Nightmare Fuel / A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017)

Off with Her Head!...

"Does this seem like a nightmare? Because that's the vibe I was going for."

— Count Olaf

The theme song warned you to LOOK AWAY, and this page will make you wish you heeded the warning.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Season 1

• A trio of children lose their parents in a tragic fire, they are taken in by an abusive guardian after their fortune, who treats them as slaves and physically harms them. When they finally manage to flee, he goes after them, killing every chance they find to have a family or a normal life they find in the path, actively harming everyone that they bond with.
• The leeches. Small creatures with a Lamprey Mouth taking up almost half their body lengths, and their ability to smell food on you when you're hundreds of feet away and above water. And they swarm.
• Uncle Monty's snake-bitten corpse in episode 4. The makeup effects in that scene were spectacularly creepy.
  • Not helping matters is Olaf mockingly describing Uncle Monty's "cold waxy face" and unblinking eyes as Violet starts tearing up. Then they learn Sunny's in the briefcase when Olaf slams it into a wall.
• "The Miserable Mill" is rather terrifying throughout, due to the themes of the suppression of free will and the mill's complete lack of workplace safety.
  • When the Baudelaires ask the workers why they still work at the mill despite the horrible conditions they're put through, they all stand up and say "Lucky Smells is our life, Lucky Smells is our home" in unison, showing that something definitely isn't right.
  • After Klaus breaks his glasses, he's sent to see the optometrist Dr. Orwell, who then proceeds to hypnotize him under the guise of giving him an eye exam. The eye exam starts out with normal things, such as "An A or a C?", and rapidly segues into things such as "A parent or an arsonist?", eerily reminiscent of the 2 + Torture = 5 scene in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
  • Klaus when Brainwashed and Crazy is both disturbing and a case of Tear Jerker. He simply responds to everything with an obedient "Yes, sir", without any awareness of what he's being ordered to do. At one point, he brings his baby sister Sunny dangerously close to a wood chipper, and even accidentally crushes Phil's leg while operating machinery. Both of the times he comes out of the trance after hearing the word "inordinate", he has no idea what he's done or why everyone is looking at him strangely.
  • Charles is later hypnotized so that he won't realize he's about to be sawed in half. His Dissonant Serenity as he gets closer to the sawblade is rather unnerving, and when the trance is broken, he immediately starts panicking and begging to get out. At least he was rescued right on time.
  • Dr. Orwell's death by falling backwards into a furnace. It was changed from her more graphic death in the book series from getting sawed in half, and she was a terrible person, but still. What's especially scary about this is how she was also holding Sunny with the intention to drop her into the furnace, and probably would've succeeded if she hadn't accidentally thrown Sunny at the last second instead.
• While providing a lot of comic relief with his lack of book smarts and paper thin disguises, Count Olaf is also a very legitimate danger to the Baudelaires. Special mentions go to picking up baby Sunny (who is clearly scared and frightened) and almost dropping her to accidentally cut off Sunny's toe, and squeezing Violet's shoulder while talking about how he can touch anything he wants. Plus, Neil Patrick Harris' performance is creepy as hell when it's not hilariously hammy.
  • His threat to Violet at the end of the second episode, hissing in her ear in the complete darkness that he'll stop at nothing to get his hands on the fortune, and fully intends on killing her and her siblings once he has it. It's incredibly unnerving.
    • "... And when I have it, I will tear you and your siblings from limb... to limb." What reads like "make a joke" becomes uniquely frightening coming from a villain who doesn't always know what he's doing — but he'll certainly try.
  • Additionally, whenever Count Olaf gets angry, it shows on his face. And his angry face is definitely something that can send shivers down anyone's spine.

Season 2

• Esmé Squalor ups the ante even further. If you ran into Olaf, you could probably get away by being clever enough to get past his overcomplicated schemes, but Esmé would have no qualms about just beating you to a pulp or flat-out killing you. Especially nasty is her stalking them through the records room at Heimlich Hospital, with literal stiletto heels that Violet just barely avoids.
• The deluxe cell in the VFD village. What makes it so deluxe? The noose hanging from its ceiling. There's some pretty nasty implications there as to why that would equal "deluxe".
• The entirety of Hostile Hospital seems almost out of place with how much Nightmare Fuel is present. Medical Horror, Abandoned Hospital vibes, Violet getting Strapped to an Operating Table and almost undergoing a Meatgrinder Surgery. Aside from all that, the overall tone of the episodes and the legitimate threat that Count Olaf and Esmé have become make these two episodes the darkest in the series.
  • The entirety of the scene leading up to Bab's kidnapping in Hostile Hospital Part One. Abandoned Hospital vibes, horror movie tropes, and creepy singing are all abound.
    "We visit people who are ill and try to make them cry. Even when the doctor says 'I'm afraid you have to die.'"
  • The scene where Esmé is chasing the Baudelaires through the Library of Records. The children are all alone in a dark room with a woman who, unlike Olaf, doesn't care about keeping them alive. The whole scene also shows just how unhinged Esmé is as a person.
  • The part where Olaf slowly lumbers through the hallway while knocking out every light with a crowbar (the same crowbar that he used to murder Jacques Snicket). Paired with the creepy music, the scene feels like it was ripped straight out of a slasher flick.
    Hook-Handed Man: You scared us!
    Count Olaf: I was practicing.
  • In Hostile Hospital Part Two, when Olaf has Violet captured and tied up. The way he talks to her while holding a variety of nasty looking medical tools is absolutely bone-chilling. This is a man who's been fed up so much with his plans failing that he's out for blood, and it shows in that one scene alone.
    Count Olaf: Have you ever hunted, Violet?
    Violet: Of course not.
    Count Olaf: Well if you had, you'd be familiar with a particular experience. There's a particular moment at the end of a long hunt when you have the animal cornered and the animal looks into your eyes, deep into them, to see if there's any mercy in there. And when it sees that there is not, it gives up. It gives its life to you. I have you cornered, Violet, and I have no mercy. (looms inches from her face as she tries to squirm away) Soon enough, your siblings will fall into my trap, and when they do, I won't be satisfied with just your fortune. This time, I will obliterate you and the entire Baudelaire line in the cruelest way imaginable. (smiles maliciously) Won't that be fun?
  • And then there's Violet being captured again after being caught trying to escape alongside Babs. The part where Violet is actually put under anesthesia is quite terrifying, especially when she's clearly struggling to escape, and there's even a point in which the viewers get to see a P.O.V. Cam of her losing consciousness. Not helping matters is when Esmé leans over her and ominously says "goodnight" before she finally goes out.
  • From the same episode, Olaf learns that one of the Baudelaire parents may be alive and suddenly every trace of his comedic side vanishes into a subdued Villainous Breakdown as he slowly and deliberately sets the hospital on fire with a look of pure rage.
  • When trying to force Klaus into cutting off Violet's head, Count Olaf acquiesces that the procedure might be fatal, but insists that some "sacrifices" are necessary in the name of the advancement of science. He then proceedes to stroke her hair and then her neck, with Klaus looking an appropriate combination of enraged and unnerved.
• Also, Count Olaf's plan has reached new heights of awfulness in season 2:
  • In "The Vile Village" he accuses the orphans of murder, and intends to burn them at the stake for a crime they didn't commit.
  • In "The Hostile Hospital", his plan is to force a disguised Klaus to perform a fake surgery on his sister in front of an audience. The surgery is nothing less than cutting off her head.
  • In "The Carnivorous Carnival", he intends to kill one of the freaks live in front of an audience, by feeding them to starving lions, just to draw in a crowd.
• "The Carnivorous Carnival" gets some serious Fridge Horror once Olaf reveals he saw through the Baudelaires' disguises right away. His making them burn down the tent full of VFD's records, and even commenting that he felt similarly uneasy before setting his first fire, makes him seem to be forcibly pushing them past the same Moral Event Horizon he'd long since crossed, aided by how the last two stories have the kids feeling very uneasy about being pushed into acting more like Olaf.
• Olivia's fate by the end of season two is as disturbing as it is heartbreaking. She gets gruesomely torn apart and eaten by lions. Olaf feeds her to the lions after he discovers she isn’t “Madame Lulu”. Everyone in the room, from the gore-hungry crowd to the theater troupe to even Olaf, who dropped her in there, looks either disgusted, shocked, horrified, or a combination of the three (the only person who doesn't react negatively is Esmé; instead, she cracks a satisfied smile). We can even hear soft tearing noises. We don't actually see the mauling onscreen, but that manages to make her grisly fate even more unsettling. Her terrified scream before she’s eaten by the lions doesn’t help.

Season 3

• The Man With a Beard but No Hair and The Woman With Hair but No Beard, full stop. Villains so dreadful that even Olaf is afraid of them, and in the first two episodes they appear in, they show us exactly why. Unlike Olaf or Esmé, there is nothing comical about them to balance out their villainy, leaving us with the two most evil characters in the entire show.
  • The things they end up doing are even worse. They burned down the VFD headquarters, murdered the carnival freaks on the way to Olaf, talk Olaf into throwing Sunny off the mountain, flawlessly capture a whole troop of children, and then burn down each and every one of those children's houses with their parents inside. And all of that is done in the first two episodes they appear in.
  • We don't get to see the full execution of the plan in action, but that arguably makes it even worse. As Mr. Poe drives Kit Snicket back into the city, he receives a phone call from the bank; he reacts in horror as he hears that a multitude of fires have cropped up all over the city, which will leave dozens of children orphaned. We then get a distant shot showing the city with dozens of plumes of smoke rising from it, looking for all the world like the Apocalypse has started. And to cap it off, we get a final scene of the Man and Woman watching this all from a rooftop and toasting to the horror below.
    Man With a Beard but No Hair: To fighting fire with fire.
    Woman With Hair but No Beard: And to watching the world go up in smoke.
  • The sheer horror that the Baudelaires experience when they realize that the pair are Justice Strauss's superiors on the High Court, meaning that the Dark Side of VFD had owned the apparatus of law and order in The City the entire time, and thus, for them, true justice could literally never have been done.
• The fate of the Snow Scouts as well, courtesy of the above. A whole camp of children carried off screaming by eagles, with all of them heavily implied to be orphaned afterwards.
• The Great Unknown makes an appearance in The Grim Grotto, finally giving a glimpse of what it is: a MASSIVE undersea monster with an eye that's as big as one of the submarine's windows and a horribly loud call.
  • It's reappearance at the end of The Penultimate Peril part 2 is even more terrifying. Kit Snicket is looking through the periscope of her submarine when the sonar system's repeated beeping begins to increase in speed and pitch, and Kit turns to see the symbol of the Great Unknown coming directly at her. Fast. There's a shower of sparks and Kit is thrown off her feet, leaving her fate unknown until the next episode.
  • Olaf will do anything to get the Baudelaire fortune, but even he metaphorically wets himself at the sight of it approaching on the radar. Yes, that's right - The Great Unknown is so scary that even OLAF is frightened of it.
• Just like in the books, Sunny gets infected with the Medusoid Mycellium, leaving her with only an hour to live. Even worse is that Olaf was perfectly happy leaving the three children in the brig and letting Sunny die. Were it not for the Hook-Handed Man letting them out, Sunny would have died and there would have been nothing her siblings could do to stop it.
  • The Medusoid Mycellium in general is pretty terrifying. It's a type of mushroom that when you breathe in its spores, it spreads into your throat and will literally suffocate you. This is not helped when you see Sunny slowly turning green and coughing loudly. The creepiest part? VFD was willing enough to use it on the Schism side, something even Fernald was disgusted by.
  • Forget use it; it's heavily implied that VFD created the Medusoid Mycelium as a bio-weapon to be used against their enemies. Which would mean that the horrific fate Sunny almost met was the intended purpose of the fungus. And since the Sugar Bowl contains the cure to the fungus, and the theft of the Sugar Bowl kicked off the Schism, they must have already been working on it before the Schism had even started!
• Larry Your-Waiter's death. Being strung up and dropped head first into a pot of boiling curry was likely a rather painful way to spend one's last moments.
• In the flashback scenes, we see the death of Olaf's father due to an accidental use of a poison dart. Olaf's reaction is pretty uncomfortable when he witnesses his father die: He goes from complete shock and sadness... to a creepy Death Glare. Start of Darkness indeed.
• The Medusoid Mycellium being released upon the island, infecting all of its inhabitants. Even worse is how Ishmael gets everyone on a boat to try to get to safety. Especially considering how remote the island might be, it's unlikely that they would get to safety within the hour they have. Although it's suggested that the Incredibly Deadly Viper may have saved them too.

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