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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • A huge theme of the show. Nearly all of the characters are unprecedentedly rich with psychological nuance, complex (and often conflicting) emotions, and words and actions which can be interpreted in a number of ways. The show treasures ambiguity, and thus refuses any easy categorizations for its characters or anything else.
    • Meta example. Did David Chase end the show that way to gain a typical audience reaction? Or was it an intentional "screw-you" to the fans? Explanation
    • Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri. Is he a ruthless psychopath in every single way, or just a turbulent man with a childlike mind and poor impulse control? His Kick the Dog moments and Lack of Empathy (the waiter's murder, Minn's murder) seem to indicate the first interpretation. On the other hand, his moments of kindness or empathy seem to indicate the second interpretation.
    • In Season 5, is Feech LaManna genuine when he apologizes to Tony for his attitude and promises to get used to how things are now? Or, is he only placating Tony so that he can later take him out? Is Tony being Properly Paranoid by having him sent back to prison, or The Paranoiac?
    • In "Kaisha", when Tony and Phil are on the cusp of burying the hatchet, their mediator, Little Carmine, feels compelled to bring up Phil's murdered brother at the most inopportune time, which puts a quick end to negotiations and cements Phil's antagonism. Fans are divided on whether this was a genuine bout of faux pas or stupidity on Carmine's part, or if he deliberately torpedoed the meeting with this "accidental" remark for his own reasons.
    • In light of The Many Saints of Newark, did Junior advise Tony to get rid of Christopher because he genuinely believed he would eventually become a liability for the family? Or was he worried that somehow Christopher would eventually discover Junior was the one who arranged for Christopher's father's death and decide to take revenge?
    • Is Albert Barese's Verbal Tic genuine, and a sign of stupidity? Or, is he doing it on purpose as a survival strategy? His repeating what others say makes a lot of sense if you consider that he is treating every mob-related conversation as an interrogation. Therefore, he is purposely giving as little information as possible by parroting others. When you remember how many characters are killed for saying too much at the wrong time, this makes even more sense.
    • Is AJ really just the lazy, spoiled brat he is often viewed as or just a young man who was dealing with mental health issues he wasn't even aware of until years later that explained his lack of energy and motivation and whose occasional sincere efforts to improve, such as his interest in history and desire to join the military in his last episodes, were undermined by his environment, leaving him stuck as someone who is self-aware enough to know he's not suited to the criminal lifestyle but feels he isn't able to do anything else?
  • Anvilicious: If it wasn't already clear before, by Season 6, David Chase really wants you to know that mobsters are not the people you should be rooting for and that the mafia life is not worth it. The mob war between the Soprano crew and the New York families claims lives on both sides when they least expect it, which brings the former to ruin. And when they're not fighting each other, they're fighting amongst themselves, resulting in even more deaths. In the meantime, characters like Tony and Christopher have their immorality ramped up as the toxic lifestyle of the mafia continues to enable their worst habits, with them hurting or even killing people who don't deserve it. Though, considering the Misaimed Fandom the series developed, as described below, this was likely necessary.
  • Arc Fatigue:
    • Vito's Gayngst and brief exodus to New Hampshire in Season 6A is the storyline most frequently accused of this. For reference; the story spans 6 episodes, literally half the season, and many fans believe it could've been resolved in at least half that time. Some also consider the amount of focus the story got jarring since Vito had been an ancillary character beforehand.
    • Tony's coma and Carmela & Furio's will they or won't they dance are other commonly-cited candidates.
    • The show spends most of Seasons 5 & 6 building up to a war between the New Jersey and NYC mobs, a build-up which includes not one but two false starts - one towards the end of Season 5, and then again at the end of 6A.
  • Audience-Alienating Ending: This show is particularly controversial with its abrupt smash cut to black. This may depict Tony's death, but it's left very ambiguous and up to the viewer's interpretation. During the original airing of the final episode, angry viewers actually called their cable companies to complain about their signal cutting out, while David Chase received many, many accusations that he inserted the No Ending as a petulant "fuck you" to the audience for, in his view, siding with Tony for too long.
  • Award Snub: The show got enormous amounts of critical acclaim but consistently lost the Best Drama Series award at the Emmy Awards, first to The Practice and then (three times) to The West Wing (though it would eventually win for its fifth season). This led to some discussion about whether there might have been some bias among Emmy voters against gritty cable series, but at this point, there's no real way to know. (Cable may have lost the battle but won the war on that front, though; a network show hasn't won Best Drama Series since 2006.)
  • Awesome Music: Alabama 3's "Woke Up This Morning", which plays over the now-signature intro title sequence.
  • Badass Decay: Happens to Furio Giunta in the fourth season; his screentime is focused more on his fledgling romance with Carmela and less on what he was known for in previous seasons.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Fans are divided into seeing AJ as either a genuinely conflicted young adult with serious mental health problems who should have had a different upbringing or a whiny, spineless moid who despite having the same nurture as Meadow and more attention, only brings shame and distress to his family just by existing.
    • Tony Blundetto is another. Some viewers enjoy the tragedy of the character, find his dynamic with Tony S compelling, and praise Steve Buscemi's performance; others deride him as the series' most glaring example of Remember the New Guy? and consider the character miscast.
  • Broken Base:
    • 'Employee of the Month' is perhaps the most controversial and divisive episode of the series:
      • Some may find it intriguing that the series delves into Melfi's character beyond Tony, and that her entire storyline provided the series with a character study of Melfi beyond what is commonly expected in a show like this. Others feel that Melfi's entire plot in this episode was unnecessary (especially considering that this event was never mentioned again) and served no real purpose for the series other than to depict a very graphic, Gratuitous Rape for the sake of shock value. It doesn't help that the rapist isn't even punished.
      • There is a searing debate among fans about whether it was right or not for Melfi to not tell Tony about the rapist. Is Melfi right for not giving into revenge and thus making Tony feel vindicated for being a mobster? Or is Melfi wrong for irresponsibly letting a dangerous criminal run loose?
    • Season 4, which either sucked out loud or was a good season that got crapped on because the show took an introspective turn.
    • Whether or not Dr. Melfi's termination of her sessions with Tony was handled properly, with some seeing it as rushed and a disservice to Melfi's Character Development.
    • The finale split people into camps of "lifers" ( and "deadheads") for months after with people on one side occasionally claiming that if you didn't agree with their take you weren't a real fan and simply didn't get the show.
  • Character Perception Evolution: A.J. Soprano was widely considered The Scrappy during the show's original run, as most viewers saw him as a whiny Spoiled Brat who continually wastes the opportunities his upper-middle class upbringing has provided him with by being a Lazy Bum. However, as mental health awareness has increased in The New '10s and The New '20s, more and more viewers have come to recognize just how serious the psychological issues and depression he suffers from are and how they cause him to act the way he does. These days, while he's still a Base-Breaking Character overall, he's nowehere near the universally hated character he was in the 2000s.
  • Character Rerailment: Meadow is significantly less insufferable and condescending in Season 6 as opposed to her personality in seasons 4 and 5.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • Much of the humor is built on Black Comedy and Refuge in Audacity, from both the writers and the characters. Bloody Hilarious examples abound, with the extreme violence used to reinforce the bathos. Richie Aprile is a standout example; him running over Beansie and crippling him for life isn't funny on its own, but then he refers to Beansie as being a "shopping cart" later on.
    Tony: (angrily) I thought I told you to back the fuck off Beansie?
    Richie: I did. Then I put it in drive.
    • Christopher's intervention has to be seen to be believed. The line-crossing happens when Adriana starts crying because Christopher, in a heroin haze, sat on her fluffy little dog and killed it. It only gets more unbelievable from there until the gangsters give up on the touchy-feely stuff and start beating the hell out of Christopher.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience:
    • Between his Lack of Empathy, Hair-Trigger Temper, uncontrolled outburst of frustration, self-destructive tendencies, and grandiose sense of entitlement, there's definitely something wrong with Tony Soprano. While the psychiatrists in the show clearly diagnose Tony as an incurable criminal psychopath, there are several moments throughout the series when he is seen expressing true remorse for his actions as well as acting on genuine feelings of altruism. In the end, he has a vague mental disorder that is ultimately left to viewers' interpretation.
    • Christopher Moltisanti, who has emotional outbursts, fits of alternating aggression and depression, and serious attention deficit difficulties. He self-medicates through drug abuse. His various undiagnosed mental problems are brought up by other characters on multiple occasions.
    • While Ralph Cifaretto has several signs of anti-social personality disorder, he seems to really care about his son Justy, so his highly impulsive, borderline-sociopathic personality is probably due to his drug addiction.
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The series was even MORE realistic and de-glamorized than Goodfellas. It lampshaded that mobsters love The Godfather and Goodfellas. Guess who loved it? And many viewers who weren't gangsters also missed the point and saw Tony and crew as heroes and anyone who ratted on them as deserving of death.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • Many people think of Johnny Sack as a decent guy due to his love for his wife, forgetting some of his more heinous actions such as putting out a hit on someone because they dared to make a joke about her weight (granted, the person who made the joke is one of the most despicable characters on the show for unrelated reasons) or urinating on a made guy after putting him in the hospital because he thought the guy was laughing at him, as well as his Manipulative Bastard and False Friend tendencies towards Tony.
    • Christopher gets this from a lot of fans due to his Freudian Excuse and treatment by Tony and the other mobsters throughout the series. This ignores that he's a psychotic Ax-Crazy Jerkass who frequently brutalizes and kills innocent people, physically and emotionally abuses his girlfriend Adrianna, and that he had several opportunities to leave the Mob life but rejected them all, even selling Adrianna out to her death rather than going into witness protection.
    • Silvio Dante might get this the most from fans. It makes a certain amount of sense since he is one of the more reasonable, friendly, and trustworthy mobsters and isn't as pointlessly sadistic as many on the show - but he's still a violent pimp who abuses his employees and a remorseless killer.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Furio Giunta, particularly for being the most badass character on the show.
    • Annalisa Zucca, the de facto head of the Neapolitan Camorra in the guise of the caretaker of her father Vittorio, the de jure boss. She can bust balls with the best of them and is one of the few women Tony truly respects despite his attraction to her.
    • Drea de Matteo as Adriana. She went from a being an extra in the pilot and a minor character in the first season to one of the most popular characters and a big hit with critics especially in season 5 when her storyline came to a head and fans were devastated by the death of the character. Drea de Matteo won the Emmy for her performance in that episode.
    • Patsy Parisi, when confronted by an angry Chris armed with a gun what does he do? Pick up a nearby lead pipe and spit on him. This is the man who pissed in Tony Soprano’s pool and got away with it.
    • Despite dying in Season 1, Mikey Palmice remains a very popular character for his entertaining dynamic with Tony as well as being a loyal and effective right-hand man to Junior. When fans discuss which characters they wish had lasted longer, Mikey tends to be one of the most frequently mentioned names.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: In "Join the Club" and "Mayham", Tony Soprano, while in a coma, dreams of himself as a salesman who loses his wallet and takes the identity of Kevin Finnerty. Numerous fan theories have suggested the dream was Purgatory, which Tony was visiting. Note that while David Chase has Jossed all theories of the significance of the "Kevin Finnerty" name, he has neither confirmed nor denied the Purgatory theory regarding the dream itself.
  • Fandom Rivalry: Fans of this show have a big one with fans of The Wire and Breaking Bad, due to all three shows being widely considered to be the top candidates for the greatest crime drama (or even drama in general) show of all time. Though fans of all three shows are willing to join together to take potshots at Game of Thrones, seeing as the latter show dethroned both The Sopranos and The Wire as HBO's flagship show and competed with Breaking Bad for most of the early 2010s.
  • Fanon: While Furio's ultimate fate is never revealed, most fans like to believe he simply returned to Naples and went back to working for the Camorra, who ignored Tony's request to have Furio killed if Tony did in fact contact them as he claims to Carmela (an idea made plausible by the fact the mafiosos of the homeland are shown having little to no respect for the Italian-American branch of their organization and Furio being a family member of the Camorra's boss).
  • Fountain of Memes:
    • The entire show has become this since the rise of social media; the fandom has become somewhat infamous for constantly repeating countless lines from the series in various different contexts.
    • Specific characters who fit this trope include Junior, Paulie, Livia, Ralphie, Phil, Christopher, Little Carmine, and Tony himself.
  • Friendly Fandoms: With Goodfellas, the show's main inspiration. Expect memes from both to overlap.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • In Season 1, Dr. Melfi's family therapist brags that his family includes the wheelman to Louis Lepke of Murder Inc. and says, "Those were some tough Jews!" Tough Jews is the name of a nonfiction book about Jewish mobsters written by Rich Cohen and published the year before the season aired.
    • Carmella reading Flaubert's Madame Bovary in Season 5 will seem a lot more meaningful if you know that it's a novel about an unsatisfied housewife who has an extramarital affair. Fittingly, the book is recommended to her by Robert Wegler, who she ultimately ends up sleeping with.
    • The Madame Bovary parallel goes a step further if you also note that the other major literary work that Carmela and Wegner discuss is The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, with Carmella clearly empathizing with Heloise's isolation and her doomed love affair. Madame Bovary also includes a major character named Heloise Dubuc, who was Charles Bovary's wife in his unhappy first marriage; their marriage never worked out, in large part, because Bovary was in love with the titular character long before he actually married her. Carmela likely relates to Dubuc as well, since she reads the book as she's just getting used to the idea that Tony never really loved her.
    • In "Kennedy and Heidi", the song that plays during the car crash that grievously wounds Christopher is "Comfortably Numb" from The Wall. "Comfortably Numb" is a song about a drug overdose by the main character of The Wall, befitting of Christopher being a self-destructive drug addict, and the main character of The Wall grew up fatherless, much like Christopher did.
    • The song playing when Tony is chasing Phil on "In Camelot" is Rock The Casbah by The Clash. The song was inspired by the events of the Iranian Revolution, and the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. Tony would later call Phil the Shah of Iran and plan to overthrow him.
  • Genre Turning Point: Not only did The Sopranos make HBO universally known (along with Oz, which had premiered in 1997), but it also established that high-quality television drama can compete with film and literature in terms of telling artfully constructed, sophisticated stories for adults. The Sopranos is also credited with demonstrating that shows with complicated, continuity-heavy plots that didn't spoonfeed information to the audience could be successful — a revelation without which shows like The Wire and Game of Thrones would undoubtedly never have been greenlit. This eventually started spreading to basic cable as well, starting with The Shield and Mad Men (created by a Sopranos veteran), and most notably executed with Breaking Bad. It also made the deaths of major characters a regular device in its storytelling, to the point that nobody was completely safe. This is now a staple of acclaimed television dramas. While other series had done many of these things before (such as Babylon 5), The Sopranos brought them all together and was not restricted by the Sci Fi Ghetto, allowing it to become the turning point for television. All of this has brought about what many consider to be a golden age of dramatic television.
  • Growing the Beard: The series is often credited as Growing the Beard for the medium of television itself. The show grew its own beard in the first season episode "College", which ended with Tony ruthlessly killing a snitch in witness protection — an act that no TV protagonist had ever done before at that time.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • James Gandolfini's death at age 51 due to a heart attack caused many scenes to play much darker:
      • During Christopher's drug intervention in "The Strong Silent Type", he counters Tony's criticism of his addiction by decrying Tony's weight and says that he's gonna die of a heart attack by the time he's 50.
      • In "Members Only", the recently slimmed-down Vito says that Tony might not be around forever given his unhealthy lifestyle.
      • Any scene between Tony and Meadow, because Gandolfini never got to spend that kind of time with his own daughter, who was born just a few months before his death.
      • Tony occasionally uses cocaine in the show. Gandolfini himself struggled with cocaine addiction.
      • In "From Where To Eternity", Christopher comes back from a Near-Death Experience with the phrase "Three o'clock" as a message for Tony. Gandolfini died in Italy, with an estimated time of death at 10 PM. That's 3'o'clock in New Jersey.
    • Phil Leotardo suffers an incapacitating heart attack. His actor Frank Vincent died on September 13, 2017 due to complications of heart surgery after a heart attack.
    • An argument about an Army career for A.J., before The War on Terror in "Army of One".
      Carmela: You wanna train him to be a professional killer?
      Tony: Oh, will you stop?! They're soldiers. And the United States Army hardly ever goes to war anymore.
    • Also in Season 6, AJ actually considers joining the Army, but his parents talk him out of it.
    • Any fat joke towards Ginny Sack or Tony, because their respective actors, Denise Borino-Quinn and James Gandolfini, both died from health complications in middle age.
    • Gigi's death in "He is Risen" was initially laughably awkward, a stone-cold killer randomly dying of a heart attack on the toilet surrounded by porno mags leaving all of his friends stuck doing their best to preserve his dignity after the fact. It became a lot less funny when Gandolfini died in the exact same manner. Tony's line comparing him to Elvis Presley is especially heart-wrenching, as Gandolfini is discussing his own fate and making a comparison that was widely made upon his death.
  • He Really Can Act:
    • John Heard is best known as the dad from Home Alone or the Romantic False Lead from Big. However, his arc as Vin Makazian in Season 1 is heartbreaking and even earned him an Emmy nomination.
    • Drea de Matteo was initially seen as just a recurring Ms. Fanservice in her role as Adriana la Cerva, but as her character's arc progressed throughout the series, she turned out to be much more than that, culminating in her Emmy win.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • One of the subplots of the final season was Tony losing a grip on his gambling addiction, culminating in a scene where he loses thousands of dollars on a NY Jets game. New York has the game in hand, until Buffalo Quarterback J.P. Losman fumbles the ball, picks it back up again, and runs it in for a touchdown to win the game. Flash forward to when that game was actually played in New Jersey: Buffalo has the game in hand until J.P. Losman fumbles the ball to the Jets, who then run it in for a touchdown to win the game.
    • Once upon a time, MADtv had a parody of the show that depicted just how disjointed the show would be if The Sopranos was shown on a non-premium cable channel (and on the Christian-Family themed PAX network at that) and edited for all manner of violence, sex, and foul, abusive language, reducing the run time to a mere three minutes. Thankfully, the actual syndicated version on A&E wasn't as bad as the parody MADtv came up with, due to the fact that Chase wisely saw the potential syndication value of the show and went about filming alternate clothed versions of all scenes involving nudity and non-explicit versions of the death scenes that he knew would not fly in syndication.
    • The major at the military school that Tony wants to send AJ to in Season 3, goes on about how society is making the current generation dependent on drugs. He later becomes a man who puts through people through death traps to better themselves and make them appreciate their lives.
    • Michael K. Williams has a small cameo in "Army of One" where, among other things, he watches Jackie Jr. get a chess lesson.
    • In the Season 6 episode "Mayham", Silvio angrily yells "Am I speakin' Norwegian here?" when trying to settle an argument between Bobby and Vito. Then, in 2012...
    • In "The Knight In White Satin Armor", Christopher talks to Big Pussy about robbing a truck full of Pokémon cards, which sounds dated and absurd coming from a mobster. Fast-forward to 2021 when the value and popularity of Pokémon cards reached their zenith.
    • In "Amour Fou", Carmela speaks up in Hillary Clinton's defense when the other wives insult her. Edie Falco would later play her in Impeachment.
    • David Chase directed a Super Bowl Special for the 2022 game, where Jamie-Lynn Sigler recreates the iconic drive in an electric Chevy Silverado. Her last scene in the series is Meadow struggling mightily to parallel park, and in the commercial, she is able to effortlessly do so at a vacant EV charging station.
    • AJ gets caught vandalizing the school because the pizza he left behind incriminated him. Andrew Tate should have learned from his mistake...
    • Tony brings up Rudy Giuliani, then-mayor of New York City, as an example of an Italian American who isn't a criminal. Two decades later, Giuliani would be indicted under RICO charges, the very same he used to jail real life Mafiosos.
  • Hype Backlash: Critics naming it the greatest television show ever made naturally led to this, especially with The Wire and Breaking Bad being declared the greatest. The extremely controversial ending doesn't help either.
  • I Am Not Shazam: The central crime family in the show is officially called "the DiMeo family", not "the Soprano family." Sopranos have only been the heads of the New Jersey branch of the larger crime family. The title refers to Tony Soprano's biological family, not his business one.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The show developed something of a pattern to its storytelling, wherein a previously unmentioned character shows up, causes problems for Tony, and is dealt with near the end of the season. After playing out with Richie and then Ralphie, fans started to feel that the show had repeated itself one too many times by the end of Tony Blundetto's arc in Season 5, which hit predictable beats up to its conclusion note .
  • It Was His Sled: It's hard to find someone who didn't know about the show without hearing about how the finale ended.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: In a cast full of murderous, psychotic gangsters, one of the most easily detestable characters in the entire show is Tony's elderly mother, Livia. Although she's largely divorced from the show's violence and more serious crimes, her deep-rooted narcissism, passive-aggressive sniping, actively spreading misery to everyone she meets, manipulative tactics, and playing the victim at every opportunity, make her a far more likely person you'd actually encounter in your life and lacks any of the suave or "coolness" factor the other mobsters have. This is on top of her being a terrible mother, spouse, and employer, incredibly racist, and anti-Semitic.
  • Love to Hate:
    • Richie Aprile is a giant sociopath even by the standards of the show, and yet despite that, he ends up being one of the most well-remembered antagonists faced by Tony thanks to David Proval's performance, the many Deadpan Snarker moments he gets, and his absolutely psycho moments of violence, to the point where they go back to being incredibly funny.
    • Despite what a massive Jerkass Ralph Cifaretto is, he's also infectiously hilarious and entertaining, and Joe Pantoliano's magnetic performance especially sells it. It should come as no surprise that Pantoliano won an Emmy for his role, specifically for "University".
    • Livia Soprano is one of the most despicable mothers in all of fiction, being even more deplorable than the actual gangsters in her family. All this combined with Nancy Marchand's excellent performance makes her incredibly fun to hate.
    • Janice Soprano is a shameless, narcissistic, opportunistic parasite, and yet many viewers actually love to hate her because she's absolutely believable and a number of them have met someone like her in their lives.
    • Phil Leotardo, complete Jerkass from the moment he appears onscreen and eventual final Big Bad of the series. But Frank Vincent's excellent performance, Fountain of Memes lines shown below and how he serves as a Foil and Shadow Archetype to Tony. Serve to make the Shah Of Iran so enjoyable and so loathsome at the same time for viewers.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Special Agent Dwight Harris is assigned to monitor the DiMeo Crime Family. Spying on the Sopranos and their allies, Harris flips several of those close to Tony to serve as FBI informants with little care of the danger it puts them in, including Adriana la Cerva whom he manipulates into being an FBI asset. Harris later uses Tony himself to gain information on potential terrorists and assists the Sopranos with the murder of the violent Lupertazzi head Phil Leotardo.
  • Memetic Loser:
    • AJ is practically the designated butt monkey to the fanbase, with him often seen as the fuck up of the Sopranos who couldn't even commit suicide properly.
    • Jackie Aprile Jr., both in and out of universe. He manages to combine being a Brainless Beauty with having an absurdly pathetic Small Name, Big Ego. He succeeds in neither the civilian world or the criminal one, is treated with disdain by all the real mafiosos, gets beaten up by Tony several times for being such a fuck-up and dishonoring his father's wishes, and ultimately gets whacked by a parade float and called a moron at his own funeral.
  • Memetic Mutation: Has its own page here.
  • Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: For obvious reasons, Jersey people get a big kick out of this show. New Jersey-based sportswriter Peter King bragged in his column that he interviewed Michael Strahan in the same booth where the show ended. It especially became a point of local pride to be able to name every location in the opening credits.
  • Misaimed Fandom:
    • In general, the show has a number of fans who think the show is about showing how cool being a mobster is when in truth it's a Genre Deconstruction that shows that modern-day gangsters are unintelligent, low-class thugs who are chasing an idealized idea of the livelihood that only exists in the past and in fiction and that, ultimately, the job only leads to constantly having to worry about being arrested by law enforcement, betrayed by your "friends", or murdered by associates.
      • Even if you set that aside, the series makes it very clear that the decline of the American Mafia has reduced it to a futile and, to some extent, pathetic organization, especially when compared to the genuinely serious Camorra. By the end of the day, the characters are nothing more than simple street thugs trying to hide and go unnoticed by the police.
    • Tony is the main protagonist of the series, so it is only natural that the audience tends to root for him. Let's just say it speaks to David Chase's writing abilities that he gets us to sympathize with a psychopathic murderer.
    • Christopher became somewhat of an Ensemble Dark Horse as the series progressed, and tended to garner a lot of sympathy along the way. In fact, many fans were legitimately devastated when Tony killed him near the end of the series. This is despite Chris being a deadbeat junkie, a total Jerkass, physically and emotionally abusive to Adrianna.
  • Moral Event Horizon: See here.
  • Narm:
    • Tony's final scene with his mother in "Proshai Livushka", an extremely awkward mix of new footage of James Gandolfini and outtakes of the late Nancy Marchand which never comes close to being convincing, not least because her hairstyle quite obviously changes from one shot to the next.
    • Jackie Jr. getting whacked by Vito with what looks like a very fake-looking prop gun in "Army of One". The fact that Jackie Jr. somehow didn't notice a very heavyset person like Vito makes the scene even more laughable. Vito slowly getting into the getaway car afterward tops it off.
    • The random and bizarre slow-motion screen wipe transition in "Cold Cuts."
    • The scene in "Remember When" where "Doc" Santoro gets whacked is ruined by a cheesy, stock sound-effect of a woman screaming.
    • Arguably, Vito's entire Armoured Closet Gay arc, save for his death. While it's clear that the show is trying to analyze what being gay would be like in a mafia environment, it ended up being given to a background character who up until that point was mainly just a Fat Comic Relief, and it was an arc that dragged on for several episodes rather than being resolved in one or two. There's also the fact that any sympathy that could be given to Vito is lost on account of his public homophobia and general brutish acts of violence like the rest of the mobsters, and that his actor is generally incapable of emoting much. Though most people will agree that his Cruel and Unusual Death at the hands of Phil Leotardo was uncomfortable and depressing to watch.
  • Narm Charm:
    • Paulie's character, while over the top, comical, and downright cartoonish, is still well-loved for the levity, the colorfulness of his character overall, and the depths of his relationship with his ma that his actor, Tony Sirico, nails especially in Season 6 Part A. Along with that, he can also be downright vicious as a gangster when he wants to be, as Minn and Jason Barone will tell you. And while he often acts impulsively to a fault, Paulie also possesses a fair amount of savviness when it comes to navigating the mob hierarchy that gets highlighted every so often, contributing to his survival through the end of the show. It all helps to make Paulie one of the standout characters of the show.
    • Silvio as well, despite the cartoonish way he looks and acts at times, along with Steven Van Zandt's limited acting range. He still manages to be one of the show's quirkiest and yet most human characters, he shows as well that can be menacing as Paulie or Chris when he wants to be. Which Tracee, Adriana, and Burt Gervasi found out the hard way.
    • Junior and Livia's failed assassination attempt on Tony, using two hitmen described by Mikey as competent when the scene shows they're anything but. Most viewers tend to look this over and see it as the scene where Tony gets out of his depression funk and back to who he's supposed to be, the boss.
    • Phil coming out of the closet to whack Vito is a heavy-handed metaphor if you think about it (how much time did he wait inside, how did he explain it to his minions?), but then again, it's a memorable move.
  • Nausea Fuel:
    • When Adriana is caught by the FBI and forced to make a Sadistic Choice about either going to jail for a lengthy sentence or becoming an informant, she Stress Vomits in response. More than just throwing up, she projectile spews a geyser of throw-up all over the table and splatters the FBI agents with chunky mush.
    • In response to the intense bullying at school, when his father is outed as having been gay after he is found brutally murdered, Vito Jr. retaliates by intentionally crapping himself in the communal shower after gym class, and then steps in the poop with his bare foot. This is shown in great detail, for the pleasure of the viewers.
    • When Tony is in the hospital in an induced coma after being shot in the gut by Uncle Junior, we get a detailed and prolonged shot of his huge, gaping, and very deep, stomach wound. It helps hammer in how tenuous his survival is, but is also quite viscerally disgusting.
  • Never Live It Down:
    • The series is often looked upon as a redefining show that changed the landscape of TV and Cable TV forever and established the ways a show should be with themes of Anyone Can Die and complex characters in a dark-like setting. But ask anybody about the show and chances are they'll just mention the infamous ending.
    • Character-wise, Christopher suffocating poor Cosette while high on heroin was this to some people. While his fault, it was an accident, and certainly not the worst of his sins. Michael Imperioli himself has mused on this phenomenon.
  • Once Original, Now Common: It's pretty hard to appreciate just how groundbreaking the show was at the time. A drama with such a nuanced storyline and dark subject matter, focusing on an Anti-Hero, was very novel for the time, but fairly standard for today's prestige television. Most notably, David Chase had to fight tooth and nail for Tony to be allowed to murder the informant in the fifth episode, as HBO execs were sure no one would watch the show again if he did it.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
  • Paranoia Fuel: The final scene. Including the suspicious guys we can see during the restaurant scene (an Italian-American-looking man walks into the bathroom, does not he remind you of something?). The scariest part is that we are not even sure what will happen after the Smash to Black. Also doubles with Nightmare Fuel.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Has its own page here.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: Season 4 dedicates a lot of time to tease a potential affair between Carmela and Furio, but it never pays off. He just leaves and, aside from a throw-away line from Tony, is never mentioned again.
  • The Scrappy: Valentina is perhaps the least-regarded of Tony's goomahs, as their initial spark quickly fizzles out and after her debut episode she becomes nothing more than a Satellite Character. Tony himself grows bored to tears with her and seizes the chance to jettison their relationship.
  • Seasonal Rot: The general consensus is that seasons 1, 2, and 5 are the strongest while the opinion on the other three is more mixed.
    • Season 3 is seen by some as suffering because of the writers having to greatly restructure the season after the death of actress Nancy Marchand, though there are still several episodes in the season that are loved by the fandom and some don't even think there was a drop in quality. Livia's final scene, with unconvincing edited-in footage of Marchand, is cited as a bit of a low point for the series.
    • Season 4 is the most debated season. Some fans didn't like the season's lessened focus on Mafia concerns (the season has the least people "whacked" of any season) and the turns Carmela's storyline took but others found the way the season explored Tony and Carmella very compelling.
    • Season 6 suffers due to the two-year break after the fifth season as well as an annoyance from fans over the season being split in two. While the earlier episodes are lauded, people generally disliked the way that Vito's storyline dragged in the middle of the season. Season 6 part 2 (the last 9 episodes of the series) is more well-liked though there's a decent amount of broken base concerning Christopher's death and the Grand Finale having No Ending.
  • Signature Scene:
    • The infamous ending scene is common knowledge to many people who have never even seen the show, having been widely referenced and parodied in media ever since.
    • To a bit lesser extent, Tony strolling down the driveway to get the paper at the start of each season. Especially since it became more of a waddle due to the sizable amount of weight that James Gandolfini gained over the show's run.
  • Song Association: Fans of the show usually remember Tony Soprano/James Gandolfini with a smile whenever they hear "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey.
  • Special Effect Failure:
    • The murder of Rusty Irish in "Pax Soprana" has the actor replaced by a very obvious dummy as Rusty Irish gets thrown off the bridge.
    • In "The Knight In White Satin Armor", when Janice shoots Richie, a hand can be glimpsed under the table pushing Richie's chair back.
    • Tony's last conversation with Livia in "Proshai Livushka". Nancy Marchand's death necessitated that the character be written out, so the crew employed CGI to superimpose Marchand's image on another actress' body. It was not convincing.
    • The murder of Jackie Jr. in "Army of One" is poorly executed, with an obvious toy gun used as a prop which doesn't even recoil after the gunshot.
    • The Season 4 premiere features a pair of storefronts with glaringly-obvious Conspicuous CG signage added to the scene.
    • "Pie-O-My" has Tony and co. cheering at what is obviously Stock Footage of a horse race.
    • A good number of scenes involving Phil Leotardo in Season 6 were clearly shot in front of a green screen, the best example being the scene where Phil and Tony discuss the hit on Hesh and Eli.
  • Strangled by the Red String:
    • Meadow's boyfriends are the source of some drama and given decent focus for the most part... except for the last one, fellow mob kid Patrick Parisi, to whom she becomes engaged. Her dates with him are mentioned but only once shown, and he doesn't even appear until the third-to-last episode of the series. The only point of his existence is to further hammer it in how hopeless it is for the Soprano family to escape a life of crime and how far Meadow has morally declined.
    • Christopher's second partner, Kellie. She suddenly appears as his new girlfriend midway through Season 6 with no introduction, and the two get married and have a baby on the way in the very same episode. Compared to the extensive focus on Adriana, Kelli is an utterly Flat Character with zero focus. The only reason she exists seems to be indirectly giving Tony a final reason to off Christopher, deciding Chris could never be an acceptable husband or father.
  • Strawman Has a Point: Although he had Artie's original Vesuvio restaurant burned down, Tony had good reason. Uncle Junior had been planning to stage a hit at Vesuvio on "Little Pussy" Malanga (not to be confused with Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero) and wouldn't change it because Malanga was comfortable there and had the hit went down, all of the regular patrons would be permanently chased away. So Tony had the place firebombed to ensure a win-win for both parties (no-hit at Vesuvio, and Artie could rebuild it with the pay-out from his insurance policy). Also, Tony kinda saved Artie's reputation.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Many fans feel this way about Tony and Janice's sister Barbara, the White Sheep who is completely disconnected from the mob and only makes sporadic appearances. The fact she managed to escape the cycle of abuse in their family would have been great to explore in further detail, especially as a Nature vs. Nurture character study.
    • Hunter, Meadow's troubled and slightly off-the-rails best friend, returns after a prolonged absence for one final scene in the last episode. In the same season, a sub-plot has AJ connecting and beginning a relationship with a troubled — but suspiciously unfamiliar — past acquaintance while in rehab. Some feel that Hunter not playing this role instead was a missed opportunity.
    • A tragically unavoidable case with Livia Soprano. One of the show's best characters played to perfection by Nancy Marchand who unfortunately passed away during the run, which meant there was no choice but to kill Livia off.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Despite being Tony's heir apparent and surrogate son, Christopher's screentime with Meadow and AJ is very limited. Christopher and Meadow hardly interact after their subplot in "Denial, Anger, Acceptance" in Season 1, while he and AJ don't even get a scene together until "Mayham" in Season 6.
    • The Feds spend the series slowly building a set of RICO cases against the Soprano/Jersey Family. However, not once do we ever see Tony or the others in his inner circle being questioned by any of the local police in connection with the many murders or other acts of violence/intimidation they carry out. Not only does this come across as unrealistic, but it may have made for a funny and amusing narrative thread to have Tony and co. being hounded and harassed by a local cop, perhaps a Rabid Cop / Inspector Javert type who is just chomping at the bit to bust Tony for something.
  • Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: One of the most common criticisms of the series, particularly in the latest seasons, is how having humanized characters who are extremely unpleasant can become strangely discordant. The main cast of the show have only the bare minimum of "redeemable" traits, and so many flaws that it's very difficult to sympathize with them. Between seasons 5 and 6, everyone is so deeply corrupted, petty, hypocritical, unrepentant, and/or just plain stupid that there are hardly even somewhat likeable characters left to root for—only assholes you are probably going to see die. It's no wonder the show ended at Season 6, because it became nigh impossible to feel any sort of sympathy for Tony after seeing the awful stuff he does over the course of the season, on top of backpedaling on all his character development, making it clear he has no hope of escaping his criminal rut and is only getting worse as a person. Perhaps not coincidentally, viewership of the show fell from usually reaching 9-12 million viewers per episode in Seasons 3-5 to only about 6-7 million in the second half of Season 6 (with only the last two episodes being an exception). The way the show ended certainly doesn't help.

  • Tough Act to Follow: James Gandolfini worked pretty consistently after completing the series, taking several parts before his death in 2013 that helped subvert his mobster persona, such as the General in In the Loop, Leon Panetta in Zero Dark Thirty, a grieving husband and father in Welcome to the Rileys, and a Gentle Giant Love Interest in Enough Said. That said, none of his roles matched up to the public ubiquity of Tony Soprano in popular culture.
  • Trapped by Mountain Lions: Carmela's "spec house" subplot is rather underwhelming beyond working as a device for new sources of problems and conflict. There is the tension of the house being built in violation of code and the fact that it's built over Adriana's body but neither of these things go anywhere.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: The show features many hallmarks of the late 90s and early 2000s.
    • The time of the setting is made easily apparently by late '90s/early '00s conventions like RadioShack, Blockbuster Video, Slipknot, the PlayStation 2, Nintendo 64, and The Yugoslav Wars.
    • There are many establishing shots of the Twin Towers in New York City, including in the opening sequence of Seasons 1-3 (obviously removed in subsequent seasons).
    • Tony states that the American military never goes to war anymore when arguing over sending A.J. to military school with Carmela in Season 3. It becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when he refuses to let A.J. join the army in the last episode now that America is at war.
    • The last episode of Season 3 is titled "Army of One", and has a subplot of Tony wanting to enroll his son in military school. The title refers to the US Army's recruiting slogan at the time, but proved to be a very short-lived slogan, replaced in 2006 with "Army Strong", due to "Army of One" seeming anti-teamwork, and has been again replaced several times since.
    • Seasons filmed after 2001 make reference to the 9/11 attacks and The War on Terror. Tony tries to wrap his mind around the loss of life at the Bing. He later wonders whether two local Arab hoodlums are terrorists. When Carmela wins a trip to France, Tony says, "Those frogs hate us," referencing the wave of politically motivated Francophobia in the Aughts. Carmela expresses concern about "flying, these days" and the increase in security.
    • The soundtrack features many songs dated to the time period, such as "Oops, I Did It Again" by Britney Spears. Ironically, the appearance of The Shins' "New Slang" in season 4 predates the song's explosion in popularity following its use in Garden State.
    • Characters have flip phones if they have cell phones at all. Others carry pagers. CRT computer screens and primitive websites abound. AJ spends his time in internet chatrooms rather than on social media.
    • In season 6, AJ gets a job at Blockbuster, a company that has almost entirely gone under and closed its last New Jersey location in 2013.
    • The heyday of the classic Italian Mafia is even more a distant memory than it was when the show came out. The presence of Mafia leaders in national news stories and the constant griping of Italian-Americans about being associated with organized crime both come across as dated.
    • The Columbus Day episode has a luncheon instilling Italian-American pride by countering the negative John Gotti with the positive Rudy Giuliani, then-mayor of New York, who was riding a wave of popularity in the aftermath of 9/11. His popularity took a massive nosedive from the mid-2010s onward due to a number of scandals and controversies (including his arrest in 2023), making the idea anyone would use him as a positive example of anything cringeworthy or laughable nowadays. It also mentions Native Americans protesting the name of the Cleveland Indians, which changed to Cleveland Guardians in 2021 in part due to said protests, and one sequence of Native Americans protesting under the statue of Christopher Columbus in Newark. The statue was permanently removed in 2020.
    • A more subtle example is how often characters are shown casually smoking in indoor public facilities, such as restaurants and hospitals. This change is referenced in a later season when a character notes how it's nice that this restaurant they're at allows indoor smoking, something that would've been increasingly rare by the time the series neared its end.
    • One of the mafia's main sources of income that is depicted throughout the show is running illegal sports betting books. New Jersey legalized sports betting in 2018, as did Pennsylvania and Delaware, which put a huge dent into the Mafia's business. New York followed in 2019, which basically killed illegal sports betting in the Mid-Atlantic.
    • The scene in the sauna where there is a discussion about the difficulties that many African-Americans face under a Republican administration felt out of place between 2009 and 2017, then felt topical between 2017 and 2021, and then felt out of place again.
    • Most of the TV sets in the series are analog box TVs, with flat screens still being treated novel and luxurious. An HD compatible television is treated as a hefty bribe in an early season.
    • The 2007 episode "Soprano Home Movies" has Bobby offhandedly mention there was a snakehead scare near the cabin last year (although it was only a bowfin), referencing a then-recent scare of the invasive Asian fish in the United States that caught a lot of media attention in the 2000s, although it's largely forgotten these days.
    • A 2001 episode had Carmela's tennis instructor tell her he was moving to San Diego for his wife's new "dot-com" job, selling antiques online. This line instantly dates the show to the late 90s and earliest 00s. Indeed, the episode was produced right around the peak of the 'dot com boom', and it was in the process of collapsing by the time the episode aired, unintentionally making the tennis instructor's fate an Uncertain Doom to future viewers.
    • A Season 2 episode had the mobsters jacking a shipment of Pokémon cards; this was around the peak of the franchise's massive sudden popularity in America, but it seems silly in retrospect that these hardened mafiosos give a single crap about a children's cartoon card game. Although it briefly became Hilarious in Hindsight following the cards' sudden and short-lived resurgence in popularity in the beginning of the 2020s.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The show abused this trope a lot, especially when the most despicable characters were humanized and sympathetic to some degree. It turns out that portraying The Mafia in the most deconstructive way possible can be very jarring or even unrealistic when you have three-dimensional characters whom you're supposed to empathize with in certain situations of the show. Their actions, signifying a crossing of the Moral Event Horizon, can often undermine the show's attempts to be emotive or moving. Sure, we're supposed to feel sorry for them after their awful actions...
    • The worst case of this is Ralph Cifaretto, a depraved, Ax-Crazy mobster. We are supposed to feel sorry for him during his sympathetic moments, such as the genuine love he has for his son, before his death. However, it's difficult to side with Ralph when you realize that this is the same man who killed a pregnant woman with his bare hands and has only been shown as a selfish, sociopathic, and slimy person up until his last appearance, so this attempt to humanize him with the bare minimum empathy comes off "too little too late" to care about.
    • Another huge example is Christopher Moltisanti, for those that don’t see him as a Jerkass Woobie. His drug addiction and abuse by Tony and the other capos is supposed to humanize him, but the fact that he’s arguably even more violent and abusive than any of them makes this hard to swallow. While Tony is a Jerkass to him at times, outside of killing Christopher near the end of the series, the worst he ever does is make fun of him and insult his sobriety, making Christopher’s complaints come across as Wangst considering he’s far more abusive to his girlfriend Adriana in comparison. It also doesn’t help that he had multiple opportunities to leave the Mafia life and actually escape Tony’s abuse, but rejected it.
      • The best example of this is when he cries to Tony about how he loved Adriana after she was killed, which would be tragic… except he told Tony about her being a rat in the first place. It seems borderline out of character considering how little Christopher seemed to care about Adriana before this, even disregarding his physical and emotional abuse of her, and how little he thinks of her afterwards.
      • Another great example is during his final relapse into alcoholism, where he tries to tell something heartfelt to Paulie about his daughter, only for Paulie to turn it into a highly insensitive joke and everyone else on the room laughing with him, even Tony. While it shows off the kind of toxic people he sacrificed his life for, he later deals with it in the worst way possible by drunkenly confessing his mafia activities and making false accusations towards JT Dolan, a civilian he had been abusing and extorting for the better part of the season, and murdering him when Dolan doesn't want to listen.
    • Vito's several episode-long story arc after being outed as a homosexual. While it seems to be trying to humanize and sympathize him to the audience due to his difficult plight, it's hard to feel any sort of sadness for a character who was little more than a very minor Fat Comic Relief for most of the show, and just as cold-blooded, power-hungry, and psychotic as the other mobsters, previously killing Jackie Jr. in cold-blood and attempting to start a coup against Tony. Furthermore, his decision to abandon the chance of a no-strings-attached civilian life with a handsome boyfriend, simply because he found it was boring after one day, to go back to New Jersey to beg Tony for his position back and try and convince him he's not actually homosexual, apparently deluding himself into thinking that all his extremely homophobic associates would just believe him and forget about the whole thing, makes it hard to feel any sort of compassion for someone so utterly moronic. His petty murder of a civilian he crashes into on his way back to New Jersey tops it off.
    • The last episode has a scene of Tony sitting next to Silvio in the hospital, who is in a likely permanent coma after an assassination attempt in the mob war with Phil. It's meant to be an Alas, Poor Villain scene, but given that Silvio is a huge Jerkass, an abusive pimp who beats his strippers, and an unrepentant hitman who executed Adriana in cold blood as she was begging for mercy, as well as being just as racist and homophobic as the rest of the mobsters, why are we supposed to feel bad about his demise again? Even if it's meant to be seen from Tony's perspective, at this point Tony is more evil than he's ever been and shown to seriously consider murdering his underlings just for being annoying.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: In-universe, Little Carmine is mainly considered to be a joke when it comes to most business-related matters. However, he's insanely quotable for his malapropisms, meaningless sayings, using unnecessarily long words, and Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable. Not to mention that he's one of the few characters who get a happy ending.
  • Values Dissonance: This occurs if the pinball game has "Adult Mode" turned off. Apparently, cursing and profanity is bad, but committing arson, burying bodies in the Meadowlands, and beating up civilians in shakedowns is okay.
  • Values Resonance:
    • AJ's psychological issues and depression was almost universally dismissed by viewers as an example of Wangst, especially the accusations that AJ is "useless", and couldn't even commit suicide right. Today, with greater awareness if how mental illness works, most of these criticisms are seen as highly offensive and misinformed, especially as the story does actually treat the situation seriously. The scene where Tony saves AJ during his suicide attempt is now seen as a disturbingly realistic depiction of suicide, with even Tony immediately dropping his anger and disappoinment and actually comforting AJ. Especially since some modern shows like Yellowstone have regressed back to this outlook on suicide.
    • A recurring topic in Tony's therapy sessions is his adherence to "tough guy" masculinity, and how that causes more problems than it solves. Outside of the therapy sessions, a good example of this "tough guy" masculinity in action is Tony having to beat up his own bodyguard to regain the respect of his soldiers, despite recovering from a serious gunshot wound not too long before and coughing up blood afterwards. Twenty years after the series, the discussion of "toxic masculinity" is going strong.
  • Viewers in Mourning: When Christopher Moltisanti was "whacked", Michael Imperioli said that he had been receiving flowers as condolence - for his own death!
  • Wangst: Most of Christopher Moltisanti's screentime throughout Seasons 3 and 4 is spent getting drunk/high and going on long tangents of self-pity to Adriana. After he gets sober, most of his screentime is spent complaining to her and his AA compatriots about how nobody takes his sobriety seriously.
  • Woolseyism: The Japanese dub had a curious one regarding the episodes' titles: Unlike Japanese translations for episodes from other shows, when the titles are translated either literally or adapted to the context of the episode, the titles of this show are one-word titles instead.note  This was done since many of the titles in the original English version are either American idioms or shout-outs from shows unknown in Japan. For example, the title of the first episode of the show, "The Sopranos", was renamed as "家族/Kazoku" (Family, after the titular family), "I Dream Of Jeannie Cusamano" became "憎悪/Zōo" (Hatred), and so on. Curiously enough, the Japanese name of the last episode, "Made In America" was named "哀愁/Aishuu" (Sorrow), after the Japanese subtitle of the show, "哀愁のマフィア/Aishuu no Mafia" (The Sorrowful Mafia).
  • Writer Cop Out: As is often the case with a story with No Ending, many viewers view the end of the series as David Chase simply not wanting to commit to a decisive end to the series and giving us nothing instead.


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