Vicky Grant (Kathrine Narducci), whose father was murdered by the mob, rants against the public fascination with gangsters: "These wiseguys, they are psychos and losers, and everybody loves them. And I don't get it." In real life, Narducci's own father was murdered by the mafia when she was 10 years old. Narducci also famously was in The Sopranos (1999) as Charmaine Bucco, the wife of Tony Soprano's best (non Mob) friend Artie Bucco. Her views on Tony Soprano (unsurprisingly) follow her character's sentiment in this episode as well.
The "Son of Sam law" Ross refers to is a law that was created to make it illegal for a person to benefit financially from the publicity of their criminal act. The law was created after David Berkowitz (aka Son of Sam) was convicted, the case received world-wide media attention and there was wide speculation that he would sell his story to a writer or filmmaker. While Berkowitz claimed he never had any interest in doing so the government realized for the first time the inherent dangers that could come from a person believing they could become famous and rich from committing heinous crimes and legislature was quickly passed to outlaw it.
"Doing a bullet" is slang for serving a one year jail sentence.
The title, "Faccia a faccia", is Italian for "Face to face".
This episode appears to be based on two separate cases:
- The Sammy Gravano case.
- The Vincent Gigante case.