History Film / Casino

* AbusiveParents: Amy is tied to the bed while she's asleep and left alone in the house when Ginger wants to go on an escapade with her lover.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure[=/=]OnlySaneMan: Stone. [[spoiler:He still gets killed because ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure.]]

* TalkShowAppearance: Ace ends up hosting his own Vegas talk show in a bid to ingratiate himself into the community.

* StaringDownCthulhu: Billy tries to stare down Nicky, which [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown fails spectacularly]].

* SurroundedByIdiots: Comes with the ControlFreak baggage for Ace, but only Ward is shown as truly inept. A more clear example with the mob bosses; Nicky's lack of subtlety, Ace's crusade and Picano's idiocy end up derailing everything.

** Justified, Las Vegas is a virgin territory at first, but Nicky draws so much heat that he manages to attract many kinds of surveillance; wiretapping, lip reading, electronic bugs, car chases, aerial vigilance…

* SmallNameBigEgo: The main characters devolve into this. They are small pieces in the chessboard that would do better by keeping a low profile, but their success eventually go to their heads.

** In the pursuit of his own criminal endeavors, Nicky seriously undermines Rothstein's efforts to run the casino. Unlike the typical Load, Nicky is actually very good at what he does; strong-arming people and pulling heists. It's the fact that he wants to be the Boss of Las Vegas that screws Ace over. For his part, Nicky doesn't really care about how it affects Ace or even his bosses.
** Piscano, the underboss of Kansas City. "A total disaster, this guy could fuck up a cup of coffee". He is supposed to keep the scheme under control but the guy is disgruntled and just talks and complains about the skimming operation all the time… inside his bugged place, to the FBI's rejoice. He also feels he is being fleeced so he starts an expense report book. [[spoiler:The FBI finds it, and it's a blueprint with everybody's names, addresses, dates, everything. "Piscano basically sunk the whole world."]]

* LoopholeAbuse: Ace's criminal record makes it impossible for him to get a license from the Nevada Gaming Commission. But his mentor points out that he doesn't need to have a gaming license to work in a casino, he just needs to ''apply for one''. There's a loophole in Nevada law in that an applicant can start working in a casino while the application is being processed. So after a while he can change his nominal job title, putting his application to the back of the line (which has a multi-year backlog), and then rinse and repeat. Since his corporation is pouring a lot of money into Las Vegas, [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney the authorities have no reason to be inquisitive or do things by the book]]… [[NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught that is]], until the Outfit order a hit on a silent partner trying to sue their front man, and outrage from the press leads to the Gaming Commission putting Ace under investigation.

* GoingCommando: The senator's hooker.

** The inability of the Mafia Dons to accept that the counters taking a small cut of the skim for themselves is acceptable. Instead, they have [[TooDumbToLive Artie Piscano]] supervise the skims, but his big mouth and overzealous recordkeeping (done for the sake of reimbursements) eventually brings the whole operation down.

** The inability of the Mafia Dons to accept that the counters take a small cut of the skim for themselves leads to them putting the skim in the hands of Artie Piscano, whose big mouth and overzealous recordkeeping (done for the sake of reimbursements) brings the whole operation down.
* FBIAgent: Nicky and Sam are under constant surveillance. The real bosses are hundreds of miles away, and the Vegas staff go to great lengths to outwit the FBI. At one point, while surveying from a small plane, they run out of gas and have to land on the golf course ''behind Sam's house''.[[note]]This really happened, though the plane had mechanical trouble, instead of running out of fuel.[[/note]]

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Ginger is introduced playing craps with a man at one of the tables, and pocketing his chips while he's distracted. He initially lets it go, but when they are done, she finds the payment of a few chips insufficient and a confrontation ensues. She starts tossing the rest of his many chips into the air to cause a big commotion. It shows that she's a thief and con artist who is given leeway at first and isn't afraid to tear down her victim when necessary, but also that she's not as clever as she thinks she is to avoid being caught in the first place.

Until the early 1980s, TheMafia had a huge stake in UsefulNotes/LasVegas. But while they ran the casinos, they didn't run the town. They had to use fronts to get their men in to run everything. One of these fronts is Sam "Ace" Rothstein (De Niro), a Jewish gambling prodigy who, having made big money for his Mafia associates in the past, is sent to Vegas to run the Tangiers casino-hotel for the Chicago Outfit. Rothstein, a ruthlessly logical and efficient character, soon turns the Tangiers into a successful and profitable organisation for the Mob bosses, but things start to go shaky when Rothstein falls head-over-heels in love with Ginger (Stone), a beautiful and seductive but manipulative and troubled casino hustler, and when Rothstein's old friend Nicky Santoro (Pesci) arrives in town. Santoro, a psychotically hot-headed mobster, is sent by the bosses to watch over things and make sure no one interferes with Rothstein's operation, but soon decides to make Las Vegas his personal kingdom, bringing much undesired attention on Rothstein himself and creating tension between the two men that will end up [[RiseAndFallGangsterArc bringing the whole thing crashing down on top of them]].

* AndThatsTerrible: The ending states that the removal of the mob influence/the corporations taking over the casinos in Vegas as a bad thing; since, endless cycles of violent murder non-withstanding, the mob cared about the people who visited Vegas while the corporations only want the money of the tourists and are impersonal as hell.

** Frankie Marino's real-life equivalent, Frank Cullotta, couldn't have been involved in [[spoiler:the murder of the Spilotro brothers]] because he had agreed to become an FBI informant and was in witness protection at the time, after the FBI played him a wiretapped conversation of Spilotro getting sanctioned by the Chicago Outfit to kill him. In addition, as revealed in his autobiography, Cullotta [[spoiler:was offended at the Spilotro brothers being beaten to death: he considered it barbaric and would have just shot them]].

** There really was an FBI plane tracking Spilotro that went down at a golf course, but unlike in the movie, it went down due to mechanical difficulties, not because it ran out of fuel.

** Ace's real-life equivalent, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, was an FBI informant... but since this didn't become public knowledge until 2008, after Rosenthal had passed away, it's never even hinted at in the movie. His wife, Geri, Ginger's real-life equivalent, was also an informant, even sharing the same FBI handler; neither ever found out what the other was doing.

--->'''Sam:''' It's in the desert where lots of the town's problems are solved.
--->'''Nicky:''' Got a lot of holes in the desert... and a lot of problems are buried in those holes. Except you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half hour or 45 minutes of diggin'. And who knows who's gonna be comin' along in that time? Before you know it, [[LeaveNoWitnesses you gotta dig a few more holes]]. You could be there all fuckin' night.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Geri [=McGee=] Rosenthal, the real life inspiration for Ginger, was a chip hustler and was no saint, but in real life she used her money from hustling to support her sick mother, her sister's family and her first daughter with Lenny Mamor, the basis behind Lester Diamond (who wasn't her pimp, but her high school sweetheart). She was known for her generosity and her intelligence: her ex-husband Lefty stated that she could walk into a room full of Harvard [=MBA=] types and discuss business theories on their level. She even served as an informant for the FBI alongside Lefty (though neither of them knew the other was an informant and that the same agents were functioning as their handlers). People in Vegas rave about what a great person she was, and she was considered a loving mom, so her breakdown was due to the abuse from Lefty. However, whether she was a loving mom is debatable as people in the book claimed that she favored her son over her daughter. The story about her tying her child to the bed frame is based solely on [[UnreliableNarrator Lefty]]'s word for it.

* HonorBeforeReason: Played with when Ace meets with County Commissioner Pat Webb. Both Ace and Webb know how incompetent Webb’s Brother-in-Law is, but Ace refuses to give him some low level job despite Webb personally appealing to him and stating he would see it as a personal favor. A lot of Ace’s problems later in the movie would’ve been avoided if he’d just appeased the powerful, but reasonable man.

* TheFarmerAndTheViper: Sam marries Ginger, knowing well her bad ways. In his hubirs, he convinces himself that [[ICanChangeMyBeloved he can change her]], but, to their mutual misery and ruin, she reverts back to her swindler nature in little time.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Ginger is introduced playing craps with a man at one of the tables, and pocketing his chips while he's distracted. When he notices and confronts her she starts tossing the rest of his chips into the air to cause a big commotion. It shows that she's a thief and con artist who isn't afraid to tear down her victim when necessary, but also that she's not as clever as she thinks she is to avoid being caught in the first place.

* TotallyNotACriminalFront:
** Nicky opens a jewelry store called The Gold Rush as a front for his theft ring, and a restaurant called The Leaning Tower. The restaurant is frequented by numerous celebrities and important figures, many of whom are eager for the chance to rub elbows with a "legitimate businessman" like Nicky.
** It's written on the wall that The Tangiers is mob-controlled. The local authorities happily tolerate it as long as the managers stay in line and play ball.

* LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub:
** Nicky opens a jewelry store called The Gold Rush as a front for his theft ring, and a restaurant called The Leaning Tower. The restaurant is frequented by numerous celebrities and important figures, many of whom are eager for the chance to rub elbows with a "legitimate businessman" like Nicky.
** It's written on the wall that The Tangiers is mob-controlled. The local authorities happily tolerate it as long as the managers stay in line and play ball.

** [[spoiler:Frank Marino is likely promoted to Nicky's position at the end]] despite being his right-hand in many transgressions and fooled the bosses with some lies. [[spoiler:His real-life counterpart Frank Cullotta turned informant for the FBI and went into Witness Protection.]]

** A particularly clever example. In ''Film/{{Goodfellas}}'', Creator/RobertDeNiro and Creator/JoePesci played roles similar to the ones they play in this movie. However, there are certain notable differences — in particular, while Nicky Santoro is more or less the same as Tommy de Vito (a blustery psychotic maniac with a HairTriggerTemper), Jimmy Conway was a lot more similar to Tommy than in this movie (being a calculatingly murderous sociopath rather than his comparatively more benevolent and decent character here). As such, the fact that Ace here is obviously terrified of Nicky in a way Jimmy wasn't to Tommy in the earlier movie serves to make Nicky even more terrifying.
** Once again, [[Film/OnceUponATimeInAmerica Noodles and Max are sharing a girl]].

** Frank Marino beats [[spoiler: Nicky Santoro]] with a Baseball Bat. Frank Vincent had previously played Billy Batts in ''Film/{{Goodfellas}}'' [[spoiler: where he was killed by Joe Pesci who played Nicky Santoro]] WordOfGod says this reversal was intentional.

* ForcedToWatch: Before he's [[spoiler:sent to the same fate, Nicky is forced to watch his brother beaten to death and buried alive, with his head forced up when he tries to avert his eyes or struggle free]].

* IronicEcho: "You think that you're home" is said by Commissioner Webb to Sam and later by Sam to Ginger. It highlights the pervasive hypocrisy of Las Vegas, both men having willingly associated with people they know are crooks because they wanted to get something out of it, only to become unreasonably angry when they're taken advantage of in turn.