Steve "Patch" Johnson is a fictional character on Days of Our Lives, an American soap opera on the NBC network.

Created by head writers Sheri Anderson, Thom Racina and Leah Laiman, he has been portrayed by only Stephen Nichols on & off since 1985.

[1] Steve served in the Merchant Marines with Bo Brady and they were good friends until they both fell for a woman named Britta.

Bo and Hope Brady went off in pursuit, sure that the film would give them the evidence they needed to convict Kiriakis for his crimes.

The mysterious father turned out to be the nefarious Stefano DiMera but, to ease their burden, Benjy's grandfather, Orion, arrived to take him away to live in secrecy.

Steve would have to come to his rescue when he needed help trying to get rid of Eddie who was trying to steal his secret fortune.

Later that year, Steve joined the ISA and was sent to track an arsonist who had been torching black churches in the south.

After undergoing some facial surgery and getting a glass eye, he infiltrated the group under the alias of Brother Daniel Lucas.

He soon discovered that Taylor was using the camp as a front for stolen goods and that he was behind many of the bombings which included an explosion that killed his best friend's parents.

Marina made it clear that she didn't want Steve back, she just needed his help getting a key that they'd thrown into the sea.

He hired a nanny, Kelly Parker, who, unfortunately, turned out to be quite crazy and kidnapped the child when Kayla escaped from prison.

After getting Stephanie back, they had the additional good news that Kayla had been cleared of the murder conviction and they all returned to Salem.

Harper tried to shoot Steve while he and Kayla were married, but his son, Jack, learning of the plot, stopped him and pushed him from the bell tower from which he took aim.

[4] He was discovered by Jack, who took him back to Salem, shocking Kayla by showing up at Jennifer Horton and Frankie's wedding.

After the pair was attacked by a lethal biological agent, they recuperated in the hospital but her recovery was complicated by a reaction to the antidote.

As Steve began to realize this, he tried to resist and to kill the man who was controlling him: Stefano's son, EJ DiMera.

This has proved difficult and EJ managed to force Steve into kidnapping John Black—so that he could steal his kidney—and in committing other illegal acts.

In August 2015, Steve suddenly returned to Salem after Joey (now a teenager) showed up on his doorstep, having run away from his boarding school.

Shortly after he reunited with Kayla, Steve's crazy ex-girlfriend Ava (who he dated when he had amnesia) returned to Salem pretending to have a terminal illness.

She was lying, however, and her real goal was to get rid of Kayla and have Steve help her search for their child—a child he didn't know existed and one she was forced to give up for adoption.

Following the wedding, Steve received word that the child he'd had with Ava—the one he believed died as an infant—was indeed alive and living under the name Tripp Dalton.

Unbeknownst to Steve, his vision loss was a result of bing poisoned by John Black, his friend and business partner.

The bionic eye, which Kayla had secretly obtained from Stefan Dimera, was then hacked and used to gain access to top-secret information.

While Steve was eventually released from prison, he chose to hunt down the people who had hacked his eye instead of returning home to his wife and family.

During the year that passed, Kayla continued to beg Steve—whose awareness had been wiped and whose body was now the host for Stefano DiMera—to return home to her.

As 2020 neared its end, Stefano DiMera returned to Salem, sporting Steve's body and pretending to be "Patch."

Kayla, who had since begun a relationship with Justin, was devastated when a callous "Steve," claimed he no longer loved her.

Stefano worked alongside Princess Gina (who was occupying Hope's body), but was unable to keep up the "Patch" persona and eventually revealed himself to Kayla.

Shortly after their reunion, Tripp returned to Salem for medical school and was accused of rape by Kayla's niece Allie.

In 2020, Charlie Mason from Soaps She Knows placed Steve at #23 on their list of the 35 most memorable characters from Days of Our Lives, saying that "The classic Days of Our Lives anti-hero, Stephen Nichols’ erstwhile Patch was from the beginning of his long run a character so compelling that we were willing to squint to see his underlying, ahem, sweetness.