History Literature / ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents

* [[ArcWords Arc Initials]]: V.F.D., and later J.S.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Invoked: the Man with a Beard but No Hair and the Woman with Hair but No Beard identify eagles as mammals. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by the well-read protagonists.

* CommonMeter: "The Little Snicket Lad" shares the common meter with "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," "Amazing Grace," "Pok&eacutemon," "Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Gilligan's Island theme."

** ''The End'' is thematically and symbolically inspired quite hevily by the Book of Genesis--a subtle ironic joke given how Genesis has the incredibly famous opening words of "In the beginning"!

** The series has many mentions of things that the siblings will later encounter or experience again and look back on particular moments... [[spoiler:that don't happen in the series itself given each book starts almost ''immediately'' after the previous one ends. While the series ends on an ambiguous note, the total summations can give the hopeful ending that at minimum the Baudelaire's will survive and return to society given they ''haven't'' experienced them yet.]]

* KickTheSonOfABitch: When Count Olaf violently pushes Carmelita Spats to the ground. Also when Ishmael locks Olaf in a cage.

** To put it very simply: If there's an adult in this series, they're either completely idiotic or [[spoiler:a part of V.F.D., for good or evil]].

---> ''In any case, this is how all our stories begin, in darkness with our eyes closed, and all our stories end the same way, too, with all of us uttering some last words - or someone else’s - before slipping back into darkness as our series of unfortunate events comes to an end.''

The series received a [[Film/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents2004 film adaptation]] in 2004, as well as a video game based on said film. Snicket (played by Creator/JudeLaw) narrates throughout, providing commentary, anecdotes, and advice -- usually against reading any more of his history of the Baudelaire orphans. While the movie never moved past one installment, Creator/{{Netflix}} [[https://deadline.com/2014/11/a-series-of-unfortunate-events-tv-show-lemony-snicket-netflix-1201274454/ obtained the film rights]] and adapted the books into [[Series/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents2017 a live-action series]]. This series premiered on Friday the 13th of January 2017, with Barry Sonnenfeld and Handler himself as showrunners; Creator/PatrickWarburton portrays Lemony Snicket, and Creator/NeilPatrickHarris plays Count Olaf.

A four-part prequel series called ''Literature/AllTheWrongQuestions'' concerning a young Lemony Snicket working for V.F.D. was later released.

A series of BlackComedy-filled children's books by Creator/DanielHandler, under the PenName "Lemony Snicket."

After their parents die in a fire at the family mansion, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire remain in the care of Count Olaf. As their sinister distant relative, Olaf wants the Baudelaire family fortune, which the children will inherit when Violet turns 18. Throughout the first few books in the series, the children are sent from one caretaker to another, each one more eccentric and troubled than the last. Count Olaf is following them in a series of [[PaperThinDisguise Paper Thin Disguises]] that [[AdultsAreUseless only the children immediately see through]]. Eventually, the children must strike out on their own to discover their family's dark secret - their parents' connection to a mysterious organization. Everywhere, bizarre and improbable disasters strike the children and everyone around them for no discernible reason.

The series has a [[Film/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents2004 movie]] and a video game based on said movie. Lemony Snicket narrates throughout, providing commentary, anecdotes, and advice - usually against reading any more of his history of the Baudelaire orphans. While the movie never moved past one installment, Creator/{{Netflix}} [[https://deadline.com/2014/11/a-series-of-unfortunate-events-tv-show-lemony-snicket-netflix-1201274454/ obtained the film rights]] and adapted the books into [[Series/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents2017 a live-action series]]. This series premiered on Friday the 13th of January 2017, with Barry Sonnenfeld and Handler himself as showrunners; Creator/PatrickWarburton portrays Lemony Snicket, and Creator/NeilPatrickHarris plays Count Olaf.

* MacGuffin: The sugar bowl. The Baudelaire fortune. Also, a DiscussedTrope, as the word "MacGuffin" is spoken in the final book.

* IncomingHam: Esmé Genevieve Gigi Squalor is the sixth most important financial adviser in the city, and she will be very sorry if you forget it--she's prone to introducing herself by her full name to people who know full well who she is and what her name is.

** He may be Lemony as Lemony mentions that he received "wart removal cream" for a birthday once.
*** Or, in the first song in the Tragic Treasury, when listing Olaf's henchpeople the song says "and one long-nosed bald man with warts." So the wart-faced man and the bald man may have been retroactively combined into one.

* StealthPun: The Baudelaire children's first guardian after Olaf is called Uncle ''Monty'', And he owns ''Pythons''. You figure it out.

* AdultsAreUseless: ''Are they ever''! By the 8th book, the three principals (by now ages fifteen, thirteen, and not-quite-two) take care of themselves because every adult they've met is either viciously holding onto the IdiotBall or is evil. On rare occasions, they encounter a decent, intelligent, competent adult -- who promptly winds up dead. That, or being dosed with a heavy amount of IdiotBall themselves. Justice Strauss being an example; She was a very good-natured and kind woman who genuinely cared for the children, yet did not believe the children until [[spoiler:Olaf staged his "play" and revealed that Strauss had married himself and Violet, legally owning her fortune in the process]].

* ChekhovsGun: Reading ''The Bad Beginning'' the first time, a reader might be confused as to why Snicket is so specific in which hand Violet uses to hold her spoon, or throw the grappling hook. Snicket makes sure the reader knows Violet is right-handed. In the end, the narration relates how Violet signs Olaf's marriage certificate with her left hand, thus not fulfilling the marriage requirement that a bride signs her name with her dominant hand. Violet only reveals this legal distinction after Olaf thinks he's triumphed, but the heavy-handedness of Violet's handedness prior to the signing already clues the audience in. was Also, in ''The Grim Grotto'', Sunny finds some wasabi in the underwater room. This turns out to be vital in curing Sunny from a near-death infection.

* GardenOfEden: This motif is twisted on the island in "The End," where colonists are kept from venturing the outside world and experiencing complexity and greater joy by a robed figure who assures them they have all they need as they are. The island is dominated by a forbidden apple tree, which the [[spoiler:the Incredibly Deadly Viper offers the children a horseradish apple from (the cure for their fungus infection but also a symbol of potential which the colonists refuse, subverting the Eden parallel]].

* IncomingHam: Esmé Genevieve Gigi Squalor is the sixth most important financial adviser in the city, and she will be very sorry if you forget it--she's prone to introducing herself by her full name to people who now full well who she is and what her name is.

* WidelySpacedJailBars: An illustration in ''The Bad Beginning'' shows Sunny in a birdcage built this way, though being suspended from a tower makes the escapability of the bars less useful

* RefugeInAudacity: As the series is primarily rooted in absurdist fiction, there's not a book that is without such a moment.

* StoppedReadingTooSoon: Parodied twice. Once, in-universe, a vital note is hidden behind chapters and chapters about somebody picking a snack. On another occasion, the ''author'' buries us in boring information before writing a note to his sister.

* SubStory: ''The Grim Grotto'' takes place largely on the V.F.D. submarine Queequeg, and later Count Olaf's sub Carmelita

* ThemedAliases: Count Olaf and his henchman often use aliases that are anagrams of Count Olaf, such as Al Funcoot or O. Lucafont. The Baudelaires finally pick up on this in the eighth book.

* ThisBearWasFramed: The Mamba du Mal never bit Uncle Monty; the venom was injected via syringe, which Klaus figures out because there's one puncture instead of the two that would result from a genuine snake bite. Of course, he can't convince anyone ''else'' that Monty was murdered by a human.

* TotemPoleTrench: An interesting variant: Violet and Klaus put on the same oversized outfit to disguise themselves as some two-headed person.

* TriggerPhrase: Hypnotism relies on these, most notably "lucky" for commands and "[[spoiler:inordinate]]" to undo the trance.

* UncertainDoom: At the end of ''The Penultimate Peril'', [[spoiler:The Hotel Denouement, which was full of almost every surviving named character from the previous books, was set on fire]]. ''The End'' never clarifies how this turned out or who did or did not survive, and extends this fate to the ''entire world'', as the islanders leave whilst poisoned with the Medusoid Mycelium.

* TheUnintelligible: Sunny (whose speech is a mixture of [[SpeakingSimlish gibberish]], semi-relevant words and phrases (some of them [[ShoutOut literary or cultural allusions]]), and sentence fragments), though her older siblings can understand her.

* WhamEpisode: ''The Vile Village'' comprehensively brings the StrictlyFormula nature of the books to an end, ending with the Baudelaires on the run after being falsely accused of murder.

* WidelySpacedJailBars: An illustration in ''The Bad Beginning'' shows Sunny in a birdcage built this way.

* WouldntHurtAChild: Unsurprisingly, few adults meet this standard. Justice Strauss, Uncle Monty, Jerome Squalor, Phil, Mr. Remora, and Mrs. Bass and Captain Widdershins are among the minority in that they treat the Baudelaires kindly if remaining inept.

* {{Bildungsroman}}: [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in ''The Penultimate Peril'' by Sunny.
* BilingualBonus: some of Sunny's comments, such as her arigato in the Slippery Slope, or her saying Aubergine to mean that she is making a plot with this eggplant. Others are a mishmash of English ("Kicbucit?" for "Is he dead?") or plain old Hebrew ("Yomhuledet!" which is translated as "Surprise" but means "birthday" and "Yomhashoah" which is translated as "Never again" but means "Holocaust Memorial Day"). The children also make pasta Puttanesca, an Italian dish translating as "whore's sauce." But Klaus explains to Violet that it means "Very few ingredients."

* {{Birdcaged}}: In book 1, Olaf traps Sunny in a birdcage and threatens to [[UnhandThemVillain drop it from a high place]] if her siblings don't cooperate with his schemes.

** Violet goes through this when they return to the abandoned submarine and find some balloons, and [[spoiler:Sunny is sick from the Mycelia mushroom]].
* BitchInSheepsClothing: [[spoiler:Esmé Squalor]], who after a successful career as a financial advisor [[spoiler:starts an affair with Olaf while married to Jerome and conspires with him to steal the Baudelaires' fortune as well as that of the Quagmires'. In subsequent books, she helps frame the Baudelaires for murder, forcibly behead Violet while the latter is unconscious, feed people to lions, kidnap ''more'' children and whip them into rowing a submarine. It's very cathartic when it's implied Olaf leaves her to die in the fire]].

* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: Doctor Orwell's eye-shaped building, the tombstone-shaped buildings at Prufrock Prep, and to a certain extent, the Eye decor of Olaf's house. Aunt Josephine's house clinging to the edge of a cliff counts as well, though THAT one didn't last long.....

* BluffTheImposter: In TheFilmOfTheBook, Uncle Monty exposes Count Olaf (pretending to be a herpetologist named Stefano) as an impostor by asking him to milk Petunia the snake.
* BoardingSchoolOfHorrors: It's a safe bet that a boarding school with the motto ''Memento Mori'', Latin for "Remember you will die," is not going to be a pleasant one. And Prufrock Preparatory School in Book the Fifth is indeed not.
* BodyMotifs: The eye that first appears in Count Olaf's ankle tattoo, and later in many other places.
* {{Bookworm}}: Klaus is the researcher of the orphans and often uses his expansive knowledge to solve problems.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: Klaus in Book the Fourth; he even appears to have MindControlEyes on the cover.
* BrattyFoodDemand: In "The Bad Beginning," Count Olaf's rude, evil theatre troupe bang on the table and demand their food, and when they get served spaghetti, they demand to be served roast beef instead.

** In The Splippery Slope, the Baudelaires run into the [[spoiler:Snow Scouts]], who have a pledge. In the pledge, helpfully named The Alphabet Pledge, the [[spoiler:Snow Scouts]] describe themselves as 26 different adjectives, each beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. Most of them are normal, but amongst the list are "human" and "xylophone."

* BrickJoke: The phrase "red herring" is introduced in ''The Ersatz Elevator''. That is not funny on its own - however, it is still crucial to a Stealth Joke pulled off in ''The Hostile Hospital''. All the names on the patient list are anagrams - one of them becomes the phrase "red herring."
* BurgerFool: The Anxious Clown, With clown-costumed waiters, balloons and food with names like "Surprising Chicken Salad."
* TheBusCameBack: [[spoiler:Phil]] in ''The Grim Grotto'' returns as the cook on the ''Queequeg''. Tons of examples in ''The Penultimate Peril'', including Mr. Poe, Jerome, Justice Strauss, the teachers from Prufrock Prep School, residents of the Village of Fowl Devotees, Hal (running an Indian restaurant), Carmelita Spats, Sir, Charles and [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg Bruce]] (a minor character from ''The Reptile Room'').

* CassandraTruth: Every time the children see through Olaf's disguises, nobody believes them in time [[spoiler:except in ''The End'']].

** Carmelita Spats always refers to people as "Cakesniffers."

* CerebusRetcon: As the series develops, it turns out that many of the characters' motivations and activities were tied up with the fraught history of a secret fire-fighting organization.

* ChekhovsBoomerang: In ''The Ersatz Elevator'' Violet attempts to use fire tongs for several different things, including welding and noisemakers. They only are effective for their final use, however.
* ChekhovsGun: Reading The Bad Beginning the first time, a reader might be confused as to why Snicket is so specific in which hand Violet uses to hold her spoon, or throw the grappling hook. Snicket makes sure the reader knows Violet is right-handed. In the end, Violet foils Olaf's plot by signing her name with her left hand, thus not fulfilling the marriage requirement that a bride signs her name with her dominant hand. Also, in ''The Grim Grotto'', Sunny finds some wasabi in the underwater room. This turns out to be vital in curing Sunny from a near-death infection.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: The wart-faced man from Olaf's troupe disappears after the 1st book and is never mentioned again. He was also left out of the movie and the Netflix series.

* CircusOfFear: Caligari Carnival, in Book the Ninth. It's mostly just run down until Count Olaf decides to make one of the main attractions feeding people to starving lions
* CityWithNoName: Although many fictional place names are mentioned, the main city where the Baudelaires used to live is never named. (The film identifies it as Boston, but this never occurs in the books).
* ClarkKenting: Numerous characters at various points, with the minor characters being better at it than the main ones.
* CoattailRidingRelative: Count Olaf, a distant relative, spends most of the series trying to get the Baudelaire orphans' inheritance. In the first book, he tries to marry Violet to do this.
* ComicBookTime: Duncan and Isadora say they spent three semesters at the academy before the Baudelaires arrive. "The Slippery Slope" later establishes the Quagmire fire as happening after "The Reptile Room." Excluding the last Chapter, Violet and Klaus only have one birthday each throughout the series.

* CompetenceZone: In the eighth book, babies up to by-then-fifteen-year-old Violet. Even the PaperThinDisguise-wearing villains are unable to see through the children's PaperThinDisguise in Book the Eighth.
* ContinuityNod: Tons of these, especially in "An Unauthorized Biography." [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] and [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in "The End"

* CouchGag: Every book begins with an illustration of the Baudelaires and the current disguise of Count Olaf. However, eventually, Olaf's disguise stops changing and a picture of himself as normal is used, and instead the ''Baudelaires'' start having changes done to their illustration (Carnival freaks, diving helmets and Klaus & Violet wearing snow scout masks)
** ''The Hostile Hospital'' features only a radio for Olaf since his current "disguise" is never shown to the reader, he only speaks through intercoms.

** Count Olaf (who is disguised as Shirley) decides to kill Charles by putting him through a buzzsaw feet-first.

* DeceptionNoncompliance: In the third book, Aunt Josephine is forced by Count Olaf to pretend to commit suicide and turn over custody of the kids to "Captain Sham" (who is Olaf in disguise). She forges a suicide note, but deliberately fills it with misspellings so the kids pick up on the secret code she wrote for them since they know their aunt is [[GrammarNazi utterly pedantic about proper spelling]]. But she was hoping that they would come to live with her in the cave with groceries, not stand up to "Captain Sham."

* DejaVu: The children of ''A Series Of Unfortunate Events'' experience this in the ninth book, having been forced in front of a large crowd like in the previous two books. The LemonyNarrator goes on to explain the concept of Dejá Vu on [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment three separate occasions in the one book]].

** In ''The Grim Grotto'', Lemony Snicket attempts to put the reader to sleep by giving a very repetitive description of the water cycle.

* DeusAngstMachina: The point of the series is to put the main characters through the wringer.

* DevilInPlainSight: Count Olaf is almost always one of these, and no one believes the Baudelaires until they finally prove that his latest persona is a criminal. Averted with Olaf's assistants, who are never detected by the Baudelaires.
* DiminishingVillainThreat: Count Olaf got less and less threatening as the books progressed, although to some degree other villains picked up the slack. Though always dangerous, eventually the books revealed Olaf to be a MookLieutenant at best and a simple ''{{Mook}}'' at worst to an incomprehensibly vast AncientConspiracy, not fully explained but pervaded the last 4 books. Even the very evil woman with hair but no beard and man with a beard but no hair appeared to be taking their orders from someone else. [[ParanoiaFuel And that person could have been taking orders from someone else, and so on...]].

* DontEatAndSwim: Aunt Josephine tells the Baudelaires that they must wait one hour after eating before swimming in Lake Lachrymose. [[CuteBookworm Klaus]] initially assumes it's because of cramps, but Josephine informs him that it's because of the lake's [[KillerRabbit carnivorous leeches]]. Later on, she attracts the leaches to their stolen boat by concealing that she had eaten a banana before boarding.

* DownerEnding: Optional in some books, in which the author [[SnicketWarningLabel suggests to stop reading and imagine an ending better than the real one]].

** "Well-read people are less likely to be evil."

* FacelessEye: The mark of V.F.D. while also comprising the letters.

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath:Shows up regularly, due to the books' [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids general tone]]

* FantasticNuke: The [[spoiler:Medusoid Mycelium, an incredibly dangerous fungal bioweapon, whose cultivation by V.F.D. was treated as a HeWhoFightsMonsters moment]].

** Implied with Coach Genghis as well.

* TheFilmOfTheBook: The movie was well-received by critics, made a lot of money, but a TV series {{Reboot}} eventually replaced the sequel after years of DevelopmentHell.

* FunWithAlphabetSoup: In ''The Hostile Hospital'', Klaus and Sunny have to use alphabet soup to solve anagrams. Since the letters are so fragile and slippery, they keep breaking, forcing the two to use chunks of carrot as stand-ins.

* GardenOfEden: This motif is twisted on the island in "The End," where [[spoiler:the Incredibly Deadly Viper offers the children an apple... to save their lives]].
* GeographicFlexibility: The spatial and temporal milieu of the series is best described as "everywhere and nowhere," as it's far from most known continents, and the large city the Baudelaires lived in doesn't even have a name.

* HalfIdenticalTwins: The Quagmire triplets are "absolutely identical," so how the Baudelaires tell whether they're talking to male Duncan or female Isadora is a mystery -- although Isadora is illustrated with subtly longer hair. But at least the two brothers Duncan and Quigley never share a scene.
* HandsOffMyFluffy: The Baudelaires despair when a snake called the Incredibly Deadly Viper bites their sister, but Uncle Monty just laughs because the name is a misnomer.

* HonestyAesop: Inverted in "The Reptile Room or Murder," which says that although the moral of ''The Boy Who Cried Wolf'' is not to lie, sometimes it's good, or even necessary to lie.

* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Alliterated "The <adjective> <noun>," e.g., ''The Miserable Mill'', ''The Wide Window'', for nearly all the books, the only exceptions being ''The Reptile Room'' and ''The End''.

* TheIlluminati: Hinted at Fiona Widdershins, who seems to prefer triangular eyeglasses.

* IncomingHam: Esmé Genevieve Gigi Squalor is the sixth most important financial adviser in the city, and she will be very sorry if you forget it.

** [[spoiler:Olaf himself when his attempt to blackmail the islanders backfires horribly; he releases the Medusoid Mycelium, but only after Ishmael shoots him in the chest with the harpoon gun]].

** Officer Luciano([[spoiler:Esmé Squalor]]) while [[spoiler:trying to shoot down Hector's balloon injures one of the village crows. The villagers notice this and turn on her and "Detective Dupin" for breaking the rules]].

* KillItWithFire: In the Village of Fowl Devotees, burning at the stake is the designated punishment for breaking ''any'' of the towns numerous rules (which includes the biggies like murder, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking but also]] [[DisproportionateRetribution trivial]] and ridiculous offenses like using mechanical devices, reading certain books, and talking out of turn in town meetings). This is because the town was founded by a bunch of people who were interested in/worshiped crows that migrated strangely, and so their first two rules were "no hurting the crows" and "anyone who breaks rules gets burned at the stake." At some point, they presumably started adding other rules. In any case, this doesn't seem to be enforced for minor offenses (as in the case of the sundae with the wrong number of nuts).

** Violet realizes that their climb to the ascending hot air balloon in ''The Vile Village'' is dangerous and her siblings back to the ground so they won't get hurt, even though [[spoiler:the Quagmires are on the balloon and it is designed never to return to the ground]].

* NeverHadToys: When the Beudelaire siblings are adopted by their evil distant cousin Count Olaf, he doesn't give them any toys to play with, only rocks, since he doesn't care about them.

* PublicExecution: Fortunately averted in ''The Vile Village'' where Jacques Snicket and later the Baudelaires are threatened with burning at the stake, but Jacques dies beforehand and the Baudelaires escape. More or less straight in ''The Carnivorous Carnival'', where Count Olaf sets up a carnival attraction where people are fed to lions and two people are pushed in.

* RedHerring: A literal one shows up (but is anything but), and a patient in the Heimlich Hospital has a name that is an anagram of red herring.

* RetroUniverse: A part of the SchizoTech of the setting. Although, it should be noted that the text never makes explicit references to the Baudelaire children wearing Victorian clothing -- even though they are typically illustrated as wearing such.

* SceneryGorn: The ruins of the Baudelaire mansion are described in detail in Book one.

** Interestingly, the names on Book 8's patient list are themselves anagrams of an EasterEgg status. Most of them are names associated with the book's production - "Linda Rhaldeen" becomes "Daniel Handler," the author, while "Eriq Bluthetts" becomes "Brett Helquist," the illustrator. There is only one exception: "Ned H. Rirger" is, in fact, an anagram of the phrase "RedHerring."

* SocialServicesDoesNotExist: Nobody ever notices the misery the Baudelaires go through in their homes. In fact, the closest thing to social services is the useless Mr. Poe, who is a ''banker''.

* TakeAThirdOption: A non-positive example. What is Nero's solution for where to put Sunny the baby since Prufrock Preparatory has no preschool class? Have her work for him as his non-paid secretary, answering the phone, stapling. etc.
* TakeThat: Lemony Snicket takes some not-so-subtle jabs at various political figures via Sunny's "baby talk": There's "[[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush bush]][[UsefulNotes/DickCheney eney]]" for "You're an evil man" in ''The Slippery Slope'' and "Scalia" in ''The Penultimate Peril'', both of which have somewhat unkind translations). Then there's his association of poet ''Edgar Guest'' with the villains in ''The Grim Grotto'', even stating outright that it's because his poetry sucked in a saccharine way.

* NoodleIncident: It's implied that a lot of the backstory is too tragic to even mention, and Snicket himself alludes to downright absurd situations such as being trapped in a flooded Italian restaurant (which may or may not be hypothetical)

* AluminumChristmasTrees: There is [[https://www.libraryhotel.com/ a hotel in New York City]] organized by the Dewey Decimal System.
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Marks Leo Marks]] was a cryptographer during World War II who used poetry to convey messages, and later became a writer for the film and stage.

* SecretSocieties: [[spoiler:The Volunteer Fire Department]].

* NeverFoundTheBody: What happened to Aunt Josephine (in the books) [[spoiler:and the cast left inside the hotel]] is left in the air.