116 Fun Facts About True Detective

In True Detective's first season, how do viewers learn what happened in 1995?

Through police interviews in 2012, each ex-partner tells the old case his own way; the two are questioned separately, and it emerges they have not spoken since a falling-out in 2002.

In True Detective's premiere, what does Rust Cohle say he is called 'in philosophical terms'?

A pessimist, he tells Marty, a breath after calling himself a realist; asked what that means, he replies, 'It means I'm bad at parties.'

Which 2013 film won Matthew McConaughey the Best Actor Oscar while True Detective's first season was still airing?

Dallas Buyers Club, for which he lost nearly 50 pounds to play AIDS patient Ron Woodroof, won him the Oscar on 2 March 2014, the same night the season's seventh episode aired.

True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto co-wrote the screenplay of which 2016 Western?

The Magnificent Seven began as a Tom Cruise project: Pizzolatto was hired to write it while Cruise was attached, but the star dropped out, the script passed through other hands, and Denzel Washington led the seven instead.

In True Detective's first season, what is the first victim's body wearing when found in a sugarcane field?

A crown of deer antlers tops the kneeling body, posed as if praying to a lone tree; Rust takes one look and tells Marty the killer has done this before and will do it again.

True Detective's creator was accused of lifting Rust Cohle's monologues from which horror writer's nonfiction?

Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race was the book fans pointed to in August 2014; months earlier Pizzolatto had told The Wall Street Journal it was 'incredibly powerful writing'.

Who played Detective Martin 'Marty' Hart in True Detective's first season?

Woody Harrelson came aboard at his co-star's request: Matthew McConaughey, first lined up for Marty Hart, talked his way into the other lead and asked for Harrelson as his partner.

In True Detective's first season, Rust Cohle says that time is what?

A flat circle: everything we have ever done, he says, we will do over and over again. The idea is not even his; he opens the speech with 'Someone once told me'.

The second season of True Detective is primarily set in which U.S. state?

California is the backdrop, where one bizarre murder throws together three officers from different agencies and a career criminal, all caught in the same web of corruption.

In True Detective's third season, what do locals call scrap collector and war veteran Brett Woodard?

The Trash Man is the town's name for Woodard, who gathers scrap to resell; suspicion over the missing children turns into a mob attack on his house that ends in a deadly shootout.

Which murder victim's discovery opens the investigation in True Detective's first season?

Dora Lange had lived among runaway girls at a backwoods brothel; her diary, recovered there, points the detectives to the burned-out church she attended.

Which actor played Detective Ray Velcoro in True Detective's second season?

Colin Farrell played Ray Velcoro, a city detective who belongs to gangster Frank Semyon because Semyon once handed him the name of the man said to have attacked his wife.

In True Detective's third season, why is the elderly Wayne Hays being interviewed on camera in 2015?

For a true-crime documentary series called True Criminal; Hays, whose memory is failing, agrees to sit for it mainly to find out what the filmmakers know about his old case.

In True Detective's first season, which of Marty Hart's daughters alarms her parents with disturbing drawings?

Audrey is caught by her teacher with the sketches; years later two young men are jailed after being found with the teenager, and Marty offers to drop the charges if they take a beating from him.

Before True Detective, Cary Joji Fukunaga directed Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender in which 2011 literary adaptation?

Jane Eyre was Fukunaga's second feature, and he told Brontë's story largely in flashbacks rather than straight through; True Detective would jump between timelines too.

Who plays Evangeline Navarro in True Detective: Night Country?

Kali Reis, a former world champion boxer, plays Navarro, whose obsession with one unsolved murder got her taken off the case and moved from the town's police force to the state troopers.

In True Detective: Night Country, which one-eyed animal blocks the road in front of Navarro?

A polar bear with one eye stops Navarro's truck just after a voice on her dead phone line says 'She's awake'; it eerily matches a one-eyed stuffed bear that Danvers keeps at home.

In True Detective: Night Country, which industry props up the town of Ennis and pollutes its land?

Mining keeps Ennis alive, through the Silver Sky company, and its pollution is the season's secret: the research station was faking the mine's toxicity data because the thawing ground helped its own work.

Which shadowy figure do suspects and victims keep naming in True Detective's first season?

The Yellow King surfaces first in a murdered woman's diary; in 2002 a prisoner offers to trade what he knows about him for a deal, then is found dead in his cell after a single phone call.

What does killer Errol Childress call the ruined tunnels where True Detective's first season ends?

Carcosa is a name a captured suspect lets slip in 1995, but the detectives only reach the place in 2012: a brick labyrinth filmed inside Fort Macomb, a 19th-century fort.

Which actor portrayed Frank Semyon, a criminal-turned-businessman, in True Detective's second season?

Vince Vaughn played Frank Semyon, whose attempts to legitimize his business are thwarted by a murder, leading him into the central investigation.

Which actress played Detective Ani Bezzerides in True Detective's second season?

Rachel McAdams played Ani Bezzerides, a sheriff's detective who poses as her own sister to get inside an elite party and has to kill a guard to escape it.

Which actor played Officer Paul Woodrugh in True Detective's second season?

Taylor Kitsch played Paul Woodrugh, the highway patrol motorcycle officer whose roadside discovery of a body triggers the whole season's plot.

Who played Detective Roland West, Wayne Hays's partner, in True Detective's third season?

Stephen Dorff played Roland West, the junior partner in 1980 who rises to lieutenant; decades on, it is Hays who has to talk him into chasing the case one more time.

Carmen Ejogo played which character, a schoolteacher and writer, in True Detective's third season?

Amelia Reardon, a local schoolteacher, marries detective Wayne Hays and writes a book about the case that, by 1990, is putting their marriage under strain.

True Detective's third season centres on the disappearance of two children from which Ozarks family?

The Purcells' children, Will and Julie, ride off to a playground one afternoon in 1980 to see a friend's new dog, with orders to be home before dark, and never come back.

Where does Rust Cohle keep the private evidence he shows Marty in True Detective's 2012 timeline?

In a self-storage unit, where years of files and photographs cover the walls; a stolen videotape he plays there horrifies the reluctant Marty into joining the hunt again.

In True Detective: Night Country, what symbol does Danvers notice on a dead scientist's forehead?

A spiral: Danvers spots it on one of the frozen men but cannot say what it means, and a local woman later tells Navarro the sign is older than the town itself.

How long is the single-take raid sequence in True Detective's first season?

The tracking shot runs about six minutes, following Cohle through a housing-project shootout in one unbroken take that ends with him escaping in Marty's car.

Which agency employs Cohle and Hart in True Detective's first season?

Louisiana State Police took Rust on after his undercover years in Texas ended in a gunfight: offered a pension, he asked instead for a transfer to any homicide unit.

In True Detective's first season, which event belongs to the 2002 timeline rather than 1995 or 2012?

Rust quits the police in 2002 after a bloody fight with Marty outside their office; the story then leaps a decade to 2012, seventeen years after the first body was found.

In True Detective's third season, what handmade objects lead Wayne Hays to the missing boy's body?

Chaff dolls mark the trail to the cave where the boy lies with his hands posed in prayer; a classmate later says the missing girl was handed one while trick-or-treating on Halloween.

Director Cary Fukunaga said which film was the only recent Matthew McConaughey work he had seen before True Detective?

The Lincoln Lawyer was all Fukunaga had seen of the actor's newer work when his name came up; on a call, McConaughey then made what the director called a compelling case for playing Cohle.

How long was the character analysis Matthew McConaughey wrote to prepare for True Detective?

450 pages, by his own count: McConaughey charted where Rust Cohle's head was at every point in the story, breaking him into four stages from undercover wreck to burned-out ex-cop.

In True Detective's first season, how does Maggie Hart finally end her marriage to Marty in 2002?

She sleeps with his partner and then tells Marty so, to make sure he will leave; the two detectives fight outside their office and do not speak again for ten years.

Which film director was in the running for True Detective's first season before leaving to make a movie?

Alejandro G. Iñárritu liked the pilot script enough that Pizzolatto wrote a second episode for him; when he went off to make a film instead, the job passed to Cary Fukunaga.

Which band recorded "Far from Any Road", the opening theme of True Detective's first season?

The Handsome Family, the husband-and-wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks, cut the song for their 2003 album Singing Bones; the show brought the 11-year-old record a fresh wave of interest in 2014.

Whose song "Nevermind" is the opening theme of True Detective's second season?

Leonard Cohen's 'Nevermind' comes from his 2014 album Popular Problems, and the title sequence never stood still: its lyrics changed with every episode, pulling different verses from the song.

Which Billie Eilish song plays over the title sequence of True Detective: Night Country?

'Bury a Friend' did more than open the show: Issa López wrote the season in lockdown listening to Eilish, and called the track 'such a dark, moody, fun, sinister little song'.

Which Nordic country served as a filming location for True Detective: Night Country?

Iceland hosted the shoot from November 2022 to April 2023, with night scenes filmed at -23 °C; Issa López said viewers would believe the setting 'because the actors were cold'.

What was Nic Pizzolatto's 2010 debut novel?

Galveston became a 2018 film directed by Mélanie Laurent, but Pizzolatto felt her changes to his script no longer reflected his vision and had the screenplay credited to a pseudonym, Jim Hammett.

On which AMC crime drama did Pizzolatto write before creating True Detective?

Pizzolatto wrote two first-season episodes of AMC's The Killing in 2011, then quit early in its second-season writers' room to work on his own material.

Which state did Pizzolatto want as True Detective's first setting before HBO chose Louisiana?

Arkansas was his first choice, but Louisiana's film tax credits won HBO over; he got his way with season three, which was set and filmed there.

On what format was True Detective's first season shot to give it a "nostalgic" quality?

35 mm film was used throughout, and even the lenses followed the story's dates: the 1995 and 2002 scenes were shot through softer vintage glass than the 2012 ones.

In True Detective's first season, a girl tells police she was chased through the woods by what?

A green-eared spaghetti monster sounds like a child's nightmare until 2012, when Marty works out that the green was house paint and tracks down the painter: a scarred man they had missed.

Which musician curated True Detective's gospel-and-blues soundtrack with Pizzolatto?

T Bone Burnett built the soundtrack with Pizzolatto under one unofficial rule: steer away from Louisiana swamp blues and Cajun music, because 'it's already been done so much'.

Which 1895 Robert W. Chambers collection inspired True Detective's occult motifs?

The King in Yellow reached well beyond the show: H. P. Lovecraft read it in 1927 and slipped its Yellow Sign into his own story 'The Whisperer in Darkness'.

The name True Detective gives its killer's lair was coined by which American writer in an 1886 story?

Ambrose Bierce coined the name in a short story whose narrator wanders among ancient ruins and finds his own gravestone; Chambers borrowed it nine years later, and the show borrowed it from him.

In the 1895 Chambers collection that inspired True Detective, what form does the cursed title work take?

It is a forbidden play, printed in book form, that drives anyone who reads it mad. The Yellow Sign is its eerie companion symbol, and the play recurs through the first four stories.

In True Detective's second season, what does Ray Velcoro learn about the man named as his wife's attacker?

He was the wrong man: years later the real attacker is caught through DNA, and Velcoro realises that the tip which put him in Semyon's debt for life was never true.

What derisive nickname do Rust Cohle's fellow detectives give him for his note-taking in True Detective?

The Taxman comes from the unusually large ledger he carries and fills with notes and sketches of crime scenes.

In True Detective, in which state was Rust Cohle raised by his survivalist father?

Alaska is where his father, a divorced survivalist and war veteran, brought him up; born in Texas, Rust later moved back south, saying he could not stand the cold.

What tragedy destroyed Rust Cohle's marriage before True Detective's first season begins?

His daughter being killed by a car at the age of two broke the marriage; moved to narcotics, Rust shot a meth user who had injected his own baby, and went undercover to avoid charges.

In True Detective, a gunfight after four years undercover sent Rust Cohle to what kind of institution?

A psychiatric hospital in Lubbock took him in after the shootout, in which he shot three cartel men and was wounded himself; the visions he still sees date from those drug-soaked years.

What is the name of the Texas biker gang Rust Cohle infiltrated, whose ties he later exploits?

The Iron Crusaders are the Texas outlaw bikers Rust rode with undercover; he rejoins them for a 1995 stash-house robbery to get a lead on their meth supplier.

What undercover alias does Rust Cohle revive to get close to the bikers in True Detective's first season?

Crash is the name the bikers knew him by in his undercover years; to bring it back he steals cocaine from the evidence room and poses as a cartel man looking to go it alone.

In True Detective's 1995 timeline, Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle is the cousin of which Louisiana official?

The governor is his cousin, and the reverend uses the tie at once, pressing for an 'anti-Christian crimes' task force that would take the murder case away from Rust and Marty.

Which suspect in True Detective's first season turns out to be a former cellmate of the first victim's ex-husband?

Reggie Ledoux shared a cell with the victim's ex-husband, who admits he showed Ledoux photographs of her; a meth cook, Ledoux sells only to one biker gang, which gives the detectives a way in.

In True Detective's first season, what does Marty Hart do on finding two kidnapped children at a meth cook's hideout?

Executes his prisoner with a shot to the head, in a rage at what he has just seen; Rust then plants evidence to make it look like a gunfight, and the two are hailed as heroes.

In True Detective's first season, what is on the videotape Rust steals from Reverend Tuttle's home?

Masked men killing Marie Fontenot in a ritual is what the tape shows; when Rust plays it for Marty in 2012, the horrified Marty agrees to help him without telling the police.

In True Detective's first season, what is killer Errol Childress doing when Rust first meets him in 1995?

Mowing a lawn at a religious school, he tells Rust he only keeps the grounds for the parish, and Rust is called away mid-conversation; the detectives learn who he really was seventeen years later.

How does Errol Childress wound Rust Cohle in True Detective's season-one finale?

Stabs him in the abdomen while Rust stands transfixed by a vision of a swirling vortex; Rust headbutts his way free, and it is the wounded Rust who fires the shot that kills Childress.

What is the title of True Detective's season-one finale?

"Form and Void" ends on a reversal: Rust, the show's bleakest voice, looks up at the night sky and tells Marty that, if you ask him, the light is winning.

By the 2012 timeline of True Detective's first season, what work is Rust Cohle doing?

Tending bar part-time is his only job: he came back to the state in 2010 after years of drifting, and has spent the time since quietly gathering evidence on his own.

Director Cary Fukunaga said who wanted True Detective's famous single-take raid cut up in the edit?

The series creator, Nic Pizzolatto, wanted the shot broken up in post-production, Fukunaga told GQ in 2018; the director kept it whole, and the episode won him an Emmy.

What happened to the HBO Go streaming service on the night of True Detective's season-one finale?

It crashed from demand, and it was no one-off: the service went down again during Game of Thrones' fourth season, and by year's end HBO had hired Major League Baseball's tech arm to build its next streaming service.

For which True Detective episode did Cary Fukunaga win the Emmy for Outstanding Directing?

"Who Goes There" ends on one unbroken take of a raid going wrong; Fukunaga got only seven attempts at it, and the first three had to be abandoned partway through.

In which Emmy category did HBO enter True Detective's first season in 2014?

Drama series, not miniseries, was HBO's choice, and FX chief John Landgraf publicly called it unfair, arguing that a one-season story lets a network sign film stars a continuing drama could never get.

Which director helmed the first two episodes of True Detective's second season?

Justin Lin, of the Fast & Furious films, opened a season built very differently from the first: Cary Fukunaga had directed every episode of season one, but season two was shared among six directors.

Whose body, found by Officer Paul Woodrugh, sets True Detective's second season in motion?

City manager Ben Caspere is found at the side of a highway with his eyes burned out by acid, and the killing pulls officers from three different police agencies into a single investigation.

For which city's police department does Ray Velcoro work in True Detective's second season?

Vinci is an invented industrial city, mired in smog and institutional corruption, and Velcoro is a fair sample of it: while carrying its badge he also takes orders from a local gangster.

What is Ani Bezzerides's full first name in True Detective's second season?

Antigone has a sister with an equally classical name, Athena; in the first episode Ani leads a raid on a suspected brothel and finds Athena working there as a webcam performer.

Which actress plays Jordan Semyon, Frank's wife, in True Detective's second season?

Kelly Reilly plays Jordan Semyon, who refuses to flee without Frank until he promises to follow in two weeks, wearing a white suit with a rose; she keeps the appointment, and he never arrives.

In True Detective's second season, what is Frank Semyon investing in when a murder wipes out his money?

A rail project: Frank had handed his money to the murdered man to buy land along a planned high-speed line, and when the cash vanishes with him, the career criminal starts an investigation of his own.

In True Detective's second season, a figure in a bird mask shoots Ray Velcoro with what weapon?

A shotgun, fired twice at close range, looks certain to have killed him, but it was loaded with rubber riot-control rounds, and Velcoro wakes up bruised at the start of the next episode.

Which singer-songwriter appears as the bar singer throughout True Detective's second season?

Lera Lynn was heard before she was seen: a song she co-wrote with Rosanne Cash scored the season's first trailer, and she insists the worn-out woman on the bar's stage is a character, not her.

In True Detective's second-season finale, where does gangster Frank Semyon die?

In the desert: stabbed by cartel men after refusing to hand over his suit, which hides a fortune in diamonds, Frank walks on through visions of his past until one tells him he stopped moving way back there.

In True Detective's third-season finale, where do the detectives learn the missing girl spent her last known years?

In a convent, where a nun says she died of HIV and shows them a grave; Hays later suspects the nuns faked the death, and that she is alive and raising a daughter with a boy she knew in childhood.

Which director shot the first two episodes of True Detective's third season before leaving the production?

Jeremy Saulnier, the Green Room director, left after two episodes, with HBO citing scheduling conflicts; veteran TV director Daniel Sackheim took over and split the remaining six with Pizzolatto.

Which HBO drama creator co-wrote an episode of True Detective's third season?

David Milch, the creator of Deadwood, shared the fourth episode with Pizzolatto, who had written all of season one alone.

Mahershala Ali said the lead role in True Detective's third season was originally written as what?

White: Ali says the lead was meant for a white actor and he was offered a supporting part, until he convinced Pizzolatto that he was the right choice to play the detective.

Wayne Hays, the lead detective of True Detective's third season, is a veteran of which war?

Vietnam gave Hays the tracking skills he falls back on in 1980: while police search the area in numbers, he reads the woods alone and follows the trail to the missing boy.

Which Ozarks college town was the main filming location for True Detective's third season?

Fayetteville was familiar ground for the show's creator: Nic Pizzolatto earned his writing degree at the university there, and came back to shoot the season in and around the town where he had studied.

Who played the missing children's father in True Detective's third season?

Scoot McNairy plays the father, whose drinking wrecks him after 1980 until detective Roland West helps him get sober; a decade on, he makes a televised plea for his daughter to come forward.

Which actor plays Henry, the detective son of Wayne Hays, in True Detective's third season?

Ray Fisher plays Henry, who gets the season's last decision: he finds the address his father wrote down, having forgotten why he needed it, and quietly keeps it.

What business does Michael Rooker's character, Edward Hoyt, own in True Detective's third season?

A chicken processing plant, Hoyt Foods, employs the missing children's mother, and the link proves fatal: it was at a picnic that the owner's grief-stricken daughter first fixed on the little girl.

In True Detective: Night Country, where do police take the block of frozen bodies to thaw?

The town ice rink is Danvers's idea: the men are frozen together in one solid mass that cannot be separated until it thaws, so the whole block is trucked there to defrost slowly.

In True Detective: Night Country, what is found on the floor of the deserted research station?

A severed tongue is all a delivery driver finds there, and it belongs to none of the missing men: it is a woman's, cut from a murder victim six years earlier, which drags her cold case back open.

During what natural phenomenon is True Detective's fourth season set?

Polar night falls on the story's first evening, 17 December, the last sunset of the year, so the disappearance and the whole investigation that follows unfold without a single sunrise.

Which John Carpenter film did Issa López cite as an inspiration for True Detective: Night Country?

The Thing was, she said, one of the biggest references for the season's Arctic research station, which she also shot to carry echoes of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining and the Nostromo in Alien.

How did Issa López describe True Detective: Night Country's relationship to season one?

A dark mirror was her pitch for the season: 'Where True Detective is male and it's sweaty, Night Country is cold and it's dark and it's female.'

True Detective: Night Country was Jodie Foster's first starring TV series role since which 1974 show?

Paper Moon had the young Foster playing Addie, the girl who tags along with a con man; as an adult she returned to series television behind the camera, directing episodes of Orange Is the New Black and Tales from the Loop.

How did Jodie Foster describe her True Detective: Night Country character, police chief Liz Danvers?

An "Alaska Karen" was Foster's own label for a chief she also called awful; playing her won Foster both an Emmy and a Golden Globe.

Which former Doctor Who star plays police captain Connelly, Danvers's boss, in True Detective: Night Country?

Christopher Eccleston plays Connelly, the chief's married lover as well as her boss, and says he would never have taken such a small part if every one of his scenes had not been with Jodie Foster.

Who earned an Emmy nomination for playing Hank Prior in True Detective: Night Country?

John Hawkes plays Hank Prior, a veteran officer who once secretly moved a murder victim's body; when he raises his gun at Danvers, it is his own son, the young officer Peter, who shoots him dead.

Which Cohle appears as a ghost in True Detective: Night Country, linking it to season one?

Travis Cohle, Rust's father, is dead before the story starts, yet Rose Aguineau greets him by name, follows him across the snow, and is led straight to the frozen bodies of the missing men.

Which Oscar-winning director executive-produced True Detective: Night Country alongside Issa López?

Barry Jenkins and his company Pastel joined after creator Nic Pizzolatto had moved on to a deal elsewhere: HBO went looking for new voices, and the result was the first season made without Pizzolatto's input.

How did creator Nic Pizzolatto react online to Night Country's use of True Detective's season-one lore?

He called it "so stupid" in one Instagram reply and wrote "Can't blame me" in another; he deleted the comments after a backlash, then reposted fans' attacks on the finale.

In which city was True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto born?

New Orleans was home only until he was five, when the family moved to rural Lake Charles; he later said the first season's landscape was simply the places he knew from where he had lived and travelled.

What was True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto's job before he moved into television?

College professor: he was still teaching literature at DePauw University in Indiana in 2010, when he gave up the classroom and left for Hollywood to try screenwriting.

Which James Bond film did True Detective's season-one director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, go on to direct?

No Time to Die only came to him because Danny Boyle walked away over creative differences in August 2018; Fukunaga was hired as his replacement a month later.

Which film won Mahershala Ali his first Oscar, two years before he led True Detective's third season?

Moonlight made him an Oscar winner in 2017, and that same year, offered only a supporting part in True Detective, he argued that he should play the lead detective instead, and got it.

Whose unsolved murder, years before the Tsalal disappearance, obsesses Navarro in Night Country?

Annie Kowtok, an Iñupiaq midwife and activist, was murdered years before the scientists vanish; her severed tongue turning up at Tsalal ties the two cases together.

The actress who plays trooper Navarro in True Detective: Night Country made her acting debut in which 2021 film?

Catch the Fair One was no ordinary first job: she helped develop its story as well as starring, as a boxer hunting for her trafficked sister, and earned an Independent Spirit nomination for best lead.

Which 2017 film by Night Country showrunner Issa López won her Best Horror Director at Fantastic Fest?

Tigers Are Not Afraid had been turned down by Sundance, Venice and other festivals before Fantastic Fest took it and gave López its directing prize; the ghost story then took off from there.

Before playing Lisa Tragnetti in True Detective, Alexandra Daddario starred in which young-adult film series?

Percy Jackson & the Olympians cast her as Annabeth Chase; True Detective then gave her four episodes as Marty Hart's mistress, whose date he confronts after forcing his way into her apartment.

The actress who plays Maggie Hart in True Detective plays the hero's wife in which spy franchise?

Mission: Impossible III introduced her as Julia, the nurse Ethan Hunt marries, whose kidnapping by an arms dealer drives the plot; she returned to the role in Ghost Protocol and Fallout.

The actor who plays Roland West in True Detective's third season was which vampire villain in Blade (1998)?

Deacon Frost is an upstart who was turned rather than born a vampire, so the pure-blood elders look down on him; he answers by seizing power and trying to raise the blood god La Magra.

Which civil rights figure has True Detective's Carmen Ejogo played twice, in Boycott and Selma?

Coretta Scott King met Ejogo during the first production and gave the portrayal her blessing; King died in 2006, and Ejogo said she carried that approval with her into Selma.

True Detective's premiere gave HBO its most-watched series debut since which show?

Boardwalk Empire had opened to 4.8 million viewers in 2010; True Detective's 2.3 million beat every HBO launch in between, Game of Thrones included, and its finale later drew over 3.5 million.

Which photographic technique gives True Detective's season-one title sequence its look?

Double exposure let the designers build portraits of the cast out of the polluted landscapes around them; creative director Patrick Clair called it a way to reveal character through location.

By 2012 in True Detective's first season, how is former detective Marty Hart making his living?

As a private investigator, running a small firm that is on the wane, he spends his evenings alone with frozen dinners until his estranged old partner turns up asking for help.

In True Detective: Night Country's finale, who is revealed to have forced the scientists out onto the ice?

A group of local women, cleaners at the station among them, found proof that the men had killed one of their own; they marched them outside at gunpoint, without their clothes, and left the cold to decide.

Which actor beat both True Detective leads to the 2014 Emmy for lead actor?

Bryan Cranston won for the final run of Breaking Bad, so Matthew McConaughey, who had collected the Best Actor Oscar that March, could not add an Emmy for Rust Cohle in the same year.

At the end of True Detective's second season, which country do Ani Bezzerides and Jordan Semyon escape to?

Venezuela is where the two women end up with Ani's baby; there she hands a reporter all the evidence she has gathered, but will not stay to testify, and the group moves on again.

Which True Detective actress earned a Golden Globe nomination for the show's first season?

Michelle Monaghan's nomination, for playing Marty's wife Maggie, came at a ceremony where the show competed as a miniseries and lost that prize to Fargo.