General Hospital's Corinthos Family Tree Explained

The "General Hospital" Corinthos family tree and its many branches extend almost everywhere throughout Port Charles. In fact, Sonny Corinthos (played by Maurice Benard) has so many children that when the one he adopted, Michael Corinthos (Chad Duell), recently decided that he was going to destroy his father's life, Sonny shrugged it off. He told his new girlfriend, Nina Reeves (Cynthia Watros), that he has no problems washing his hands of Michael for the moment (via Soaps.com).

The Corinthos family is also the biggest crime family in Port Charles, but since Sonny doesn't deal in drugs, weapons, or prostitution, fans have yet to learn what his illegal operation does. This leaves the writers the option to paint Sonny as both a mobster and a flawed hero at the same time, who has a big family his subconscious seemed to want to get away from when he had amnesia for nine months in a small Pennsylvania town called Nixon Falls (via Soaps In Depth).

Who are the other members of the Corinthos clan that have made Port Charles a fascinating place to be for decades?

Sonny Corinthos has been a part of the "General Hospital" scene since 1993 as the sleazy owner of a strip club who got Scott Baldwin's daughter, Karen Wexler (Cari Shayne), hooked on drugs (via Soap Central). It turned out Sonny was just a mob underling then, but he eventually started rising to the top and soon fell for Brenda Barrett (Vanessa Marcil), a younger woman starting her modeling career with Deception Cosmetics. Some fans still believe Sonny and Brenda are endgame despite Brenda living in Europe for years.

In between romances with Brenda, Sonny has married and been with a lot of women, and some of those women have even given him children. Sonny has been married to Carly Benson Corinthos (Laura Wright) the longest, but as of 2022, they are divorced once again. Sonny returned from his Nixon Falls amnesia experience as a different man who had feelings for Nina Reeves, a woman from Port Charles who found him in Nixon Falls and fell in love with him while keeping his identity a secret. In all fairness to Nina, Sonny constantly told her he had no interest in learning his true identity (via Soaps In Depth).

In 2009, a new undercover cop arrived in Port Charles under the name Dominic Pirelli, and when Sonny Corinthos learned this man was a cop who was trying to infiltrate his organization, he shot him. That's when Sonny's ex from his teenage years in Brooklyn, New York, Olivia Falconeri (Lisa LoCicero), burst into the room and announced that Dominic was really Dante Falconeri (Dominic Zamprogna) and the son that Sonny never knew he had (via Soap Central).

Over the years, Dante has remained a cop with a mobster for a father, but they have also grown close and he sometimes seems to be the only one of Sonny's kids who care about him. Dante also has his own son, Rocco, with ex-wife, Lulu Falconeri (Emme Rylan), a woman who has been lingering in a coma in a New York hospital now for nearly two years. As of this writing, Dante is involved in a romance with Sam McCall (Kelly Monaco), according to via Soaps In Depth, a woman who once gave birth to Sonny's stillborn baby she named Lila Rae (via Soap Central).

Carly Corinthos never wanted AJ Quartermaine (played by Billy Warlock and Sean Kanan) to raise the son they conceived via a one-night stand, so she tried to pass him off as anyone but AJ's child. But AJ did learn the truth and wanted to raise his son. When Sonny and Carly married, Sonny wanted to adopt AJ and used his mob ways to coerce AJ to sign away his rights to Michael and that's how the boy became known as Michael Corinthos (via Soap Central).

Michael had many horrible things happen to him as a child due to his father being a crime lord, including being shot in the head and lingering in a coma. He was also presumed dead at one time and spent a few months in prison, where he was sexually assaulted in a sad and disturbing story. In 2022, adult Michael (Chad Duell) is very angry that Sonny chose to defend Nina Reeves after she didn't reveal his identity to him in Nixon Falls for six months, so he shut Sonny out of his life and vowed to bring him down (via Soaps In Depth).

As of this writing, Sonny is about to make Michael even angrier when he testifies on Nina's behalf in a visitation hearing for Michael's son, Wiley, as Nina is young Wiley's biological grandmother.

Ava Jerome really liked those Corinthos men. She had an affair with Morgan Corinthos and later had hate sex with Sonny, in the Quartermaine crypt of all places, after Sonny had killed AJ Quartermaine (via Michael Fairman TV). That hate sex resulted in Avery Corinthos (Ava and Grace Scarola), a little girl Ava and Sonny have fought to have custody of since she was a newborn. As of this writing, the two parents get along and share Avery (via Soaps In Depth).

Carly Corinthos was shocked in 2019 when she learned she was pregnant. When Sonny asked her how it happened, she told him she guessed she was past child-bearing years and had stopped taking her birth control. Carly not understanding how biology really works resulted in young Donna Corinthos, who was born with spina bifida, a condition that was quickly treated with surgery right after her birth (via Soap Opera Spy). In 2022, Donna is rarely seen or heard and her spina bifida is never mentioned.