Fargo made its TV debut in the same way as it did on cinema screens in 1996: with the words, "This is a true story". The Coen brothers' modern classic certainly has a plot that is stranger than fiction - pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson stumbles upon a criminal stuffing his partner's body into a wood chipper while investigating five murders that stem from a ransom-raising kidnapping gone wrong. But that is all it ever was: fiction.

Because the opening explanation is an untruth ("The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. 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"). But, in the internet dawn of 1996, only a handful of critics decided to check whether such a crime had happened in Minnesota less than a decade earlier. So the myth that Fargo's brutally violent plot really did happen pervaded.

The Coens stuck to the story during the promotion of their film, too. In an interview with Premiere in March 1996, Joel is quoted saying: "we wanted to try something based on a real story, and tell it in a way that was very pared down", before adding that the script was "pretty close" to the actual event.