100 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.

Which pasta sauce do the Baudelaire orphans prepare for Count Olaf's theatre troupe in The Bad Beginning?

Puttanesca is the dinner Olaf rejects the moment he walks in: he demands roast beef, which he had never asked the children to make.

Which literary device links the titles of the first twelve Unfortunate Events books, such as The Wide Window?

Alliteration runs through twelve titles, from The Bad Beginning to The Penultimate Peril, and only the thirteenth and final volume breaks the pattern.

What is the title of the Netflix Unfortunate Events theme song, which urges viewers to stop watching?

Look Away has music by Nick Urata and words by the books' own author, and its middle section is rewritten for each story to sum up the misery ahead.

The banker who places the Baudelaire orphans with each new guardian is constantly troubled by which ailment?

A cough is the banker's trademark, along with a gift for missing the obvious: Olaf's disguises take him in again and again while the children see through them at once.

What does one of Count Olaf's most loyal henchmen have in place of hands in A Series of Unfortunate Events?

Hooks stand in for the hands of the henchman who turns up in book after book, and he sometimes slips fake hands over them to complete a disguise.

The Slippery Slope was the second-bestselling children's hardback of 2003, behind a book from which rival series?

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the only children's hardback to outsell it that year, even though the tenth Baudelaire story sold some 900,000 copies.

Which birds fill the town that adopts the Baudelaires in The Vile Village, roosting at sunset in the Nevermore Tree?

Crows rule the village so completely that harming one is its gravest crime, which is what finally turns the townspeople against Olaf's disguised girlfriend.

In The Carnivorous Carnival, Count Olaf plans to draw crowds by feeding a sideshow performer to which animals?

Lions were meant to revive ticket sales, and the performer picked for their pit turns out to be Violet and Klaus, who are sharing a single disguise.

Which skill does Sunny Baudelaire take up as she grows out of infancy in the later Unfortunate Events books?

Cooking takes over as Sunny's speciality: by The Slippery Slope she is preparing breakfast for Olaf's whole troupe on a frozen summit.

Which actress played the kindly judge living next door to Count Olaf in Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events?

Joan Cusack's judge returns in the final season to preside over a blindfolded trial meant to clear the children, which Olaf promptly turns against them.

In The Wide Window, which sweets do the allergic Baudelaires eat on purpose to escape a restaurant dinner?

Peppermints bring all three children out in hives, which gets them sent home from the Anxious Clown with time to decode their aunt's farewell note.

Aunt Josephine's farewell note in The Wide Window hides the name of which refuge in its deliberate errors?

Curdled Cave is where the children find their aunt alive: she had faked her own death and hoped the four of them could simply live there together.

What is the name of the lumbermill where the Baudelaires are put to work in The Miserable Mill?

Lucky Smells pays its workers in coupons instead of money, and their whole lunch is nothing more than chewing gum.

Which alias does Count Olaf use while posing as an eye doctor's receptionist in The Miserable Mill?

Shirley takes in the mill's owner completely: he warns the orphans in a memo that one more accident will see them handed over to her care.

Count Olaf joins the staff of the boarding school in The Austere Academy disguised as which gym teacher?

Coach Genghis keeps Olaf's telltale features under a turban and shoes he will not take off, then wears the orphans out with laps that last all night.

In The Ersatz Elevator, the kidnapped triplets are smuggled out of an auction inside a statue of which fish?

A red herring is the statue nobody suspects, because the Baudelaires are busy bidding on a box marked with the initials they have been chasing.

Why are the elevators at 667 Dark Avenue switched off when the Baudelaires arrive in The Ersatz Elevator?

They are out of style, in a neighbourhood so ruled by trends that light itself has been declared unpopular and the whole avenue is kept dark.

Which unreliable newspaper brands the Baudelaire orphans as murderers in the later Unfortunate Events books?

The Daily Punctilio is why a friendly shopkeeper suddenly recognises the children in The Hostile Hospital, forcing them to flee in a stranger's van.

Which sideshow act does Sunny Baudelaire pose as, under the name Chabo, in The Carnivorous Carnival?

A wolf baby is Sunny's cover, billed as half human and half beast, while her older siblings squeeze into one costume as a two-headed act.

Which icy range hides the V.F.D. headquarters that the Baudelaires search for in The Slippery Slope?

The Mortmain Mountains were meant to be a refuge, but the children climb all that way only to find the headquarters already burned to the ground.

Where does Count Olaf imprison Sunny Baudelaire to force her siblings to obey him in The Bad Beginning?

A birdcage dangling outside his tower window holds Sunny hostage, and twelve books later the islanders of the final story shut Olaf in one himself.

In The Grim Grotto, which condiment do the Baudelaires use in place of horseradish to cure Sunny's poisoning?

Wasabi works as a culinary equivalent of horseradish, and the children happened to have some left over from their search of the grotto.

In The Grim Grotto, Count Olaf pursues the Baudelaires in a submarine built in the shape of which sea creature?

An octopus is the shape of Olaf's vessel, which is powered by kidnapped children and named the Carmelita after the spoiled girl he has taken in.

In The Grim Grotto, the menace that sends even Count Olaf's submarine fleeing appears on sonar as which symbol?

A question mark is all the sonar ever shows, and the thing is never explained: it chases off Olaf's submarine once and sends him running again at the close.

Which uniformed job do the Baudelaires take as a disguise while spying on guests in The Penultimate Peril?

Concierges can go anywhere unquestioned, so the three split up and end up serving faces from earlier books, from their old schoolteachers to the mill owners.

What is the title of the play Count Olaf stages in The Bad Beginning so that he can legally wed Violet?

The Marvelous Marriage was written by Olaf under the pen name Al Funcoot, which is simply his own name with the letters rearranged.

Each Unfortunate Events book ends with a letter from Lemony Snicket about the next manuscript, addressed to whom?

His editor receives ever more battered instructions: the letters turn up torn, soaked or as telegrams, and by the eighth book only shredded scraps remain.

In The Grim Grotto, one of Count Olaf's oldest henchmen turns out to be the long-lost brother of which mycologist?

Fiona finds her brother Fernald among Olaf's crew and ends up joining the villains herself, though she lets the Baudelaires escape first.

In The Slippery Slope, Violet builds a tool for climbing a frozen waterfall out of forks and which instrument?

A ukulele and a handful of forks become Violet's ice-climbing gear, carrying her up the frozen waterfall to the summit where Sunny is being held.

Which actor played Jacques Snicket, the narrator's dashing adventurer brother, in Netflix's Unfortunate Events series?

Nathan Fillion's Jacques recruits a school librarian to help the orphans, an expanded heroic role that one critic felt undercut the loneliness of the novels.

Which actress played the fearful Aunt Josephine in the Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events?

Alfre Woodard's Josephine has been afraid of nearly everything since losing her husband Ike, and in the Netflix telling she is herself a member of V.F.D.

Which comedy actor plays a V.F.D. father trying to return home to his children in Netflix's Unfortunate Events?

Will Arnett and Cobie Smulders play the parents of the triplets the Baudelaires befriend at boarding school, both of them members of the secret organisation.

Which actor played Jerome Squalor, the timid husband of the trend-obsessed Esmé, in Netflix's Unfortunate Events?

Tony Hale's Jerome hates arguing so much that he gives in to his wife on everything, and in the end he is not brave enough to help the orphans.

Which young actress played the inventive Violet Baudelaire across all three seasons of Netflix's Unfortunate Events?

Malina Weissman had already worked with the show's lead director on the film Nine Lives, and he chose her for her knack of speaking quickly without overacting.

Which director took over the 2004 Unfortunate Events film after the original choice quit over its budget?

Brad Silberling inherited a project Nickelodeon Movies had been developing since 2000, and his film folds the first three novels into a single story.

Which British character actor played the Baudelaires' hapless banker in the 2004 Unfortunate Events film?

Timothy Spall's banker is the one who breaks the news of the blaze to the children, then looks after their interests for the rest of the story.

Which Hollywood veteran has an uncredited cameo as a critic at Count Olaf's play in the 2004 Unfortunate Events film?

Dustin Hoffman sits unbilled in the audience of Olaf's wedding play, and Helena Bonham Carter appears, also uncredited, as one of the Baudelaire parents.

Which debut novel by Lemony Snicket's creator led him to invent the pen name while he was researching it?

The Basic Eight, a dark satire about a teenage girl, was turned down by many publishers for its subject matter before it finally reached print.

Lemony Snicket's Unauthorized Autobiography has a reversible cover posing as a cheerful story about which animals?

Ponies front the fake jacket, titled The Pony Party and credited to Loney M. Setnick, whose name is Lemony Snicket's with the letters shuffled.

Where does Klaus Baudelaire spend his thirteenth birthday during the events of The Vile Village?

In a jail cell is where Klaus turns thirteen, and the bread and water he is given become the tools the children use to dissolve the wall's mortar.

Which creatures infest the shack where the Baudelaires are made to sleep in The Austere Academy?

Crabs scuttle over the floor and fungus drips from the ceiling, and the orphans are stuck there because they have no guardian to sign a dormitory permission slip.

What do the Baudelaires find inside the box marked V.F.D. that they win at auction in The Ersatz Elevator?

Doilies, Very Fancy ones, fill the box, and Olaf promptly slips on them, losing the boots and monocle that had been hiding his identity.

Which youth group do Violet and Klaus find camped in a cavern while fleeing stinging gnats in The Slippery Slope?

The Snow Scouts are led by Bruce, the man who once carted away a late guardian's reptile collection, and one masked member turns out to be a secret ally.

In The Vile Village, which flying invention does the handyman Hector build in secret against the town's rules?

A hot air mobile home, meant to stay aloft for good, carries Hector and the rescued triplets away while the Baudelaires are stranded on the ground.

In The Ersatz Elevator, the trend-obsessed Esmé Squalor is the city's sixth most important what?

Financial adviser is Esmé's profession, but she takes in the Baudelaires for one reason only: orphans happen to be the fashionable thing to have.

Which British actor played the menacing Man with a Beard but No Hair in Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events?

Richard E. Grant's villain is a mentor whose aura of menace frightens even Olaf, and he and his partner later turn up as judges at the children's trial.

On the summit in The Slippery Slope, the captive Sunny Baudelaire is made to sleep in which kitchen item?

A casserole dish in the car's trunk is Sunny's bed, and it saves her: when Olaf goes to hurl her off the peak, the dish turns out to be empty.

The creator of Lemony Snicket performs on 69 Love Songs, a three-album set by which indie pop band?

The Magnetic Fields gave him his first real musical notice, after two earlier bands of his own had gone largely unheard.

In The Vile Village, the first letters of the smuggled couplets spell out which hiding place of the kidnapped triplets?

Fountain is the clue: the triplets are shut inside the beak of the town's bird-shaped Fowl Fountain and send each couplet out by wing at dawn.

Which actress played Kit Snicket, the narrator's sister and Olaf's former fiancée, in Netflix's Unfortunate Events?

Allison Williams's Kit is the third Snicket sibling, alongside Lemony and Jacques, and like her brothers she belongs to the secret organisation.