Trivia / A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017)

• Actor-Inspired Heroism: While Count Olaf is more terrifying and ruthless in the book, Neil Patrick Harris emphasizes Olaf's bumbling nature and makes him more sympathetic. This is hardly a surprise, considering the charisma and likability that Harris brings to every one of his roles.
• Actor-Shared Background: Coincidental, but Louis Haynes is a middle child like his character Klaus.
• Cast the Expert: Colette the Contortionist is played by Bonnie Morgan, who is a contortionist in real life. You might also recognize her from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where she was quite creatively cast as a Terminator who's killed by being horribly twisted into a knot.
• The Cast Showoff: Neil Patrick Harris, who plays Count Olaf, is a talented singer. He performs the show's theme song as well as several In-Universe songs as Olaf.
• Executive Meddling: A minor positive example as Netflix executives asked for an explanation of how the Baudelaire children ended up with Count Olaf as their first guardian. Daniel Handler wrote the "Yessica Haircut" flashback, and created the character of Jacquelyn for it, to establish that Olaf tricked Mr. Poe into giving him the orphans.
• Fake American: Louis Hynes, who plays Klaus, is British. While it's not certain where the show takes place, he affects an American accent.
• Genius Bonus: Described under Take That!, Olaf insults a movie theatre as a "godforsaken nickelodeon." Prior to Brand Name Takeover, "nickelodeon" was in fact a term for a neighbourhood movie theatre that took a nickel as the admission fee - Olaf could just as easily been saying he's in an old and cheap movie theatre as he is giving a Take That! to Nickelodeon.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Unlike most Netflix originals there's no official soundtrack despite numerous instances of Neil Patrick Harris showing off his singing chops.
• Making Use of the Twin: The Powder-Faced Women are played by twins Jacqueline and Joyce Robbins. The characters, subsequently, were made to be like-minded twins who frequently finish each other's sentences.
• Meaningful Release Date: The release date for the first season has been announced as January 13th. Which is, of course, a Friday. The year of release, 2017, is also 13 years after the movie was released. But really, who would expect anything different?
• Playing Against Type:
  • A rare comedic role for Alfre Woodard as the perpetually terrified Josephine. For context, just a few months before the first season's release she'd already been on Netflix as the Manipulative Bastard Mariah Dillard in Luke Cage (2016).
  • The dour, well-spoken Lemony Snicket is quite a departure from Patrick Warburton's usual dimwitted lunkheads.
  • Will Arnett usually plays Jerkasses, dimwitted characters, but here he plays a level-headed family man.
  • Kitana Turnbull's later voice acting roles such as Olivia, Sydney, and Kit Secord are all nice girls (with the exception of maybe Coco in NEO: The World Ends with You). Thus, her playing the villainous Carmelita Spats here is definitely a shock.
• Playing Their Own Twin:
  • Triplets Duncan and Quigley Quagmire are both played by Dylan Kingwell.
  • The identical Denouements are played by Max Greenfield.
• Real-Life Relative: Neil Patrick Harris's husband David Burtka plays Mr. Willums and their twins Harper and Gideon Burtka-Harris play Skip and Little Trixie Willums in "The Carnivorous Carnival".
• Self-Adaptation: Daniel Handler, author of the book series, is also executive producer and one of the writers of the show.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Nathan Fillion's Robert Goulet-esque look in the series as Jacques Snicket makes him look like he could be related to Patrick Warburton.
• What Could Have Been: According to this interview with writer Joe Tracz:
  • The final scene of Season Two was planned to have a musical number, "Cliffhanger", which was cut due to a feeling it reduced the tension of the scene.
  • "The Grim Grotto" was originally planned to feature Captain Widdershins, but his disappearance halfway through the book posed a problem - they'd need to explain it, and if he was doing anything too important, it might overshadow the Baudelaires' story. Thus, he was dropped, and his role was given to Fiona.
  • Jacquelyn was planned to have a cameo in "The Penultimate Peril", but it never came to fruition.
  • In addition, Jacquelyn was originally planned to just be a bit part during the Yessica Haircut scene (which was added in response to a Netflix executive asking why the children were placed in Olaf's care). However, the crew loved Sara Canning's performance, and so they expanded her role.
  • Mr. Poe was initially conceived as a stuffy Brit, similar to Timothy Spall's portrayal in the 2004 film. Ultimately, they went with K. Todd Freeman, who played Poe as a cheerfully oblivious idiot.
  • Charles was intended to appear in "The Penultimate Peril", as Jerome's new partner. Despite everyone's enthusiasm for the scene, Rhys Darby (Charles) was unable to arrive for filming due to a typhoon striking Fiji, stranding him there. Kerri Kenney-Silver (Babs) stepped in on short notice.
• Word of Gay: While the character's sexuality was already implied, Fernald Widdershins's actor confirmed on Twitter that he has feelings for Olaf and was going to confess in "The Slippery Slope".

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