Unlike Arnold Rothstein (who was murdered in 1928), four main real-life gangsters were still alive at the end of the series - Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Charlie Luciano and Johnny Torrio. Not only did they survive the Prohibition Era, they lived long enough to die of natural causes. Capone died of cardiac arrest in 1947 at age 48 at his Palm Island home, Lansky died at age 80 of lung cancer in 1983 at his Miami Beach home. Luciano died in 1962 of a heart attack at age 64 in Naples, Italy. Torrio died in 1957 of a heart attack at age 75 in Brooklyn. A fifth, Ben 'Bugsy' Segal lived until he was assassinated in 1947 in Beverly Hills, California, aged 41.
The poem drunkenly recited by the college students on the Boardwalk ("I wanted the gold and I got it...") is "The Spell of the Yukon" by Robert W. Service. In the poem, the narrator travels to the Yukon during the Gold Rush of 1896, hoping to strike it rich. He succeeds, but finds his new fortune strangely unsatisfying. The narrator dreams of returning to the Yukon later in life, but this time for the forests, the natural beauty, and the sense of peace he felt while he was there, which he now considers far more valuable than the gold. He expresses regret that he did not fully appreciate these things in his relentless pursuit of wealth.
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In real life Enoch Lewis "Nucky" Johnson (Nucky Thompson's real life counterpart) lived until he was 85 and died of natural causes in 1968.
The episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative Period Program (One Hour or More).