Lemony Snicket didn't lie: Please read something else.
- The DVD's main menu
and the film's credits are drawn in insanely eerie Goth styles, and might be even scarier than the film itself. - In The Bad Beginning, Count Olaf's plot to marry his adoptive 14-year-old daughter Violet would be squick-y enough if it were left at that. The book doesn't leave it there, though. Violet dreads the idea of waking up next to him every day, and just in case the reader gets the idea that Daniel Handler just didn't think through the implications, Count Olaf announces after the "marriage" that he and his new bride are off to their wedding night. Anyone concerned that this deep level of creepiness might be left out of the 2017 Netflix series will be glad to know that it's actually creepier, with a new line added where Olaf announces that he can "touch whatever [he] wants" before putting his hand on Violet's shoulder as she cringes away. The rest of us will just go and throw up a little.
- Count Olaf's schemes to get the fortune become more terrifying as the books go on:
- Aunt Josephine's death in The Wide Window is one of the more disturbing in the series. The idea of [being eaten alive by leeches carries a vibe similar to death by a thousand cuts.
- That moment in the movie when Count Olaf lets go of Josephine, as the boat sinks. We actually get to see her sink with the boat in a deleted scene.
- In The Hostile Hospital, Count Olaf's plan involves decapitating Violet while she's unconscious. No complicated and goofy plots here. Just cutting the head off of an anesthetized child. Of course, this is barely even noteworthy compared to the villagers' attempt in The Vile Village to set the Baudelaires on fire.
- Oh and not just decapitate her but slowly saw her head off, which the bald guy loves and only wishes she was conscious to feel.
- Aunt Josephine's death in The Wide Window is one of the more disturbing in the series. The idea of [being eaten alive by leeches carries a vibe similar to death by a thousand cuts.
- The Medusoid Mycelium. It's just a mushroom, neither aggressive nor poisonous. However, its method of killing its victims by growing inside of them until their breathing passages are blocked off is seriously horrifying, particularly considering that it's very close to being allowed to kill Sunny. The potential for the Mycelium to do damage if it were ever to begin spreading in the wild is a bit of fridge horror, although thankfully it does have a pretty simple "antidote" in the form of horseradish.
- The Great Unknown. As its name implies, we have no idea in the name of all that is sane and Holy as to just what it actually is, but it's enough to scare the pants off Olaf, who's never been scared of anything else before.
- While the VFD is supposedly a heroic organization, several things about them make them sound like child kidnappers. Volunteers are recruited as children, when they hear a strange sound coming from outside their house. When they ask their parents what it was, the parents reply with "It was probably nothing," to which the child responds with the phrase "If there's nothing out there, then what was that noise?" There's also this song:"When we grab you by the ankles,Where our mark is to be made,You'll soon be doing noble work,Although you won't be paid.When we drive away in secret,You'll be a volunteer,So don't scream when we take you:The world is quiet here."
