A Boesky: Saul playing Lyman Zerga. This is a reference toย?Ivan Boesky, a big-time trader on Wall Street who got caught committing securities fraud. The con is about a wealthy bankroller who has insider information.

A Jim Brown: the confrontation between Frank Catton and Linus Caldwell, staged to distract Terry Benedict so that Linus can lift the security codes to the vault. Named for the famous American football player

A Miss Daisy: references the SWAT truck our con men used as their getaway car. 'driving miss daisy' is a movie about a woman who has to get a chauffeur to drive her around. under the guise of the SWAT truck, Danny, Rusty and the gang can escape without a hitch.

Two Jethros: refers to the Malloy brothers, Turk and Virgil. The two jethros are the 'hillbilly, gear-headed types" who are hired to look after miss daisy. In the movie, they provide general two-man work like the distraction they pull with the balloons covering the security camera on the casino floor so Livingston can get into the video surveillance room.

Leon Spinks: the distraction in the form of disrupting the boxing match. there was this episode of NCIS once where the director went home to Chicago to investigate the death of his boxer friend. in the episode, they mentioned this boxing match where Leon Spinks beat Muhammad Ali, and it was a total upset that no one expected. no one expected the power to go out in the middle of the match in the movie, either, and it created absolute chaos, which was great for our con artists.

Ella Fitzgerald: the idea to loop a tape of a robbery over Benedict's security system, a robbery which had actually been staged the previous night as a distraction while the real robbery takes place. it comes from a commercial for memorex i saw in my ad production class the other week where a recording of Ella Fitzgerald's voice breaks a glass, then the voice over says, "is it live or is it memorex?" the concept is that Benedict doesn't know if the robbery he's seeing is the robbery that's actually happening.