For a guy who claims he was “sort of whacked” in the pilot episode of “The Sopranos,” Marc Baron has had quite an afterlife.

“I’ve done more than a thousand of these,” Baron said during a recent bus tour of the show’s New Jersey sites, in a rare moment when he wasn’t, as a thoroughly enjoyable guide, dispensing nuggets of insider information or passing out quirky prizes for correctly answering trivia questions.

As with all things Sopranos, survival is the ultimate objective, be it the franchise or Tony himself. And so, not long after the bus emerged from the western exit of the Lincoln Tunnel on a recent Friday morning to begin a most unscenic tour, Baron addressed the question of whether there would ever be confirmation of Tony’s existence beyond the booth at Holsten’s Confectionery in Bloomfield, N.J.

“Listen to me carefully — there will not be a movie,” said Baron, 53, an actor in New York who cites 13 “Sopranos” stand-in credits, as well as a cameo as a bartender at the original Vesuvio restaurant, which was burned down by Tony in the show’s HBO debut.

“We are hearing there will be a trilogy,” Baron said. A caveat: Nothing will happen without a script that is acceptable to James Gandolfini, who, of course, played Tony.

How reliable is his information? Baron confided to a reporter that it had come from the owner of a certain North Jersey establishment that the tour would later be visiting, the site of many Sopranos scenes unsuitable for children and network television.

The Sopranos tours, which are operated by On Location Tours (screentours.com; tickets, 212-209-3370) and cost $40, run Fridays and Saturdays from midtown Manhattan and last about four hours. According to Cathy Wilke, the company’s director of marketing, the buses are usually full. “We get a lot of people from the U.K. and Ireland,” Wilke said.

Two of those people, Sean McGuire, 24, and Aine Bannon, 21, had arrived from Belfast the previous day, had dinner, went to sleep and by morning were bound for New Jersey. Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building would have to wait until they had enjoyed breathtaking views of the Pizzaland shack, a diner under the Pulaski Skyway where Christopher Moltisanti took one for the team and the auto-body shop run by Sal Bonpensiero, known, of course, as Big Pussy.

“This is the first part of America we’re seeing,” said McGuire, who said “The Sopranos” was broadcast on free television in Northern Ireland. “It’s just like the show.”

Not exactly what the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce had in mind. But, while strolling in a light rain on Kearny Avenue in the town of the same name, Baron reminded everyone that many Sopranos settings were inauthentic. Ethnicity notwithstanding, the street had a legitimate wiseguy feel, embellished by poker-faced, cigarette-smoking young men outside Big Stash’s Sub House.

Winding through Newark and Belleville and on into Bloomfield, the bus settled in front of Holsten’s on Broad Street. Since the final episode ended there with Tony, Carmela and A.J. waiting for Meadow, the Holsten’s staff has greeted fans with bags of the onion rings Tony endorsed and the Journey song “Don’t Stop Believing,” which provided the series-ending soundtrack.

Chris Carley, a co-owner of Holsten’s, said he won’t stop serving as long as the tourists keep coming (and buying assorted merchandise).

“In my perfect world,” Carley said, “there will be a movie, and it will begin with Meadow coming in and sitting down with her family.”

Carley had a don’t-blink-you’ll- miss-it appearance behind the counter in the finale, but he too thought his television was broken when the screen went dark as the episode concluded. “To this day, people come in here and ask us, ‘What the heck happened?’” he said.