The casino is named after George Zucco who played Moriarty in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939), and a Nazi in "Sherlock Holmes in Washington" (1943). To my mind, he is the definitive Moriarty! His Moriarty is everything I expect from Holmes' greatest enemy. Brilliant, and diabolically twisted at the same time, but not in an obvious way like Andrew Scott's Moriarty, though his take on the classic villain is good too. In one scene, Zucco calmly, yet with anger in his tone, explains to his butler that he was on trial for "merely" killing a man, but for damaging one of his prize flowers, he would gladly torture the butler to death. It may come off as "old film" hokey, but when George Zucco says the lines, you know he ain't messin'. He delivers the right amount of shivers to your spine.
George Zucco specialized in playing villains who were cool under pressure, more often than not, smooth and yet full of snark. So British in other words.
"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" has Moriarty attempt to steal the Crown Jewels on his own instead of having his men do it. 73 years later, "The Reichenbach Fall" has Moriarty try it again, and more or less succeed.
I can neither confirm or deny that "laptop guy" is a certain hacker from one of my most favorite shows, "Leverage".
I'm not thrilled with having John and Lestrade's flashback quotes be inaccurate, it really bugs the OCD in me, but I have an even bigger problem with breaking the 3rd Commandment. I know that taking the Lord's name in vain is becoming very common to the point where most people don't think of it as swearing, and I also try not to have my Christian views interfere with my writing too much since I don't want to come off as patronizingly preachy or have only a select few able to enjoy reading my stuff, but sometimes I just got to take a stand on certain things and say, "I'm not writing that".
The Incident that caused Sherlock to drop out of university and drastically escalate his drug addiction will be expanded on in later "episodes".
Meiringen is the Swiss town closest to the Reichenbach Falls. They have a Sherlock Holmes museum and statue.
E. Scott the plumber was the disguise Sherlock Holmes used in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" (1905)
von Bork and von Herling were the main villains in "His Last Bow" (1917) And von Bork was *SPOILER ALERT* revealed as the villain in "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror" (1942) the first Rathbone film to take place in contemporary times.
Sherlock Holmes fighting Nazis. Never gets old! Always awesome!