There's even an urban legend in which a Japanese woman, Takako Konishi, found dead in Fargo in 2001, had actually just gone looking for the buried treasurein an art imitates life imitates art kind of moment.
Was she searching for real riches?
Part of the confusion no doubt has to do with the text screen, which opens both the film and the TV series and makes this cheeky claim:
"This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 2006/ 1979/ 2010 (depending on what season it is). At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred."
The language of the message is obviously mocking; it pokes fun of true-life disclaimers by purposefully muffing up an "respect" for the survivors. It's the dead who get what they want.
Executive producer Noah Hawley, however, settled the matter for his series by saying : "I can't speak to the movie. But the showIt's all just made up. The whole cloth. I didn't go looking for true crime. It started from a character standpoint and everything grew organically out of that."
Still, there are elements of reality (or rather, truthiness) to the story. Directors Joel and Ethan Coen have said that they based their central auto defrauding scheme on a real-life case. And then there was the woodchipper murder, an actual homicide , which inspired perhaps the most famous moment in the film. (The woodchipper makes an appearance in the series as well, but more so as a film homage.)
So the money and treasure are all fake but the bloody murdering is mostly real? That's right.
