Errores

As Jerry and Jean tell Scotty they don't want him playing hockey, Wade calls Jerry to set up the meeting the next day. When Jean answers the phone, the time on the microwave is 10:44. When she hands the phone to Jerry, it's 7:43. When he turns his back, it's 11:05.

In the opening scene where Jerry is towing the Ciera along the snow-covered roads, both cars are understandably covered with road grime, ice and salt. Later, when he pulls into the King of Clubs for the meeting, both cars are perfectly clean.

When Gaear throws the chopped log at Marge, it falls behind her and a tree. When Marge is pursuing Gaear at the edge of the frozen lake, the log has moved to the bank of the lake where she's standing.

During the ransom transaction scene between Carl and Wade, the camera shots alternate between snow falling and no snow falling.

During the parking garage sequence, the neon clock at Minneapolis City Hall (visible in some shots) shows a very different time from when the money was supposed to be exchanged. According to the same clock, nearly an hour elapses between Carl's departure and Jerry's arrival.

If the tan Cierra that Gaear and Carl was driving had dealer plates, as indicated by Marge and the first Brainerd police officer, it does not require tags.

Nightcrawlers would rarely be used as an ice fishing bait and typically are not even available in the middle of winter. (However although they appear to be in a paper bag, it is foil-lined, which is appropriate for this kind of bait.)

Minnesota license plates have numbers on one side and letters on the other; they are not mixed together as shown on the car at the beginning of the movie.

The state trooper turns on the flashing light on the police car way before it gets close to the kidnappers' Cierra. It means that he could not have noticed that the Cierra had dealer plates on it at such distance, at night.

Marge shoots Gaer in the leg at Moose Lake at the end of the movie. She then transports Gaer to the police station in her own car. This isn't standard police protocol. If a suspect becomes seriously wounded during a pursuit, as from a shot wound, then an ambulance must be called and the suspect must first be transported by that ambulance to a hospital for treatment before they can later be taken into police custody.

Jean Lundegaard dials 911 from a phone in the upstairs bathroom. A few seconds later, the phone is disconnected. While modern 911 systems could automatically identify the address, that was not the case in 1987. The dispatcher might not have been able to take any further action.

In Ludegaard's first plan to raise money, he asks Wade for seed money for a $750,000 parking lot project. Wade refuses to give him the money, but offers him a 10% finder's fee. If he took the finder's fee, he would have had $75,000 instead of the $40,000 he would have had from his second plan of splitting the $80,000 ransom with the kidnappers. However, the ransom demand was $1 million; Jerry only told the kidnappers it was $40,000.

When the patrolman approaches the kidnappers' car at night on the highway, he carries the flashlight in his left hand, and his gun and holster are on his left hip, but when he arrives at the car window, he has the flashlight in his right hand, and the gun and holster are on his right hip. This is not a goof because when the patrolman is approaching the car it's being filmed through the car's side mirror.

Marge is visibly pregnant, but in the initial crime scene, she complains of "morning sickness." Morning sickness typically occurs in the first 12-15 weeks of pregnancy, long before any woman has a visible "baby bump." However, morning sickness can last throughout an entire pregnancy.

When Jerry speaks to Shep about "the two guys," Shep says he only knows Grimsrud and does not know Carl. But when Shep later bursts into Carl's room to choke and whip him, they clearly recognize each other. Shep could have been lying to Jerry, or perhaps Shep knows very little about Carl so he won't vouch for him and pretends not to know him at all.

The face of Steve Buscemi's stunt double is clearly visible when Shep throws Carl across the room.

At the motel in North Dakota where Jerry is hiding out, the knob on the outside door is not an exterior keyed door lock, but rather an interior type bathroom door knob that can be opened with a paper clip. The hotel employee fakes using a key to open it.

When Showalter breaks down the bathroom door during the kidnapping, the wall to the left of the door moves slightly as he pries it open.

The position of the car of the two witnesses to the trooper's being shot vary between the night they drove it off the road and its position the next morning.

At the ransom scene, when Carl shots Wade several times after he is on the ground, Wade's body does not move with the impact of the bullets.

Shep beats Carl over 30 times with body tosses, punches, strangling and belt whips, yet Carl is still able to walk to a phone booth to call Jerry and shows no signs of Shep's physical abuse.

Shep Proudfoot told Jerry that he vouched for Grimsrud; "Don't know his buddy. Don't know him, don't vouch for him," meaning Carl Showalter. So how did Shep know where to find Carl, let alone what he looked like?

A barrel plug can be clearly seen when Marge is aiming her pistol at Gaear as he is feeding Carl's leg into the chopper.

As Officer Olsen spots witness Mr Morris ("funny lookin'") through the police car windscreen sweeping snow off his drive, there is a perspex screen attached to the bonnet/hood of the car. In the next shot, it is gone.

A jar in the kidnappers' shack has a 1990s "Nutrition Facts" label.

When Jerry, Wade, and Stan are standing outside of the Embers, you can see I-394 over their shoulders. An overhead sign shows an HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle, or carpool) lane. Minnesota introduced HOV lanes in 1991.

The Oldsmobile Ninety Eights featured in the movie are "refreshed" 1989-1990 models with a revised grille, side moldings, emblems, nameplates, and rears.

When Jerry meets Carl and Gaer for the first time, he says, "...A brand new burnt umber Cierra." Burnt Umber was not a color available on any GM car in 1987.

Some of the buildings in the Minneapolis skyline scene were built after 1987.

When Shep Proudfoot is beating Carl with the belt, his mouth does not sync correctly with his words.

When Jerry drives past the parking garage booth, a crew member is reflected in Jerry's rear window.

Shadow at lower left during zoom into Marge's bed.

When the kidnappers first enter Minneapolis, they are driving northbound on 35W, which means they're approaching from the south. Brainerd is north of the Twin Cities, so they should be approaching from the north.

In Brainerd, when Officer Olson interviews Mr. Mohra about the guy "going crazy at the lake," they each refer to lakes that are nowhere near Brainerd. Officer Olson asks if it's White Bear Lake, about 130 miles southeast of Brainerd. Mr. Mohra tells him it was Moose Lake. Minnesota has more than 1 Moose Lake, but the closest one is in adjacent Cass County, which is outside of the Brainerd Police department's jurisdiction. The error is repeated later, when Marge Gunderson says she is on patrol around Moose Lake.

When Marge and Lou are talking, they get a lead that their two suspects stayed at the Blue Ox Inn on I-35. However, I-35 runs about 60 miles east of Brainerd, MN.

From Brainerd, Norm would not be "going up" to Mille Lacs to ice fish, but rather be "going over" or "going down" since the lake is slightly to the southeast. There is no elevation change, either.

The first scene takes place in Fargo, ND at 8:30pm. It's takes 3.5hours to drive from Fargo to Twin Cities where Jerry lives. He will return home at midnight at the earliest. But when he gets home it's dinner time.

The poster in Scotty Lundegaard's room spells accordion "accordian."

The irate customer says he was paying "Ninteen Five for that car!". The MSRP for a loaded brand new 1987 Cutlass Cierra was $12,357 which the customer would have seen on the window sticker and far below his original quote.

When Marge interviews Shep Proudfoot, she tells him that associating with criminals is a parole violation and will land him "back in Stillwater", referring to a men's medium-security prison in Minnesota. However, she then proceeds to tell him about their involvement in a homicide. Considering that a triple homicide has occurred and that one of the victims was a state trooper, Shep would not be going to Stillwater, but to Oak Park Heights, which is Minnesota's only maximum security prison for men. As a sheriff, Marge should have known the difference and it would have given her even greater leverage in getting information out of Shep.

Marge did not ask even the basic questions from the two girls about Carl and Gaer's descriptions, and she just accepted "funny looking". Marge did not ask about height, weight, age, skin color, tattoos, or what they were wearing, which direction did they come from, which way did they leave, etc. It is inexcusable for Marge not to have asked, especially since she was the police chief.