Small Details You Missed In The Irishman

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There's a lot going on in The Irishman. At its heart, Martin Scorsese's latest gangland epic is an intimate and personal tale, chronicling the rise and fall of mob hitman Frank Sheeran and the numerous friends he made (and victims he whacked) along the way. And yet, according to Sheeran's own testimony, the story is so much more. It's a journey through six decades of organized crime in America, and ties together everything from the Bay of Pigs invasion to the Kennedy assassination to, most notably, Jimmy Hoffa's still-unsolved disappearance.

As a result, The Irishman has a cast filled with dozens and dozens of characters, multiple ongoing subplots, and constant references to major historical events. Throw in a script that jumps around the timeline at will, and it's almost too much to keep track of – almost. 

While you may not pick up on everything on a first viewing, the world of The Irishman is full of detail, making every visit intoxicating. Even if you don't notice everything, all of those small references, callbacks, and Easter eggs add up, giving the story depth and texture while bringing Sheeran's wild, unbelievable story to life. So, here you go: These are just some of the small details that make The Irishman so special.

Martin Scorsese likes to work with the same stars over and over, and sure enough, in The Irishman, you can see the likes of Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Harvey Kietel, as well as work from behind-the-scenes folks like Scorsese's regular editor Thelma Schoonmaker, casting director Ellen Lewis, and music supervisor Robbie Robertson. Still, unless you were paying attention to the scenery, you probably didn't notice the contribution from one of Scorsese's most frequent collaborators: The United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg, which has housed many of America's most notorious gangsters.

Lewisburg is where Jimmy Hoffa served his sentence for jury tampering, and where, as depicted in the movie, he lost his temper (and his ice cream) during an argument with Tony Pro. He's far from the first Scorsese protagonist to spend time in the Pennsylvania prison, though. In Goodfellas, Lewisburg is where Henry Hill spent his luxurious prison stay, cooking elaborate meals and yucking it up alongside boss Paulie Cicero (real name Paul Vario). The Irish gangster Whitey Bulger, who was the basis for Jack Nicholson's character in The Departed, stayed at Lewisburg for two years in the '60s. Bootlegger Enoch L. Johnson was sentenced to Lewisburg in 1941. He'd later go on to inspire Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson on HBO's Boardwalk Empire, which Scorsese directed and produced.

Over the years, Lewisburg has been home to plenty of other organized crime legends, too. John Gotti spent some time in the prison a few decades before taking over the Gambino crime family, while Al Capone "enjoyed" a brief stint at Lewisburg, as well.

Before The Irishman, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro had only worked together a handful of times, but they'll be forever linked in the public consciousness thanks to a little movie called The Godfather Part II, which is considered both one of the best sequels and one of the very best movies of all time. Both actors appeared in the movie, although they didn't share any scenes together: While Pacino plays Michael Corleone in the 1950s, De Niro takes over as his father, Vito, for an origin story taking place in the 1910s.

But that's not all. The Irishman has another link to The Godfather — and it comes from one of the most unlikely characters. As he's written in Steve Zillian's script and played by Jesse Plemons, Chuckie O'Brien is a harmless, simple-minded man whose biggest claim to fame is being known as Hoffa's foster son. But in reality, O'Brien was actually a shrewd operator, and a key part of Hoffa's operation. In fact, O'Brien's stepson claims that it was Chuckie, not Frank Sheeran, who served as Hoffa's right-hand man.

Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, seems to agree, because he based Corleone family consigliere Tom Hagen, played in the film by Robert Duvall, on O'Brien. Don't take Chuckie's hapless discussion about the fish in his car as a reference to The Godfather's most famous piece of dialogue, "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." That's actually a nod to O'Brien's real-life alibi: As he convinced authorities, O'Brien couldn't have been involved in Hoffa's disappearance because he was busy delivering a fish to a fellow Teamster the same day.

The Irishman wastes no time in establishing Joe Gallo, played in the film by Sebastian Maniscalco, as a loose cannon. In his first few minutes on screen, Scorsese establishes that Gallo as a flippant livewire who kidnapped his own bosses and started a gang war, welcomes any and all press conferences, and, after a lengthy stay in prison, doesn't seem to answer to anybody — including Russell Bufalino.

"Hey, whaddya doin' with that?" Gallo asks Russell at the Copacabana nightclub, flicking the mobster's Italian-American Civil Rights League pin. "You really believe in that?" In that moment, it's crystal clear: Gallo has to go.

Gallo's assassination is about much more than his disrespectful fashion critique, though, and has everything to do with the scene that comes just before this encounter. In 1971, Jerome A. Johnson shot mob boss Joseph Colombo three times while he was speaking at a rally for the Italian-American Civil Rights League, an organization founded to combat the negative images of Italian-Americans in the media, including films like The Godfather. Colombo survived, but was paralyzed for the rest of his life.

While the police concluded that Johnson was acting alone, many members of the criminal underworld presumed that Gallo, who'd had a falling out with Colombo, was behind the hit. As such, when Gallo needles Bufalino about the pin, he's not just being a wiseguy. He's shamelessly flaunting his impropriety. No wonder Russell wants him dead.