Whatever Happened To General Hospital's Ric Lansing?
When gangster Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard) was a child on "General Hospital," his mother Adela Corinthos (Iris Almario) got pregnant from an affair with her married boss, Trevor Lansing (Stephen Macht). After Adela accidentally fell down a set of stairs while helping him with his raincoat, Trevor believed Sonny was jealous of the baby and did it on purpose, so he told her to pick between him and Sonny. Ultimately, she let Trevor take the baby when it was born, and she and Sonny left him. That baby was Ric Lansing, and growing up, Trevor fostered a hatred for Sonny in him. Ric became a lawyer and came to Port Charles in 2002. Sonny reluctantly hired him when his own lawyer, Alexis Davis (Nancy Lee Grahn), was unavailable. Ric didn't say that he was Sonny's half-brother initially, but when the truth came out about their relationship, the two became antagonists.
Ric soon met Elizabeth Webber (Rebecca Herbst) and they eventually were married. She got pregnant, but sadly miscarried. So, Ric captured a pregnant Carly Corinthos (Laura Wright), and incarcerated her in a secret room, planning to steal the baby when it was born. When Liz found out, she dumped him and ended up sleeping with the troubled Zander Smith (Chad Brannon) and got pregnant again. She and Ric soon made up, and the two planned to get remarried and take care of the child. However, their second marriage was short-lived, and they split up again.
Ric was heavily involved in the mob
Ric later got involved with Alexis Davis (Nancy Lee Grahn), they married, and had a daughter named Molly Lansing-Davis. Ric also helped Alexis find her long-lost daughter who turned out to be Samantha McCall (Kelly Monaco). However, Ric and Alexis' relationship was soon on the rocks, and after he and Sam commiserated about their lives, they had sex. When Alexis caught them, she dumped Ric.
Eventually, Ric became the lawyer for the Zacchara crime family, because scion Johnny Zacchara (Brandon Barash) was accused of murder. Johnny's father, Anthony Zacchara (Bruce Weitz), was a mobster who was at war with Trevor. After Ric successfully got the young man exonerated, Johnny's sister Claudia Zacchara (Sarah Brown) was so happy, she started an affair with him. But, Anthony made Claudia marry Sonny to seal a business deal. When she got pregnant, Ric told Sonny that he might be the father, but before finding out he moved to Los Angeles.
As the Jerome crime family, led by Julian Jerome (William deVry), tried to move in on Sonny's territory in 2014, Ric came back to Port Charles. He claimed he was visiting Molly, but Sonny felt he was really funding the Jeromes. No one knew that Luke Spencer's (Anthony Geary) alternate identity was secretly funding Julian's operation, and ordered Julian to implicate Ric as head of the organization and frame him for shooting Lucas Jones (Ryan Carnes).
His dishonesty cost him Elizabeth
Fortunately, Anna Devane figured out Ric was innocent and helped him pretend to be killed while escaping prison, in order to flush out Julian. Ric went into the witness protection program, but Johnny had Carlos Rivera (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) kidnap him. Shawn Butler (Sean Blakemore) and Jordan Ashford (then Vinessa Antione) were able to successfully retrieve Ric from his captors.
After an unsuccessful attempt to woo Elizabeth back by making her jealous, and thinking he was married to Hayden Barnes (Rebecca Budig), he worked with Madeline Reeves (Donna Mills) to take her daughter Nina Reeves' (then Michelle Stafford) money. Ric convinced Nina to marry him, and he and Madeline gaslit her into thinking she was insane. Eventually, as Madeline's plan started to unravel, she killed Nina's ex-husband Silas Clay (Michael Easton). Fortunately, Ric had recorded Madeline's confession, and when their scheme was exposed, Ric used the confession as leverage to get himself immunity for his crime. Nina then quickly dumped him.
2016 was the last time Ric was in Port Charles. He saw that Elizabeth was getting romantic with reformed serial killer, Franco Baldwin (Roger Howarth), and out of jealousy asked her out for coffee. Ric wondered how she could love a serial killer, but not him, and she explained that Franco had been honest with her about his past, while Ric was never honest with her. Ric then left town, and hasn't been back since.