keep Sheila from forging a mother-son relationship with Finn due to her history of duplicity toward Steffy’s family. (This, after Steffy overhears Thomas talking to Sheila about her plan to break up Brooke and Ridge and drive the latter towards Taylor by sending a bottle of champagne — purposely mislabelled as non-alcoholic — to recovering alcoholic Brooke, a revelation that spurs their confrontation in the alley of Il Giardino, where Finn arrives after finding out about Sheila’s deed and Steffy going to confront his mother about it.) Sheila subsequently shoots Steffy and leaves her for dead to keep her from calling 911 about the shooting, though Steffy survives and is left with short-term amnesia. Steffy later pieces together the events of that night, and convinces Ridge and Taylor to set up a sting operation with police to get Sheila to confess her role in the shooting (which also leads to Steffy remembering Sheila’s role in the champagne incident that led to Brooke kissing Deacon while inebriated on New Year’s Eve), leading to her arrest.

* MurderInTheFamily: In a 2022 storyline, Sheila fatally shot Finn, her biological son and Steffy’s husband, while intending to kill Steffy for trying to keep Sheila from forging a mother-son relationship with Finn due to her history of duplicity toward Steffy’s family. (This, after Steffy overhears Thomas talking to Sheila about her plan to break up Brooke and Ridge and drive the latter towards Taylor by sending a bottle of champagne — purposely mislabelled as non-alcoholic — to recovering alcoholic Brooke, a revelation that spurs their confrontation in the alley of Il Giardino, where Finn arrives after finding out about Sheila’s deed and Steffy going to confront his mother about it. Sheila subsequently shoots Steffy and leaves her for dead to keep her from calling 911 about the shooting, though Steffy survives and is left with short-term amnesia. Steffy later pieces together the events of that night, and convinces Ridge and Taylor to set up a sting operation with police to get Sheila to confess her role in the shooting (which also leads to Steffy remembering Sheila’s role in the champagne incident that led to Brooke kissing Deacon while inebriated on New Year’s Eve), leading to her arrest.

* MurderInTheFamily: In a 2022 storyline, Sheila fatally shot Finn, her biological son and Steffy’s husband, while intending to kill Steffy for trying to keep Sheila from forging a mother-son relationship with Finn due to her history of duplicity toward Steffy’s family. (This, after Steffy overhears Thomas talking to Sheila about her plan to break up Brooke and Ridge and drive the latter towards Taylor by sending a bottle of champagne — purposely mislabelled as non-alcoholic — to recovering alcoholic Brooke, a revelation that spurs their confrontation in the alley of Il Giardino, where Finn arrives after finding out about Sheila’s deed and Steffy going to confront his mother about it.[[/note]] Sheila subsequently shoots Steffy and leaves her for dead to keep her from calling 911 about the shooting, though Steffy survives and is left with short-term amnesia. Steffy later pieces together the events of that night, and convinces Ridge and Taylor to set up a sting operation with police to get Sheila to confess her role in the shooting (which also leads to Steffy remembering Sheila’s role in the champagne incident that led to Brooke kissing Deacon while inebriated on New Year’s Eve), leading to her arrest.

* MurderInTheFamily: In a 2022 storyline, Sheila fatally shot Finn, her biological son and Steffy’s husband, while intending to kill Steffy for trying to keep Sheila from forging a mother-son relationship with Finn due to her history of duplicity toward Steffy’s family.[[note]]This, after Steffy overheard Thomas talking to Sheila about how she had alcoholic champagne delivered to recovering alcoholic Brooke, who kisses her ex-lover Deacon while inebriated, and switched the labelling with that from a non-alcoholic bottle in order to break up Brooke and Ridge and drive the latter towards Taylor, a revelation that spurs their confrontation in the alley of Il Giardino, where Finn arrives after finding out himself.[[/note]] Sheila subsequently shoots Steffy and leaves her for dead to keep her from calling 911 about the shooting, though Steffy survives and is left with short-term amnesia. Steffy later pieces together the events of that night, and convinces Ridge and Taylor to set up a sting operation with police to get Sheila to confess her role in the shooting, leading to her arrest.

* MonochromeCasting: One of the most shameful examples ever, as the show is set in Los Angeles, yet in 25 years, the amount of minority characters can be counted on one hand. The show got better about this in 2015, with the expansions of existing African-American character Maya Avant's family (with younger sister Nicole as a regular, and parents Julius and Vivienne as recurrings) plus the return of Zende Forrester Dominguez, an orphan adopted from Africa by Kristen Forrester and her husband Tony Dominguez 13 years earlier, all of whom are joined by fellow existing black character Carter Walton.

* BothSidesHaveAPoint: The 2020 storyline featuring Liam taking Kelly away from Steffy has Liam and Steffy fight, with both of them bringing up accurate points. On the one hand, Steffy is correct that Liam has no right to barge in and invade her privacy the way he did whether he genuinely was worried for her or not, and to take her daughter out of nowhere the way he does is borderline cruel. On the other, Liam is right that Steffy very clearly needs help for her incoming drug problem before it becomes a full-fledged addiction, and his concerns about [[AdultFear what could've happened to Kelly while Steffy was passed out]] are all valid.

Set in Los Angeles, California, ''The Bold and the Beautiful'' centers around the fashion industry, the struggles of surviving in such a competitive environment. At the center of the show are two families; the influential and elitist Forrester family – headed by Eric and Stephanie Forrester, founders of the fashion company Forrester Creations, and the once upper-middle class Logan family – primarily headed by oldest daughter Brooke Logan. Both families become integrated together through marriage, affairs, and bitter feuds. Adding to the conflict includes the Marone family, headed by Jackie, and the Spectra family, headed by Sally.

* RealityEnsues:
** The first time Eric pursued Taylor, she listed a ''lot'' of reasons it was a bad idea. . .and stuck with it, rather than a typical soap storyline of her throwing caution to the wind and embarking on a relationship with him anyway.
** The 2019-2020 storylines have repeated many of the adultery/LoveTriangle storylines the show has used before (a fact that many soap operas are guilty of, not just this one). Until this point, each repeat storyline was like the previous ones had never happened. Recently, characters are starting to call each other out for having this predictable behavior, specifically calling out the fact that they constantly show regret over their actions and then willingly repeat it over and over again, which is what would happen if people willingly put each other through a MasochismTango for 15-odd years straight.

* PunchClockVillain: PlayedWith with Bill's right-hand man, Justin. Justin does pretty awful things, but only because Bill pays him, and he even serves as a voice of reason from time to time. (Not that Bill ''listens'' to him, ever, but still.) That said, Justin ''does'' clearly care about Bill, and seems to genuinely regard him as a friend.

* AbortionFalloutDrama: Morgan [=DeWitt=], an ex-girlfriend of Ridge's came to town still bitter about the abortion she'd had years ago. Flashbacks showed that she had ''wanted'' the baby, but had been browbeaten into terminating the pregnancy by Ridge's [[MyBelovedSmother controlling mother]] Stephanie, who didn't feel that Morgan was good enough for Ridge, nor that the two were ready to take on the responsibility of parenthood.

* AxCrazy: Morgan fits into this, as does Pam (though she got better), and later Quinn (who could easily called Machete Crazy, if such a trope existed) and Aly.
* TheBabyTrap: Stephanie used this against Eric to get her to marry him over Beth Logan. It's quite despicable in the first place, even more so when a retcon reveals that Massimo Marone is Ridge's father and that Stephanie had to have known there was a possibility of this. Eric often throws this in Stephanie's face whenever he's caught in an affair. [[spoiler: Doesn't quite explain though why Eric goes crawling back to Stephanie after all his affairs end.]]

* BackFromTheDead: Being a SoapOpera this happens frequently. Most prominently with Taylor (twice!) and Macy. Some characters, however, stay dead; for example, Stephanie Forrester (due to her portrayer, Susan Flannery's, decision to retire from acting) and Darla Forrester (whose actress, Schae Harrison, has appeared on the show since Darla was killed off in 2007 but only as either a mental illness-induced hallucination or a ghost in a dream sequence).

* BettyAndVeronica: Taylor and Brooke for Ridge, respectively. In recent years, the focus was on Hope and Steffy for Liam. However a larger focus had been placed on Wyatt and Liam for Hope since Wyatt's introduction, with Caroline and Maya for Rick getting some steady increase in screen time and plot relevance as well. Liam's tendency to waffle on his feelings for women would later result in a Betty-Betty situation with Hope and Ivy, which Quinn put a stop to by pushing Ivy off a bridge into the River Seine to keep Liam from taking Hope away from Wyatt (Quinn's son). Ivy then became the Betty to Steffy's Veronica after Liam, Steffy and Ridge's takeover of Forrester Creations, and the end of Liam and Ivy's ''very'' short-lived marriage due to a misunderstanding regarding Ivy (who's Australian, but a dual U.S.-Australian citizen)'s citizenship status.

** Similarly, when Bill was shot. Tends to happen when you screw over ''everyone'' you come into contact with. [[spoiler:Taylor did it.]]
* {{Expy}}: "Dollar" Bill Spencer, Jr. could easily be seen as this of Creator/DonaldTrump; the two both are extremely wealthy self-made businessmen who have high opinions of themselves (even acknowledging they think they're good-looking with shameless confidence), have little if any filter when it comes to their actions (an example in Bill's case being his decision to [[spoiler:out Maya as transgender in his magazine]]) and can be very obnoxious.

** Maya Avant came to the canvas out of prison and ready to turn her life around. Then came Caroline Spencer, who conspired to keep them apart and eventually snagged Rick. In addition to becoming a rival to Caroline, she flips between a woman who wants to redeem herself and a ManipulativeBitch. She then is shifted towards more of a heroine role [[spoiler:when she is revealed to be transgender]].

** In the running for the show's most egregious example of the trope, Thomas Forrester. As an adult (as played by Adam Gregory and Pierson Fodé), Thomas was a standard Bad Boy Lothario, but the version played by Matthew Atkinson has seen the character devolve into a full-blown sociopath, fueled by a obsessive infatuation with Hope that developed amid his grief over the off-screen sudden death of Caroline from a blood clot hemorrage in the Spring of 2019, causing him to rack up a large amount of amoral actions rivaling those any other soap baddie has committed in such a relatively short timespan. Over the last eight months of 2019 alone, he found out and hid the true identity of Liam and Steffy's adopted daughter Phoebe, who was really Hope and Liam's thought-to-have-been-stillborn daughter Beth, and manipulated multiple people involved in Dr. Reese's cover-up of the faked miscarriage (including Flo and Zoe) in order to prevent Hope from getting back together with Liam; manipulated and basically mentally abused his young son, Douglas, to get closer to Hope and to keep him from revealing the Beth secret; used Brooke accidentally pushing him off a cliff (an incident he survived) after she catches him manhandling Hope, during a failed effort to convince Hope to forgive him for keeping Beth's identity a secret, to drive a marriage-ending wedge between Brooke and Ridge, whom he manipulated into believing he's changed; faked a [[{{McLeaned}} McLeaning]] into a vat of acidic chemicals during an incident with Hope, leading her to briefly believe that she accidentally killed him; tries to coerce Hope into having sex with him in exchange for receiving custody of Douglas; drugged Liam and planned to drug Hope; and... oh yeah... caused a '''''vehicular homicide''''' by running Emma off the Pacific Coast Highway to keep her from revealing the truth about Beth.
* GoodAdulteryBadAdultery: Brooke tends to justify her flings as being part of her 'destiny', though Ridge seems to be the one she considers her soulmate. Also, ''all'' of the women Eric has affairs with (and end up leaving Stephanie for) throw this excuse in Stephanie's face, citing her neurotic control smothers Eric and that she needs to let him go. [[spoiler: Yet, once these relationships end, Eric will go crawling back to Stephanie and beg her forgiveness. Lather, rise, repeat.]]

* HeteronormativeCrusader: Aly Forrester grew into this, the result of her inability to cope with losing her mother Darla in a drunk driving accident when she was a little girl and her being mentally unhinged as a result (she actually sees and hears a floating image of her mother's head, for crying out loud!). It results in some serious SlutShaming against Steffy (Aly's grudge is really against Steffy's mother Taylor) and some not-as-overt judgemental behavior towards Maya, whom like Rick treated her more like a servant after Rick took over at Forrester (though the fact that [[spoiler: Maya's transgender]] also has something to do with it).
* HistoryRepeats: The Brooke, Ridge and Taylor LoveTriangle has pretty much been transposed to Hope, Liam and Steffy, with Brooke being the best [[MeddlingParents analog]] for Stephanie. {{Irony}}!

* HotScientist: Brooke is actually an incredibly skilled chemist, and one thing that makes her an asset to Forrester Creations is that she created a formula which permanently removes wrinkles from clothing.

** Taylor is a pro at this as well. She constantly bashes Brooke for her many romantic entanglements, especially for dating more than one man from the same family and for getting romantically involved with her daughter's love interests. Taylor herself has been engaged to Storm Logan, had a relationship with Stephen Logan and been romantically involved with Eric Forrester, Ridge Forrester, Thorne Forrester and Rick Forrester (the last of whom was her daughter Phoebe's great love and Phoebe's distress over this led to the car accident which Phoebe died). It coming to incredible degrees in which she fully blamed Bill for the affair that imploded Liam and Steffy's marriage, even after Steffy accepted and took the blame for her part with grace and maturity, even fostering a familial relationship between her and Hope, that [[spoiler: Taylor attempted to gun down Bill in cold blood, almost even letting Ridge be persecuted of the crime.]] Once again she evaded jail, after Steffy begged Bill to not implicate Taylor for the crime, once again she got back on her high horse condeming and calling Brooke, Hope and Bill horrible people, even as she made thinly veiled threats against the three.

** Brooke always hated it when Stephanie meddled in her relationship with Ridge, and has hated Taylor for years for stealing Ridge (more than once). The fact that Stephanie blatantly favored Taylor did ''not'' help matters. But Brooke meddling in Steffy's relationship with Liam, trying to push him towards her own daughter Hope, and at some points just straight-up refusing to give Steffy the benefit of the doubt in any given situation? ''Totally'' different.
** Brooke is also quick to [[SlutShaming condemn]] Steffy for sleeping with Bill, her husband's father, seeing it as a reason why her own daughter Hope should be with Liam instead. This is a bit rich when you remember that the only reason Hope ''exists'' is because Brooke had an affair with her ''daughter's'' husband.
* LargeHam: Sally Spectra. Big, bold and larger than life, Sally was never afraid to [[ChewingTheScenery chew some scenery]]. Her niece and namesake is proving to be this too.

* OedipusComplex: Inverted, in what some psychologists have termed "The Jocasta Complex". Stephanie was so obsessed with Ridge that several people outright suggested that she's in love with her own son. Even favorite daughter-in-law Taylor got fed up with it when she finally realized that the real reason Stephanie had always supported her over Brooke in the battle over Ridge is because Taylor reminded Stephanie so much of herself that she figured that since she herself couldn't sleep with Ridge, she'd settle for him being with someone just like her.
* OnlySaneMan: Wyatt and Justin both qualify, though both are mostly loyal to Bill. Wyatt tries to stay out of the feuds that pop up around him, and is hilariously annoyed by everyone's constant drama, but he will jump in and take a stand if something ''really'' matters to him. Justin, meanwhile, is similarly annoyed by his boss' shenanigans, but tends to take a "[[PunchClockVillain Whatever, as long as I get paid]]" approach.

* PlotTumor: The Hope/Liam/Steffy triangle. Liam started out as a minor character, and has grown to the point where his love life has become the sole focus of every other character on the show for an entire year and counting (September 2012).

* PrisonRape: While in a mental hospital for her various crimes, Sheila gets beaten up by two other prisoners. Their [[ButchLesbian unpleasant appearance]] and [[PsychoLesbian demeanor]], plus the way Sheila acts afterwards--taking a ShowerOfAngst--are clearly meant to imply that they sexually assaulted her as well. Even if not, the whole sequence still gives off a DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything vibe.

* RapeAsBackstory: Recent years has revealed this about [[spoiler: Stephanie]], which serves to more or less explain her neurotic behavior. [[spoiler: complete with a very emotional scene where Eric and Stephanie confront her mother about the abuse she suffered.]]
* RapeAsDrama: Brooke is an unfortunate victim of this trope frequently. In the pilot episode she's assault by a group of men and rushes home with her clothes in tatters. She's raped by Andy Johnson after the latter was hired by Stephanie to seduce her. Ridge also unintentionally raped her when he had sex with her while she was drugged. To his credit he had no idea she was drugged and was horrified when he realized what he did.

** The 2020 COVID-19 outbreak caused a several month filming break while the cast quarantined, leading to a brief HandWave when the show came back to air: Katie claims that they had to close up shop to build and organize a new warehouse.

* SecretKeeper: Brooke is the only one who knows that [[spoiler:Taylor shot and almost killed Bill Spencer - she willingly keeps the secret because she got to watch Taylor [[AintTooProudToBeg getting on her knees and begging her to keep the secret]], and seeing her ArchEnemy willingly debasing herself like that was enough for her]].
* SeriesContinuityError: This frequently happens when characters are SORAS'd, but a glaring example of this is the Logan sisters childhood angst. In recent years they've claimed ParentalAbandonment and that oldest brother Storm practically raised them. But earlier episodes clearly show the Logan family to be a happy and stable family unit.
** This also included Steffy and Phoebe. For many years these two were known as identical twin sisters, and were even played by identical twins during different SORAS periods. When [=MacKenzie=] Mauzy was cast as Phoebe though, the show didn't bring Steffy on until much later, with Jacqueline [=MacInnes=] Wood playing her. Neither actress looks alike.
* SoapOperaDisease: Carolina developed leukemia, and in a rare Soap instance her ''character stays dead''. Recently, Stephanie was diagnosed with ''stage four lung cancer'', and made a complete recovery (at least for a little while; the cancer returns to kill her in 2012).

* TokenGoodTeammate: The second generation of Spectras aren't ''evil'', but Coco is the only one who's 100% committed to keeping things on the level. Though Sally is now trying to change that, and is trying her hand at being good, too.

** Amber and Raymond, though their's was more of a FriendsWithBenefits situation.

* WhoMurderedTheAsshole: Well, who ''attempted'' to murder the asshole. At one point, [[spoiler:someone shoots and almost kills Bill Spencer - while he does survive, he never saw the attacker, meaning no one knew who did it. It also didn't help that by the time he was shot, Liam, Wyatt, Justin, Steffy, Ridge, and all of Sally Spectra's team had motive to attempt to kill him. The evidence originally suggested Ridge, but it turns out to have been Taylor, who had previously been out of town and thus had been unsuspected]].
* WhosYourDaddy: Brooke was so sure that Bridget was Ridge's child that she named the baby Bridget – which is a combination of Brooke and Ridge's names. However in actuality she wasn't sure ''who'' Bridget's father was but wanted Ridge to be her father. [[spoiler: It turned out that Eric, Ridge's father and Brooke's former husband, was Bridget's father.]]

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: The 1994 Los Angeles earthquake was written into the show's storyline.

** Subverted with Morgan [=DeWitt=], an ex-girlfriend of Ridge's who came to town still bitter about the abortion she'd had years ago. Flashbacks show that she had in fact ''wanted'' the baby, but had been browbeaten into terminating the pregnancy by Ridge's [[MyBelovedSmother controlling mother]] Stephanie, who didn't feel that Morgan was good enough for Ridge, nor that the two were ready to take on the responsibility of parenthood. The offensive implications go UpToEleven with Morgan manipulating things to once again become pregnant with Ridge's baby and even kidnapping Ridge and Taylor's daughter Steffy after she has a TragicStillbirth, thus implying that women who have abortions go insane over the child they lost.

* YourCheatingHeart: Marriage infidelity is the center of the drama at times. Eric has cheated on Stephanie numerous times with numerous women, and has produced ''numerous'' children with other women. Brooke can also fit into this category because a lot of men she had pursued are already in relationships when she develops feelings for them.

* WhoMurderedTheAsshole: Well, who ''attempted'' to murder the asshole. At one point, [[spoiler:someone shoots and almost kills Bill Spencer - while he does survive, he never saw the attacker, meaning no one knew who did it. It also didn't help that by the time he was shot, Liam, Wyatt, Justin, Steffy, Ridge, and all of Sally Spectra's team had motive to attempt to kill him]].

* SuddenlySexuality: Karen Spencer came out as a lesbian in 2012 at the same time as her portrayer, Joanna Johnson.