History Film / Fargo

* AlliterativeName: Gaear Grimsrud.

* AwesomeMcCoolname: Shep Proudfoot. One of the cops has to clarify, "That's a name."

* TheGoodTheBadAndTheEvil: [[TheHero Marge Gunderson]] is the good, as she's an AllLovingHero who can't [[GoodCannotComprehendEvil understand how some people can be so cruel.]] [[DecoyProtagonist Jerry Lundegaarde]] is the bad, as he is an immoral businessman who's willing to put his wife in danger to cover up his own incompetence. [[BigBadDuumvirant Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud]] are the evil for being the ones to commit the crime and kill quite a few people over the course of the film (even moreso in [[PsychoForHire Grimsrud's]] case).

Like many of the Coens' films, ''Fargo'' takes liberal inspiration from FilmNoir, [[AuthorAppeal one of their favorite subjects]]. But rather than being a straight GenreThrowback (like ''Film/BloodSimple'' and ''Film/MillersCrossing'') or an AffectionateParody (like ''Film/TheBigLebowski'' and ''Film/HailCaesar''), it's perhaps best described as a ''subversion'' of the genre. The story is a fairly straightforward tale of [[CriminalProcedural criminal intrigue]] and [[PoliceProcedural a dogged cop on a mission]], but it derives much of its subtle BlackComedy from its setting--taking place in the famously friendly, folksy Upper Midwest. Likewise, Frances [=McDormand's=] character Officer Marge Gunderson is a famous subversion of the archetypal HardboiledDetective, being a [[NiceGuy perfectly nice and well-adjusted]] [[PunchClockHero police officer]] who spends most of the film galumphing around in a bulky parka while heavily pregnant.

* BasedOnAGreatBigLie: In theatres, and on the original versions of the DVD, the movie was preceded by a [[RomanAClef statement that the story was true, with names changed to protect those still alive.]] Yet the typical "all names and events are fictitious" disclaimer appears in the end credits. When asked, the Coens stated this was a device to encourage people to suspend disbelief. Apparently someone complained, because later pressings of the DVD are missing the pre-movie statement. Since the first bars of the opening theme played over the statement, it's replaced with a black screen during that time for those discs missing the statement. Though the Region 1 UsefulNotes/BluRay and the version shown on {{Creator/Netflix}} still maintains this statement, so Your DVD May Vary. The only things that may be based on reality would be Jerry using nonexistent dealership vehicles to scam loans from GMAC ([[https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/09/dealer-swindled-6-billion-general-motors/ as happened from 1980 to 1991]]) and the scene where Gaear is stuffing Carl's remains down the wood chipper. Such a method of disposing of a corpse had been done before as Richard Crafts of Newtown, Connecticut [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Helle_Crafts was convicted in 1989 of murdering his wife]] on November 19, 1986 and disposing of her body with a wood chipper.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The bad guys are either caught or dead, but they killed lots of people in the process, the money is lost forever, Jerry's son now has no parents, and nobody really learned from their mistakes. However, Margie, her husband, and their future child supposedly live HappilyEverAfter.]]

** The eventual fate of Jerry and Jean's son, Scotty, is never revealed, though presumably [[spoiler: having lost his mother and grandfather to criminals and his father to prison, he was taken into care. Wade earlier said that Scotty and his mother will be OK (pointedly not including Jerry), which suggests that he has a will that would give her and Scotty his money in the event of his death. Scotty will have a tough time emotionally and personally, but at least he will be perfectly fine financially]].

** After kidnapping Jean, Showalter and Grimsrud get pulled over by a state trooper because the car Jerry gave them doesn't have temporary tags. Showalter's first instinct is to try and bribe the trooper. Who's not having it and tells Showalter to get out of the car. It isn't impossible for police officers to be corrupt in real life, but the vast majority of them aren't going to look the other way no matter how much money you offer them. You wave a few hundred dollars in a cop's face, and nine times out of ten, you're just giving them a reason to arrest you.

* ThoseTwoBadGuys: Showalter and Grimsrud are two criminals hired to stage a kidnapping. They end up killing several innocent people.

** The eventual fate of Jerry and Jean's son, Scotty, is never revealed, though presumably [[spoiler: having lost his mother and grandfather to criminals and his father to prison, he was taken into care]].

* PregnantBadass: Marge might be the foremost example in cinema. She is seven months pregnant. Her badassery, boardering on plain stupidity, is shown in the climax movie when she spots ''the'' brown sierra and goes after it. One heavily pregnant policewoman against two extremely violent criminals.

* ControlFreak: Wade. When dealing with kidnappers, he wants to somehow negotiate, and has to be told by Jerry and Wade's trusted partner that it isn't a "horse trade". To maintain ''some'' control of the situation, he unwisely tries to confront the kidnappers himself ''and'' brings a weapon, which leads to his death.

* RealityEnsues: The movie is basically a {{deconstruction}} of what you find in a crime-thriller.
** After kidnapping Jean, Showalter and Grimsrud get pulled over by a state trooper because the car Jerry gave them doesn't have temporary tags. Showalter's first instinct is to try and bribe the trooper. Who's not having it and tells Showalter to get out of the car. It isn't impossible for police officers to be corrupt in real life, but the vast majority of them aren't going to look the other way no matter how much money you offer them. You wave a few hundred dollars in a cop's face, and nine times out of ten, you're just giving them a reason to arrest you.
** Several example happen after Grimsrud shoots the trooper.
*** Carl, despite being an amoral crook, is still rather shell-shocked by having a man murdered right in front of him, so close he gets splattered with blood. It takes Grimsrud telling him to hide the body to even register what just happened.
*** Afterwards, the short and scrawny Carl tries to drag the taller and heavier corpse on his own, to predictably slow results. It takes so long they get spotted by a passing car.
*** Grimsrud gives chase, but instead of a drawn-out car chase like the movies, the other car veers off the road and flips over. Turns out driving full-speed down an icy road in the middle of the night, without even traffic lights is an accident in the making. Even without the driver probably being in a blind panic.
** Wade tries to be a Papa Wolf, ignoring Jerry (who says that the kidnappers gave specific instructions about him being the one who made contact and delivered the money) and charges off to the drop-off himself with a concealed pistol. [[spoiler: His Clint Eastwood act when confronting Showalter is completely ineffective, resulting in the latter shooting and killing him out of sheer exasperation, and exacerbates the danger to his daughter's life even further.]]
** Disposing of a dead body [[spoiler: via woodchipper isn't anywhere near as good an idea as it may sound. Not only does it take a long time, even without the woodchipper possibly jamming, it leaves a massive pool of blood that can't be cleaned and creates so much noise that Marge got the drop on Grimsrud and yelled at him from only a few feet away without him noticing.]]
** As Jerry finds out, being TheChessmaster is far easier in books and movies than in RealLife. Everything he planned winds up backfiring because of things he either didn't think through or had no control over, and it ends with [[spoiler: his wife, father-in-law and several innocent people all dead, him arrested while trying to flee and his son now effectively orphaned.]]

* RealityEnsues:

* ExtremeMeleeRevenge: Shep ProudFoot to Carl Showalter. After finding out Carl and Gaear’s shenanigans have jeopardized his parole, Shep repeatedly tosses Carl across the room, repeatedly kick him, briefly strangle him with a telephone cable, before using said cable to whip Carl hard enough to leave bloody gashes. Needless to say, [[AssholeVictim Carl deserved every bit of it and more.]]

* ExtremeMeleeRevenge: Shep ProudFoot to Carl Showalter. After finding out Carl and g

* BasedOnAGreatBigLie: In theatres, and on the original versions of the DVD, the movie was preceded by a [[RomanAClef statement that the story was true, with names changed to protect those still alive.]] Yet the typical "all names and events are fictitious" disclaimer appears in the end credits. When asked, the Coens stated this was a device to encourage people to suspend disbelief. Apparently someone complained, because later pressings of the DVD are missing the pre-movie statement. Since the first bars of the opening theme played over the statement, it's replaced with a black screen during that time for those discs missing the statement. Though the Region 1 UsefulNotes/BluRay and the version shown on {{Creator/Netflix}} still maintains this statement, so Your DVD May Vary. The only thing that may be based on reality would be the scene where Gaear is stuffing Carl's remains down the wood chipper. Such a method of disposing of a corpse had been done before as Richard Crafts of Newtown, Connecticut [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Helle_Crafts was convicted in 1989 of murdering his wife]] on November 19, 1986 and disposing of her body with a wood chipper.

* NonIndicativeName: There is a grand total of one scene in Fargo — and that's the beginning. Most of the action takes place in the town of Brainerd, Minnesota, which is over 150 miles away.

* TrivialTitle: Only one scene (the opening scene in which Jerry meets Showalter and Grimsrud) takes place in Fargo. The rest takes place in the next state over, Minnesota, around the town of Brainerd.

* WoodChipperOfDoom: Perhaps the most infamous usage of this trope is in the movie Fargo, where psychopathic criminal Gaear Grimsrud murders [[spoiler: Carl Showalter]] with an ax, chops the body up into little pieces, then shoves the pieces into a ridiculously small wood chipper, which has jammed by the time Marge Gunderson arrives to the scene, horrified by Grimsrud's actions.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: Jerry's entire plan. He hires two thugs whom he doesn't know and probably can't control, on the recommendation of a violent parolee, to kidnap his wife, and lies to them about the full amount of money being exchanged. He doesn't consider that the thugs might try to blackmail him for more money or that his stingy, bossy, and distrustful father-in-law might try to interfere rather than just hand over a million dollar ransom. He also never considers how his wife and son will take the whole ordeal. Even if his plan had been successful, the paper trail of the [=GMAC=] car loans would make no sense and indicate some sort of fraud in Jerry's part.