Still unsorted
Seeing the completed bookcase made the young Chalky decide to be a carpenter too and asked his father to assist him during his next job. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a set up and his father was hanged. Being only a child, the murderers decided to not kill Chalky too, but they forced him to watch and scarred his face afterwards to "teach him a lesson".
- So Chalky is Inigo Montoya? Hmm, makes a certain amount of sense.
- "Ma name is Chalky White. Yo killed ma Daddy, prepare to die".
- "Havre de Grace" implies that he got the scars during a street fight in Atlantic City, the day he met Oscar Boneau. However, witnessing his father's murder is still consistent with why Chalky decided that he "had to" leave his mother and siblings at his father's funeral, when he saw that his family was going to do nothing about it (as told in "The Old Ship of Zion").
- Judging from the scars on his neck and that the damage is mostly on one side, it's likely that Richard Harrow suffers from damage to one of his recurrent laryngeal nerves, this creates the hoarseness to his voice, for a similar example see "Godfather" from Generation Kill. This in itself wouldn't be painful, but the other injuries to his face and mouth are likely to hurt badly, plus we also see that he has difficulty swallowing alcohol. Overall not a pleasant experience.
- He has a problem raising his voice, as shown in "Farewell Daddy Blues".
We know that the D'Alessios have an adult non-criminal brother named Adrian. The age gap seems to be most wide between Lucien (fourth of the criminal gang by age) and Sixtus (fifth), and coincidentally Sixtus also means "sixth" in Latin (it was in fact a popular name for the sixth child born in Roman times). So it makes sense that the order is Leo-Ignatius-Teo-Lucien-Adrian-Sixtus-Pius-two male children, thus making the 9 D'Alessio brothers total mentioned.
Never stated openly, but seems likely considering the fact that she never had more children despite her promiscuous life and that she unsuccessfully spent the better part of the years from 1905 to 1916 trying to get some rich guy to marry her. The only reason she didn't use The Baby Trap was because she couldn't.
- 'Course, there is the fact that the show is set in Atlantic City, one of whose nicknames (and also the title of one episode) is "The Emerald City".
- Alternatively, Mickey Doyle is the scarecrow.Jimmy: If you had a brain, you'd be dangerous.Mickey: Hnnnnnnnnn.
In the first season Nucky visits Chalky to oversee a shipment of alcohol in a storage area. What's the name in one of the signs? Rowland Smith. Flashforward to S3, and we find a teenage punk named Rowland Smith who claims Nucky gave his family a turkey for Christmas when he was little, even though he lives in Pennsylvania, which would (probably) be out of Nucky's reach a decade or more before. This is because S3 Rowland Smith was actually born in Atlantic City. His father, Rowland Smith Sr., lost his business and/or died and the family left for Pennsylvania sometime after the first season.
The story about being widowed early is just that, a story. She is trying to avoid the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock. That's why she signs the bills as Emma Harrow.
Quite convenient that just as soon as the house gets in economic trouble, the man "dies". However, his tomb is nowhere near the property, or Richard would have seen it when he saw his father's tomb and know the name of Emma's husband. The Harrow parents probably share a tombstone, but Emma's husband would be likelier to get one of his own.
Not much besides putting another random historical factoid in the show, but both parents are alive in Richard's last family photo (1916). However, Richard is only not aware of his father's passing (1923) when he returns back home for the second time in 1924. We know that Richard was back home first between 1918 and 1920, when his sister treated his wound, just as the epidemy struck. His mother's death could have been one of the things that made him decide to leave.
Owen mentions that he was 17 when he first volunteered and was turned down (twice). If this was in 1916, he'd been born in 1899, one year after Jimmy. Thus, by the time the Irish War of Independence breaks out for real in 1919, Owen would be 20 and this time deemed old enough to fight.
I think a guy like Mickey Doyle wouldn't last as long as he did in real life.....unless he was faking stupidity. It's easier to take action when people underestimate you. Especially as is the case with Nate the thief in the season 3 premiere.
- See above.
Michael Pitt and Leonardo Dicaprio look similar, Jimmy is Irish-American and Amsterdam & Jenny were Irish immigrants, Jimmy uses the same "knife in the boot" trick that Amsterdam tries, both are young and delicate-looking but very tough, and Atlantic City isn't far from New York. Gangs of New York and Boardwalk Empire are both Martin Scorsese productions with similar tones and themes, and both feature fictional and fictionalized criminal characters rubbing shoulders with real-life historical figures.
- And Tommy contributed to the gene pool of the Costigans of South Boston.
Both focus on the Jersey Mafia.
Omar is of course Chalky's Identical Grandson.
Maybe not a direct descendant, but maybe Owen had a sister who married Matt's great-grandfather.
- Adding water to the theory, Gyp has been confirmed to have two daughters in the show.
- This is somewhat compromised after Jimmy is killed in "To the Lost", unless the old man was actually Richard Harrow, taking Jimmy's pass-the-torch moment a little too far. Even the 93 year-old Indy played by George Hall in the TV series bookends is also missing one eye!
- It probably was made up by Tommy. "Cowboys vs. Germans"? It totally fits.
- Except Charlie Cox appears in both.
- It's the most logical way to explain the Season 4 finale.
Sorted
Jimmy claims to have no father. We know from the preview for "Broadway Limited" that Nucky has some sort of connection to Jimmy's mother that has led him to watch out for Jimmy.
I love Harrow. Maybe it's his status as a giant woobie and broken badass, or maybe it's Huston's pitch-perfect performance, but he is by far my favorite character as of the end of Season 2 . . . but I honestly think he's going to die in the first couple episodes of Season 3. The strength of his loyalty towards the Darmody means that Jimmy's murder will not go unavenged, but he doesn't have the charisma or social skills to put up an organized front against the criminal empires orbiting Atlantic City. If he does survive, it'll be as a wild card, appearing and reappearing as a spanner in the works.
They're both severely damaged goods with emotional dependences on Jimmy. Now that he's dead, it only makes sense for them to hook up and seek revenge. Gillian fucked her own son, so a man with half his face missing wouldn't be below her standards. Also, recall what the fortune teller told her early in Season 1. She would meet a man who is dangerous, and not like other men. This might have meant Luciano, but he didn't really live up to the hype, and Harrow fits that description much more accurately. In a lot of ways Richard and Gillian would be perfect for each other. This combination of people will no doubt do some serious damage to Nucky and his empire.
- Incidentally, the current synopsis for the first episode of S3 at the HBO website says that Richard is "mentoring" Tommy and Gillian is either pretending, or outright raising Tommy as if he was her own son. It would be a big shock to find that they have married each other in the meantime, but it wouldn't be out of left field either, especially if we consider that S3 begins a year and a half after the end of S2. Harrow does have a desire to start a family, and we know that Gillian tried repeatedly to marry in the past only to be shut down.
- Jossed - for the time being. Their relation in 3x01 is cold.
- And remains the same way after the season 3 finale, if not worse. Julia's arrival makes this relationship even more unlikely.
- What about the guy he's working out a merger with and his wife? They all went to Chalky's club together. Though it's possible they're just extensions of her delusion...
- He exists in a corporeal essence, but his name might not be that. He is actually a Pinkerton hired to expose Gillian as a murderer and she ends the fourth season behind bars.
- Very much jossed.
- Does jail count as an institution?
- She is institutionalized, but in Season 5.
Several reasons:
- Van Alden is now in Chicago and involved with the O'Banion gang. Bugs Moran was part of O'Banion's gang but has not been introduced yet in the show.
- Even though O'Banion's gang was mostly Irish-American, Bugs Moran himself wasn't. Like Van Alden.
- After Van Alden adopts the George Mueller alias, the two share a first name. Same first name, different surname as their real life inspiration is consistent with other fictionalized characters in the show, like Nucky Thompson (Nucky Johnson), Louis Kaestner (Louis Kuehnle) and Joe Miller (Joe Howard, the guy that Capone kills in a bar after he attacks Jake Guzik).
- Bugs Moran was called "Bugs" because he was nuts and unpredictable (same for Bugsy Siegel). The same could be said of Van Alden.
- Bugs Moran is mentioned in "Farewell Daddy Blues". As for Van Alden he joins the Chicago Outfit.
Paul has less than a year left because of cirrhosis and he wants Richard to be there for Julia (whom he has just married) and Tommy. In particular, what happened at the Artemis Club in the third season finale has been an ongoing mystery for the judge(s) deciding Tommy's custody case because 1) it makes Gillian's case bad and 2) it threatens to send Richard to the chair. If Gillian seems close to win, Richard might decide to make that information public to take her down at his own expense, but Paul would want to save him by taking the fall. After all, even if he was sentenced to death he's likely going to die before he can be executed.
- No need for that now.
- Close but no cigar. Mickey is killed by Luciano while trying to talk him out of taking the Old Rumpus, which he just got handed down to him.
- As of "New York Sour", there she is, but she never becomes major.
- No, just no.
- He has played at his father's club. Drugs? Not in papa's place at least.
Nucky wastes some precious time for no apparent reason to tell his intentions to the Commodore before tossing Jimmy out... despite being quite obvious that the Commodore does not give a shit about Jimmy. Naturally, this would mean that the Commodore was well into his 50s when he hung out with a 13 or 14 year old girl.
We're up to episode three of the series, and Jimmy already has this going against him:
- The prohibition agent knows that Jimmy pulled off the hijacking of Rothstein's delivery because one of the survivors pointed him out before he died.
- Because of Jimmy's involvement with the above, Rothstein wants him dead.
- Nucky fired him and strongly suggested he disappear for a while.
Whoever can survive those odds in a show like this is damn near a Determinator, and Jimmy's not likable enough to be that.
- Well, it seems so, as Jimmy then went to Capone, who was rising through the ranks of Turrio's outfit in Chicago at the time, and wound up becoming one of the top men in Turrio's fit. And as of the last episode, Nucky invited Jimmy back as a hitman to help deal with his rivals.
A related theory: As of “Two Boats and A Lifeguard,” Jimmy has apparently successfully pulled off his coup of power from Nucky in Atlantic City. He’s also played a pivotal role in uniting the Young Future Famous People (Luciano, Lansky and Capone) to likewise take out the old guard gangsters (Torrio and Rothstein). However, Jimmy’s claim to the throne is already shaky, with people pressuring and second-guessing him, Manny Horvitz demanding money and Jimmy being generally volatile as a result of his falling out with Nucky. It stands to reason that while he serves as a means to usher in the new criminal regime of the series, he himself will fall hard, fast and soon, especially if Eli’s comments about Nucky being smarter and unforgiving hold true and Nucky’s plans (pretty obviously pretending to accept defeat to get Jimmy & Co. think they’ve won, as well as encouraging Chalky to rile up his black constituents) pay off.
- As of the season 2 finale, "To the Lost," Jimmy is dead by Nucky's hand. This might make him a Sacrificial Lion rather than a Sacrificial Lamb, though.
I was thinking about this in light of the protagonist of The Grifters abruptly leaving for that reason. It would kind of make sense for why Jimmy left so suddenly, and why he dropped out of Princeton- it wouldn't really help, since he'd still be fairly close by.
- Confirmed in "Under God's Power She Flourishes" with the twist that he actually slept with Gillian. It's also indicated that Jimmy was probably close to getting expelled anyway in circumstances directly attributable to Gillian.
Eddie has Undying Loyalty to Nucky which doesn't seem at all deserved in light of any of Nucky's behavior to him on the show. There has to be a good reason for it, and it would make sense if he hired Eddie prior to World War I and at the time, also protected him from xenophobia. It would also be really in line with Nucky's personality for him to be quite happy to stoke anti-German xenophobia when it was in his interest- i.e. regarding Hans Schroeder.
- More than a guess, I believe this was more or less said outright in an early episode.
- The episode is Season 1's "Anastasia". Nucky tells Eddie that he put with "the war, the anti-German bullshit" on his behalf, in his usual jerkass fashion. If Eddie was victim or the intended target of actual physical violence, however, remains unconfirmed.
- As of "New York Sour", he's back in Wisconsin sans Julia or Tommy.
Hoover doesn't believe Knox's theory that there is a "nationwide conspiracy" with Nucky at its center. In his opinion the bigger threat is the leftist political agitators, particularly the African-American ones like Marcus Garvey (who he does cite by name). Besides a criminal, Narcisse is a follower of Garvey, occupies his office while Garvey is awaiting extradition, and is slowly creeping into Chalky's AC Northside. Once Chalky gets his act together and tells Nucky, he is going to mislead Hoover into thinking that Narcisse is reaching into the Northside for political reasons, and have him arrested and/or deported.
- In a very roundabout way, but technically true.
- Confirmed by the season 5 flashbacks.
- Confirmed. Nucky is shot multiple times in the series finale and killed.
Nucky is loosely based on Enoch L. Johnson, who held power in Atlantic City until his imprisonment in 1941. By that year, Tommy Darmody will be 24. Fittingly enough, the age his father was when Nucky killed him.
- Confirmed. A teenaged Tommy shoots Nucky multiple times at the end of the series finale and kills him, on the boardwalk.
