Mental Flosses' Great List of 24 Things You Might Not Know About 'Goodfellas'.

12: ONE GOODFELLAS ACTOR CLAIMS THE SIMPSONS RIPPED HIM OFF TO THE TUNE OF $250 MILLION.

Like almost every other film or TV show to portray the Mafia after 1990, Simpsons writers, producers, and animators probably took some cues from Goodfellas when constructing their very own mob crew. However, for one Goodfellas actor, the similarities were too close for comfort. In October of 2014, Frank Sivero, who played the vaguely afroed and ill-fated Frankie Carbone, filed a whopping $250 million lawsuit against the The Simpsons for appropriating his looks and mannerisms when creating a little-seen Springfield mob associate named Louie.

According to Sivero, Simpsons writers lifted his likeness while living next door to him in Sherman Oaks in 1989, the year before Goodfellas’ release. Louie debuted on the show during the 1991 episode “Bart the Murderer,” and as of this year had appeared in 21 Simpsons episodes in total.

13: THE REAL LIFE HENRY HILL WAS JUST AS SURPRISED AS YOU ARE THAT HE NEVER GOT WHACKED.

Henry Hill’s testimony against some of the most ruthless and powerful Lucchese crime family associates led to roughly 50 convictions, his stint in witness protection was short-lived, and as Hill learns from the very beginning, rule number one in the wiseguy world is “never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.” So why was Hill able to live to be a (relatively) old man and die of natural causes, instead of ultimately meeting a violent end like so many of his past associates?

According to Hill, he had absolutely no idea. In 2010, he told the Telegraph, "It's surreal, totally surreal, to be here. I never thought I'd reach this wonderful age,” and hypothesized he was still standing simply because "there's nobody from my era alive today.” Following his death in 2012, The Guardian hypothesized that bureaucratic disorganization in the organized crime world or fame might have kept Hill standing.

14: THE FILM COULD HAVE STARRED TOM CRUISE AND MADONNA AS HENRY AND KAREN HILL.

Seriously. According to producer Irwin Winkler, Tom Cruise “was discussed,” and according to producer Barbara de Fina, Madonna was “in the mix” to the extent that Scorsese scouted her at a performance of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow on Broadway.

However, Scorsese was keen on Ray Liotta after seeing him in Jonathan Demme’s 1986 film Something Wild. Liotta eventually convinced Winkler, who was skeptical of his acting chops, that he was right for the role after a chance meeting in a restaurant. Scorsese liked Lorraine Bracco largely due to how well she related to Karen, having grown up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn.

15: DURING FILMING, THE LINES BETWEEN THE MOVIE AND THE MOB WORLD WERE OCCASIONALLY BLURRED.

Louis Eppolito, a police detective who had a bit part as a wiseguy in Goodfellas, was later convicted for carrying out hits for the Lucchese crime family, which is, of course, the family chronicled in the movie. According to screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, there was an open call for real wiseguys, and Scorsese “must have hired like half a dozen guys, maybe more, out of the joint.” And Tony Sirico, who had a bit part as a wiseguy in Goodfellas but is best known for playing Paulie Gualtieri on The Sopranos, had a longer crime resume (28 arrests) than acting resume (27 credits) when the movie was released in 1990.

16: GOODFELLAS BIT PLAYER TONY LIP IS THE ONLY ACTOR TO ALSO APPEAR IN BOTH THE GODFATHER AND THE SOPRANOS.

Speaking of The Sopranos: Between Tony Sirico, Lorraine Bracco (Karen Hill), Frank Vincent (Billy Batts), Michael Imperioli (Spider), and many, many more, the show shares a huge number of cast members with Goodfellas.

However, the only actor confirmed to have appeared in the holy trinity of Mafia pop culture—the original The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos—is Tony Lip, best known for his portrayal of New York crime boss Carmine Lupertazzi on The Sopranos.

17: GOODFELLAS ONLY WENT HOME WITH ONE ACADEMY AWARD, AND THE WINNER WAS TAKEN ENTIRELY BY SURPRISE.

While met with extremely enthusiastic reviews, Goodfellas was overshadowed by Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves at the 1991 Academy Awards. The film was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, but only took home the Best Supporting Actor trophy for Joe Pesci’s portrayal of Tommy DeVito. Pesci was up against two other mobster portrayals: Al Pacino’s Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy and Andy Garcia’s Vincent Mancini in The Godfather: Part III.

Pesci spoke just five words upon accepting the award (“It’s my privilege. Thank you.”), thus delivering one of the shortest Oscar acceptance speeches ever. According to Pesci, the speech was so brief simply because he didn’t expect to win.

18: THE 1978 LUFTHANSA HEIST CASE IS STILL AN OPEN INVESTIGATION.

As Goodfellas makes clear, many of the mobsters involved with the $6 million 1978 Lufthansa heist—at the time the largest cash robbery in American history—were taken out by a paranoid and greedy Jimmy Burke, while more still were put in jail by Henry Hill’s testimony on unrelated charges. But as of 2014, the Lufthansa heist case was still an active case, as shown by the recent arrest of 78-year-old Vincent Asaro on cooperating witness testimony. Authorities claim that Asaro served as lookout and helped the getaway. And in a tie to the movie, Asaro is believed to have taken Spider to get stitched up after he was shot.

19: SCORSESE PLAYED BY A SPECIFIC SET OF RULES WHEN PICKING THE SOUNDTRACK.

From Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches” over the opening narration to The Sex Pistols' punk rock take on “My Way” over the closing credits, Scorsese’s use of music is frequently mentioned as one of the many reasons why Goodfellas is a classic. And, of course, Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla (Piano Exit)” after the discovery of Jimmy Conway’s Lufthansa heist carnage is frequently cited as one of the best uses of popular music in movie history.

While the genres included run the gamut, Scorsese abided by a set of rules when picking songs: They had to at least vaguely comment on the scene or characters, and they had to be chronologically appropriate to the time the scenes were set in.

20: IN THE SHOOTING SCRIPT, BILLY BATTS WAS WHACKED IN THE VERY FIRST SCENE.

The Goodfellas we now all know and love features Billy Batts living (and dying) to regret his “shinebox” remark to Tommy DeVito just a bit shy of the movie’s halfway mark, with just a teaser of Batts getting finished off in a trunk at the beginning. But the original shooting script actually featured Batts celebrating the most unpleasant “welcome home” party in film history in the very first scene, followed by dinner at Tommy’s mother's before cutting to Liotta narrating the immortal words “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster” and cutting to Hill’s life as a Brooklyn kid.

21: TERRIBLE PREVIEW SCREENING NUMBERS HAD THE FILM TEAM HUGELY CONCERNED.

If anyone behind Goodfellas thought it might be a classic in the making, they hardly would have known it from the movie’s preview screenings. Co-screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi claims that a screening in Orange County, California had roughly 70 walk-outs due to the violent content. According to an executive producer, one screening ended with the film team hiding at a bowling alley due to an angry audience, with one disgruntled moviegoer simply writing “f**k you” on a comment card.

22: U.S. ATTORNEY EDWARD MCDONALD PLAYS HIMSELF.

The fed laying out the ins and outs of the witness protection program to Karen and Henry Hill after they get pinched? That’s U.S. Attorney Edward McDonald, reenacting his conversation with the real Karen and Henry Hill after they flipped. McDonald volunteered himself for the part after Scorsese scouted his office as a possible filming location, and ultimately won it after a screen test. Like so much of the rest of the script, McDonald’s “Don’t give me the babe-in-the-woods routine, Karen” line was all improv.

23: THE FIRST SCENE SHOT FOR THE FILM WASN’T DIRECTED BY SCORSESE.

As you might know, the business of filming is rarely chronological—directors tend to jump scenes for cost, scheduling, and efficiency reasons. For Goodfellas, the scene that broke shooting ground was the intentionally low-budget Morrie’s Wigs commercial, which plays just before Henry and Jimmy hassle Morrie about a debt near the beginning of the film. To get the feel of the commercial right, Scorsese contacted Stephen R. Pacca, who had created his own ultra low-budget ads for his replacement window company, to write and direct the Morrie’s Wigs ad.

24: THE SHOT OF PESCI SHOOTING AT THE CAMERA IS A NOD TO A MILESTONE 1903 FILM.

Joe Pesci’s last appearance in the film, featuring Tommy shooting directly into the camera, is an homage to the landmark 1903 short, silent Western film The Great Train Robbery, which ends with a similar shot. According to Scorsese, he saw his film as part of a “tradition of outlaws” in American pop culture and films, and noted that despite nearly a century separating the two films, they’re essentially “exactly the same story.”

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