'True Detective' Creator May Have Plagarized

Was Rust Cohle just quoting a book this whole time?

"True Detective" creator Nic Pizzolatto is under fire today as accusations of plagiarism have come up concerning the first season of the HBO show.

Specifically, fans of philosopher Thomas Ligotti are saying that Pizzolatto lifted exact phrases and took ideas from Ligotti's "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror," which already sounds like a book that Matthew McConaughey's Rust Cohle would have read.

John Padgett, who founded the John Ligotti Online website, explained his concerns in an interview: "It became obvious to me that Pizzolatto had plagiarized Thomas Ligotti and others — in some places using exact quotes, and in others changing a word here and there, paraphrasing in much the same way that a high school student will cheat on an essay by copying someone else's work and substituting a few words of their own."

Plagiarism in screenplays of non-visual media isn't usually as hotly pursued as plagiarism in books, essays and journalism, but in this case it seems that Pizzolatto borrowed from Ligotti the most in the scene where Cohle explains his worldview to Marty Hart in the car...one of the most famous scenes in the series.

Defamer has a transcript of that scene with the allegedly plagiarized lines emphasized. In the context of the scene, the allegations could have easily been avoided if Pizzolatto simply had Cohle mention that he had read Ligotti's book, or that he was quoting it.

These allegations likely won't stop the freight train that is "True Detective," as HBO has a handful of Emmy nominations for the show and is in full swing on pre-production for the second season, with a third season likely to follow.