Jerry Lundegaard
Jerry is a sales manager at a car dealership who has worked himself into one dilly of a pickle by faking collateral in the form of dealer vehicles to float a loan of more than $300,000. Desperate to avoid his boss—and father-in-law, Wade Gustafson—from discovering this lapse in judgment, he enters into an overly complicated scheme that involves hiring two goons to abduct his wife for a fake kidnapping so he can take half the ransom he plans on his father-in-law paying for the return of his daughter. Things just get much worse from there.
Carl Showalter
Carl is one of the goons that Jerry hires as part of the fake kidnapping plan. He is very talkative, funny-looking, has a chip on his shoulder and chooses the worst possible moment to try driving on a deserted highway at night in a car with no license plate. That decision ultimately leads a spiraling vortex of blood and death that obliterates Jerry’s already overly complicated scheme.
Gaear Grimsrud
Carl’s partner-in-kidnapping whose taciturn resistance to small talk is a constant irritant to Carl. Gaear is not as short-tempered as Carl, but when his patience does reach its limit, the results are unusually violent and serve only to make things even worse.
Marge Gunderson
Brainerd, MN Chief of Police Marge Gunderson is pregnant, chipper and unexpectedly competent. Charged with investigating a triple-homicide on the highway involving a state trooper, she follows the one significant lead—that the suspects were driving a car with dealer plates—all the way to solving the kidnapping of Jerry’s wife, Jean Lundergaard.
Mike Yanagita
An old high school friend of Marge who calls her after seeing her on TV in a news story about the triple homicide. When Marge stays the night in Minneapolis as part of her investigation, she meets up for dinner with Mike who tells her a sob story about marrying another high school girl who died of leukemia. Shortly thereafter, Marge learns that Mike made up the entire story: not only is the girl he claimed to marry not dead, but they were also never married and he’s been dealing with psychiatric problems.
Norm Gunderson
Marge’s husband who ends the movie with the revelation that his drawing of a duck has been chosen to appear on a 3-cent stamp.
