[[quoteright:247:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/seriesofunfortunateenventspicturetvtropes.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:247:Wouldn't you rather read a story about a happy little elf?]]
->''[[SnicketWarningLabel PLEASE READ SOMETHING ELSE.]]'' —Lemony Snicket

A series of darkly humorous SteamPunk children's books by Daniel Handler, under the nom de plume Lemony Snicket.

After their parents die in a fire at the family mansion, the Baudelaire children (Violet, Klaus and baby Sunny) are left in the care of Count Olaf, a sinister distant relative who wants his hands on the Baudelaire family fortune, which Violet will inherit when she 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 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. And all the while, bizarre and improbable disasters strike the children and everyone around them for no discernible reason.

[[{{LemonyNarrator}} Lemony]] Snicket [[{{Narrator}} narrates]] throughout, providing commentary, anecdotes, and advice - usually against reading any more of his history of the Baudelaire orphans.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: ''A Series of Unfortunate Events'': ]]

*Book the First: ''The Bad Beginning''
*Book the Second: ''The Reptile Room''
*Book the Third: ''The Wide Window''
*Book the Fourth: ''The Miserable Mill''
*Book the Fifth: ''The Austere Academy''
*Book the Sixth: ''The Ersatz Elevator''
*Book the Seventh: ''The Vile Village''
*Book the Eighth: ''The Hostile Hospital''
*Book the Ninth: ''The Carnivorous Carnival''
*Book the Tenth: ''The Slippery Slope''
*Book the Eleventh: ''The Grim Grotto''
*Book the Twelfth: ''The Penultimate Peril''
*Book the Thirteenth: ''The End''
*[[supersecretspoiler:Book the Last: ''Chapter Fourteen'']]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Supplementary materials: ]]

*(''The Bad Beginning Rare Edition'')
*''Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography''
*(''The Puzzling Puzzles'')
*''The Beatrice Letters''

----
!!This series provide examples of:
* AbusiveParents: Not parents, strictly speaking, but many guardians are [[{{understatement}} thoroughly unsuitable]]. Count Olaf worst of all.
* AdaptationDecay: Most fans found ''something'' wrong with the movie. For better or worse, its revision of the plot was certainly unfaithful to the original series, bearing a resemblance only in generalisations. It doesn't help that the original author was effectively fired after writing eight drafts of the screenplay; alleged leaked excerpts of these indicate the movie might even have been ''canon'')
* 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 occasion, they do encounter a decent, intelligent, competent adult -- who promptly winds up dead.
* AdventureTowns: Each book is in a different town (or island or mountain or ...). Except the first, sixth, and twelfth, which are set in the same nameless city.
* AffectionateParody: Handler started off trying to write the sort of gothic, bloodthirsty children's stories he wanted to read when he was a child, and most of the books take off one genre or another, occasionally straying into {{Deconstruction}} territory)
* AfterTheEnd: Seven-thirteenths of ''The Beatrice Letters''.
** Well, they don't fit the trope -- there is no clear evidence of a world-wide disaster -- but they take place after ''The End'', Book Thirteen.
* AlasPoorVillain
* AlliterativeName: The OddNameOut in both sets of triplets: Quigley Quagmire and Dewey Denouement.
** [[spoiler: Beatrice and Bertrand Baudelaire. Actually, both Beatrice Baudelaires.]]
** Not characters, but the titles of the first twelve books are alliterative, as well as many, many locations mentioned throughout the books (Lousy Lane, Lake Lachrymose, Finite Forest, Heimlich Hospital, etc.).
* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Is Count Olaf's marriage ploy just to get Violet's money? Or does he actually hold a long-standing, near-incestuous, [[{{Squick}} paedophilic]] (well, technically, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebophilia ephebophiliac]]) lust for her? Of course, in FanFic, [[BrotherSisterIncest everyone is incestuous]]).
* AlterEgoActing: Daniel Handler and Lemony Snicket -- separate characters in the books themselves.
* AmbiguousGender: The Person of Indeterminate Gender, a.k.a. the enormous person who looked like neither a man or a woman.
* AmbiguouslyJewish: The author has noted that his characters are Jewish by default, and he unconsciously inserts Jewish themes and ideas into his books.
* AntiLoveSong: Several of The Gothic Archies' accompanying songs on the audiobooks and ''The Tragic Treasury'', including ''Smile!'', ''Shipwrecked'' and ''Walking My Gargoyle''.
* AntiVillain: Arguably the Baudelaires themselves in later books, and among actual antagonists, Fernald seems to fall into this category at times.
* AnyoneCanDie
* ApatheticCitizens: Most of society is unwilling and/or unable to fight injustice, and many would prefer to [[PassThePopcorn gawk at violence for entertainment]] than attempt to stop it, unless [[HypocriticalHumor it actually threatens them]].
* [[ArcWords Arc]] [[strike:[[ArcWords Words]]]] [[ArcWords Initials]]: V.F.D., and later J.S.
** There are also some actual ArcWords, especially in the later books and in the "supplementary materials." For example, "The world is quiet here."
* AristocratsAreEvil: ''Count'' Olaf, anyone?
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: The back covers list five or more of the "unfortunate events" found within, some of which are quite harmless -- or at least sound that way.
* AttractiveBentGender: Plausibly a parody, as the person who finds the CrossDresser Olaf attractive is himself an unpleasant semi-villain.
* BackForTheDead: You can make an argument for all the returning characters in Book the Twelfth.
* BaitAndSwitchCredits: [[spoiler: Chapter 170, a.k.a. ''Chapter Fourteen''.]]
* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: The narrator and his comrades imply that V.F.D. dates back to AncientGreece, that Martin Luther King, Edith Wharton, and Thomas Malthus were involved with it -- although Malthus was on the evil side of the schism -- and that Shakespeare may be alive. However, these may be the result of revisionism in accordance with V.F.D.'s own views.
* BelatedBackstory: [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Although it takes a while,]] this is exactly what happens to Fernald.
* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: Doctor Orwell's eye-shaped building.
* BlackAndGrayMorality: Especially from Book the Eighth and on.
* BoardingSchoolOfHorrors: Prufrock Preparatory School in Book the Fifth.
* BodyMotifs: The eye that first appears in Count Olaf's ankle tattoo, and later in many other places.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: Klaus in Book the Fourth; he even appears to have MindControlEyes on the cover.
* BriarPatching
* BrokenBase: There have been many fan debates about the quality of TheFilmOfTheBook, not to mention the open-ended conclusion of the books.
* BunnyEarsLawyer: Some members of V.F.D.
* BurgerFool: With clown-costumed waiters, balloons, and food with names like "Surprising Chicken Salad", The Anxious Clown combines aspects of this and SuckECheeses.
* BusCrash: [[spoiler: Let me see... Hector, the Quagmire triplets, Captain Widdershins, Fernald, Fiona]]. ''Maybe.''
* BusmansHoliday: Lampshaded -- and defined, in trademark Snicket style -- in ''The Penultimate Peril'', in which Sir, the lumbermill boss, has come to a hotel to do some business at a cocktail party and attends a sauna so he can enjoy the smell of hot wood.
* ButNotTooEvil
* ButtMonkey: Pretty much the entire cast.
* CanonFodder: While the series was going on, it was assumed that all the loose ends and questions would eventually be resolved or answered, leading to huge amounts of speculation. Most of it was never referred to again.
* CargoShip: Implied in ''The End'', when Olaf embraces his weapons -- a harpoon gun and a container of poisonous mushrooms -- as if they're the only things he loves.
* CassandraTruth: Every time the children see through Olaf's disguises, nobody believes them in time [[spoiler:except in ''The End'']].
* CatchPhrase: Snicket's "...a word which here means..."
* 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 organisation.
* CerebusSyndrome: The series starts off [[InvertedTrope doing this backwards]], moving from darkness and Grimm-style misery into comedy and wackiness, but then slides back into darkness again in the later books.
* ChekhovsBoomerang
* CinderellaCircumstances: The first book, in which the Baudelaire siblings live with the bossy and horrible Count Olaf who treats them like servants.
** In the tenth book, "The Slippery Slope", Sunny resides with Count Olaf and his henchmen after being captured by them. She ends up becoming a servant for the whole group, including cooking meals in freezing temperatures, cleaning, and sleeping in a casserole dish.
*** The narrator even references Cinderella during that book.
* CircusOfFear: Caligari Carnival, in Book the Ninth.
* ClarkKenting: Numerous characters at various points, with the minor characters being better at it than the main ones.
* 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.
* ContemptibleCover: Many non-English-language covers are awful and do the series no justice.
* ConveyorBeltODoom: Occurs in Book the Fourth -- with an absurdly huge circular saw.
* CoolBoat
* CoolCar: The Tatra 603 and 1959 Chrysler Imperial in the movie.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Closer to this than CorruptHick is Sir, the amoral, cigar-smoking lumbermill owner who pays his workers in coupons and gives them gum for lunch; in a later appearance, business is bad, as nearby lumber source the Finite Forest is running out of trees.
* CoversAlwaysLie: The twelfth book features several sinister-looking figures whom fans thought would be important -- or even specific characters from previous books -- but no corresponding characters appear in the text. Inverted by the British edition of the sixth book, on which the cover gives away the main plot twist.
* 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 ''Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography'' 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... NoJustNo. 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.
* CrossesTheLineTwice: he freaks in the ninth book, although some people found it DudeNotFunny.
* CrowningMomentOfAwesome
* CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming: In TheMovieOfTheBook, ''The Letter That Never Came''.
* CurseOfTheAncients: "Blasted furnaces of Hell!"
* CutShort: Or more precisely, NoEnding.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Most adults have this due to their involvement from an early age with V.F.D.
* DarkMessiah: Ishmael is a mild example.
* DaydreamBeliever: The combination of LiteraryAgentHypothesis and ParanoiaFuel really makes an impact on some impressionable young readers.
* DayOfTheWeekName: Book the Thirteenth features Friday Caliban, and alludes to a Thursday Caliban and a Monday.
* DeadGuyJunior [[spoiler: Beatrice Baudelaire]]
* DeathbringerTheAdorable: Incredibly Deadly Viper.
* {{Deconstruction}}: Most of the books deconstruct one genre or another (although sometimes this is closer to an AffectionateParody). The second half of the series deconstructs the first half of the series. Arguably the last three books start deconstructing their immediate predecessors, too.
* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: Frequently used for humour in the narration throughout the series, mostly as part of the "defining words" and "translate Sunny's speech" gags:
-->But even so, the three children were eager to leave the Anxious Clown, and not just because the garish restaurant - the word "garish" here means "filled with balloons, neon lights, and obnoxious waiters" - was filled with balloons, neon lights, and obnoxious waiters.
** In the ninth book, one chapter starts out with a description of deja vu. The second page of the chapter is almost exactly the same as the first page (including the picture and the chapter heading).
** In ''The Grim Grotto'', Lemony Snicket attempts to put the reader to sleep by giving a very repetitive description of evaporation.
* DesertedIsland: The nameless island in ''The End''.
* DeusAngstMachina: Pretty much the point of the series.
* DeusExMachina: [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in Book the Seventh.
* DevilInPlainSight
* DistantFinale: Seven-thirteenths of ''The Beatrice Letters''; ostensibly supplementary, but there's no such thing as "optional" really, is there?
* DontTryThisAtHome: In Book the Second, Snicket tells the reader to "never ever ever" do something, and the "ever"s continue for two whole pages.
** And for an extra bonus, there are 169, or thirteen squared, "ever"s.
* DownerEnding: Optional in some books, in which the author [[[[SnicketWarningLabel suggests to stop reading and imagine an ending better than the real one.]]
* DracoInLeatherPants: Even before we had much BelatedBackstory for them, {{Fanon}} interpreted Olaf's assistants as YaoiGuys, or certainly something far more complex and sympathetic than they appeared in canon.
* DrowningPit: Lemony in an ''Italian restaurant''.
* DumbIsGood: [InvertedTrope Inverted]]: "Well-read people are less likely to be evil."
* DVDCommentary
* EigenPlot: In every book the children are in situations that require inventing skills, research skills, and sharp teeth (or cooking, from the 10th book on); also true to some degree of the Quagmire triplets, although Duncan's journalism interest is rarely useful.
* EpilepticTrees: A rather pervasive bit of {{Fanon}} holds that everyone and everything the Baudelaires encounter is part of a massive XanatosGambit arranged by an AncientConspiracy with the purpose of training them for V.F.D. Theories of the "Minor Character X is really Character Y/one of the Baudelaire parents/Lemony Snicket" sort also show up.
*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.
* EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory: One can make a somewhat reasonable case for the Series being an allegory for the history of the Jewish people, and [[WordOfGod Daniel Handler]] has himself noted that the Series contains Jewish themes. Snicket's frequent use of [[MeaningfulName Meaningful Names]] and literary allusions has also inspired a fair amount of overinterpretation.
* EveryoneWentToSchoolTogether: Quite a few characters went to school together, but this is somewhat [[JustifiedTrope justified]] by the fact that they were all members of a secret organisation and this was their training; also, several of these characters are TheGhost.
* EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses: Parodied with Carmelita Spats's "tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian" costume from the eleventh book.
* EvilCostumeSwitch: Fiona, when joining Olaf's side, exchanges a uniform with a portrait of Herman Melville for one with a portrait of notoriously bad poet Edgar Guest.
* EvilLaugh
* EvilTastesGood: Esmé: "I'm going to flatten you! Olaf and I are going to have a romantic breakfast of Baudelaire pancakes!"
* EvilTeacher: Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass aren't '''evil''' per se, just obnoxious. Vice Principal Nero is another story.
* ExternalRetcon: In explaining the difference between "denouement" and "end", Snicket "reveals" the [[DistantFinale distant endings]] of several {{Fairy Tale}}s, involving the rather non-fantastical deaths of the heroes.
* FacelessEye: One of the distinguishing marks of the series.
* FakeOutOpening: In TheMovieOfTheBook.
* FanficChopSuey: Approximated in-universe by Carmelita Spats's ridiculous "tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian" and "ballplaying cowboy superhero soldier pirate" outfits.
* {{Fauxreigner}}: Gunther and Lulu, who are indefinitely foreign.
* FetishFuel: Esmé's lettuce bikini.
* FictionalDocument: Snicket's letters at the end of each book, leading his editor to the manuscript of the following book and several props borrowed from it; also, numerous diaries and newspapers are quoted within the narrative, while the supplementary books are each a full-blown ScrapbookStory.
* FixFic: Because of the No Ending and possible Kill Em All.
* ForegoneConclusion
* FunWithAcronyms (V.F.D.)
* FunWithForeignLanguages (Snicket translates "cul-de-sac", to "At the end of a dark hallway, the Baudelaire orphans found an assortment of mysterious circumstances", based on guesswork about word frequency)
* GainaxEnding
* GenreSavvy (The Count Olaf in the movie must have read the books, as he [[spoiler: corrects Violet to use her right hand]])
* GeographicFlexibility (the spatial as well as temporal milieu of the Series is best described as "everywhere and nowhere", as it's apparently far from most known continents, and the large city the Baudelaires lived in doesn't even have a name)
* GravityIsAHarshMistress (plays out in dialogue (and thus is [[AvertedTrope averted]]) in Book the Twelfth; "I suppose I’ll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies")
* 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; Jacques and Kit [[AvertedTrope avert]] this by there being no mention of their similarity, but they're only very vaguely implied to be twins at all)
* HandsOffMyFluffy
* 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 XanatosRoulette)
* HostageForMcGuffin (partially [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] in Book the Tenth, where it's proposed by the heroes for once, but neither they nor the villain are capable of carrying out their side of the bargain)
* "HowDoYouLikeThemApples" (''TheEnd'')
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming (alliterated "The ", e.g., ''The Miserable Mill'', ''The Wide Window'', for nearly all the books)
* InCaseYouForgotWhoWroteIt
* IncomingHam
* InfantImmortality (despite all the terrible things that happen in the books, no children are killed during the course of the series. [[spoiler: In fact, even though one of the Quagmire triplets was thought to be killed in a fire before the Baudelaires met them, it turns out that he survived.]] )
** [[spoiler: However, several of the Baudelaires' friends who were about their age are taken by "The Great Unknown" in the last book. While the books make it clear that this is probably a very bad thing, it is never outright stated to be fatal.]]
* IronicNurseryTune (Book the Eighth's accompanying song, ''Smile! No One Cares How You Feel''; Book the Twelfth's ''Things Are Not What They Appear'' feels like this as well; TheFilmOfTheBook plays music-box tunes and the saccharine "Littlest Elf" song during tragic scenes)
** Also, ''The World Is A Very Scary Place''. The lyrics could be threatening, to an extent, but the music is just so ''upbeat''.
* IssueDrift (not the most [[TVTropesWikiDrinkingGame egregious]] issues ever, but undeniably a drift)
* ItRunsInTheFamily (InvertedTrope)
* ItsPopularNowItSucks (the fear among some sections of the fandom that an influx of n00bish fans of TheMovie would ruin everything)
* ItWillNeverCatchOn (real life example: Daniel Handler thought the series was an awful idea, and when his editor said she liked it, he thought she was drunk)** Then some of the books became best-sellers... so much for the warnings.
* JokerJury (something of a subversion because [[spoiler: the Baudelaires actually killed someone, albeit accidentally]] and it turns out [[spoiler: two figures of unfathomable evil apparently run the official courts]].)
* JustAStupidAccent (characters trying to be "foreign" use broken English with clumsy syntax (like "I am loving of the children") and frequent interjections of "Please", and apparently everyone falls for it)
* KarmaHoudini
* KickTheSonOfABitch (when Count Olaf violently pushes Carmelita Spats to the ground)
* KillAllHumans (while not particularly harmful, the insects called snow gnats sting humans just for the fun of it)
* KillEmAll (maybe)
* KnowWhenToFoldEm
* LampshadeHanging
* LeftHanging
* LemonyNarrator ([[TropeNamer obviously]])
* LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition (numerous rereleases of The Bad Beginning, including one priced higher than the thirteen-book box set. Also, the box sets, which have exclusive artwork. The new paperbacks are subversions because they're much better for about half the price)
* LiteraryAgentHypothesis
* LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard
* LostAesop (the series starts off meandering fairly aimlessly through satires of various unfortunate literary settings, with Book the Third LampshadeHanging its lack of a meaningful [[AnAesop Aesop]], but the later books begin to diverge wildly with mixed messages about what is justifiable in conflict; Book the Tenth resolves this, then Book the Twelfth forgets it was resolved, and Book the Thirteenth (and Last) concerns the impossibility of finding answers to the big questions in life, while ignoring most of the big questions in the series)
* MacGuffin (the sugar bowl and the Baudelaire fortune - and "MacGuffin" is even spoken in the final book)
* MacGyvering
* MakingASpectacleOfYourself
* MaliciousSlander
* {{Masquerade}}
* MeaningfulName (many character and place names are literary allusions, some relevant(like Dr. Orwell the hypnotist and Dewey the librarian), others more like a secular version of WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic)
* MeanwhileBackAtThe
* MetafictionalDevice
* MilkmanConspiracy
* 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)
* MisaimedFandom
* MisBlamed (the plot of the movie is attacked... for trying to fix the insubsantial nature of the books it was based on; alleged leaks of the author's original screenplays indicate that he'd have [[AdaptationDecay deviated even more wildly]])
* MisterSeahorse (sent up in ''The End'', where Count Olaf tries to disguise himself as a pregnant woman)
* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate (Doctor Orwell)
* MysteriousPast (besides the heroes, nearly every character has a mysterious past, and none are ever fully revealed)
* MythologyGag (in TheMovie)
* {{Narrator}}
* {{Necromantic}} (in Book the Eighth, Lemony wishes he could...)
* NeverTrustATrailer (an official website that revealed the only details about the highly secretive twelfth book made numerous updates implying an elevator-centric plotline which never actually materialised, going so far as to reveal a chapter picture which actually referred to a single inconsequential offhand sentence; Snicket's OnTheNext mislead by giving away random details as though they were equally important, and later obscure themselves to become even more incomprehensible; one promised a prop in the following book that never actually appeared)
* NiceHat (the Council of Elders in the seventh book wear hats shaped like crows)
* NightmareFuel (Literature and Film)
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed
* NoEnding
* NominalImportance
* NonindicativeName
* 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)
* NotSoDifferent (attempted for the Baudelaires and Olaf from Book the Eighth onward, but with only limited success)
* NotSoSafeHarbor: Damocles Docks in the third book.
* NumberOfTheBeast (close - 667 Dark Avenue, with its sixty-six floors)
* NumerologicalMotif (canon, text, paratexts... the number thirteen is everywhere - it was once the number of search results for this page on the wiki)
** It has 13 books, with 13 chapters, and each chapter had 13 pages.
*** Actually [[spoiler: they have a fourteenth book as an epilouge.]]
* ObfuscatingStupidity: An AlternateCharacterInterpretation of movie!Olaf. He's portrayed as very goofy and melodramatic by Jim Carrey (surprise, surprise), but he's still able to come up cunning plans to steal the Baudelaire fortune.
* OddNameOut ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isadora_Duncan Isadora, Duncan]], and Quigley Quagmire; [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_and_Ernest_%28comic_strip%29 Frank, Ernest]], and Dewey Denouement)
* OneLetterName (every character in ''The Unauthorized Autobiography''; often we already knew their full names, but Kit Snicket, for example, was [[FanNickname known to fans]] only as K. for three books)
* OnionTears (discussed in ''TheEnd'')
* OnlySaneMan (frequently the Baudelaires are this, as are other well-read volunteers. Liam Aiken (who played Klaus in ''TheMovie'') himself described the siblings as "the only sane people" during an interview.)
* OnlySmartPeopleMayPass
* OnTheNext (Lemony's letters to his Kind Editor, which include the title of the next book and a few random details from it; as the series goes on, these letters become increasingly obscured, such as by tearing and water-stains, and so the information is increasingly unforthcoming, such that only half of the eleventh book's title was known, the twelfth book's title was completely lost, and the letter about the thirteenth book was just a single sentence written on a napkin (with the title included, but nobody realized at the time as it deviated from the usual [[IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming title pattern]]))
* [=~Orphan's Ordeal~=]
* OurProductSucks
* PaintingTheFourthWall
* PaperThinDisguise (Count Olaf)
** In the eighth, ninth, and twelfth books, the Baudelaires get disguises of their own. Their disguises in the eighth book are particularly ridiculous: thirteen year old Klaus and baby Sunny just don face masks and ill-fitting doctor uniforms and are mistaken as the pale-faced women, ''by the women's own cohorts''! In the ninth book, their disguises are a bit less paper thin, but Count Olaf still probably should have recognized them since he's been following them so long (though he does mention that they look familiar).
* ParanoiaFuel (Beneath the surface of society is a violent feud going back decades between two factions of a child-stealing conspiracy, many members of which lead elaborate double lives as respectable members of the community while in secret they have few compunctions about arson or murder; your parents, teachers and especially librarians are probably in on it, and so are waiters and hotel managers, while taxi drivers are just waiting to whisk you away to a new life)
* ParentalAbandonment (off the top of my head, at least eleven characters)
* {{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)
* ProperlyParanoid (the Baudelaires, about Count Olaf's many attempts to infiltrate their lives and snatch them for their fortune; V.F.D., a secret organisation which has split into two opposing sides, one noble and one murderous; and Aunt Josephine in TheMovie, for the scene where all her crazy fears come true (although she's not around to see it))
* PutOnABus (Hector with Duncan and Isadora Quagmire; Fernald and Fiona were PutOnABus ''offscreen'', no less)
* PyroManiac Count Olaf ''really'' likes to burn houses down and enjoys it even more ''if there is someone inside''
* RavensAndCrows (the Village of Fowl Devotees is full of crows, and was founded to marvel at them)
* RecursiveCanon (apparently Snicket's books are published within the world of the Series, but it's not clear if they're different versions)
* RecordNeedleScratch (in TheMovie)
* RedHerring
* RedHerringTwist (yes, both)
* ReptilesAreAbhorrent ([[SubvertedTrope subverted]]: The Baudelaires' herpetologist uncle was kind and well-educated. He allowed the children to fearlessly indulge their curiosity. The dangerous snakes were properly caged. And he only named the harmless and friendly but fearsome-looking Incredibly Deadly Viper that as a joke)
* RetCon (so heavy that a number of companion books had to be written to fully explain them; these were themselves retconned)
* RetroUniverse
* ReverseShazam: TheMovie is often referred to as "Lemony Snicket".
* RomanticPlotTumor (not entirely, but the romance subplots near the end of the series, with characters who only appeared in a single book each, felt rather tacked-on and rather quick - although the characters were rather busy)
* ScarpiaUltimatum
* SchizoTech
* ScrapbookStory (''The Unauthorized Autobiography'' and ''The Beatrice Letters'')
* [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere Screw This, I'm Outta Here]] ([[spoiler:the white-faced women]] fall victim to this in Book the Tenth, as apparently do [[spoiler:Fernald and Fiona]] in Book the Twelfth (albeit off-screen))
* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness (usually seen in books which Klaus ends up reading, which only he can make sense of)
* ShoutOut (numerous allusions to literature, history, and mythology, among other things; many are listed [[http://www.quidditch.com/lemony%20snicket.htm here]])
* ShrugOfGod (the fans can't get anything out of Daniel Handler)
* SickSadWorld
* SigilSpam
* SignificantAnagram (Count Olaf's henchmen use anagrams of "Count Olaf" as pseudonyms, and in the eighth book Violet is given an anagrammed name on a hospital patient list)
* SlasherSmile
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism (largely toward the "cynical" end of the scale; many characters seem like they would prefer to be idealistic but have had the optimism crushed out of them, and those who are consistently optimistic come across as foolish)
* SlidingScaleOfSillinessVersusSeriousness (for the most part, very silly)
* SlipknotPonytail ([[SubvertedTrope subverted]], as Violet needs to tie her hair up to think straight)
* SocialServicesDoesNotExist
* SomethingTheyWouldNeverSay
* SnicketWarningLabel ([[TropeNamer]])
* SpoofAesop (Snicket's narration is peppered with comments like "The moral of WorldWarI is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand'"; the SpinOff ''Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid'' compiles a lot of these, some from the main series and some entirely new)
* SpySpeak (V.F.D., being a secret organisation, naturally uses copious quantities of this, so much so that there have been disputes among readers over whether certain phrases are in code or not)
* SteamPunk (nearly)
* TakeThat (Lemony Snicket takes some not-so-subtle jabs at various political figures via Sunny's "baby talk": There's "busheney" 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 TastesLikeDiabetes way. Kind of jarring in a series so focused on BlackAndGrayMorality.
* TastesLikeDiabetes (the first few minutes of TheFilmOfTheBook, which is quickly and mercilessly subverted by a RecordNeedleScratch)
* TearJerker
* TemporaryPlatform (in the video game of the movie)
* TethercatPrinciple
* ''TheEnd'' (the title of the last book, but the story itself deeply [[SubvertedTrope subverts]] the notion of endings)
* TheFilmOfTheBook
* TheGhost (the series has a wide backstory and several characters are only ever referred to - the most notable example is probably R., the Duchess of Winnipeg)
* TheLibby (Carmelita Spats)
* TheLongList (the Snow Scouts Alphabet Pledge in the tenth book, along with lists of food, disguise items, and books seen elsewhere - and, not to mention, the long list of rules they had to endure at the Village of Fowl Devotees)
* TheOmniscientCouncilOfVagueness (V.F.D., and specifically the transcript of the meeting of the vague "Building Committee" in the ''Unauthorized Autobiography'' - even the author didn't know some of what was being discussed here, and he was technically ''in attendance'')
* TheProblemWithLicensedVideogames: This troper (who will not be identified) has the game rotting in his cabinet because he managed to get it for 6 dollars. He should have spent the 6 dollars on something else.
* TheSadisticChoice (a variant of this occurs in Book the Seventh, in which Olaf offers the Baudelaires the choice of which one of the three of them won't be burned at the stake the next day; a [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] DeusExMachina lets them TakeAThirdOption)
* TheTropeWithoutATitle (the white-faced women, the man with a beard but no hair... pretty much any accomplice of Olaf's)
* TheUnintelligible
* TheUnpronounceable (Sir's real name - which is why he makes people call him Sir)
* TheUnReveal (when Sir is in a sauna, he puts down the cigar whose smoke usually covers his face, but is covered up again by the steam)
* ThemeInitials (V.F.D.)
* ThemeNaming (the teachers at Prufrock Preparatory School are named after fish, and later we discover some families of siblings with alphabetically sequential names)
* ThereAreNoTherapists (so many children are orphaned in this series, but instead of counselling they get sent to abusive foster homes)
* TheyChangedItNowItSucks
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot (frequently indistinguishable from AbortedArc and RedHerringTwist)
* ThirteenIsUnlucky (there are thirteen books in the series - and thirteen of several other things, too)
* TotemPoleTrench (an interesting variant: Violet and Klaus put on the same oversized outfit to disguise themselves as a two-headed person)
* TorchesAndPitchforks
* TwoTeacherSchool (Prufrock Prep has three teachers and a Vice Principal, and no other visible staff)
* UncleanlinessIsNextToUngodliness (Olaf's poor hygiene and dirty house, played up even more in TheMovie-- there are not only roaches and rats in the kitchen, but bats living in the cupboards)
* UnusualEuphemism (on two occasions, flustered or frightened characters blaspheme the names of divine entities from about five different religions, concluding with "Charles Darwin!" or "Nathaniel Hawthorne!")
* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans (a mild example, Ishmael's [[{{Dystopia}} Dystopic]] {{Utopia}} on a DesertedIsland suppresses its inhabitants via peer pressure, technological deprivation and druggings)
* VerbalTic ({{Fauxreigner}}s "Gunther" and "Madame Lulu" say "please" in almost every sentence)
* ViewersAreGeniuses
* ViewersAreMorons: In a parody of the way children's books try to be educational, Lemony constantly defines words such as alcove, brummagem, cower, denouement, ersatz etc. Ironically many viewers were moronic enough not to realize this is supposed to be a joke, even though he uses the most bizzare and snarky definitions, and much of the humor comes from assuming the reader [[ViewersAreGeniuses ''already knows'']] the standard definition of the word.
* VillainDecay Count Olaf got less and less threatening as the books went on, although other villains picked up the slack to some degree)
* VillainExitStageLeft
* WeirdnessMagnet (sort of; the children are more like weirdness iron filings drawn to bizarre people and places. On the other hand, that might just be because there aren't any normal people in Snicketland)
* WeSellEverything (Last Chance General Store)
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse (Phil, and arguably a lot of minor characters who weren't brought back, in the last couple of books when many one-shot characters returned)
* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue ([[spoiler:Chapter Fourteen]]; arguably a SubvertedTrope because they haven't gone anywhere, although their views have moved on)
* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield (every setting, from "the city", to fictional locations with alliterative names, to an island not on any map; we don't even know where half of them are in relation to each other)
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes (Aunt Josephine, for ''nearly everything'', including realtors)
** The movie and an offhand line in a later book [[JustifiedTrope justify]] some of her fears.
* WigDressAccent (most characters' disguises involve some combination of these or similar items, and the three stages of V.F.D.'s disguise training-- Veiled Facial Disguises, Various Finery Disguises, and Voice Fakery Disguises-- resemble this trope)
* WorldGoneMad
* WorldOfNoGrandparents
* WorstNewsJudgmentEver ("'Heimlich Hospital Almost Forgets Paperwork!' Wait until the readers of ''The Daily Punctilio'' see that!" - one of many examples courtesy of Geraldine Julienne, star reporter)
* WritersCannotDoMath
* YouFailBiologyForever (the menacing pair in the tenth book identify eagles as mammals - [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by the well-read protagonists)
* YouFailGeographyForever / YouFailHistoryForever Winnipeg is the CapitalCity of Manatoba. It has no Dutchess... none of the cities in Canada do.
**A king of Arizona is mentioned in the sixth book, so it's likely that the author was aware of this.
* YourMileageMayVary (TheFilmOfTheBook and the open-ended conclusion to the Series created a lot of polarization within the fanbase, and the whole Series has gotten its share of vehemently hateful reviews)
* YouShouldKnowThisAlready (a secret organisation called V.F.D. is central to the plot)
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