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@Shanghaied
Well, Campag has exploded diagrams of all their shifters under Technical Documentation on their website, with specific numbers for each part so that they can be ordered as spares. Each spare part number has a two letter prefix, so it's something like SR for Super Record, RE for Record, CH for Chorus etc. What is really interesting though is that the top three or four groups are basically exactly the same until about last year, ie ALL the spare parts for Super Record, Record, and Chorus (and Athena until 2010) shifters have exactly identical part numbers, with the prefix SR, the only difference is in the brake lever itself. I don't remember the exact number but I think S Record and Athena carbon shifter only had something like 10 gram difference in weight, which is easily accounted for by the different levers.
Of course since 2011 from Athena and downwards the shifters can only shift 3 gear at a time down and 1 up, as oppose to 5 down and 3 up for Chorus and upwards, so the innards were downgraded accordingly. But the lower end stuff still share innards, as do the upper end stuff. Which makes sense really, since there's only so much you can do with the tiny nuts and bolts inside, and it makes no business sense to make 5-6 different versions of every single part. This has been the case since at least 2000, before that I don't know since I was too young and had other things on my mind.
So to answer your question, not much, especially on stuff before 2011. Mirage and Xenon had plastic levers and usually has one gear less than the more expensive stuff (ie 9sp vs. 10sp, or 10sp vs. 11sp), Veloce and Centaur had aluminium levers. And the really fancy stuff, Chorus and Record, had plastic levers again (well carbon). I'll say this though, I've found the carbon and aluminium levers to be a bit stiffer than the plastic levers.