Money Heist: The REAL Reason Why The Robbers Have City Names

The real names and backstories of the robbers in Money Heist have (almost) all been revealed now, but they nonetheless continue to use the city codenames that the Professor assigned to them. Even characters like Raquel Murillo and Mónica Gaztambide, who joined during or after the Royal Mint heist, were given honorary city names (Lisbon and Stockholm, respectively).

Clearly there’s more to Money Heist‘s city names than just securing anonymity for the heist crew – but that was the original reason for them. The Professor spent years plotting out the precise details of the Royal Mint heist, and a key part of his plan was ensuring that the crew didn’t know each other and had no personal attachments to one another. Of course, this plan fell apart long before they even entered the building. Moscow insisted on bringing his son, Denver, into the job. Oslo and Helsinki are cousins. Tokyo and Rio started up a romantic relationship. And the Professor broke his own rule by making his brother, Berlin, the heist’s captain.

The behind-the-scenes reason for the Money Heist crew’s names being cities is actually rather random. Speaking to Lifestyle Magazine, showrunner Álex Pina revealed that while the creative team knew they wanted to have unique codenames for the characters, the idea to use the names of cities actually came from a T-shirt:

“We had a number of ideas, with the names of the planets amongst others. Then, one day, someone turned up with a T-shirt bearing the word Tokyo and that’s how it all began. Try and imagine it if we had kept to the names of the planets and the Money Heist heroes were called Uranus, Mercury and Jupiter!”

On the Professor’s part, the city names were probably chosen as a way to deliberately mislead the police into trying to analyze them. While the Money Heist crew come from different places around the world, none of them have city names corresponding to their place of origin. For example Oslo and Helsinki are Serbian, but their codenames are the capital cities of Norway and Finland, respectively. This naming convention somewhat fell apart with Monica, who was given the nickname “Stockholm” due to speculation that she was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

More than any practical reason, the crew in Money Heist have city names simply because, well, it’s cool. There’s a grand tradition of criminal teams in movies and TV shows having nicknames, like Reservoir Dogs‘ “Mr. Pink” and “Mr. Blue.” The use of pseudonyms and the later reveal of the robbers’ real names also reflects how Money Heist introduces them as strangers, and gradually unravels each of their backstories. Hopefully in Money Heist season 5 we can look forward to learning the true names of Marseille and Bogotá, as the Bank of Spain heist continues to play out.

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Hannah Shaw-Williams
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Hannah has been with Screen Rant since 2013, covering news, features, movie premieres, Comic-Con and more! You can follow her on Twitter @HSW3K

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