Why does Tony have six fingers in the pilot for ‘The Sopranos’?

How many fingers do you have? If you have five, join the rest of human civilisation, but if you have six, don’t panic (yet), for you’re in good company with Tony Soprano of The Sopranos fame, also having the same number of digits. At least, this is what appears to be true in the pilot episode of the celebrated show. So why exactly does the mentally fragile mob boss appear to have six fingers?

Dense with enough hidden meaning and context that any Sopranos fan worth their salt can bury their heads into the series time and time again and still find new secrets, HBO truly did strike gold when they gave David Chase the money to make the crime show back in 1999. Heavily inspired by the gangster flicks of Martin Scorsese, Chase’s series tells the story of Tony Soprano, a New Jersey crime boss who has to juggle his personal life with his grisly professional business.

Ever since the release of the show, fans have compared the life of Tony Soprano, played by the great James Gandolfini, to the real-life mob boss Vincent ‘Vinny Ocean’ Palermo, with Chases’ meticulous attention to detail creating a path of breadcrumbs for viewers. In the 2006 documentary The Real Sopranos, this parallel is explored further, with one moment even showing Palermo’s crew reacting to FBI recordings of them watching The Sopranos: “Is that supposed to be us? Every show you watch, more and more , you pick up somebody… They even got a topless joint over there. Jesus.”

Yet, Palermo did not have six fingers, making it even stranger that in the pilot episode, when Tony is lying in bed, the bedsheets are arranged in such a way that suggests the protagonist has an extra digit.

While some might believe that the curiosity of the shot is a mere coincidence, Chase was no such person, and when you look deeper into the significance of six-fingered beings, the intention becomes clear. In ancient culture, having a sixth finger on the left hand was an omen of imminent bad luck, with the show’s creator creating this illusion as a hint to the audience that Tony’s fortunes were due to steady decline.

Such also works to draw a through-line from the pilot to the show’s divisive ending in which (spoilers) Tony meets his demise before the screen cuts to black and his laborious life his comes to a close.

Take a look at the scene in question where it seems Tony has six fingers in the clip from The Sopranos pilot below.