When Alfred Donnelly's wife asks him why he is so panicked about trying to "get" McCloud before McCloud recognizes him, Donnelly shouts out: "Because I'm in the Mafia!" The M-word was practically never used on television during the 1970s because Italian-Americans resented the use of an Italian word to describe a crime syndicate (writers generally used the terms "Mob" or "Syndicate" instead). McCloud may have been ahead of its time in having an Australian use the word: the term popped up in Russia (as "Mafiya") after the fall of the Soviet Union and has since come into general use for crime rings all over the world.