The whole concept is loosely based on author Howard Waldrop's novella "A Dozen Tough Jobs," which recounts the labors of Hercules in a similar Mississippi setting, albeit ten years earlier. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen tip their hat in Waldrop's direction through the name of Penny's suitor, "Waldrip". Another possible link comes from the William Faulkner short novel, "Old Man." In it a convict survives an "Odyssey"-like adventure. The "tall convict" in the story is carried away on the flooded Mississippi River of 1927 and struggles to return home. At the very end of the story he remembers the only sweetheart he had before being incarcerated and how she stopped visiting him in prison or returning his letters until finally sending him a postcard. "It was a postcard, a colored lithograph of a Birmingham hotel, a childish 'X' inked heavily across one window, the heavy writing on the reverse slanted and primer-like too: 'This is where were honnymonning at. Your friend (Mrs.) Vernon Waldrip'."