YMMV / A Series of Unfortunate Events

• Alternative Character Interpretation: How much of Olaf's bumbling is an act? At first impression, he may come off as an idiot that lucked into being surrounded by a society of even bigger idiots, but he does have genuine knowledge about things like manipulating mob psychology, marking secret locations, and is well-read enough to quote poetry as his last words. Many fans believe he deliberately cultivated an anti-intellectual persona to stick it to the literature-loving side of the VFD schism.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • There is a hotel in New York City organized by the Dewey Decimal System.
  • Leo Marks was a cryptographer during World War II who used poetry to convey messages, and later became a writer for the film and stage.
• Anvilicious: Parodied. Daniel Handler disliked the heavy handed moralizing of children's stories, so he deliberately wrote the Lemony Narration in a way that satirized this reaction. This also overlaps with Unreliable Narrator, since there's no direct indication that, for instance, the constant emphasis on books being the solution to all of life's problems is supposed to be satire, but in one interview, Handler revealed what he really thought:
  Daniel Handler: I liked the idea of a universe that was governed entirely by books. The Baudelaires find the solutions or what appear to be the solution to their problems in libraries in each volume, and so there are sort of some heavy-handed or I hope mock heavy-handed propaganda saying that all of life's difficulties can be solved within the pages of the right book.
• Audience-Alienating Ending: The books' endings are particularly frustrating, because although the series repeatedly goes out of its way to warn you there won't be a happy resolution, what it doesn't tell you until the last book is just how little will be resolved at all. The TV series rectifies this and, while we don't see what becomes of the heroes, we're told they're fine, living happily, and raised Kit Snicket's daughter, who finds Lemony to tell him this.
• 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.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Just try reading the books without imagining Count Olaf sounding like Jim Carrey. Did you succeed? Oh, it just means you're hearing Neil Patrick Harris instead.^note  Unless you remain faithful to Tim Curry from the audiobooks...
• Cargo Ship: In The End, Olaf embraces his weapons — a harpoon gun and a container of poisonous mushrooms — as if they're the only things he loves.
• Epileptic Trees: A rather pervasive bit of Fanon holds that everyone and everything the Baudelaires encounter is part of a plan 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.
• 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 over-interpretation.
• Growing the Beard: The whole Mind Screw started and was hinted from the third book onwards, but it's after The Austere Academy when things really took off. That's because when Handler was writing the fifth book, he had finally had his contract signed for 13 installments and could plan ahead the plot.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In The Wide Window Lemony says Josephine's fear of realtors is irrational because nothing bad has ever come out of the industry, which is rather awkward after the 2007 housing bubble collapse. This is actually acknowledged in the Netflix series, as he still says the line but then looks embarrassed by it.
• Ho Yay:
  • Sir and Charles are portrayed as being very close.
  • Even before they were given backstories, Fanon interpreted Olaf's assistants as gay, or certainly something far more complex and sympathetic than they appeared in canon.
• Inferred Holocaust: Considering the huge number of buildings that get torched in the series, it's only to be expected. However, it's also deconstructed in the sense that when it's the Baudelaires' turn to start burning things, they admit that they have no idea how many people die as a result of their actions, and are deeply affected by it, most notably in the destruction of the Hotel Denoument, where even the author isn't sure of the death toll. The book even ends with one: there's the potential for the islanders to spread their poisoning to the mainland, though it's acknowledged that this is unlikely.
• Iron Woobie:
  • The Baudelaire children. Their parents are killed in a house fire and they're being pursued by a relative who wants their fortune. To add to their woobieness, their relatives are killed off and their only friends get taken away from them.
  • The Quagmires. Just like their friends, their parents have been killed in a mysterious accident and two of the siblings believe their brother has died. They're also pursued for their fortune and have been held captive for who knows how long. In Duncan and Isadora's final appearance, they're separated from their friends again, but it's never explained what happened to them.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: The fear among some sections of the fandom that a Newbie Boom resulting from The Film of the Book and the Netflix series would ruin everything.
• Memetic Molester: Count Olaf. On top of being creepy as all hell, the part where he "marries" Violet certainly enforces this.
• Misaimed Fandom: There are some fans who interpret the series as a serious drama rather than a dark comedy. While the series has plenty of dark and depressing moments, there are also plenty of absurd, comical scenes to balance it out.
• No Yay: Count Olaf's affections for Violet are always portrayed as disturbing by the fanbase.
• Once Original, Now Common: Back in the day, these were some of the darkest and most cynical kids books you can find on shelves. The bar has been raised a lot by some things that came out after the first book.
• Paranoia Fuel: Beneath the surface of society is a Violent Feudal Drama 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.
• Periphery Demographic: Like Harry Potter, it's one of those books you'll often see teens and adults picking up for themselves, possibly not allowing their own children to read them until they are mature enough that it won't give them nightmares.
• Rooting for the Empire: In a way, Count Olaf. The "noble" side of the schism, which includes the Lemony Narrator himself, tends to be obnoxiously judgmental about their ideals, for instance, considering good taste in literature a necessary prerequisite for a moral person. Despite being otherwise a bad person, this causes readers to somewhat side with Count Olaf constantly getting the better of them despite being repeatedly called stupid by the narration. This, incidentally, reflects the popularity of many anti-intellectual celebrities in real life, and has some applicability towards those with learning disabilities.
• Ship Mates: Violet/Duncan or Violet/Quigley end as this with Klaus/Isadora.
• Squick:
  • Olaf trying to arrange Violet to marry him in the movie/first book. Keep in mind that he's a man probably in his fifties or older trying to get a teenage girl to marry him.
  • The Hook-handed Man or the Bald Man, both of whom agree that Violet is pretty. It's not really explained if they're just as dirty as Olaf or not.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Olaf does this to Poe in the movie while Violet does this in the series proper, politely declining to come with him after the clusterfuck that was the first 7 books. This is more satisfying in the series where Poe is more self-centered, as opposed to the film where he is still bumbling but more well-meaning than his book counterpart.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Towards the end of the series, the sheer amount of times that Poor Communication Kills and Adults Are Useless makes some readers just plain give up.
• Values Dissonance: Among the unusual cast of Olaf's theater troupe is a huge henchperson who "looks like neither a man nor a woman", and their appearance is framed as uncanny and frightening, with extra dehumanizing effect coming from the character never speaking words or demonstrating a personality, being an almost bestial hulk who is often referred to as "it". With increasing awareness today about gender diversity and gender queerness/nonconformity, having a character being an inhuman threat narratively reviled for scary gender ambiguity can feel tasteless at best and hateful at worst. The Netflix series adaptation addresses these concerns and reframes the character as an average-looking person who simply doesn't conform to a clear gender (including showing an interest in gender politics and in questioning norms) and isn't framed as creepy for it in the slightest, and their role is given more personality and likability as well.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: This is a story about a man who murders just about every character in the series trying to kill three orphans to get their inheritance. This includes characters being eaten alive, death by harpoon gun, and the untold unmentionables who didn't escape the hospital fire.
• Woolseyism: Since "VFD" originally stood for Volunteer Fire Department, the initialism can vary wildly in different languages, so other names using the initialism are adjusted accordingly. For instance, in Greek, "VFD" becomes "Ε.Α.Π.", so the "Village of Fowl Devotees" has to become "Επαρχία Αρπακτικών Πτηνών" or "District of Predatory Birds". In some languages, there's even a modified logo; for instance, the French "VDC" logo looks like this.

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