Even before Michael Corinthos was born in 1998, he was a magnet for drama. Mom Carly (then Sarah Brown) hoped that his father was her mother’s estranged husband — long story — but it turned out to be one-night stand A.J. Quartermaine who should’ve been working on his diaper-changing technique. Once Michael had made his debut, it was one thing (heart surgery) after another (baby’s first kidnapping).
After father figure Jason Morgan put half brother A.J. in the hospital with a broken back, someone smothered the patient to death — and not with love, either. For a while, Michael (then Dylan Cash) thought that he’d inherited adoptive dad Sonny Corinthos’ killer instinct, but it turned out that he was no more a cold-blooded murderer than Sonny was a coffee importer or A.J. was dead.
Reason No. 2,105 why there is no Take Your Child to Work Day for mobsters: During a visit to Sonny’s warehouse, Michael took a bullet that was intended to be the end of the don. Instead, it only began the boy’s year-long coma, from which he emerged looking like Drew Garrett.
Rescuing pregnant mom Carly from Claudia Zacchara — the wicked stepmother who’d ordered Sonny rubbed out — got Michael sent up the river. And though Jason followed to protect the boy, he couldn’t save Michael from being raped by a fellow inmate. Once the surrogate father/son duo were sprung from prison, Sam McCall set up Michael (by then Chad Duell) with a stripper pal in hopes of helping him overcome his issues.
Abby Haver not only seduced Michael right past his PTSD, the two of them fell head over heels in love. And then — we kid you not — a crane dropped its load on her as she was just walking down a Chicago street. So much for happily ever after!
When One Life to Live’s Starr Manning relocated from Llanview to Port Charles, she and Michael discovered that they had a lot in common. Mostly a lot of deaths in their lives, but still… They grew closer and closer until poof! One day, she up and took off for Los Angeles. Luckily, Michael wouldn’t have to wait long to meet another young woman like her…
We can’t imagine why Morgan would’ve thought that there was something going on between half brother Michael and his girlfriend, brunette Starr lookalike Kiki Jerome. Unless… Oh. Yeah. On second thought, the his-and-hers towels do make them look sorta guilty. Thank goodness — for Morgan, anyway — the twosome believed that they were related for just long enough for him to put a ring on it.
Given the way that Michael has chucked his phone to the foot of the bed, you might think that he was really into Rosalie Martinez. He wasn’t. They were just killing time in a horizontal fashion until he moved on to a real storyline and she moved on, period — without us ever finding out the big secret that Nina Reeves used to blackmail her, either. Dang!
Needless to say, when A.J. rose from the grave, he had some ’splainin’ to do to his son — and fast. He’d only be back among the living for a little while before he was returned to the morgue. Hey, maybe the third time will be the charm, buddy!
Upon learning that it was Sonny who had killed A.J. — this time for real — Michael turned his back on his adoptive father. Did he mean it, though? Did he ever. Not only did he sue Sonny for custody of the mobster and Ava Jerome’s baby — during one of Mom’s “deaths” — he refused to drink any more Corinthos Coffee. And those lattes are freakin’ good, man!
Michael thought that he’d found The One when he began seeing Nurse Sabrina Santiago — until her pregnancy revealed that he hadn’t been her Only One. The cute couple broke up but was thisclose to reuniting when… Gah! The Michael’s-girlfriend curse struck again, and Sabrina was murdered by Paul Hornsby!
Before Michael’s next girlfriend Nelle Benson fell off a cliff to her presumed death — ha! — the she-devil raised all kindsa hell, fake-sleeping with Sonny to exact vengeance on Carly, working her wiles on Harrison Chase, the cop who’d investigated her previous fiancé’s untimely demise, and just for good measure, handing off Michael’s newborn to Brad Cooper to be raised in place of his and husband Lucas Jones’ deceased son. Yeah, she was, as the kids would say, a lot.
Yeah, yeah, so Sasha Gilmore pretended to be Nina Reeves’ long-lost daughter — it was Valentin Cassadine’s idea! And regardless of that whopper of a lie, she managed to forge a truly healthy relationship with Michael. In fact, so deeply did she care for him that she faked a fling with his pal Chase so that he’d dump her and marry Willow Tait in order to keep son Wiley out of Nelle’s clutches. Now that’s love.
At first, Michael and Willow were only playing house mansion for the sake of Wiley’s custody. But a funny thing happened as they settled into their mom-and-pop operation: They realized that their feelings for one another had grown stronger than those of friends. So by the time the truth came out about their “unfaithful” significant others Sasha and Chase, neither Michael nor Willow wanted out of their arrangement.
Michael and Willow were well on their way to becoming the cutest couple in the history of couples when… yikes. She turned out to be the daughter of the only woman that he hated more than Alexa when she wouldn’t obey his commands: Sonny’s “other woman,” Nina. Mind you, it would take more than a visit to Ancestry.com to bring that secret to light.
Though Willow and Michael checked five minutes after learning that they were expecting to see if she was showing — er, no — their celebration was cut short, at least for her. She also found out that she had leukemia and decided to keep her honey in the dark while she delayed treatment to ensure that she didn’t lose the baby.
Though he forgave Sonny for offing biodad A.J., Michael just couldn’t get over the lady killer’s replacement of mom Carly with Nina. So after Michael’s attempt to have her thrown in jail failed, he hired Dex Heller to infiltrate “the family business” and amass enough evidence to do the impossible: get the kingpin tossed in the pokey.
As Willow’s condition deteriorated, Carly was finally forced to reveal why Nina’s bone marrow might be able to save her. “Thanks for keeping that under your hat all these months,” Michael said. (No, really, he basically did.) Alas, Nina was not a donor match, so for a while there, it looked like newborn Amelia might start her life just as her mother’s came to an end.
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