Goodfellas had various characters based on real-life gangsters, and there’s one that even though didn’t appear in the movie, he had a connection to the main characters: John Gotti. Throughout his career as a filmmaker, Martin Scorsese has explored a variety of genres, but he’s best known for his gangster movies, which explore the Italian-American identity and themes like redemption, corruption, and more. Although he has made some very popular and praised gangster movies, the one that continues to be regarded as his best is the 1990 movie Goodfellas, based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi.
Goodfellas tells the story of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), an associate of the Lucchese crime family, from his days running errands for Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and his crew to his full involvement with them. Through Henry, viewers met some big and important names in the mob, such as Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy “The Gent” Conway (Robert De Niro), with whom Henry worked on many occasions and committed various crimes. Although the main focus of the movie is Henry’s life up to his decision to become an FBI informant and his work with the Lucchese crew, there are characters from other crime families that make minor appearances in the movie, and there’s a big one that doesn’t appear, but his connection to one of the main characters is very important: John Gotti.
The “Five Families” is the organization of the five major crime families of the Italian American Mafia in New York, which are now known as the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, and Lucchese families. In Goodfellas, only two of the five families appear: the Lucchese family, as the main characters were part of it, and the Gambino crew. The latter was mostly represented by Billy Batts, the man Tommy and Jimmy brutally kill and later get rid of his body as he was a “made man” and thus untouchable. It’s through Billy Batts and the Gambino crime family that Goodfellas has a connection with John Gotti, as he was the boss of that particular group, but at the time the movie is set, he was just getting initiated as a made man, but he already had a long criminal history.
Gotti actually assisted the Lufthansa Heist, seen in Goodfellas, and made arrangements for the getaway van to be crushed and baled at a scrapyard in Brooklyn, but Parnell “Stacks” Edwards failed to get rid of the van, which was found by the NYPD days later. Gotti is also linked to the disappearance and murder of Tommy DeSimone (DeVito in Goodfellas), as he killed two of his men: Billy Batts and Ronald Jerothe, Gotti’s protégé. DeSimone reportedly dated Jerothe’s sister and was abusive, which led Jerothe to threaten to kill him, but as DeSimone was known for his temper and violent behavior, he killed Jerothe. Although DeSimone’s disappearance and murder are still a mystery, as it’s unknown who killed him and what happened to his body, there are many theories that point to Gotti as the one who pulled the trigger, while others believe he just ordered the murder and might have been present when DeSimone was killed, but he wasn’t the murderer.
John Gotti’s career in the mob, like those of Paulie and Jimmy in Goodfellas, also ended when one of the members of his family became an FBI informant. Gotti died in 2002, but just like the Lucchese crew, the Gambino crime family is still active. There’s a lot of history behind Goodfellas, which shows the many links between various groups of organized crime and the amount of violence and betrayal between them.