50 Fun Facts About A Series of Unfortunate Events

What is the real name of the author who wrote A Series of Unfortunate Events as Lemony Snicket?

Daniel Handler had never written for children, so he reworked an abandoned mock-gothic novel meant for adults. He had made up the name Lemony Snicket years earlier, before he had any books to put it on.

The final Unfortunate Events book came out on which 2006 date?

Friday the 13th of October suited a series built on unlucky thirteens. There are thirteen books, and each one has thirteen chapters.

Where are the Baudelaire children when told of their parents' deaths?

At the beach: the three are at Briny Beach when a banker arrives to tell them that their parents are dead and their home destroyed.

In The Austere Academy, Vice Principal Nero tortures the Baudelaires by playing which instrument?

The violin, a joke on the emperor said to have fiddled while Rome burned. Pupils who skip Nero's six-hour recitals must buy him a bag of candy and watch him eat it.

Which A Series of Unfortunate Events book hides an extra section called Chapter Fourteen?

The End has thirteen chapters like the twelve books before it, then a short second book titled Chapter Fourteen. It jumps ahead a year, to the day the children sail away from their island.

The Baudelaire orphans are named after the French poet Charles Baudelaire, author of which book?

Les Fleurs du mal, The Flowers of Evil, got its author prosecuted for obscenity. The books borrow grown-up names throughout: other characters are called after George Orwell and Virginia Woolf.

What does Violet Baudelaire tie her hair up with when inventing?

A ribbon keeps her hair out of her eyes while she thinks. Violet, fourteen and the eldest, builds the devices that keep getting the three children out of trouble.

What is Klaus Baudelaire's special talent?

Research is his gift. Klaus has read most of his family's library, and he can call up the page he needs whenever Count Olaf's latest scheme has to be exposed.

What is baby Sunny Baudelaire's great talent in the early books of A Series of Unfortunate Events?

Biting: Sunny starts the series with four oversized, very sharp teeth and uses them on anything in reach. As she grows she trades them for a second talent, cooking, and both end up saving her siblings.

Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are thought to be named after figures in which real attempted-murder case?

The von Bülow affair: socialite Claus von Bülow was convicted of trying to kill his wife, Sunny, then cleared at a second trial. Violet is thought to echo Violet Sharpe, a maid caught up in the Lindbergh kidnapping.

Where is Count Olaf's tattoo of an eye?

On his left ankle. A second man with the same tattoo, Jacques Snicket, is murdered by Olaf so that he can pass off the body as his own and blame the children.

Besides his eye tattoo, which facial feature must Count Olaf hide in every disguise?

A unibrow: each disguise covers his single eyebrow and the tattoo, which is enough to fool the adults, while the children know him at once.

In A Series of Unfortunate Events, what does the secret organisation V.F.D. stand for?

Volunteer Fire Department. A schism split the once-noble group into two camps, the volunteers and the villains, and Count Olaf and Lemony Snicket had both been members.

Which banker manages the Baudelaire fortune and keeps placing the orphans with unsuitable guardians?

Mr. Poe is forever coughing, and he never believes the children when they warn him about Count Olaf. His name is a nod to Edgar Allan Poe, the master of the grim tale.

Which mysterious object, stolen from Esmé Squalor, do both sides of V.F.D. hunt through the later books?

The sugar bowl is chased for books on end, and the children are told that what matters is what is inside it. The books never say what that is.

Which triplets, heirs to a fortune in sapphires, befriend the Baudelaires at Prufrock Preparatory School?

The Quagmires get two of their first names, Isadora and Duncan, from the dancer Isadora Duncan. They are orphans too, and for much of the series they believe the third triplet, Quigley, is dead.

How does Violet Baudelaire invalidate her forced marriage to Count Olaf in The Bad Beginning?

She signs with her left hand, and the law requires a bride to sign in her own hand, which for Violet is her right. Olaf had staged the wedding inside a play, with a real judge cast as the judge.

Uncle Monty, the Baudelaires' second guardian, collects which animals?

Snakes fill his Reptile Room, and the prize of the collection is the Incredibly Deadly Viper. It is completely harmless: Monty chose the name as a prank on his fellow scientists.

Aunt Josephine, the widow of The Wide Window, is obsessed with what?

Grammar is her passion, and she turns it into a code. Forced by Count Olaf to write a farewell note, she fills it with mistakes that encode the name of the cave where she is hiding.

Aunt Josephine's house overlooks which body of water, home to deadly leeches?

Lake Lachrymose, whose name means tearful, is full of leeches that attack anyone who has eaten within the hour. Aunt Josephine meets them with a banana still in her stomach.

Which sailor does Count Olaf pose as to win over Aunt Josephine in The Wide Window?

Captain Sham turns up with an eyepatch, a peg leg and a business card. Aunt Josephine reasons that the card says Captain Sham and not Count Olaf, so that must be who he is.

Which 'last safe place' do the Baudelaires go to in The Penultimate Peril?

Hotel Denouement is run by identical brothers on opposite sides of the feud, whom nobody can tell apart. The Baudelaires end up setting it alight themselves, as a signal that the last safe place is safe no more.

Which deadly fungus is released on the island in Lemony Snicket's The End?

Medusoid Mycelium can kill within the hour. Count Olaf smuggles it ashore in a diving helmet hidden under his clothes, and the helmet shatters when he is shot with a harpoon.

In The End, which food cures the Baudelaires of the deadly fungus?

Apples from a tree their own parents had crossed with horseradish, the fungus's known antidote, save all three children. The islanders refuse to eat them and sail away still infected.

Lemony Snicket dedicates every book to which lost love?

Beatrice broke off their engagement, sending back his ring with a 200-page book explaining why she could not marry him. The first dedication reads: To Beatrice, darling, dearest, dead.

Lemony Snicket's lost love, to whom he dedicates every book, turns out to be whom?

The Baudelaires' mother is named as his lost love only in the last pages of the thirteenth book. A newborn girl left in the children's care is then given her name.

Which phrase does Lemony Snicket use whenever he defines a difficult term for the reader?

A word which here means is followed by a definition that fits only the scene at hand. The habit pokes fun at the heavy-handed children's books the author disliked as a child.

On every back cover, Lemony Snicket urges readers to do what?

Put the book down, he begs, and find something happier. He calls it his solemn duty to record the Baudelaires' misery, and sees no reason anyone else should have to read it.

Lemony Snicket's creator names Roald Dahl and which macabre American illustrator as his influences?

Edward Gorey made the kind of book he hunted for as a boy, stories in which mysterious and creepy things happen. The first book the future Lemony Snicket bought with his own money was Gorey's The Blue Aspic.

Who illustrated all thirteen Unfortunate Events books?

Brett Helquist ends each book with a full-page picture that hides a clue to the next one.

Which British actor narrates most of the Unfortunate Events audiobooks?

Tim Curry reads ten of the thirteen. The author took over as Lemony Snicket for books three to five, found the work far harder than he expected and handed the microphone back.

Which novelty band, featuring the author, recorded a song for each Unfortunate Events audiobook?

The Gothic Archies are a side project of Stephin Merritt, better known for The Magnetic Fields. When the final book appeared, the band took its gloomy songs on tour.

Which instrument does Lemony Snicket's creator play in several bands?

The accordion is his instrument, and he played it on The Magnetic Fields' album 69 Love Songs. That band's songwriter later wrote a song for every one of his audiobooks.

Lemony Snicket's creator was born in which American city?

San Francisco raised him and got him back. He moved to New York to start his writing career, then returned to settle in the city where he was born.

In The Miserable Mill, how does the eye doctor Georgina Orwell turn Klaus Baudelaire against his sisters?

By hypnotising him: Klaus comes back from each eye appointment in a trance, and under it he causes a serious accident at the lumbermill. Her surname is a nod to George Orwell.

Esmé Squalor, Count Olaf's fashion-obsessed girlfriend, takes her name from a short story by which author?

J. D. Salinger wrote For Esmé, with Love and Squalor. The Esmé of the books judges everything by whether it is in or out, and adopts the Baudelaires only because orphans are in.

What is the title of Lemony Snicket's four-book noir prequel about his own childhood?

All the Wrong Questions earns its name: each of the four books has a question for a title, starting with Who Could That Be at This Hour? A not-quite-thirteen Snicket spends them asking the wrong ones.

Who played Count Olaf in the 2004 Unfortunate Events film?

Jim Carrey was signed in 2002 under the film's first director and stayed on when that director left. He kept a say over who was hired as the replacement.

Who voiced Lemony Snicket in the 2004 Unfortunate Events film?

Jude Law is heard throughout but never properly seen. His Snicket appears only in silhouette and shadow, typing up the story in a clock tower.

Who played Aunt Josephine in the 2004 Unfortunate Events film?

Meryl Streep plays a guardian frightened of almost everything, from her own stove to her welcome mat. She has nonetheless made her home in a house perched high above a lake.

In the 2004 Unfortunate Events film, where does Count Olaf leave the children locked in his car?

On a railway track, and the children divert the oncoming train by rigging a device to throw the track switch. Olaf then loses custody of them, but only because he is thought to have let a child drive.

Who plays Uncle Monty in the Unfortunate Events film?

Billy Connolly's kindly Uncle Monty is one of three guardians the film gets through. It folds the first three books into a single story, so none of them lasts long.

Which Academy Award did the 2004 Unfortunate Events film win?

Best Makeup went to the team that built Count Olaf's face and his string of disguises. The film was nominated in the other three categories here as well, and lost all three.

Which Australian actress, later the star of Sucker Punch, played Violet Baudelaire in the 2004 Unfortunate Events film?

Emily Browning said she would gladly make a sequel, but none was ever made, and she grew too old for the part.

Who played Count Olaf in the Netflix series?

Neil Patrick Harris also sings the theme song, Look Away, which begs viewers to watch something else. He was a producer on the show as well as its star.

Who played Lemony Snicket, the deadpan on-screen narrator, in the Netflix series?

Patrick Warburton, Puddy in Seinfeld, walks through the scenes in a suit and talks straight to the camera. The characters carry on around him as if he were not there.

Which actress appears in both the Unfortunate Events film and the Netflix series?

Catherine O'Hara switched sides between the two. She is the kindly judge Justice Strauss in the film and the sinister eye doctor Georgina Orwell in the 25-episode series.

Which director left the 2004 film of A Series of Unfortunate Events, then returned to make the Netflix series?

Barry Sonnenfeld lost the film in a fight over its budget and got his second chance 14 years later. He even appears in the series himself, as Aunt Josephine's late husband, Ike.

Where was Netflix's Unfortunate Events series filmed?

Vancouver hosted the shoot from May 2016. The show's world was built there as massive physical sets, the lumber mill among them.

Who provided the voice for baby Sunny's babble in the Netflix series?

Tara Strong, the voice of Bubbles in The Powerpuff Girls, supplied the babble. On screen Sunny was a real toddler, Presley Smith, and subtitles translated what she meant.