40 Fun Facts About The Reptile Room

In The Reptile Room, Uncle Monty's friendly new snake is wrongly named the Incredibly Deadly what?

Viper is a misnomer: the Incredibly Deadly Viper is among the least dangerous creatures in Uncle Monty's collection, and it quickly becomes Sunny's playmate.

In The Reptile Room, Uncle Monty plans to take the Baudelaires snake hunting in which country?

Peru was the destination, but Uncle Monty was found dead on the morning they were due to leave. The disguised Count Olaf still tried to drag the children there himself.

What false name does Count Olaf use while posing as Uncle Monty's new assistant in The Reptile Room?

Stephano arrived bald and bearded to replace an assistant who had vanished. The Baudelaires saw through him at once, but the adults around them did not.

Which flavor of cake does Uncle Monty serve the newly arrived Baudelaires in The Reptile Room?

Coconut cream cake, which Uncle Monty made himself, was the first sign that this guardian would treat the orphans kindly after their misery with Count Olaf.

What tool does Violet Baudelaire make from the plug of a lamp in The Reptile Room?

A lockpick let Violet open Count Olaf's suitcase, where she found the proof that Uncle Monty had been poisoned by a person and not by one of his own snakes.

Which job does Uncle Monty give sharp-toothed baby Sunny Baudelaire in The Reptile Room?

Biting rope into pieces of a usable length was Sunny's task, and her older siblings were each given work that suited their own talents.

Why does Uncle Monty give his harmless new snake a terrifying name in The Reptile Room?

As a practical joke on the scientific society whose members teased him about his own name, Uncle Monty planned to unveil the snake and watch them panic.

What does Count Olaf use in The Reptile Room to hide the eye tattoo on his ankle from Mr. Poe?

Powder covered the tattoo until Mr. Poe rubbed the ankle with a cloth, and the eye that appeared proved who the new assistant really was.

How do Klaus and Sunny distract the adults in The Reptile Room while Violet searches for evidence?

A staged snake attack fooled the adults: Uncle Monty's gentle newest snake pretended to pounce on Sunny, which bought Violet the time she needed.

Which Count Olaf henchman poses as Dr. Lucafont to examine Uncle Monty's body in The Reptile Room?

The hook-handed man hid his hooks inside a pair of fake plastic hands to play the doctor, and the name O. Lucafont is an anagram of Count Olaf.

Which kind of scientist is Uncle Monty, the Baudelaires' kindly second guardian in The Reptile Room?

Herpetologist is the word for a scientist who studies reptiles and amphibians, and Uncle Monty keeps a huge collection of them in a hall of his house.

What does Uncle Monty let each Baudelaire orphan choose on arriving at his house in The Reptile Room?

Their own bedroom was an early sign of how different this guardian would be: Uncle Monty treated the orphans with kindness and gave them free run of the house.

What does the disguised Count Olaf rub against Violet's knee at dinner in The Reptile Room?

A knife, kept out of Uncle Monty's sight under the table for the whole meal, was a silent warning to Violet not to reveal who the new assistant really was.

In The Reptile Room, Uncle Monty wrongly believes his new assistant has been sent to his house as what?

A spy sent to steal his new discovery is what Uncle Monty suspected. He never grasped that the stranger was Count Olaf, whatever the children said.

In The Reptile Room, what halts Count Olaf's getaway with the Baudelaires after Uncle Monty dies?

A car crash stopped the escape almost at once, because Count Olaf ran into the vehicle of Mr. Poe, the banker in charge of the orphans, while leaving the estate.

Which task does Uncle Monty assign Violet Baudelaire to prepare for his expedition in The Reptile Room?

Inventing snake traps suited Violet, the eldest Baudelaire and a gifted builder of gadgets, and her devices were meant to catch new specimens on the trip abroad.

The final illustration in The Reptile Room hides a clue to which next book in the series?

The Wide Window is hinted at by a shirt in the picture that reads Lachrymose Leeches, the creatures that infest the lake in that story.

Which American author wrote The Reptile Room under the pen name Lemony Snicket?

Daniel Handler invented Lemony Snicket as a false name for requesting mailings from groups he found offensive or funny while researching his first novel, then made him the gloomy narrator of the series.

Which comic actor played Count Olaf in the 2004 film that adapted The Reptile Room and two other books?

Jim Carrey shaved his head so the heavy prosthetic makeup was easier to wear, and the director let him improvise when Count Olaf posed as a lab assistant.

Who plays Count Olaf in the 2017 television series that adapts The Reptile Room in two episodes?

Neil Patrick Harris played Count Olaf in every season and also performed the theme song, which urges viewers to stop watching the miserable story.

Which streaming service adapted The Reptile Room as the third and fourth episodes of a 2017 series?

Netflix told the story across two episodes, the pattern it followed for nearly every book in the series.

What material forms the walls and soaring ceiling of Uncle Monty's reptile hall in The Reptile Room?

Glass walls and a ceiling as high as a cathedral's enclose the collection, which sits in metal cages arranged in neat rows on wooden tables.

The venom Count Olaf injects into Uncle Monty in The Reptile Room comes from which snake in the collection?

Mamba du Mal venom turned up in a vial among his belongings, and the snake was known as one of the most dangerous in Uncle Monty's whole collection.

The road to Uncle Monty's house in The Reptile Room is known for the strong smell of which food?

Horseradish from a nearby factory gives the whole area a bitter reek, and the same pungent root turns out to be a lifesaving cure much later in the series.

Which grimly named road must Mr. Poe drive along to reach Uncle Monty's house in The Reptile Room?

Lousy Lane winds past sickly gray fields and an orchard of famously sour apples before it reaches the steep gravel driveway of the house.

Which former assistant of Uncle Monty is said to have suddenly resigned before The Reptile Room begins?

Gustav had not resigned at all: Count Olaf later admits to killing him, which is how the villain opened up the job he then took in disguise.

Which film does Uncle Monty take the Baudelaires and his new assistant to see in The Reptile Room?

Zombies in the Snow was directed by the assistant Count Olaf had replaced, and a later book reveals that it carried a hidden warning meant for Uncle Monty.

What does Uncle Monty tear up to keep his new assistant off the expedition in The Reptile Room?

His ticket for the voyage was torn up once Uncle Monty decided the newcomer could not be trusted, a snub that left the disguised Count Olaf furious.

Klaus proves in The Reptile Room that no snake killed Uncle Monty because the pale body lacks what?

Bruises would have covered the body, since the snake blamed for the death also squeezes its victims, and Klaus had read exactly that in one of Uncle Monty's books.

To which lost love does Lemony Snicket dedicate The Reptile Room, as with every book in the series?

Beatrice receives a mournful dedication in each volume, and the last book reveals that she was the Baudelaire children's mother.

Which Scottish comedian played Uncle Monty in the 2004 film drawn partly from The Reptile Room?

Billy Connolly played the kindly snake expert opposite a mix of real snakes and animatronic ones, which the effects team later polished with computer graphics.

What has Count Olaf shaved off his face to pass as a new lab assistant in The Reptile Room?

His eyebrow, the single long brow that marks him out, had to go, and a beard and a bald head completed the disguise.

Which American artist illustrated The Reptile Room and every other book in A Series of Unfortunate Events?

Brett Helquist had spent six years as a graphic designer in New York, and a trade review of this book praised his detailed drawings of gargoyles.

Which British actor reads the audiobook of The Reptile Room, a performance that earned an Earphones Award?

Tim Curry narrates most of the series on audio, although the author took over the reading himself for books three to five.

The ship Uncle Monty books in The Reptile Room, the Prospero, is named after a character in which Shakespeare play?

The Tempest is a favorite of the series: castaways in the last book, including Ariel, Miranda and Ferdinand, borrow their names from the same play.

Uncle Monty warns in The Reptile Room that his Virginian Wolfsnake must never be let near which object?

A typewriter is off limits, a gag that makes sense once the snake's name is read as a pun on the English novelist Virginia Woolf.

A 2007 paperback reissue of The Reptile Room added which alternative title after the word 'or'?

Murder! was the shout on the cover of an edition that also added seven new illustrations and the second part of a comic serial.

Which actor plays Uncle Monty in the 2017 television episodes adapted from The Reptile Room?

Aasif Mandvi's Uncle Monty reads a secret message in a film's subtitles, a twist the screen version added that the book's character never notices.

In The Reptile Room, how is Uncle Monty actually related to the Baudelaire children's late father?

His cousin's brother-in-law is the short version: Mr. Poe introduces the doctor as the brother of the wife of a cousin of the children's father.

Who arrives to cart away Uncle Monty's reptile collection in the closing pages of The Reptile Room?

Bruce returns much later in the series as the leader of a troop of young scouts, and Count Olaf eventually cheats him out of the reptiles.