Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Trivia: If you look at the poster advertising the play "The Marvelous Marriage," you'll see it was written by Al Funcoot. "Al Funcoot" is an anagram of Count Olaf. This is a common theme in the Lemony Snicket Books.

Trivia: In some scenes, Klaus is taller than Violet, depite the fact that she is supposed to be two years older. The actor that plays him grew quite a lot while filming, and his costume had to be altered several times.

Trivia: The instrument that Uncle Monty plays to the children is called an autoharp, from the Appalachian mountains - it's like an accordion, but the piano keys have been replaced with harp strings. Billy Connolly can actually play this instrument in real life, and the song he sings to the children is a song about Scotland, Billy's homeland.

Trivia: During the wedding, Violet tries to sign the marriage certificate with her left hand, and Olaf immediately stops her. The explanation is referenced in the book, in which the marriage was annulled as the justice rules since Violet signed with her "wrong" hand, she could not have been said to have signed with her legal hand.

Trivia: When Jim Carrey, as Count Olaf, is being told that the Baudelaires parents are dead he says "Yes, of course. How very, very awful". Then he suddenly says "Wait, let me do that one more time. Give me the line again. Quickly, while it's fresh in my mind.". That was pure improvising and was not supposed to be in the movie. Jim Carrey actually wanted to do that shot again. But the directors thought it fit in the movie and included it. (00:10:55)

Mortug

Trivia: Aunt Josephine attracting the leeches after eating a banana references an old superstition that it is extremely bad luck to bring bananas on sea voyages. To this day, some sailors will refuse to sail if there is a banana on board a boat.

Trivia: The train scene is full of references to the books. The store Count Olaf goes into is called "Last Chance General Store", which appeared in the 8th book. There is an ad in the window for parsley soda which is from the 6th book. Finally, the words "Veritable French Diner" are on the back of the magazine Olaf is reading. These have the initials VFD, which is the secret organization in the books.

Brad

Trivia: Right after Lemony has shined the flashlight on Uncle Monty's grave a man takes a picture of Uncle Monty. That man was Daniel Handler, the real Lemony Snicket. (00:44:30)

BigOLB

Trivia: In the novel, Olaf gets busted about the marriage plot much much earlier and this is the reason the children go live with Uncle Monty. The Aunt Josephine story would occur last, not in the middle as it did in the movie.

Trivia: There is one point in the movie where you can see Lemony Snicket's face if you look closely. At the end of the movie, when he takes the paper out of the typewriter, the light bounces off the paper and onto his face, illuminating it briefly.

Brad

Trivia: The car Count Olaf drives is a 1960 Chrysler Crown Imperial Limousine. These were ultra-expensive for the time period, retailing for $16,500 in 1960 dollars. This translates to an incredible $104,556.45 in 2006 dollars. Therefore, it is no surprise that only sixteen 1960 Imperial Limos were made (including one for Jackie Kennedy). The dashboard of Count Olaf's limo was made for the film and is nothing like a 1960 Imperial dash, and there were no lock "plungers" on the real car's doors, but the rest of the car is original and unmodified. See http://www.imperialclub.com for more information.

Trivia: The hair and make-up process to transform Jim Carrey into Olaf took three hours.

Trivia: A sequel was planned for some time. However, due to the first film not making quite as much as expected at the box office and because of corporate shakeups at the studio, it was repeatedly delayed. At one point, the sequel was going to be retooled into a stop-motion animated film so the original actors could provide their voices (as they grew up too much after this film came out to be able to reprise their roles on-screen), but the film was eventually cancelled before this could happen. Finally, 13 years after this film's release, the Netflix series premiered, which managed to adapt all 13 novels over the course of three seasons.

TedStixon

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events mistake picture

Revealing mistake: When Violet and Klaus make the tent inside their bedroom in Count Olaf's house, they set up the light with the faces of their parents on it in front of it. Except when it shows the shadow of the object outside the tent, the edge of the picture frame isn't showing when it should. (00:21:40)

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Stephano: I've been bitten forty-three...seven hundred times. Mostly on the face. A lot of this has been reconstructed but I think they did a great job even though my moustach is a tad askew.

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Question: As we know, the magnifying glass in Olaf's tower started the Baudelaire fire. This is the same tool that Klaus uses to burn up the marriage certificate. If the magnifying glass was powerful enough to cause the Baudelaire mansion to burst into flames, which was 37 blocks away, why didn't the stage burst into flames as well?

Answer: A magnifying glass concentrates all the light that goes through it at its focal point, and it is this focal point that needs to be placed on the object which one wants to set on fire. The distance of the focal point to the lens depends on the magnifying glass characteristics, and it is more than likely that Count Olaf chose a glass where the focal point would be situated exactly "37 blocks" away from his house, that is, at the Baudelaire's mansion. When trying to set on fire an object much, much closer, the glass would concentrate much, much less energy, and would only be able to set on fire easily burnt objects, such as thin paper.

AnthonyA

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