History Literature / ASeriesofUnfortunateEvents

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* Babieseverafter: The end of The End

* BannedInChina: Daniel Handler was actually hoping for some of this, and was disappointed in how little it happened. His one real "victory" was that the books were banned from a school in Georgia due to Olaf's plan to marry his distant relative Violet in book one, to which he responded "I'm at a loss as to how to write a villain who doesn't do villainous things."

* HanlonsRazor: The line between willful villainy and pure incompetence is rather thin, especially since some incompetent and stupid characters become pawns in what seems like a massive GambitRoulette.
* HannibalLecture: Or rather, Hannibal Gloat, in the movie. Olaf reveals to the audience that he has just legally married Violet and played everyone for a sap. When Mr. Poe demands that the Chief of Police arrest him, Olaf calls Poe and everyone out on how the kids had repeatedly tried to warn the adults and asked for help, but they wouldn't listen to them. "No one ever listens to children".
* HenpeckedHusband: Jerome Squalor. And how.

* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: All but [[OddNameOut the thirteenth book]] have an alliterative title.
* AdultsAreUseless: By the eighth book, the three principles (by now ages fifteen, thirteen, and not-quite-two) take care of themselves, because just about every adult they've met is stupid, evil, cowardly, or some combination thereof. On rare occasions they encounter a decent, intelligent, competent adult -- who promptly winds up dead.

* AmbiguouslyJewish: The author has noted that his characters are Jewish by default, and he unconsciously inserts Jewish themes and ideas into his books. In the final book, the Baudelaires mention that it is their family's tradition to name babies after deceased relatives. This is a Jewish tradition. [[hottip:* :(Jews aren't supposed to name babies after ''still living'' relatives, as this is considered tantamount to putting a death sentence on the older party. Please note that this is an an Ashkenazi custom and may not apply to other groups of Jews.)]]

** What with the computer in "The Austere Academy" being small and able to display a picture and may or may not be able to fake photographs, it definitely takes place sometime after the fifties, or at least at a point when computers did not fill an entire room.

* 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?") and a couple are plain old Hebrew ("Yomhuledet!" which is translated as "Surprise" but literally means "birthday" and "Yomhashoah" which is translated as "Never again" but literally means "Holocaust Memorial Day"). The children also make pasta Puttanesca, an Italian dish translating as "whore's sauce."

** Handler likes playing this one. On one hand, you have people like Count Olaf, who subvert this hard. On the other, it's entirely played straight.
* ButtMonkey: Pretty much the entire cast.

* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer: A website identified goth-girl fashion icons Emily the Strange and Ruby Gloom as characters; not to mention the numerous pages -- including at least one on this very wiki -- which refer to ''LemonySnicketTheUnauthorizedAutobiography'' as something like "The Unofficial Biography". A preview of ''The Beatrice Letters'' claimed that the punch-out letters in the book spelled out the "real" title of the thirteenth book ... Nope. Similarly, just about every preview of ''The Beatrice Letters'' claimed that the punch-out letters would spell out two different secret messages, but if there is a second one, it's nothing more than a RedHerring.

* DeusAngstMachina: Pretty much the point of the series.

** Of course, in this case 'less threatening' does not necessarily translate into 'less ''dangerous'''

* DirtyCoward: It isn't Aunt Josephine's numerous, [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment crippling, irrational phobias]] that qualify her for this title, but rather the way she instantly and shamelessly promises not to reveal Olaf's [[PaperThinDisguise disguise]] and even offers for him to take the children when she is threatened. The narrator and the Beaudelaires agree that she was a horrible guardian. To be fair to her, she's widowed, terrified of everything and got no support in life. Can you blame her for what she did?

* FakeAmerican: Australian EmilyBrowning in TheFilmOfTheBook. Mind you, she's American [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield in accent only]].

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: There's a chapter from one of the books that starts out with a discussion of French phrases. One of the phrases Snicket gives as an example is "la petite mort" which he translates, quite literally, as "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the feeling you have when a small part of you has died]]." He neglects to give the more common usage of the term- [[GetTheeToANunnery slang for having an orgasm]].

** The AdultsAreUseless mentality of pretty much everyone the kids meet probably made most of them TooDumbToLive when they refuse to believe the building they're in is on fire. YMMV on whether the (potentially lethal) negligence displayed by characters who were otherwise good people made this LaserGuidedKarma.

** Not to mention the connection to his name and [[EasterEgg Edgar Allen Poe's association with tuberculosis]]

* ItRunsInTheFamily: An InvertedTrope, in that the members of the Baudelaire family are just about the ''least'' insane people they encounter.

** Don't forget Esme Squallor's personal library full of books cataloging what was in and out in various months, years, etc.

* MindScrew: The eleventh and thirteen books featured an [[spoiler: incarnation of Mystery and Death, shaped like an ''enormous question mark'', that stalked the seas, its motives unfathomable]]; the existence and activities of V.F.D. get very close to this in the twelfth book, too.
** Hell, re-reading the entire series, along with all the [[RedHerring Red Herrings,]] [[RedHerringTwist twists on such]], ParanoiaFuel, and the fact that ''every single thing in the series could be a clue toward an ending'' (or not) Can turn even the [[ViewersAreGeniuses smartest and most critical thinking readers]] on their heads in absolute confusion.

* NeverSayDie: Notable for averting this trope, and hard.

* ParentalSubstitute: Dr. Montgomery is a good substitute. In ''The Penultimate Peril'', volunteers Kit Snicket and [[spoiler:Dewey Denouement]] answer ''some'' of the Baudelaires' questions and the latter offers to become their guardian. [[spoiler:All three of them die, of course.]]

** Subverted with Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass, who are not evil so much as they are very, ''very'' bad teachers. Remora's class consists of him endlessly telling short, boring stories while eating bananas, and Bass is obsessed with measuring things. When they are forced to give the Baudelaires "special exams" for sleeping in class (which they studied for thanks to notes collected by Duncan and Isadora Quagmire), by the third question they realize Sunny and Klaus are actually very smart students, and only continue the exam because of Nero. They ask Nero if they can give an extra hard exam to Carmelita Spats instead because she's so awful, and when Nero decides he's going to expel the Baudelaires anyway for skipping gym, Remora and Bass state it's not cheating if you're trying to make sure athletics don't affect your schoolwork. Of course, they aren't in a position to do anything since Nero is their boss, so they prove to be just as useless as the rest of the adults in the series.

* TranslationYes: Judging by the translations in-text, almost everything Sunny says carries a lot of meaning per sound. Complete sentences aren't more than two syllables long until she starts learning a little English in the later books, and even then, she seems to get a lot more across with her babytalk.

* TheTropeWithoutATitle: The white-faced women, the man with a beard but no hair ... pretty much any accomplice of Olaf's.

* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue [[spoiler:Chapter Fourteen]]; arguably a SubvertedTrope because they haven't gone anywhere, although their views have moved on. ''The Beatrice Letters'' form part of an epilogue themselves. Even though the scrambled letters reveal that [[spoiler:" BEATRICE SANK"]], the Baudelaires [[spoiler: are apparently living out their lives doing what they love. Beatrice (that's the Beatrice born in Book 13) is currently trying to find Lemony Snicket, presumebly to ask him [[MindScrew what the hell is happening.]] ]]

** If examined closely, the package the children receive at the end of the film is postmarked to Boston. The film is of course, non-canon, and even if Boston were the location, it'd be a highly fictionalized version of the city.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Aunt Josephine, for ''nearly everything'', including ''realtors'' Why the heck she [[spoiler: hid inside a cave that Lemony says is 'Phantasmagorical, a word which here means "every scary word you can think of mashed together with horror']] is because before her husband Ike died, she was ''ever so slightly'' braver and loved swimming in the leech-filled lake.

A four-part prequel series called ''AllTheWrongQuestions'', concerning a young Lemony Snicket joining VFD, has been announced. The first installment ("Who Could That Be At This Hour?") was out October 23rd, 2012.

* EveryEpisodeEnding: Every book ends with exactly the same formula: There's a full-page picture containing a clue to the plot of the next book; comical bios for the author and illustrator, with a [[{{Plot-Based Photograph Obfuscation}} obscured picture]] of the former and a themed illustration of the latter; and a letter from Lemony Snicket to his editor explaining where to pick up the manuscript for the next book, along with several items related to it.

* {{Plot-Based Photograph Obfuscation}}: Lemony Snicket never shows his face in photographs, but there are several possible explanations for why this is, and most such photographs are only seen by the audience in his author bio rather than by the characters. The nearest thing we get to an actual image of him is the elusive taxi driver, which is rumoured, and hinted in the series, to actually be him.

Additionally, a film of it was made in 2004, but no sequels were made.

[[color:#ffffff:Book the Last: ''Chapter Fourteen'']]

A four-part prequel series called ''AllTheWrongQuestions'', concerning a young Lemony Snicket joining VFD, has been announced. The first installment ("Who Could That Be At This Hour?") will be out October 23rd 2012.

A four-part prequel series, concerning a young Lemony Snicket joining VFD, has been announced. The first installment ("Who Could That Be At This Hour?") will be out October 23rd 2012.

* 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. At the end, Violet foils Olaf's plot by signing her name with her left hand, thus not fulfilling the marriage requirement that a bride sign her name [[ExactWords "in her own hand"]]

* ActorAllusion: An unexpected one, in hindsight: in book number 8, The Hostile Hospital, Violet is compared to Sleeping Beauty. A few years later, her actress Emily Browning would play the lead role in Jane Campion's "Sleeping Beauty".

A four-part prequel series, concerning a young Lemony Snicket joining VFD, has been announced. The first installment will be out October 23rd 2012.

** Film!Stephano claims to be Italian, but he [[NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent sounds more like a vague foreshadowing of]] [[TheDarkKnight Heath Ledger as the Joker.]]

* ABoyAGirlAndABabyFamily

* KillAllHumans: While not particularly harmful, the insects called snow gnats sting humans just for the fun of it.

* TheLongList: The Snow Scouts Alphabet Pledge in the tenth book, along with lists of food, disguise items, and books seen elsewhere. Also, the long list of rules they had to follow at the Village of Fowl Devotees.

* ManchurianAgent: A secret command word does this to [[spoiler:Klaus]].

* MenDontCry: AvertedTrope

* ThrowItIn: In TheFilmOfTheBook, "Let me try that again, quickly, while it's fresh in my mind." The dialog was supposed to end after Klaus says "Our parents just died", but Carrey felt he didn't get the reaction right. Silberman just kept the cameras rolling and Carrey ad-libbed from there.

* SomethingTheyWouldNeverSay