A Series Of Unfortunate Events - Television Tropes & Idioms

Wouldn't you rather read a story about a happy little elf?

PLEASE READ SOMETHING ELSE. —Lemony Snicket

A series of darkly humorous Steam Punk 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 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.

Lemony Snicket narrates throughout, providing commentary, anecdotes, and advice - usually against reading any more of his history of the Baudelaire orphans.

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
Book the Last: Chapter Fourteen

Supplementary materials:

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

This series provide examples of:

Abusive Parents (not strictly speaking parents, but many guardians are thoroughly unsuitable, namely Count Olaf)
Adaptation Decay (most fans found something wrong with the movie, and for better or worse its revision of the plot was certainly unfaithful to the originals, 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)
Adults Are Useless (by the eighth book they take care of themselves because every single adult they've met is stupid/evil/cowardly). They do meet a few good/nice/intelligent adults, but every single one of these adults ends up dying.
Adventure Towns (each book is in a different town, except the 1st, 6th and 12th which are in the same nameless city)
Affectionate Parody (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)
After The End (seven-thirteenths of The Beatrice Letters)
Alas Poor Villain
Alliterative Name (the Odd Name Out in both sets of triplets: Quigley Quagmire and Dewey Denouement)
- Beatrice and Bertrand Baudelaire
- 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.).
Alternate Character Interpretation (is Count Olaf's marriage ploy just to get Violet's money, or does he actually hold a long-standing, near-incestuous, paedophilic lust for her? Of course, in Fan Fic, everyone is incestuous)
Alter Ego Acting (Daniel Handler and Lemony Snicket - separate characters in the books themselves)
Ambiguous Gender (The Person of Indeterminate Gender, a.k.a. the enormous person who looked like neither a man or a woman)
Ambiguously Jewish (the author has noted that his characters are Jewish by default, and he unconsciously inserts Jewish themes and ideas into his books)
Anti Love Song (several of The Gothic Archies' accompanying songs on the audiobooks and The Tragic Treasury, including Smile!, Shipwrecked and Walking My Gargoyle)
Anti Villain (arguably the Baudelaires themselves in later books, and among actual antagonists, Fernald seems to fall into this category at times)
Anyone Can Die
Apathetic Citizens(most of society is unwilling and/or unable to fight injustice, and many would prefer to gawk at violence for entertainment than attempt to stop it, unless it actually threatens them)
Arc ~~Words~~ Initials (V.F.D., and later J.S.)
Aristocrats Are Evil (Count Olaf, anyone?)
Arson Murder And Jaywalking (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)
Attractive Bent Gender (plausibly a parody, as the person who finds the Cross Dresser Olaf attractive is himself an unpleasant semi-villain)
Back For The Dead (you can make an argument for all the returning characters in Book the Twelfth)
Bait And Switch Credits ( Chapter 170, a.k.a. Chapter Fourteen)
Beethoven Was An Alien Spy (the narrator and his comrades imply that V.F.D. dates back to Ancient Greece, that Martin Luther King, Edith Wharton, and Thomas Malthus were involved with it[although the latter is 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)
Belated Backstory (although it takes a while, this is exactly what happens to Fernald)
Bizarrchitecture (Doctor Orwell's eye-shaped building)
Black And Gray Morality (especially from Book the Eighth and on)
Boarding School Of Horrors (Prufrock Preparatory School in Book the Fifth)
Body Motifs (the eye that first appears on Count Olaf's ankle, and later in many other placeS)
Brainwashed And Crazy (Klaus in Book the Fourth; he even appears to have Mind Control Eyes on the cover)
Briar Patching
Broken Base (there have been many fan debates about the quality of The Film Of The Book, not to mention the open-ended conclusion of the books)
Bunny Ears Lawyer (arguably some members of VFD)
Burger Fool (with clown-costumed waiters, balloons, and food with names like "Surprising Chicken Salad", The Anxious Clown combines aspects of this and Suck E Cheeses)
Bus Crash (let me see... Hector, the Quagmire triplets, Captain Widdershins, Fernald, Fiona. Maybe)
Busmans Holiday (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)
But Not Too Evil
Butt Monkey (pretty much the entire cast)
Canon Fodder (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)
Cargo Ship (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)
Cassandra Truth (every time the children see through Olaf's disguises, nobody believes them in time except in The End)
Catch Phrase (Snicket's "...a word which here means...")
Cerebus Retcon (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)
Cerebus Syndrome (the series starts off doing this backwards, moving from darkness and Grimm-style misery into comedy and wackiness, but then slides back in again in the later books)
Chekhovs Boomerang
Cinderella Circumstances: 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.
Circus Of Fear (Caligari Carnival in Book the Ninth)
Clark Kenting (numerous characters at various points, with the minor characters being better at it than the main ones)
Competence Zone (from babies up to fourteen-year-old Violet, even the Paper Thin Disguise-wearing villains are unable to see through the children's Paper Thin Disguise in Book the Eighth)
Contemptible Cover (many non-English-language covers are awful and do the series no justice)
Conveyor Belt O Doom (occurs in Book the Fourth with an absurdly huge circular saw)
Cool Boat
Cool Car (the Tatra 603 and 1959 Chrysler Imperial in the movie)
Corrupt Corporate Executive (closer to this than Corrupt Hick 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)
Covers Always Lie (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)
Cowboy Bebop At His Computer (a site 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... No Just No; 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 Red Herring)
Crosses The Line Twice (the freaks in the ninth book, although some people found it Dude Not Funny)
Crowning Moment Of Awesome
Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming (The Letter That Never Came in The Movie)
Curse Of The Ancients ("Blasted furnaces of Hell!")
Cut Short
Dark And Troubled Past (most adults have this due to their involvement from an early age with V.F.D.)
Dark Messiah (Ishmael is a mild example)
Daydream Believer (the combination of Literary Agent Hypothesis and Paranoia Fuel really makes an impact on some impressionable young readers)
Day Of The Week Name (Book the Thirteenth features Friday Caliban, and alludes to a Thursday Caliban and a Monday)
Dead Guy Junior Beatrice Baudelaire
Deathbringer The Adorable (Incredibly Deadly Viper)
Deconstruction (most books deconstruct one genre or another (although sometimes this is closer to an Affectionate Parody); the second half of the series deconstructs the first half of the series; arguably the last three books start deconstructing their immediate predecessors, too)
Department Of Redundancy Department: 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.
Deserted Island (the nameless island in The End)
Deus Angst Machina (pretty much the point of the series)
Deus Ex Machina (lampshaded in Book the Seventh)
Devil In Plain Sight
Distant Finale (again, seven-thirteenths of The Beatrice Letters; ostensibly supplementary, but there's no such thing as "optional" really, is there?)
Dont Try This At Home (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.
Downer Ending (optional in some books, in which the author suggests to stop reading and imagine an ending better than the real one)
Draco In Leather Pants (even before we had much Belated Backstory for them, Fanon interpreted Olaf's assistants as Yaoi Guys, or certainly something far more complex and sympathetic than they appeared in canon)
Drowning Pit (Lemony in an Italian restaurant)
Dumb Is Good (inverted: "well-read people are less likely to be evil")
DVD Commentary
Eigen Plot (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)
Epileptic Trees (a rather pervasive bit of Fanon holds that everyone and everything the Baudelaires encounter is part of a massive Xanatos Gambit arranged by an Ancient Conspiracy 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)
Every Episode Ending (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 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)
Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory (one can make a somewhat reasonable case for the Series being an allegory for the history of the Jewish people, and Daniel Handler has himself noted that the Series contains Jewish themes. Snicket's frequent use of Meaningful Names and literary allusions has also inspired a fair amount of overinterpretation)
Everyone Went To School Together (quite a few characters went to school together, but this is somewhat justified by the fact that they were all members of a secret organisation and this was their training; also, several of these characters are The Ghost)
Everythings Better With Princesses (Carmelita Spats's "tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian" costume from the eleventh book)
Evil Costume Switch (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)
Evil Laugh
Evil Tastes Good (Esmé: "I'm going to flatten you! Olaf and I are going to have a romantic breakfast of Baudelaire pancakes!")
Evil Teacher (Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass aren't evil per se, just obnoxious. Vice Principal Nero is another story.)
External Retcon (in explaining the difference between "denouement" and "end", Snicket "reveals" the distant endings of several Fairy Tales, involving the rather non-fantastical deaths of the heroes)
Faceless Eye (one of the distinguishing marks of the series)
Fake Out Opening
Fanfic Chop Suey (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)
Fetish Fuel
- Um, what?
Fictional Document (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 Scrapbook Story)
Fix Fic (because of the No Ending and possible Kill Em All)
Foregone Conclusion
Fun With Acronyms (V.F.D.)
Fun With Foreign Languages (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)
Gainax Ending
Genre Savvy (The Count Olaf in the movie must have read the books, as he corrects Violet to use her right hand)
Geographic Flexibility (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)
Gravity Is A Harsh Mistress (plays out in dialogue (and thus is averted) in Book the Twelfth; "I suppose I’ll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies")
Half Identical Twins (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 avert this by there being no mention of their similarity, but they're only very vaguely implied to be twins at all)
Hands Off My Fluffy
Hanlons Razor (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 Xanatos Roulette)
Hostage For Mc Guffin (partially 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)
"How Do You Like Them Apples" (The End)
Idiosyncratic Episode Naming (alliterated "The <adjective> <noun>", e.g., The Miserable Mill, The Wide Window, for nearly all the books)
In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It
Incoming Ham
Infant Immortality (despite all the terrible things that happen in the books, no children are killed during the course of the series. 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. )
- 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.
Ironic Nursery Tune (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; The Film Of The Book 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.
Issue Drift (not the most egregious issues ever, but undeniably a drift)
It Runs In The Family (Inverted Trope)
Its Popular Now It Sucks (the fear among some sections of the fandom that an influx of n00bish fans of The Movie would ruin everything)
It Will Never Catch On (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.
Joker Jury (something of a subversion because the Baudelaires actually killed someone, albeit accidentally and it turns out two figures of unfathomable evil apparently run the official courts.)
Just A Stupid Accent (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)
Karma Houdini
Kick The Son Of A Bitch (when Count Olaf violently pushes Carmelita Spats to the ground)
Kill All Humans (while not particularly harmful, the insects called snow gnats sting humans just for the fun of it)
Kill Em All (maybe)
Know When To Fold Em
Lampshade Hanging
Left Hanging
Lemony Narrator (obviously)
Limited Special Collectors Ultimate Edition (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)
Literary Agent Hypothesis
Locking Mac Gyver In The Store Cupboard
Lost Aesop (the series starts off meandering fairly aimlessly through satires of various unfortunate literary settings, with Book the Third Lampshade Hanging its lack of a meaningful 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)
Mac Guffin (the sugar bowl and the Baudelaire fortune - and "Mac Guffin" is even spoken in the final book)
Mac Gyvering
Making A Spectacle Of Yourself
Malicious Slander
Masquerade
Meaningful Name (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 What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic)
Meanwhile Back At The
Metafictional Device
Milkman Conspiracy
Mind Screw (the eleventh and thirteen books featured an 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)
Misaimed Fandom
Mis Blamed (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 deviated even more wildly)
Mister Seahorse (sent up in The End, where Count Olaf tries to disguise himself as a pregnant woman)
Morally Ambiguous Doctorate (Doctor Orwell)
Mysterious Past (besides the heroes, nearly every character has a mysterious past, and none are ever fully revealed)
Mythology Gag (in The Movie)
Narrator
Necromantic (in Book the Eighth, Lemony wishes he could...)
Never Trust A Trailer (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 On The Next 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)
Nice Hat (the Council of Elders in the seventh book wear hats shaped like crows)
Nightmare Fuel (Literature and Film)
No Celebrities Were Harmed
No Ending
Nominal Importance
Nonindicative Name
Noodle Incident (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)
Not So Different (attempted for the Baudelaires and Olaf from Book the Eighth onward, but with only limited success)
Not So Safe Harbor: Damocles Docks in the third book.
Number Of The Beast (close - 667 Dark Avenue, with its sixty-six floors)
Numerological Motif (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 they have a fourteenth book as an epilouge.
Obfuscating Stupidity: An Alternate Character Interpretation 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.
Odd Name Out (Isadora, Duncan, and Quigley Quagmire; Frank, Ernest, and Dewey Denouement)
One Letter Name (every character in The Unauthorized Autobiography; often we already knew their full names, but Kit Snicket, for example, was known to fans only as K. for three books)
Onion Tears (discussed in The End)
Only Sane Man (frequently the Baudelaires are this, as are other well-read volunteers. Liam Aiken (who played Klaus in The Movie) himself described the siblings as "the only sane people" during an interview.)
Only Smart People May Pass
On The Next (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 title pattern))
Orphan's Ordeal
Our Product Sucks
Painting The Fourth Wall
Paper Thin Disguise (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).
Paranoia Fuel (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)
Parental Abandonment (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)
Properly Paranoid (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 The Movie, for the scene where all her crazy fears come true (although she's not around to see it))
Put On A Bus (Hector with Duncan and Isadora Quagmire; Fernald and Fiona were Put On A Bus offscreen, no less)
Pyro Maniac Count Olaf really likes to burn houses down and enjoys it even more if there is someone inside
Ravens And Crows (the Village of Fowl Devotees is full of crows, and was founded to marvel at them)
Recursive Canon (apparently Snicket's books are published within the world of the Series, but it's not clear if they're different versions)
Record Needle Scratch (in The Movie)
Red Herring
Red Herring Twist (yes, both)
Reptiles Are Abhorrent (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)
Ret Con (so heavy that a number of companion books had to be written to fully explain them; these were themselves retconned)
Retro Universe
Reverse Shazam: The Movie is often referred to as "Lemony Snicket".
Romantic Plot Tumor (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)
Scarpia Ultimatum
Schizo Tech
Scrapbook Story (The Unauthorized Autobiography and The Beatrice Letters)
Screw This, I'm Outta Here (the white-faced women fall victim to this in Book the Tenth, as apparently do Fernald and Fiona in Book the Twelfth (albeit off-screen))
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness (usually seen in books which Klaus ends up reading, which only he can make sense of)
Shout Out (numerous allusions to literature, history, and mythology, among other things; many are listed here)
Shrug Of God (the fans can't get anything out of Daniel Handler)
Sick Sad World
Sigil Spam
Significant Anagram (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)
Slasher Smile
Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism (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)
Sliding Scale Of Silliness Versus Seriousness (for the most part, very silly)
Slipknot Ponytail (subverted, as Violet needs to tie her hair up to think straight)
Social Services Does Not Exist
Something They Would Never Say
Snicket Warning Label ([1])
Spoof Aesop (Snicket's narration is peppered with comments like "The moral of World War I is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand'"; the Spin Off Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid compiles a lot of these, some from the main series and some entirely new)
Spy Speak (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)
Steam Punk (nearly)
Take That (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 Tastes Like Diabetes way. Kind of jarring in a series so focused on Black And Gray Morality.
Tastes Like Diabetes (the first few minutes of The Film Of The Book, which is quickly and mercilessly subverted by a Record Needle Scratch)
Tear Jerker
Temporary Platform (in the video game of the movie)
Tethercat Principle
The End (the title of the last book, but the story itself deeply subverts the notion of endings)
The Film Of The Book
The Ghost (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)
The Libby (Carmelita Spats)
The Long List (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)
The Omniscient Council Of Vagueness (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)
The Problem With Licensed Videogames: 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.
The Sadistic Choice (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 lampshaded Deus Ex Machina lets them Take A Third Option)
The Trope Without A Title (the white-faced women, the man with a beard but no hair... pretty much any accomplice of Olaf's)
The Unintelligible
The Unpronounceable (Sir's real name - which is why he makes people call him Sir)
The Un Reveal (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)
Theme Initials (V.F.D.)
Theme Naming (the teachers at Prufrock Preparatory School are named after fish, and later we discover some families of siblings with alphabetically sequential names)
There Are No Therapists (so many children are orphaned in this series, but instead of counselling they get sent to abusive foster homes)
They Changed It Now It Sucks
They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot (frequently indistinguishable from Aborted Arc and Red Herring Twist)
Thirteen Is Unlucky (there are thirteen books in the series - and thirteen of several other things, too)
Totem Pole Trench (an interesting variant: Violet and Klaus put on the same oversized outfit to disguise themselves as a two-headed person)
Torches And Pitchforks
Two Teacher School (Prufrock Prep has three teachers and a Vice Principal, and no other visible staff)
Uncleanliness Is Next To Ungodliness (Olaf's poor hygiene and dirty house, played up even more in The Movie— there are not only roaches and rats in the kitchen, but bats living in the cupboards)
Unusual Euphemism (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!")
Utopia Justifies The Means (a mild example, Ishmael's Dystopic Utopia on a Deserted Island suppresses its inhabitants via peer pressure, technological deprivation and druggings)
Verbal Tic (Fauxreigners "Gunther" and "Madame Lulu" say "please" in almost every sentence)
Viewers Are Geniuses
Viewers Are Morons: 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 ''already knows'' the standard definition of the word.
Villain Decay Count Olaf got less and less threatening as the books went on, although other villains picked up the slack to some degree)
Villain Exit Stage Left
Weirdness Magnet (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)
We Sell Everything (Last Chance General Store)
What Happened To The Mouse (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)
Where Are They Now Epilogue (Chapter Fourteen; arguably a Subverted Trope because they haven't gone anywhere, although their views have moved on)
Where The Hell Is Springfield (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)
Why Did It Have To Be Snakes (Aunt Josephine, for nearly everything, including realtors)
- The movie and an offhand line in a later book justify some of her fears.
Wig Dress Accent (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)
World Gone Mad
World Of No Grandparents
Worst News Judgment Ever ("'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)
Writers Cannot Do Math
You Fail Biology Forever (the menacing pair in the tenth book identify eagles as mammals - lampshaded by the well-read protagonists)
You Fail Geography Forever / You Fail History Forever Winnipeg is the Capital City 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.
Your Mileage May Vary (The Film Of The Book 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)
You Should Know This Already (a secret organisation called V.F.D. is central to the plot)

Septimus Heap

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