Characters / The Sopranos: Tony Soprano

The Sopranos Main Character Index
The Soprano Family (Tony Soprano, Christopher Moltisanti) | DiMeo Crime Family (Capos | Soldiers | Associates) | The Lupertazzis and Other Criminals | Mob Wives, Sweethearts and Goomahs | Law Enforcement and Civilians

Anthony John "Tony" Soprano Sr.

"More is lost by indecision than wrong decision."

^{Click here to see Tony in 1973}

Played by: James Gandolfini; Michael Gandolfini (The Many Saints of Newark).

"All due respect, you got no fuckin' idea what it's like to be Number One. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other fuckin' thing. It's too much to deal with almost. And in the end you're completely alone with it all."

The central character of the series. Capo and later Don of the DiMeo Crime Family, Tony Soprano has to juggle between the mounting pressure of running a crime organization and everyday problems with his family. After suffering a panic attack and collapsing on his son's birthday, Tony has no choice but to see a psychiatrist.

Beware of unmarked spoilers.

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A-F

• 24-Hour Armor: In the final season. During the Mob War of 2007, he always carries a carbine rifle with him, to the point of sleeping with it.
• Abusive Parents:
  • In flashbacks, both of his parents are portrayed as highly manipulative and callous narcissists who regularly prioritized their own needs at their children's expense. Whereas Tony's father is portrayed as a corrupting influence who was alarmingly indifferent to his children's emotional well-being, his mother, Livia, is revealed to have regularly subjected Tony and his siblings to physical and emotional abuse that has left them psychologically scarred as adults.
  • Zig-Zagged regarding his behavior towards A.J. and Meadow. While he genuinely loves and ultimately cares for their well-beings, he's emotionally and verbally abusive towards both of them (more-so the former) fairly often, has threatened physical violence towards them at least once, and generally does little to shield them from his temper tantrums, among other things. He's definitely a better parent to A.J. and Meadow than his own parents were towards him, but he's still very flawed.
• Action Dad: He's a family man and a ruthless, strong, mob boss at the same time.
• Aesop Amnesia: At the very end of the series finale, when AJ brings up the reflective advice Tony gave to his children at the end of Season 1, "focus on the good times", Tony has forgotten about it and even scolds AJ for being sarcastic. This showcases his diminishing wisdom, and overall degradation, as his narrative journey has driven him to a worse place than where he started.
• Affably Evil: Played straight in the first two seasons. Despite being ruthless and very rough around the edges with a lot of people, he's perfectly capable of genuine kindness (particularly towards his family), and is friendly with his friends and subordinates, so long as they don't piss him off. It's Averted HARD starting with the third season, however, largely due to the murder of Big Pussy and the stresses of being The Don gradually piling up.
• All Psychology Is Freudian: Played with. Tony Soprano cites Sigmund Freud (whom he learned about in his "semester and a half" of college) to explain to Melfi that he understands therapy "as a concept", but the show deals with psychology a lot, and it really isn't here. Often called the most accurate fictional depiction of what actually happens in therapy. Tony however is diagnosed with a compelling Freudian Excuse and Freud is also the Trope Codifier for Oedipus Complex, one of the Freudian Excuses mentioned often by Melfi despite Tony's repulsion.
• Almighty Janitor: His gambit for much of the series. Although he begins to run the family after the death of Jackie Aprile, Sr. in the fourth episode, he's technically only a capo during Season 1, and the street boss during Seasons 2-5 while his uncle Junior formally holds the position of boss. He gets the title for real after surviving a gunshot wound by a senile Junior in Season 6, after which his uncle is arrested, released into a mental institution, and cut off by everyone.
• AM/FM Characterization: His favorite musical genre is Classic Rock, particularly of the 1960s and 1970s. Over the course of the show he is seen to enjoy AC/DC, Deep Purple, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, Jefferson Airplane, Jethro Tull, Journey, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd, Rush, Steely Dan, The Clash, The Chi Lites, The Lost Boys, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, and Van Morrison.
• Animal Lover: He enjoys feeding the ducks which visit his pool. He has a sentimental attachment toward animals, being traumatized by the loss of his childhood dog (as revealed in "In Camelot"). Later, he invests in a racehorse, Pie-O-My, and becomes involved in horse racing through his friend Hesh who owns a stable. When his horse is eventually killed in a fire — possibly set by Ralph Cifaretto — Tony is deeply upset and saddened, arguably more emotional over the loss of the horse than the death of any human character on the show (except maybe Tracee's murder, who he also avenged Ralph over). When he learns that Christopher accidentally killed Adriana's dog, Cosette, during Christopher's intervention, he immediately loses his cool and becomes deeply upset, even threatening to kill Chris with his bare hands (as he did do to Ralph). When informed by Carmela that a black bear has been foraging in his home's backyard while they were separated, during Season 5, he reacts with interest, rather than fear. During his stay in the hospital after his shooting, he can be seen reading a book about dinosaurs. At the same time, several characters point out that he seems to value animal life more than human life.
• Animal Motifs: A few:
  • In a dream following her rape, Melfi symbolizes him as a rottweiler: a stocky, thick-necked, and violent beast with origins in ancient Rome that she could sic on the man who assaulted her if she really wanted to.
  • Ralphie at one point calls Tony "a dog with two bones". As in, he can't stand to see someone else happy.
  • Bears appear to be a big one for Tony. Following his separation from Carmela, the camera compares him to the black bear that keeps showing up in the house's backyard; here he's a portly and potentially violent creature who isn't welcome on the property but can't be completely forced away from it either. A lot of his fights (especially with Ralphie) are reminiscent of a bear mauling someone.
• Anti-Hero: In the first few seasons. He's a con artist, a thug, a murderer, an extortionist, and an adulterer. However, he also has a genuine love for his family and close friends, wants to make sure his children are well provided for and remain unaffected by his Mob activities, tries to keep innocents and those not involved in the business out of harm's way, has moments of guilt and vulnerability over how he hurts others, and makes an effort to help out others or do the right thing occasionally. Overtime, he becomes increasingly callous and self-centered as the stress and power of being The Don goes to his head, and he loses almost all of his previous virtues and standards. By Season 4, he's become a full-on Villain Protagonist, and by the last stretch of the series, he decides to fully embrace his evil nature.
• Arch-Enemy: Of all his enemies, Richie Aprile, Ralph Cifaretto and Phil Leotardo were Tony's biggest headaches.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: While Tony recovers from a severe gunshot wound, he notices that his old lieutenants don't follow his orders as readily as they used to, and he suspects that they now see him as weak. Tony responds by goading his hotheaded, musclebound bodyguard into fighting him. He kicks the ever-loving shit out of the much younger man in front of his entire crew, to their visible shock, then calmly walks into the bathroom and coughs up blood into the sink. No one questions his orders after that.
• Ax-Crazy: While he's not as psychotic as Paulie, Richie, or Ralph, Tony still possesses a highly impulsive, homicidal personality which often leads him to make rash judgments with little forethought of the consequences. In fact, his anger caused Ralphie's brutal death and has led to him seriously injuring other characters like Coco and Georgie. On another occasion, he was even willing to murder Paulie.
• Bad Boss: Zig-Zagged heavily. For a Mafia don, he's a very effective leader and fairly progressive. However, the nature of the business means that he often has to crack heads to get his men to follow his authority, and he takes it as a matter of principle that they kick up as much of their earnings as possible into his coffers. He's also perfectly willing to ignore his men's needs when they conflict with his personal desires, and it often causes them to suffer, such as when Benny nearly gets beaten to death by Phil Leotardo because Tony refuses to give up his cousin to him.
  • It becomes a Deconstructed Character Archetype by the final season; by then, very few of the remaining members of the DiMeo Family have any real faith in Tony as the boss, due to his callousness and questionable decision-making. It reaches the point where Carlo (and possibly Patsy) are strongly implied to be planning on turning against him.
• Badass Boast: Makes a few over the course of the series, though the following one is probably the best example:
  Tony: "I'm the motherfucking fucking one who calls the shots! And you better pay me the respect that I gave your brother. Or we're gonna have a problem... a bad one."
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Tony frequently dresses in expensive suits to go to business meetings and fancy dinners.
• Bald of Evil: He's somewhat bald and a ruthless mob boss.
• Being Evil Sucks: For all the rush he gets out of being The Don, it's made painfully clear throughout the entire series that it's destroyed him mentally and emotionally. And that's not even getting into the mess that his immediately family is.
• Being Good Sucks: Tony tries to do the right thing once in a while, but for a variety of reasons, he's never more than a few moments away from returning to form.
• Being Personal Isn't Professional: At least, it's what he believes, which he charmingly sums up by his motto "I don't shit where I eat". Too bad he makes little effort to actually let even the slightest bits of disrespect slide.
• Berserk Button:
  • Junior remarking that Tony "never had the makings of a varsity athlete" royally pisses him and he's angry every time someone brings it up.
  • In spite of his cruelty to humans, animal cruelty sets Tony off. He sees animals as innocent and sometimes associates certain animals with his family.
  • Whenever someone refers to Green Grove dismissively as a "nursing home", Tony becomes indignant and maintains that it is a "retirement community". He finally relents in calling it a nursing home in "Members Only" during his therapy session with Melfi as a way of defending his mother's behavior. It comes up one final time in "The Second Coming" during A.J.'s therapy session, when A.J. reveals Livia shared her bleak view of the world with him. At hearing this was said in the "nursing home", Tony just quietly facepalms.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Towards Janice, despite being the younger sibling. They might have a lot of issues, but laying a hand on her is ill-advised. In "To Save Us All From Satan's Power", when Tony sees that Janice is still suffering pain from the Russian mobster's retaliatory attack, he takes steps to hunt the guy down and, along with Furio, beat seven shades of shit out of him. When Janice finds out what Tony did, she is genuinely moved to tears. And Richie should have counted his lucky stars that Tony wasn't there when he hit Janice.
  • He also plays it straight with Barbara, who actually is younger than him. When Livia tries to guilt Barbara into letting her live with Barbara and her family, Tony refuses to let it happen because he knows Livia will just cause problems for her.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Both his immediate family and the crime family he heads are prime examples. He tries to unscrew 'em, but it usually backfires, chiefly because, one way or another, he's one of the main problems.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: How he sees the world.
  Melfi: [on Christopher] Do you think he'll go to hell?
  Tony: No. He's not the type that deserves hell.
  Melfi: Who do you think does?
  Tony: The worst people. The twisted and demented psychos who kill people for pleasure, the cannibals, the degenerate bastards that molest and torture little kids. They kill babies. The Hitlers. The Pol Pots. Those are the evil fucks that deserve to die, not my nephew.
  Melfi: What about you?
  Tony: What? Hell? You been listening to me? No, for the same reasons. We're soldiers. Soldiers don't go to hell. It's war. Soldiers they kill other soldiers. We're in a situation where everyone involved knows the stakes and if you're gonna accept those stakes you gotta do certain things. It's business. Soldiers. We follow codes, orders.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Tony is a Politically Incorrect Villain whose profession is long past its mid-20th Century heyday.
  It's good to be in something from the ground floor, and I came too late for that, I know. But lately I've been getting a feeling that I came at the end. The best is over.
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Downplayed at first, in that Tony's far from a shining example of a parent, but he nonetheless does a decent job of keeping his kids on the straight and narrow.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Tony's high school guidance counselor tells his mother that he has scored very high on the Stanford I.Q. test, but doesn't get any grades higher than D+ because he doesn't apply himself.
• Broken Ace: Top of the line in his profession, wealthy, charismatic, powerful, ruthless, has keen business acumen, a beautiful family, and drop-dead goomahs. Underneath it all, he suffers from some serious parental issues and other mental problems, which cause him to have panic attacks.
• Broken Pedestal: Many old-school mobsters and his father don't live up to his memories. He himself is one for Christopher.
• The Brute: While Tony's main role is being the boss, he's also this. Due to his size, he's probably the physically strongest character in the series (along with Bobby), and he takes full advantage of it. Most of the time, there isn't any strategy to his fights, he just has to get his hands on his opponent and smash them around until they stop moving. His fight with Ralph is a good example of this.
• The Bully: He's one towards his associates. Tony is a successful manager, but he verbally shreds his underlings on a regular basis.
• Bully Hunter: Despite being a major bully himself, Tony reacts angrily to others abusing the defenseless and those who are not part of the mobster lifestyle (and are thus fair game). Abuse of animals, which are both, enrages him.
• Break the Badass: He lets out a very vulnerable scream when his uncle shoots him by mistake and spends the first half of the sixth Season in a coma.
• Cain and Abel: The close relative variety with Tony B and Christopher.
• Carpet of Virility: A manly raw trait prominently seen in his private life.
• Catchphrase:
  • "You've gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me!"
  • "End of story".
• The Chains of Commanding: The hardships of being a boss is a central part of his character. In-universe, he fluctuates between Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster! and Being Evil Sucks.
• Character Development: Negative example. As the series progresses, he becomes more and more egotistical and self-centered, with his attempts to maintain some moral rectitude diminishing or disappearing completely, and abandoning many of his own standards and guidelines.
• Character Tics:
  • Tends to facepalm, touch his face, or run his hand over his head a lot when he's agitated or unamused by something.
  • Breathes heavily through his nose when he's pissed off.
• The Charmer: Downplayed. Even though most of his mob friends are just sycophantic yes men, Tony is shown to have a notable knack for charming people. It helps him at crucial moments like getting the other capos to side with him in the first season to convincing Agent Harris to save his hide during the war with Phil. It also explains why he's more successful with women than a guy with a body and temperament like his would usually be.
• Childhood Friends: With Artie Bucco.
• Cigar Chomper: Look at the picture. He can be seen smoking a cigar during important events, such as shortly before being told of his mother's death and when disposing of Ralph Cifaretto's corpse. In "A Hit Is a Hit", he gives his doctor and next-door neighbor Bruce Cusamano a box of Cuban cigars as a thank-you present for referring him to Dr. Melfi.
• Consummate Liar: His job requires him to look people in the eye and lie convincingly to them, often coming up with the lie right on the spot. A Drinking Game for every time Tony tells a lie will kill all players by Episode 3. It's a major reason why his therapy is so ineffective, as he often re-frames events to make himself look more steady, sympathetic, or beleaguered.
• Cool Car: Like most of the mobsters in the series, he's shown to be partial to Cadillac and Lincoln vehicles. When discussing with Dr. Melfi a bizarre dream in which his penis falls off, he mentions that he went to the guy who used to "work on my Lincoln when I drove Lincolns". For the first four seasons, Tony drives a burgundy 1999 Chevrolet Suburban LT 4x4, but in season 5, this has been replaced with a black Cadillac Escalade ESV. This Escalade is totaled in an accident and quickly replaced with a white Escalade ESV. Tony has this Escalade until the end of the series. He has also occasionally used Carmela's Mercedes-Benz E Class station wagon and drove it when they went places together.
• The Corrupter: To Bobby near the end of the series. Knowing that he can't physically overpower him and is morally inferior to him, he decides to bring him down to his level by sending him out on his first hit.
• Cultured Warrior : Downplayed, but relevant enough when compared to his peers. While not exactly well read, he maintains an avid knowledge and interest in history, particularly World War II. He is often shown watching programs on The History Channel about great leaders such as George Patton, Erwin Rommel, and Winston Churchill. He reads The Art of War (Sun Tzu), a work which is quoted by several other characters on the show as well, particularly Paulie Gualtieri.
  More is lost by indecision than wrong decision.
• Culturally Religious: Tony was raised Catholic and is ostensibly practicing, but is almost never seen praying, attending mass, or following any of the moral tenants of the religion. He still claims to believe in God and dislikes AJ's existentialist phase, though often experiences existential dread himself. He is also quick to dismiss Paulie and Christopher's superstitious attitudes, is uncomfortable with receiving any sort of religious counsel, and befriends a physicist in the hospital, being is taken with his attitudes on life and the universe.
• Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Zig-Zagged. Sure, Tony has a nice house, nice suits, and makes a lot of money, but he has to face his boorish family all the time (and vice versa), suffers from depression and anxiety attacks, and he always has to worry about his "friends" turning on him, maybe leading to his arrest or assassination.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has his moments. Tends to mix sarcasm and plain bluntness. An example:
  Tony: What did you wanna talk about?
  Richie: Fuckin' Dick Barone!
  Tony: Well, as long as the two of you are happy.
  • He even had his moments as a child.
  Dickie: (referring to a comic Tony is reading) There were Jews in the Middle Ages?
  Tony: Well… the Bible.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Tony Deconstructs a number of classic mob media tropes:
  • Chiefly, he's a devastatingly realistic portrayal of The Don. Tony is very much not a ridiculously powerful kingpin with a great number of resources like most Mafia bosses in fiction (or even other bosses in the show, like Carmine or Johnny); what he actually has access to is much more limited. This makes sense, since the show is set in modern times, where tougher racketeering laws give Tony a lot of trouble. The crime family he leads shows that The Mafia today is at a downfall from informants, the government, infighting within the various families, and drugs. On top of this, the family he runs is located in New Jersey, meaning that he can't compete with the power of the major families across the river. While those families work with him for mutual benefit and he is friends with a number of them, they tend to use their overwhelming power advantage to force better deals for themselves and, behind his back, they speak of him as a small fry. By the end of the series, this family is basically on its way to extinction, since they simply do not have the manpower to rebound from the Mob War they got involved in with the New York family.
    • Additionally, his personality is a far cry from the wise and honorable Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters like Vito Corleone. Despite his occasionally friendly demeanor, it's made very clear that at his core, Tony is a manipulative, childish narcissist who only gets worse over time, as all his various justifications for his lifestyle and his claims of honor are revealed as hollow or simply the excuses of a self-serving hypocrite.
  • He's also one of the Justified Criminal archetype. Tony begins the series by going to therapy and expressing remorse over a lot of what he's done, but it becomes apparent as the series goes on that he's mostly looking for salvation without doing anything to actually earn it. Tony believes that since he feels bad about the things he's done, he deserves some form of redemption and is better than his contemporaries (despite being just as complicit as them, not to mention being the boss of his crew). As his therapist continually shuts down his Necessarily Evil motivations, he mostly comes away from their sessions less with a desire to change his ways, and more armed with language to excuse the bad things he's done. This unwillingness to change is part of what eventually turns him into a full-blown Villain Protagonist.
  • Tony's parenting is also one for Evil Parents Want Good Kids. Thanks to his struggles with the morality of his criminal actions, coupled with the decline of the mafia lifestyle, Tony wants Meadow and AJ to avoid getting involved with the mob and become honest citizens. Unfortunately, the combination of Tony himself not having good role models to model his parenting after, his inability to hide what he does from the kids despite his best efforts, his own frequent Parental Hypocrisy, and constant pampering and nepotism he and Carmela bestow upon them has resulted in both Meadow and AJ becoming spoiled, materialistic brats with entitled attitudes, weak moral compasses, and poor work ethics. The few decent qualities they do have such as Meadow's academic success or AJ's abhorrence of violence are largely in spite of Tony's parenting, and are still not enough to overcome the environment they grew up in. As a result, by the end of the series Tony has largely failed to raise his children to become good kids, with Meadow engaged to the son of one of Tony's soldiers and on her way to becoming a mob lawyer, while AJ's last chance of making something of himself is working a low level job at Little Carmine Lupertazzi's movie production company.
• Delusions of Parental Love: Tony goes back and forth between insisting to his therapist that his parents were noble, upstanding people who did the best they could raising him and defending them against the (completely true and accurate) accusations that they were terrible people in reality, or begrudgingly admitting that they're a lot of the reason he's a psychological mess as an adult. At one point, his therapist points out how ridiculous it is that Tony is forgiving his mother for trying to murder him, just for putting her in a nursing home, instead blaming himself for making her do it by being a bad son. A lot of this has to do with his Italian Mafia career indoctrinating the importance and value of family above all, making it very hard for him to admit his family sucked, despite the fact he struggles to think of even one pleasant childhood memory when asked (the best he can come up with is one time his father slipped and hurt himself). After his mother's death, he backpedals considerably on the truth that she never loved him and tries to convince himself she tried her best and he deserved her abuse.
• The Don: HEAVILY deconstructed in a number of ways. While he does try to to rein in the worst parts of his own family, and keep business going to some degree, his own numerous character flaws, as well as the fucked up people he tends to manage, always get in the way. It's pretty evident by the tail end of season 5 that Tony is NOT an effective boss, nevermind authority figure.
• The Dreaded: From the moment we're introduced to him, it's clear that Tony is NOT someone you want to cross. By the fourth season and onward, everyone in the Mafia is terrified of Tony. They know how unpredictable his temper is, especially after Tony's murder of Ralph, and go out of their way to avoid his wrath. If they're smart, anyway.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: He hates the story of his father shooting a hole through his mother's beehive hairdo that Janice reminisces on because it makes their family look dysfunctional. Rather than, you know, actually being dysfunctional. It's one of many, many instances of Tony trying to ignore his parents' innumerable sins to convince himself they were good people.
• Dream-Crushing Handicap: The Many Saints of Newark reveals Tony's life goal was to become a professional football player. Unfortunately, putting aside the influence the mob lifestyle had on him, he simply didn't have the size to make it to the professional ranks.
• The Dutiful Son: The one who took care of his mother after his sisters had moved on with their lives.
• Enraged by Idiocy: He's a hothead in general, but the stupidity of his mooks and his son ranks near the top of his list of triggers. In "Remember When", he considers murdering Paulie for his annoying and dimwitted tendencies.
• Epiphany Therapy: Zigzagged; sometimes the therapy leads him to be somehow gentler, but most of the time, it is a tool to hone his managerial (read criminal) skills.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Although the Mafia is of course restricted to ethnic Italians — and it seems the Jersey crime family is fairly strict with that rule — Tony is more than happy to do business with anyone who won't snitch. And although he professes to be disgusted by homosexuality, it's clear when Vito is outed that he hates the idea of giving up a big earner much, much more than he's interested in enforcing traditional Mafia norms. He also says that a large part of him wants to just let Vito live his own life and he believes what consenting adults do is their own business.
  • Despite his bigotry towards African-Americans, he has indulged in a number of scams and schemes with blacks that have been mutually very profitable, even engaging in very congenial interactions with them in the course of said scams.
• Erotic Dream: He has had more than a few erotic dreams throughout the series, including one with his psychiatrist Dr. Melfi in her office.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: A very complex issue. Straight example at first, he has many reasons for contempt and as befits a depressive individual, he goes through phases of love, hate, denial, anger, and acceptance. By the end of the series, he seems willing to apply a nostalgia filter over his sociopathic mother.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • No matter how amoral he becomes and how much he whines about them, he truly does care about his children. His reaction to AJ's suicide attempt is to drop whatever he was eating at the moment and rescue AJ from the pool and comfort him at the poolside all while calling him "baby" and at the verge of tears. And his reaction to a Lupertazzi mobster that's sexually harassing Meadow is to personally come to their territory and literally curb-stomp the mobster.
  • His relationship with his uncle is complicated but he does care for Junior, He forgives him for the murder attempt (both of them) and is very supportive when "Uncle Jun" is diagnosed with cancer. He spends most of the last season angry with him but in their final scene, Tony desperately tries to make Junior remember his old life as he can't bear to see the old man like that and is brought to tears when he realizes his uncle is a shell of his former self.
• Even Evil Has Standards: A major part of his character. Despite his profession, he does all that he can to prevent innocent people from getting hurt in the process, and was horrified at Ralph's brutal murder of the stripper he'd impregnated and tried to abandon. Similarly, he grows increasingly disgusted with his late father after learning of the extent to which he disregarded his family's needs and silently vows to never become like him. Ultimately Subverted in that despite his attempts to do the noble thing, Tony repeatedly falls back into his destructive patterns and ultimately resigns himself to his true nature by the second half of Season 6.
  • As tenuous as Jackie's grasp on leadership was, Tony still respected him. When Brendan mocks Jackie's cancer, Tony picks him up and hurls him out the door.
  • When Pussy was suspected as a rat, Tony made it clear to Paulie that he wasn't to be killed unless absolute proof of his betrayal could be found.
  • Tony has a soft spot for animals. He is outraged to learn that Christopher drunkenly killed Adriana's dog, and he kills Ralphie with his bare hands for killing a horse.
  • Tony does provide for the family members of his men, even if he is not above trying to find ways to spend less money on them like with Vito Jr.
  • When he was a teenager, he frequently smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol, but he never did marijuana because he knew that could get him in serious trouble and jeopardize his spot on the football team.
  • He is horrified when he learns one of Meadow's friends slept with their soccer coach, and immediately wants to kill him for it.
  • He is more open minded towards AJ's relationship with Blanca, a dark-skinned Latina, than Carmela is, primarily because Blanca's also Catholic.
• Evil Feels Good: One of the reasons Tony never even considers the possibility of leaving his criminal life behind is because he likes being respected and feared, commanding power, and bending the law to his favor, such as being able to kill or beat up people he doesn't like with relative impunity. When he tries to actually be a waste management consultant in an episode to prop up a possible cover story, he's quickly bored to tears by even the glimmer of honest work and breaks out in a rash. Ultimately, it blinds him to the fact life as a mobster is self-destructive degradation, destroying both his body and soul, and that of those around him.
• Evil Genius: It's repeatedly made clear that Tony is observant, intelligent, and the brains behind the Jersey mob. He mentions once to Johnny Sack that he has an IQ of 136, which depending on the specific test could put him in the top percentile.
• Evil Is Petty: He never forgets to take time to treat people under him terribly, often for extremely minor slights against him. At one point, he seriously considers murdering Paulie, one of his closest, most reliable, and loyalist underlings, simply because Tony found him annoying.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: He hopes that both his children will escape the life of crime he has led and has always tried to conceal his criminal life from them — something that Meadow saw through early on and A.J. also realized with guidance from his sister.
• Evil Uncle: Throughout the series, Tony is a bullying Jerkass to Chris though it's not as prevalent in the early seasons where Chris was a Morality Pet and example of Even Evil Has Loved Ones for Tony. Eventually, Tony's poor treatment of Chris (coupled with Christopher's own self-destructive failings) causes him to relapse and ultimately leads to Tony killing him.
• Expy: Of Michael Corleone from The Godfather. While lacking Michael's education, level-headedness, and sophistication, Tony is nonetheless strikingly similar given that both characters feel irrevocably tied to a career in organized crime due to their heritage and struggle to balance their lifestyles as crime bosses and family men while failing miserably.
• Fat Bastard: Starts as a little overweight and gets fatter and more evil as the series goes on, bordering on being outright obese by the end.
• Fatal Flaw: A few of them:
  • Tony's Hair-Trigger Temper, Entitled Bastard factor and lack of self-restraint manifests in many ways, from his impulsive violence to his philandering, gambling and substance abuse.
  • Tony is intelligent enough to realize that the mobster lifestyle is a trap that he has gotten himself caught in, but at the same time, he is also lacks the drive and discipline to get himself out of the trap and work an honest trade.
  • Egotism is another major one for him. There are many times where Tony could have avoided conflict in the first place by swallowing his pride and being more respectful to his colleagues. It also results in him refusing to take any responsibility for problems that were caused by his poor decision making. Sil has a point when he notes Tony's sin is Pride.
• Faux Affably Evil: Starting from season 3, he dips heavily into this. He will often act friendly to those he is just about to do something horrible to, like Jackie Jr and Phil Leotardo, just to taunt them. This is mostly relegated to people who piss him off, but Tony clearly gets a kick out of it. That being said, he's still not above doing something genuinely kind-hearted from time to time.
• First-Name Basis: He's almost exclusively called Tony or T by his friends. Whenever someone calls him Anthony, it's usually an authority figure like his parents or Dr Melfi trying to reason with him.
• Foot-Dragging Divorcee: A very savvy one, he invokes Loophole Abuse by tainting every potential attorney with a conflict of interest.
• Formerly Fat / Formerly Fit: He flip-flopped between these across his lifetime; most flashbacks to his pre-teen years in the show and the first half of the Many Saints of Newark show him to be overweight (the latter film even retconning a scene from season 1 where his younger self was quite skinny) but in high school he was much more lean and athletic, having played on the football team. Over the timespan of the series, he went from being mildly overweight to looking quite morbidly obese.
• Freudian Excuse: He hates the mere concept of the excuse, yet he's diagnosed with a very powerful one; Tony was literally born into the mob, and his abusive parents wrote the proverbial book about how not to raise a model citizen. His mommy issues are one of his major malfunctions, he's full of love and hate towards his unpleasable mother, and constantly struggles with his "Well Done, Son" Guy nature.
  Tony: This is gonna sound stupid, but I saw at one point that our mothers are... bus drivers. No, they are the bus. See, they're the vehicle that gets us here. They drop us off and go on their way. They continue on their journey. And the problem is that we keep tryin' to get back on the bus, instead of just lettin' it go.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: At the same time, however, it's shown that Tony did have people in his life who tried to steer him away from a criminal lifestyle, like his high school football coach, and even had the opportunity to earn a college degree at Seton Hall before pursuing a legitimate career path. Ultimately, he chose to enter the mob on his own volition despite being well aware of the immorality of the job because he wasn't interested in honest work and had numerous chances to go straight but refused to do so. In other words, whilst his parents did warp his mindset, he still had every chance to escape the lifestyle but chose not to.
  (Subconscious) Coach Molinaro: I suppose you blame it on your father when you're crying to that shrink of yours.
  Tony: Ehh, more my mother.
  Molinaro: [chuckles] Of course, even better.

G-L

• The Gadfly: Sometimes, Tony just likes screwing with people for the hell of it, such as when he mocks Junior's *ahem* ability to please his partners, as well as getting Matt to sweep the floor while Sil is in a bad mood.
• The Gambling Addict: Gets progressively worse towards the end of the series. At one point, he tries to get Carmela to use the profits of a house sale to bet on the Jets. His inability (or unwillingness) to pay his debts (incurred due to gambling losses) basically ruins his friendship with trusted confidant and advisor Hesh Rabkin.
• Genius Bruiser: Undoubtedly a smart guy, although without much formal education (he never finished college). What book learning he has, he only really has a vague grasp of, although that's enough to set him apart from the others. He's particularly in tune with Sun Tzu's The Art of War. His strength is also never in doubt; one of the first episodes has him effortlessly pick up and throw someone across a room.
  • In The Many Saints of Newark, we learn that high school-aged Tony scored very high on the Stanford I.Q. test, but can't get his grades up past D+ because he doesn't apply himself.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Almost to the point of Exaggeration. Tony's fuse is extremely short, and only gets shorter as the series goes on. Listing all the examples of him losing his temper would likely take up multiple pages.
• Has a Type: Brunettes with strong, often toxic personality and independence. It's explicitly addressed there is a resemblance to his mother.
• Hates Their Parent: He understandably hates his mother for her abusive, narcissistic personality. He then zig-zags on this after her death, sometimes believing that she did the best she could.
• Honorary Uncle: He's not related to Christopher Moltisanti by blood, who is actually Carmela's cousin, but Tony still considers him a nephew. Tony was very close to Dickie Moltisanti, Christopher's biological father, who was a kind of second father figure to the young Tony. He's also this to children of his fellow wiseguys, due to the code of brotherhood.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Zig-Zagged. Although he is aware that he chooses to surround himself with a bunch of murderers who might be gunning for his seat, and experience has taught him which of his family members (domestic and criminal) are blatant threats to his position (such as Feech La Manna, Richie Aprile, and Janice), he has a few standout cases of poor judgment of character:
  • He completely fails to recognize the total liability that Christopher is, in spite of Christopher's chronic drug addiction, constant insubordination, blatant disrespect, and frequent antagonism towards the other capos. He resists taking any decisive action until "Kennedy and Heidi", where he finally decides to kill Christopher following a near-fatal drug-induced car crash. This blind spot is largely because Christopher's father Dickie Moltisanti was an important mentor and father figure (more-so than Johnny Boy) to Tony himself.
  • He is chronically prone to replicating his relationship with his mother in his extramarital affairs, dating manipulative, emotionally volatile, depressive, brunette women who are a constant threat to his actual marriage. Dr. Melfi tries to get him to see the pattern, but he never catches on.
  • He keeps Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero around as a soldier and close confidant in his crew, even in spite of significant evidence pointing to him as a federal cooperator. Looks exchanged by Silvio and Paulie indicate that they were aware that Sal wasn't exactly out of the woods just because Jimmy Altieri "ate the pill" for him, but didn't feel it was worth arguing with Tony since, at the time, Sal was out of the picture. "Funhouse" implies that Tony had always been aware that Pussy was a snitch, but was unwilling to face it.
  • Related to the above, a significant number of Tony's capos turn out to be federal cooperators, including Eugene Pontecorvo, Carlo Gervasi, and Ray Curto. Not to mention that Adriana, whom he develops a soft spot for, is also a cooperating informant. Tony is completely unaware in most cases, to the point that Eugene and Ray die without Tony ever discovering their betrayals. Even when he finds out, it's only after it's bitten him in the ass.
  • Downplayed with respect to his mother, Livia. He originally denies that Livia is capable of any real harm and is unable to face her deep-seated emotional issues and the impact they have left on him. Eventually, with the help of therapy and her attempt to have him whacked, he comes to face the fact that she was a deeply troubled woman who negatively impacted his childhood, but is unable to truly reconcile those truths about his mother with his Nostalgia Filter, as well as his need to displace all of his life problems on her, as he is entirely unable to consciously face the impact that Johnny Boy Soprano left on him as a father.
  • Believes his son AJ to essentially be a good person, with that being the excuse he presents for why AJ could never adopt the mafia lifestyle. This is after AJ has attempted to murder Junior Soprano, admittedly in retribution for shooting his father and folding, and not long before AJ becomes complicit (albeit unwillingly and due to hanging out with the sons of Tony's fellow gangsters) in melting a college student's toe with highly corrosive acid over a gambling debt, and collaborates in an assault against another Somalian student over a bike accident.
  • Outright lampshaded when Tony's friend Jack Massarone, an associate of the DiMeo crime family, is suspected to have become an FBI informant based on circumstantial evidence presented by Patsy. Tony meets with Massarone in private on the basis that he knows how Massarone thinks and can instantly tell when he's lying. He fails entirely, instead just makes Massarone very suspicious of Tony, and when Tony returns to the Bada Bing he wonders why he even thought he could be a Living Lie Detector.
  • In the final season, Tony believes that Phil Leotardo is, at the end of the day, primarily motivated by Greed like all the other mobsters and he can be placated by good business deals. Unfortunately, it turns out that Phil is primarily driven by pride and his principles, and he eventually decides to launch an all-out war between the DiMeos and Lupertazzis so he can get his revenge, business be damned.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: By the last few episodes, Tony is effectively the king of a pile of ruins. All his best men are either dead, on death's door, or have clearly lost faith in his leadership. He's hiding in a dinky safehouse with Red Shirts who also don't trust him, he has an indictment looming with Carlo turning witness, and he sleeps with a rifle from the sheer paranoia. If the possible hitman at the diner didn't get him, then the indictment likely will.
  • His immediate family isn't much better: Meadow is fully gearing up to be a lawyer defending criminals, Carmela is the same materialistic, miserable housewife she was from the start, and A.J.'s current career path isn't likely to keep him distracted from his depression for a meaningful period of time. Janice is also well on her way to becoming Livia, and Junior has fully succumbed to dementia.
• Hypocrite: Tony is rarely one to practice what he preaches, to say the least:
  • He believes all men should be "The strong, silent type like Gary Cooper". He repeatedly proves himself to be neither, easily losing his temper.
  • He goes ballistic at even the thought of his wife cheating on him and is furious at Jackie Jr. for being unfaithful to Meadow. Tony himself sleeps around all the time.
  • Throughout the series, he ridicules the stereotypical psychiatric patient whining about his mother and shows contempt for anyone he sees as displaying self-pity. In the series finale, Tony delivers a self-pitying monologue about his hard childhood to AJ's therapist and is usually just as quick to follow one of the moments of ridicule with a pity party of his own.
  • As he makes clear during Christopher and Eugene Pontecorvo's making ceremony, everyone who is a part of the DiMeo Crime Family must prioritize the good of the organization over their blood family. Tony does not follow this at all, as he clearly favors his own kin, particularly Christopher and Tony B, professionally and gives them privileges and breaks he'd never give any other associate. It's particularly egregious in Tony B's case, as he's not even an official member of the crime family.
  • After Bobby beats him in a fight, Tony berates him for "sucker-punching" him, calling it a cheap move, this despite almost every fight Tony's won in the series being started by him sucker-punching the other guy.
  • Christopher calls him one to his face in "Amour Fou", after Jackie Aprile Jr. and his friends rob Eugene Pontecorvo's card game. Chris calls for Jackie's head, as made men were shot at, with Furio being wounded and dealer Sunshine fatally hit, but Tony intimates he wants to give Jackie a pass, as Jackie Sr. was his close friend. Chris explicitly states that Tony expects everyone else to follow the rules, while Tony himself does whatever he pleases, ignoring the rules if they're inconvenient.
  • Believes that being a "bad son" is one of the worst things a man can be. It's later revealed that from a young age, he became an accomplice in his father's infidelity, lying to cover his father's cheating. Just after Livia had suffered a miscarriage. He also has invoked Country Matters regarding his mother more than once.
  • In "For All Debts Public and Private" Tony berates his men for not fulfilling their obligation to Junior when he cons his uncle in the same episode.
  • After Christopher goes to rehab, Tony frequently makes fun of him for abstaining from alcohol even though he was the one who forced him to get clean in the first place. And then whenever Christopher suffers a relapse, Tony will violently berate him for falling Off the Wagon.
  • He occasionally mocks Bobby and, to a lesser extent, Vito for their weight despite him also being fat and getting progressively more so as the show goes on.
  • What ultimately pushes him over the edge to kill Chris is him causing a serious road accident while high. In the self-same episode, he drives a girl out into the Mojave while off his face on peyote.
  • Dr. Melfi refuses to provide any more therapy to Tony after she reaches the conclusion that he is beyond therapeutic help, it just makes him better at manipulating people and at justifying his criminal actions. Tony tries to backtrack at first, but when he realizes her decision is final he just calls her immoral.
• Iconic Outfit: The white bathrobe, A-shirt, boxer trunks, and slippers, which are inherited by his Cleaver expy.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!:
  • He briefly went to college, was an athlete, and sometimes remarks his life could have been very different under other circumstances, as he remembers that his mother frustrated the more legit dreams of his father.
  • One of his nightmares was where he was in a locker room all by himself, only to come upon the office of his deceased football coach. The coach, who is once again a living man, chastises Tony for dropping out of school. He remarks how he spent countless hours with Tony on the football field, only to throw it away by going into crime. He said if Tony had listened to his conscience, he could have continued on in a career in sports, possibly succeeding him as a coach. This gave insight to that Tony did not originally intend to be a mobster and had some inklings towards a legitimate life.
• Ignored Epiphany: After recovering from his coma, he realizes that life is too short, and vows to treat every day as a gift and better his relationships with others. It isn't too long before he's worse than ever, gambling more frivolously, getting angered more easily, treating his family members far more rudely than he did prior, and has done nothing to improve himself as a person and is getting worse instead. His therapist notices he's not exactly succeeding in his vow to treat every day like a gift and tries to steer him back on course, but all in vain; by the end of the series, Tony is a morally broken man.
• I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: He uses this justification whenever he has an affair with another goomah, as though he has to seduce every attractive woman that exchanges more than one sentence with him. His therapist points out this is nonsense, and as a grown adult, he has every ability to control his inhibitions, in the same sense you don't have to eat all the food at the table. Not that Tony ever takes it to heart, more than once attempting to seduce her too.
• I Was Quite a Looker: In the present of the series, Tony has gotten quite overweight and is balding in his middle age, but it is frequently brought up that he had a strong and athletic build in his youth, and was somewhat of a Long-Haired Pretty Boy in his heyday.
• It's All About Me: At first, he's just rather self-involved. But by the end of the series, it's warped to the point that he sees everyone (aside from his immediate family) as a tool for his own gratification or self-advancement and increasingly devotes all his time jealously guarding the power he spent his whole criminal career accumulating.
• Jerk Jock: In high school as a star athlete for the Varsity football team. Nevertheless, even as a middle-aged mobster, he has a vicarious fixation on AJ's high school sports and frequently displays a lingering fondness for locker-room humor, much to the annoyance of his wife and children.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Played straight at first, then gradually Subverted as the series goes on. He genuinely loves his family and friends, and he really does make an effort to change his ways, even if it tends to be futile. However, as time goes on, he discards his virtues and becomes just as despicable as the mobsters he butts heads with. He also ends up hurting the family and friends he claims to care about with his own selfish behavior and narcissism, as well as murdering both his cousin and nephew. By the end of the show, he possesses virtually no redeeming qualities, bar his love for his immediate family (however tainted).
• Jerkass: Even beyond his stone-cold personality and ruthlessness, he is still an angry, racist asshole towards virtually everyone he talks to. Whenever he seems to improve, he's quickly back to his same old dickish self before anyone knows it.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Tony tends to raise a valid point in his rants and grievances toward others, even if his reasons are self-serving and never fully justify his asshole behavior.
  • Whilst he is horribly abusive towards Georgie, he is still paying him a salary as he himself points out and the latter should be able to work a phone at his age or at least ask Tony how to operate it if he's unsure.
  • When he says that Tracie should definitely abort her next kid if it comes from Ralphie as the father, you have no idea how much he means it!
  • He is right that Carmela is happy to benefit from his immoral acts and only disapproves when they affect her negatively.
  • Similarly, he's right that Meadow's self-righteousness about Tony's lifestyle is pretty hollow considering that she's happy to live a life of luxury with the money he earns from it.
  • It may come off as harsh but he's right that the customers at Vesuvio are only annoyed by Artie's corny jokes.
  • He's trying to deflect the attention from the fact he was trying to have sex with Adriana when he says Chris seems like he should be more concerned for her than he is but it is still a valid point.
  • When Chris looks like he disagrees with his murder of Ralph, Tony points out that Ralph was a terrible person who had it coming for a long time.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: While Tony was always rather off-kilter and [[{{Jerkass a massive prick]], some of his actions in the earlier parts of the series were at least understandable. Come the final season, he does nothing to hide how warped he really is.
• Justified Criminal: At least, that's how he sees it. It becomes more and more clear as the series goes on that he's just making excuses for himself.
• Karma Houdini: While he does suffer from some sort of karma a good portion of the time, Tony often gets away with the bad stuff he does, largely due to being The Don. This trope is arguably Subverted by the final stretch of the series, however.
• Kavorka Man: Despite growing increasingly bald and fat with age, his notorious reputation as the powerful Don of a Mafia family, and his charismatic personality work almost unfailingly in his favor when seducing women. Any woman he wants, he easily can get (only his therapist consistently rejects his advances, and even she repeatedly admits being attracted to him). He often cheats on his wife, who became attracted to him for similar reasons while in high school (coupled with the fact that he was considerably more attractive then, as evidenced by a flashback from "In Camelot" and in The Many Saints of Newark).
• Kick the Dog: A central part of his characterization. His kinder actions are usually followed by malignant and purely spiteful actions towards someone. Georgie, the bartender at the Bada Bing, is one of the frequent dogs, and Christopher is usually not far behind.
• Kick the Morality Pet:
  • He callously reacts to Artie's suicide attempt, making it about him and forcing Artie to keep quiet about his involvement as he cares more about protecting his own reputation than what Artie is going through.
  • Plenty of examples in Season 6B:
    • Tony's murder of Christopher, the same man who was like a son to him and saw Tony as a Mentor in earlier seasons. He shows no remorse afterwards, only relief and satisfaction.
    • He desires to help spoiler: Vito's family with some good money so they can move on, but his own priorities interfere and finally goes with the cheapest, harshest option.
    • He disparages, insults and finally alienates his friend Hesh over a gambling-related loan debt.
    • Has a really nasty fight with Carmela after she doesn't share the spec house money for his gambling.
      Tony: When I die, you can live in a dumpster for all I care!
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: In the series finale, he finds a stray cat at his safehouse during the war with New York and takes a liking to it. He brings it back to Satriale's, where it stares at the deceased Chris Moltisanti's photo (much to Paulie's dismay).
• Large and in Charge: He is a big dude and The Don. Second only to Gentle Giant Bobby, he's the biggest guy on his crew and has enough Stout Strength to deliver quite a beating.
• A Lighter Shade of Black:
  • As morally repugnant as Tony can be, the likes of Ralph Cifaretto, Richie Aprile and Phil Leotardo are still around to show that Tony is not the worst of the worst.
  • For how narcissistic Tony can be, even he doesn't hold a candle to Janice, who doesn't actually love her children, and sees them more as her possessions.
• Like Father, Like Son:
  • It's discussed by Livia and Junior in the show and confirmed in The Many Saints of Newark, that teenage Tony did many of the same misdeeds that AJ does in the series. Many Saints shows that Tony also got in trouble at school for cheating on tests and frequently partook in underage drinking.
  • His father also had anxiety attacks and passed out once or twice a year.
  • As the show progresses, he takes more after his mother's narcissistic, self-pitying personality, being unable to accept that people around him could improve and wanting to spread his internalized misery to them.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: There are many signs that he goes after women who remind him of Livia. Especially clear in Many Saints of Newark where Vera Farmiga plays young Livia and she looks and sounds just like Carmella in the series.
• Like a Son to Me:
  • Is this to his Uncle Junior, even though they frequently argue and wrestle for power in the family. Junior was the only one genuinely concerned about Tony and his future when the guy was growing up while Johnny remained apathetic, Livia actively abused him, and Dickie corrupted him.
  • Early on he feels this way regarding Chris, although their relationship is repeatedly strains, usually due to Chris' impulsive decisions and inferiority complex, and eventually deteriorates beyond repair by Season 6. Tony realizes Chris hates him deep down and in turn loses all respect for Chris when he crashes his car while driving high and kills him.
• Loan Shark: Usury makes up a big portion of Tony's income, and he is ruthless when someone misses a payment, even with childhood friends like David Scatino.
• Lonely at the Top: Carmela points out to him in an argument that Tony only has underlings who coddle up to him to try and earn his favour. Aside from Artie Bucco, Tony lacks genuine friends; the closest ones he has in the mob are Jackie Aprile Sr., Pussy Bonpensiero, and Silvio Dante. Jackie and Pussy die early on (the latter by Tony's own hand), and he increasingly alienates Artie as the title of "Boss" goes to his head.
  "All due respect. You got no fucking idea what it's like to be number one. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other fucking thing. It's too much to deal with almost. And in the end, you're completely alone with it all."
• Love-Obstructing Parents: His over-protectiveness of Meadow has led to feuds between them on several occasions. For example, her first boyfriend at college was of part black heritage, and Tony's racism led him to try to drive him away. Meadow learned of her father's actions and didn't speak to him for several months, eventually reconciling at Christmas in 2001. Tony actually likes Meadow's second boyfriend, but Tony's dangerous criminal lifestyle and Meadow's willingness to go along with it nonetheless proves a major deciding factor in him leaving her later.

M-R

• Manchild: In general, Tony tends to come across as a big kid in the body of a middle-aged mobster. He outright tells Valentina (one of his later goomahs) that what he finds funny are the same things an eight-year-old would find funny. There are also several times throughout the show where he gets into arguments with his children, and they're a lot like schoolyard brawls.
• Manly Tears:
  • For all his strong, silent type beliefs, he wasn't afraid to shed tears when saving his son from an attempted suicide.
  • When he hears the news of his best friend Jackie Sr.'s death, he breaks down in tears in front of his capos, who are entirely understanding of him.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Definitely has wealth. Nice suits and a good dinner. That's his good taste. He gets called a gavone (a boorish goombah) by his mother-in-law after some dissonance at a party with some cultured Italians.
• Meaningful Name: His surname alludes to the historic practice of castrating young male soprano singers to prevent their voices from deepening after puberty. Much of Tony's characterization hinges on his obsession with traditional masculinity, and his inability to fit into a changing social landscape where such virtues are increasingly viewed as outdated—leading him to feel symbolically "castrated" by modern society.
• Mentor: For Christopher in the earlier seasons.
• Middle Child Syndrome: Janice got most of his father's attention (mostly part of a scam he was part of), while Barbara, being the youngest, got most of his mother's attention.
• Mock Millionaire: Downplayed. Technically he is a millionaire, as he mentions in one episode that his house is worth $1.2 million. However, it's eventually revealed that Tony doesn't actually make as much money as his lifestyle would suggest and the reason he is able to afford it, as well as all of the vices he indulges in, is because he lives paycheck-to-paycheck. Hesh even points out Tony spends most of his money as soon as he earns it and has no real liquidity or savings. This causes stress for Carmela, as she knows that if anything happens to him it's unlikely the family will be unable to continue living their life of comfort. When Tony think he's going to be arrested in Season 2 and is getting ready to go on the lam, he's only able to leave behind with his lawyer the relatively modest sum of $400,000 for Carmela.
• Morton's Fork: One interpretation of his ultimate ambiguous fate in the final episode. Either he is immediately shot to death by a hitman in front of his family, or he'll be indicted and sent to prison for a long time; both possible fates would spell the end for his him and his reign.
• The Movie Buff: Has a wide collection of works and a projection room in his house. He regularly watches movies or documentaries at home and usually draws conclusions from them that he then applies to family or business matters. Predictably, he loves gangster films like The Public Enemy (1931) and The Godfather. However, he shows disdain for Goodfellas, since the film was Based on a True Story and Henry Hill sold his life story after ratting to the Feds.
• My Greatest Failure: He was supposed to join Tony Blundetto in a robbery, but failed to because he got into an argument with his mother and suffered a panic attack. To hide this from associates (since saying he fainted after getting yelled at my his mother would've been far too embarrassing to admit), he lied that he was unable to participate because he had been mugged "mulignans" (aka: black men) and injured. Tony B. went ahead and got arrested.
• Narcissist: Despite displaying redeeming qualities such as a heartfelt concern for his family's well-being along with a childlike fondness for animals, he is portrayed throughout the series as an exceedingly vain and ruthless mobster who considers himself entitled to unquestioned respect or obedience from those around him. However, unlike most real-life narcissists, he demonstrates empathy for certain people in his life. He's aware of how his actions affect others and feels legitimately guilty when innocents end up in the firing line, as was the case when Ralphie murdered Tracee. Nevertheless, he is too consumed by his own selfish desires to meaningfully change his ways. Ultimately, it's left ambiguous as to what the precise nature of Tony's mental dysfunction is, and whether he's truly heartless.
• Necessarily Evil: He believes many of his evil actions are a lesser evil, and sometimes the show portrays him in this light — particularly considering that most alternatives for head of the Jersey crew are shown to be too violent, too cruel, too stupid, or unable to handle the pressure.
• Nepotism:
  • He naturally embraces the Thicker Than Water approach, favouring his kin professionally and tolerating situations with Christopher and Tony B that would be finished with a bullet to their head if the same events happened with any other associate. It is eventually subverted when they cross the limits of Tony's leeway.
  • Janice and A.J also benefit from some unwarranted favoritism regularly.
  • Zigzagged with Bobby Baccala, who becomes underboss after he marries Tony's sister, but given Bobby is one of the most reliable members of the family, nobody considers the promotion undeserved.
• Nervous Wreck: Tony's anxiety, depression, and panic attacks are what lead him to start taking therapy sessions from Dr. Melfi at the beginning of the series.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: Tony maintains a policy of not killing civilians, although it doesn't stop him from abusing and exploiting them. It's ultimately moot, as most of his capos are responsible for murdering civilians, on screen. Chris and Paulie in particular have murdered several. This is subverted in "Soprano Home Movies" when he has the civilian brother-in-law of a Quebec associate killed to save money on a pharmaceutical deal.
• Never My Fault: Roughly half of the conflicts and dilemmas he faces are a consequence of his own behavior and poor decisions, but to him, everything is always someone else's fault, be it Carmela, Chris, Paulie, or his mother. His refusal to take responsibility all but destroys most of his relationships by the end.
• Noble Bigot: From his point of view, anyway. In reality, he's overtly mean and bigoted towards Meadow's boyfriend Noah just because he's black and cozying up to his daughter.
• Noble Demon: Deconstructed. It's clear from the get-go that Tony is not a good person, but he possesses a few altruistic qualities that set him apart from his underlings and fellow mobsters. Although it's probably motivated more by pragmatism than a desire to do the right thing, he tries to keep his gang's activities discrete, quiet, and bloodless while minimizing the destructive excesses of his more unruly compatriots. More than anyone else in the family, he's horrified at Richie paralyzing Beansie and the brutal murder of Tracee. However, in Season 3, he begins to compromise what few principles he has by assenting to the rise of Ralph Cifaretto, a depraved mobster whose wanton cruelty completely disgusts him. By the end of the series, he's resigned himself to being evil and given up on maintaining any kind of moral guidelines. The only things that keep him from being utterly monstrous are his loved ones and the fact that his enemies are even more heinous and despicable than him.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Tony was based on real-life New Jersey mobster Vincent "Vinny Ocean" Palermo, who later became the DeCavalcante crime family's acting boss before becoming an FBI informant in 2003. Elements of Sam DeCavalcante were also added to Tony Soprano.
• Nominal Hero: Tony is hardly a model human being, but he's generally better than most of his enemies and tries to avoid harming civilians or people not involved in the business. However, this is gradually Subverted as the show goes on. By the end, he has barely any standards whatsoever and is just as ruthless as his enemies.
• Not Helping Your Case: Tony has a bad habit of this. A good example is when Tony and Adriana get into a car accident, the rumor goes around that it happened because Adriana gave Tony a blowjob, Chris is naturally furious and asks Tony if it's true. Instead of just telling Chris the truth and telling him it didn't happen, he just insults him and says he should be happy that Adriana is staying with him. Predictably, this only makes tensions worse.
• Obliviously Evil: He's usually VERY aware that what he's doing is deplorable, but it's nonetheless Discussed in one instance. When asked, Tony doesn't think he or any other mobsters will go to Hell for what they've done, because they're "soldiers", and what they do is just business (as though they were all forced into this lifestyle), and because they follow "codes", it makes them moral (even though they frequently break these codes over the course of the series). While it COULD just be him making excuses for himself and his underlings, like he always does, there's just enough genuinity in how he's saying what he's saying that there's a chance he really believes it.
• Only Sane by Comparison: Played with. He's often clinically labeled as a sociopath by professional psychiatrists and law enforcement, and not for no reason. However, many of his colleagues are even MORE psychopathic, which tends to make Tony appear balanced and rational in comparison.
• Papa Wolf: He may not be the most morally upstanding of fathers, but one of his most consistently humanizing features is his sincere love for his children, Meadow and AJ. They may not always get along with their dad, but God help you if you insult, harass or endanger them (to give one example, when Coco drunkenly made vulgar sexual comments about Meadow, Tony beat, pistol-whipped, and curbstomped him). Additionally, one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the series is Tony's soliloquy in Dr. Melfi's office when he concludes that AJ has inherited his depression.
• Parents as People: He's initially portrayed as a rough around the edges, but ultimately loving father towards Meadow and AJ. Unfortunately, he gradually morphs into an outright example of Abusive Parents by the end.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Some of his victims have done nefarious things to him or others, such as Bevilaqua and Ralphie. ZigZagged in that most of these examples occur during moments where the characters are in a vulnerable or quasi-sympathetic position, which makes Tony's retaliation against them sickening.
• Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: Shows more morals than his colleagues, but sometimes has to do the wrong thing because it's expected of a ruling mob boss.
• Pet the Dog: He has a number of humanizing moments with his loved ones, friends and even people he doesn't know very well, all of which keep him from being completely unlikable:
  • A particularly poignant one occurs in "Employee of the Month". When Dr. Melfi is raped and the perpetrator is allowed to go free on a technicality, she feels helpless and betrayed by the political justice system. She seriously considers telling Tony about the attack, enlisting him to exact brutal revenge against the rapist, but ultimately decides against it. At the end of the episode, Melfi breaks into tears during her therapy session with Tony, who gets up from his chair and puts his hand on her shoulder, and asks in the gentlest manner he could manage "what's wrong?". What's notable here is that Tony's strong sexual attraction for Dr. Melfi has been well documented, but there is no hint of lust or other prurient intent here: he's genuinely concerned for her as a human being and a friend and surprisingly tender.
  • When Tony finds out Ronald Zellman got the African-American cop who issued Tony a ticket demoted and denied overtime (forcing him to get a demeaning part-time customer service job), Tony feels bad and attempts (poorly) to get Zellman to reconsider the decision. It also turns out the cop may be suffering depression similar to Tony’s. Subverted in that, because of an argument with Meadow about racism, Tony allows Zellman to squash the cop's attempts to have a black officers' group to investigate his case, purely out of spite. Finally, Tony, once again out of guilt, tries to give the cop an enormous tip under-the-table at his part-time job, only for him to refuse out of disgust.
  • While Tony bleeds Davey dry without much remorse he did at least give him fair warning about getting involved at first.
  • He was genuinely fond of his brother-in-law Tom's father, who often visited the Soprano residence for Christmas, and was shocked by the man's sudden death. He even gives Tom a "boost" to help cover the funeral costs just because of his respect for the man.
  • In the series finale, he holds the hand of a comatose Silvio to comfort him.
  • While he's fond of homophobic remarks himself and understands how it goes against their old school "tough guy" principles Tony genuinely doesn't seem to care much when it comes out Vito is gay and was seemingly going to overlook it. While this seemed mostly out of pragmatism of Vito being one of his best money makers as well as gratitude for all the service he'd done for him it also seemed like Tony really just didn't care so long as he kept it to himself. He implies he'd suspected other guys in the past of the same thing but never choose to press the issue.
  • When Pie-O-My falls ill during the night and Ralphie refuses to help her, Tony rushes to the stables, pays the vet's bill himself, and sits on the hay with her in her stall, petting the animal and reassuring her that everything would be alright.
  • When Chris gives Adrianna shit for her IBS, Tony later comforts her and expresses that people don't take health issues seriously.
  • In-between Seasons 5 and 6, he promotes Benny Fazio to soldier after Phil Leotardo brutally assaulted him and fractured his skull, rewarding him for his loyalty and also protecting Benny from future reprisals due to his status.
• Phrase Catcher: "He got a lot on his mind" is often said in reference to him.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He has a rather derogatory, disrespectful viewpoint towards pretty much every group that isn't Italian, with ethnic minorities and gays, in particular, being prime targets. He frequently uses slurs quite arbitrarily and disparagingly, even disparages other Caucasians, calling Irish-Americans "Micks" at one point and often using the slur "medigan" for WASP Americans. Interestingly enough, despite referring to African Americans with various racist pejoratives (ditsoon, charcoal briquette, and mulignan), Tony never outright uses the N-word (in contrast to his fellow mobsters who show no hesitation).
  • Some episodes make it clear that Tony's bigotry is only surface-level at best, given him grudgingly admitting to Melfi that he doesn't really have an issue with what gay people do behind closed doors, in addition to showing genuine guilt towards African Americans at various points in the show. However, this does not preclude Tony from being extremely hateful in many circumstances regardless.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • A ruthless boss who knows when to avoid a given action for the sake of the business, not out of moral qualms. He is against killing Vito when he's outed as homosexual, if only because Vito is one of his top earners, and feels like it would be a bad financial decision.
  • He states that the main reason he keeps AJ away from the criminal side of his life and doesn't groom him to be a successor, despite the importance of family ties in the business, is because he knows that his son simply isn't cut out for a life in the Mafia and probably would not survive. The fact he's aware that the organization's heydays are over and the career's risks outweigh the benefits also plays a part in this.
• Properly Paranoid: He is very prone to this, as expected from a mob boss with anxiety and depression. He knows RICO and the government are out there stalking him time and again.
• Psychopathic Man Child: Tony is often shown to have ENORMOUS anger issues and a lack of emotional control, displays a crude and juvenile sense of humor, shows deep-seated insecurity and a need to insult and belittle others, neglects the long-term consequences of his actions, and at times comes across as an overgrown, emotionally immature jock. Even Melfi mentions how childish Tony can be to her therapist.
  Melfi "He can be such a little boy sometimes."
• Race Fetish: He has a strong preference for women of European, particularly Italian descent, with dark hair and eyes and exotic features. His mistresses have been, in chronological order, of Russian, Italian, Italian/Cuban, and Jewish descent. He favors dark features but also had a few brief flings with blond European women, including a Russian housekeeper and a stewardess from Icelandic Airways. He had one very short encounter with an Asian-American escort during "The Test Dream".
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Played with. He's genuinely supportive of Bobby's clean record and admits that this particular Mafia custom is far more hassle than it's worth. However, when Bobby beats him in a fight, he uses this against him and orders him to make his first hit.
• Really Gets Around: Has plenty of mistresses and one-night stands, in spite of the fact that he's not exactly catwalk material.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives these out all the time, especially in later episodes. Characters on the receiving end have included Livia Soprano, Richie Aprile, Jackie Aprile Jr., Jennifer Melfi, Johnny Sack, Artie Bucco, A.J., Janice Soprano, Meadow, and even Carmela.
  Tony: (to Feech La Manna) That's another thing. I don't want to hear any more how it was in your day. From now on, keep your antidotes to local color, like Dynaflow or McGuire sisters. Otherwise, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
• Redemption Rejection: He seems to become nicer after he wakes up from his coma in season 6... then suddenly becomes far more of a raging dickhead than he ever was before.

S-Z

• Sad Clown: While talking to his therapist, he describes himself as a "Sad Clown": putting on a happy, joking face to his family and friends while keeping his pain locked away. His claims come across more as self-pitying than anything else, given his behavior throughout the series, and his therapist quickly calls out the fact his description doesn't seem accurate at all.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: A given when one is a rich and powerful mobster. He also serves as the invoked connection for other characters.
• Secret Identity: A paper-thin one, he is a "waste management consultant" for Barone Sanitation and usually goes by the name of Mr. Spears in the civilian world. It doesn't fool anyone, but legally, he's untouchable... at least for most of the series.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Zig-zagged, he tends to favor casual and sportswear, but suits up when the occasion calls for it.
• Sibling Rivalry: He has a troubled relationship with Janice, due to her flighty and impulsive nature, which leads to her constantly relying on him for financial and emotional support. On the other hand, he gets along fine with Barbara, largely due to her normality.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Tony was always evil, but he still had some semblance of morality for most of the series. By the time he recovers from his coma and vows to treat every day as a gift, he ends up becoming one of the most morally bankrupt characters in the series. He insults his family behind their backs, becomes a wastrel with gambling, starts acting more aggressive and belligerent towards everyone, and considers killing some of his most loyal men (while actually offing one of them). The fact that he doesn't have any panic attacks after his recovery in the hospital shows that he's becoming more comfortable with who he truly is.
• The Sociopath: Deconstructed, and ultimately subverted. While he displays some trademarks of sociopathy, including a grandiose sense of entitlement and poor impulse control, he is nevertheless revealed to be capable of experiencing genuine shame and remorse for his crimes as well as making sincere (albeit largely ineffectual) attempts to perform acts of genuine kindness for those outside his immediate family. However, his self-absorbed and covetous nature is entirely consistent with narcissistic personality disorder.
• Stout Strength: Tall, stocky, and usually at odds with his weight, Tony is nonetheless quite strong and able to deliver a hell of a beating. He played football in high school and says he used to bench press 300 lbs.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Especially Paulie and Christopher. A good portion of his problems is generated by sub-par competence or judgement from his underlings.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Tony often gets annoyed and, at times, extremely jealous when people around him appear to be happier than he is, and often goes out of his way to take measures to drag them down to his level, making them as miserable as himself, even at times when it is outright detrimental to him. The crowning example being when Janice starts working on controlling her anger issues through anger management classes and actually shows some real progress (something Tony himself hadn't been able to achieve during his years in therapy). He decides to cruelly and smugly bully and antagonize her by repeatedly mentioning her disappeared son Harpo until her resolve finally gives out and she explodes at him.
• Tantrum Throwing: Tony is prone to this, a trait later recreated by the boss in Cleaver. Tony is also at the receiving end of a steak when he infuriates Gloria Trillo.
• Tin Man: He would like to be The Stoic, admiring the public image of Gary Cooper, "the strong, silent type", but to his chagrin, he's incapable of keeping his feelings and impulses at bay. Rather than looking for a way to find strength within himself, he blames it on several factors: too many therapists, dysfunctions, and excuses for everything and people don't take things in stride anymore.
• Too Clever by Half: Tony is a lot smarter than his associates and even received a score of 136 on an I.Q. test when he was a teenager. However, because Tony is aware of his intelligence, he constantly thinks that he knows better than everyone else and makes several poor decisions as a result of his hubris. Junior even calls him out on it on a few occasions.
  Junior: Keep thinking you know everything. Some are so far behind in a race that they actually believe they're leading.
• Took a Level in Cynic: He was already quite cynical at the start of the show, but by the end he has become so cynical that he forgot the optimistic words he told AJ in the first season, and thought it was a joke.
  A.J.: Focus on the good times.
  Tony: Don't be sarcastic.
  A.J.: Isn't that what you said one time... "Try to remember the times that were good"?
  Tony: I did?
  A.J.: Yeah.
  Tony: Well, it's true, I guess.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Seems to take a new level with each passing season. Reaches its peak in the second half of season 6, where his callousness and selfishness causes some of his long time underlings and associates to turn their backs on him for good.
• Trademark Favourite Food: Gabagool (cappocola). It’s his go-to comfort food whenever he’s stressed even if it's what triggers his panic attacks. He also shows a preference towards bialys in later seasons.
• Tragic Hero: Assuming his eventual downfall or assassination, Tony Soprano is probably the biggest example of a tragic hero in modern television. He actually wants to be a good person, a good father, and a good husband, and he tries hard, even getting flashes where you hope he'll improve (such as when he realizes that the stripper Ralphie just murdered was the same age as his daughter), but is incapable of overcoming his own ego, shortsightedness, and lack of empathy. There's also the fact that he's, you know, a mob boss.
• Tragic Keepsake: Tony actively defies it with an artistic picture of Pie-O-My. He gets rid of it because it brings painful memories and gets very angry when he discovers that Paulie rescued it from the garbage and restored it. The picture is finally disposed of for good.
• Tragic Villain: Despite being a hardened criminal, he has a very powerful reason why he's in The Mafia. Tony is emotionally manipulated and terrorized by his difficult mother throughout his childhood and well into his adult life. One notable incident featured his mother threatening to stick a fork in his eye when he was only ten years old. Tony's father was outwardly friendly, but also a manipulative sociopath who indoctrinated his son into violent crime and the mob. It's implied that the various degrees of emotional manipulation and terror Tony suffered under his parents is what turned him into the violent, savage man that heads the New Jersey crime families.
• Trapped in Villainy: A recurring theme for him; he speaks at length about it to Melfi. He never seriously considers retiring from the mob, feeling that he was born into it and has no other path in life. During Davey Scatino's bust out, he attempts to console his downtrodden friend with the knowledge that when the mobsters have driven his business into bankruptcy, Davey, unlike Tony, will get to walk away and start again. For all that Tony feels welded to the footsteps of his legendary father, however, he does not want the mob life for his own son.
• Trauma Conga Line: Despite Tony's tendency to avoid karma, it's easy to overlook that he's dealt with a lot of nasty shit, and deals with even more of it over the course of the series:
  • His childhood was no picnic, to say the least.
  • He regularly has to deal with his psychopathic, impulsive, and often downright moronic underlings, as well as his immediate family.
  • His best friend, Jackie Aprile, dies, and in the ensuing power struggle, his own mother and uncle conspire to have Tony murdered.
  • He discovers that one of his best friends is an informant and has to kill him.
  • His mother dies.
  • He fails to keep his best friend's son (Jackie Junior) out of the criminal life, and Tony has him whacked.
  • The fiancée of Christopher turns informant, and Tony has to have her killed.
  • His beloved cousin Tony B antagonizes the Lupertazzi family, and Tony is forced to sacrifice him to appease them.
  • He is shot by Junior and nearly dies.
  • His son AJ tries to kill Junior and to commit suicide, failing in both cases. The overall prospects of his children are negative, undesirable, uncertain or both.
  • His once beloved nephew, Christopher, dies, killed by Tony himself (which, ironically, is a relief for him).
  • His brother-in-law is killed in a mob war, and his consigliere ends up in a coma.
  • One of his capos is going to testify against him and is out of reach, with Tony himself unable to do anything about it.
  • Topping it all off, it's very likely that he is murdered at the very end of the series.
• Troll: Tony dips into this from time to time.
  • He tells Matt Bevilaqua to clean up the mess under Silvio's seat during a particularly bad poker game for Silvio, knowing full well that Silvio is in a pretty bad mood and wouldn't like to be interrupted at all.
  • He gives Dr. Cusamano a box full of sand for safekeeping but doesn't tell him what's inside, stoking his curiosity and paranoia over what a mobster would entrust him with.
  • He often plays simple physical pranks on others. He wakes up Paulie's slumber during the executive card game, pous cold water on Carmela while she showers, and sprays Tony B's sons with the hose while they're in the pool.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Zig-zagged. Sometimes his racism is used to show what a jerkass he is, but others it's shown that he mainly resents other races out of a genuine sense of loss for the world he once knew as the changing demographics of his city and America in general have resulted in the loss of much of the places and culture he grew up with.
• Uncertain Doom: His final fate. Either he was shot dead at the diner in front of his family, or he wasn't, but still got convicted and put in prison. It is something very controversial and continues to be so today. While David Chase has obliquely confirmed his death, he refuses to elaborate when or how he died, and what happened immediately after the cut to black at the end of the series finale.
• Unexplained Accent: During Tony's Adventures in Comaland under the name of Kevin Finnerty, James Gandolfini used his natural speaking voice over the character's stronger Joisey accent.
• Unstoppable Rage: When he's in a bad mood, Tony is brutal in every single way.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As shown during flashbacks and The Many Saints of Newark, Tony was initially just a normal high schooler who was occasionally unruly before he got roped into the world of organized crime.
• Vader Breath: Breathes rapidly through his nose as he grows more agitated (making this a major danger signal), growing to wild boar-like breath when he's fully angered and/or violent.
• Villain Protagonist: While having his fair share of Pet the Dog moments, he effectively discards nearly all of his virtues from Seasons 3-6 onward in favor of becoming an individual who is just as ruthless and destructive as his adversaries.
• Villainous BSoD: Every time he has his panic attacks.
• Villainous Friendship: With Jackie Aprile and Salvatore Bonpensiero, a.k.a. Big Pussy. Unfortunately for Big Pussy, his friendship comes after the code of the family, as he finds out when Tony discovers he's a rat and whacks him.
  • Silvio Dante is the one person in the mob whom he fully confides in, and whose advice and input he values most. His respect for Silvio is evident in several instances where his consigliere makes him see certain truths and change his position on issues. Silvio for his part greatly admires his leader and is one of the few members of the family Tony can always count on for getting the job done and Undying Loyalty.
• Vocal Evolution: His New Jersey accent gets stronger as the series goes on, and he slurs his words much more heavily by the later end.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: It becomes increasingly clear over the course of the series that although Tony says he wants to better himself, what he really wants is to be told he's better without actually doing anything to morally improve. For example, he's angered when he doesn't get some sort of reward for choosing to not cheat on his wife for once, as though it were some immense struggle. This in turn feeds this lack of desire to escape the mob life, since he doesn't get rewarded for being law-abiding, but he does get many rewards for breaking the law (ignoring the countless downsides).
• Wealthy Yacht Owner: He's an amateur yachtsman and has owned two motor yachts over the course of the show — Stugots and Stugots II. The Neapolitan Italian word means "This dick," or in paraphrase "Fuck it."
• Wicked Cultured: Played with, a refined ruffian with some college background who likes to insert learned words, but often mangles them with malapropisms. In another life, from another background, he could have been an intellectual; as he is, not so much, only coming off as less crude than his boorish associates.
• Would Hit a Girl: There are several scenes of him being violent with women, although he usually won't strike them unless they hit him first. The exception is Carmela. When he's furious with her he'll manhandle her but he won't bring himself to punch her. During an argument, he barely restrains himself by punching holes in the wall next to Carmela.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: One of his better qualities, and one of the few virtues he keeps throughout the series, alongside his fondness for animals, Tony loves children immensely, not just his, and would never harm one. Case in point, while not strictly a "child", he considered Tracey basically one, and Ralph killing her makes him go ballistic (with the implication his brutal murder of him later was at least partially motivated by that action). In a seriously twisted example of this, he only decided to off Christopher when he realized his daughter would have been killed in the car accident had she been in the car with them.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: When someone calls him "Anthony", it's a sign of something serious. Most of his underlings simply call him T. or Ton., and his close friends/wife usually call him Tony.

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