Netflix's deliciously dark adaptation of the best-selling books A Series of Unfortunate
Events is absolutely loaded with easter eggs and references.
Yippee ki-yay movie lovers, it's Jan here, and in this video I'm going to whip through
some of my favourite easter eggs, cameos, and connections to TV shows, movies, and Lemony
Snicket's original books that I found in the TV series.
Ok, quick warning: there are spoilers ahead, so if you want to avoid those, look away,
look away!
But don't forget to come back here when you're ready!
Before this show, actress Malina Weissman, who plays Violet Baudelaire, was best known
for her role as the young Kara Zor-El in the TV show Supergirl, and there's a great Supergirl
hat-tip in Part One of The Reptile Room.
Yes, when Violet and her siblings sit down to eat with their guardian Dr Monty Montgomery
and Stephano, Violet asks, 'Could you please pass the pot stickers?'
Which is a delicious reference to Supergirl's love of that particular food, which we've
seen a number of times in the Supergirl TV series!
If only Violet could have 'melted' Count Olaf's face when he deliberately ate all the pot
stickers, the way that Kara jokingly told her sister she'd do in Supergirl, then the
Baudelaire children wouldn't have had to deal with all those unfortunate events!
During the tunnel scenes in the first episode, Lemony Snicket walks past a variety of signs,
many of which are references to characters in the original books, some of whom we'll
no doubt see in future seasons.
For example, there's a sign for JULIENNE, which is a shout-out to Geraldine Julienne,
a reporter at The Daily Punctilio, where Eleanora Poe is the Editor-in-Chief.
Speaking of which, although Julienne hasn't appeared in the TV series yet, Eleanora Poe
does mention her 'star reporter' who wrote a front-page feature about the Baudelaire
Mansion fire, and whose by-line we see on another article about the Baudelaire children.
Another sign we see is for REMORA, which is a reference to Mr Remora, a teacher at the
Prep School where Violet, Klaus and Sunny find themselves at the end of season one.
And that's also where, in the book The Austere Academy, the Baudelaires meet the very mean
schoolgirl Carmelita SPATS.
As for the sign for WIDDERSHINS, that refers to Captain Widdershins, the step-father of
the Hook-Handed Man, who also gets a sign in the tunnels featuring his name FERNALD.
There are also signs for characters who appear in later episodes of season one, including
Montgomery, the children's guardian; Anwhistle, the surname of the Baudelaire's guardian,
Aunt Josephine; Strauss, Count Olaf's neighbour Justice Strauss; Snicket, a reference to writer-narrator
Lemony or his siblings Jacques and Kit; and Quagmire, the surname of Cobie Smulders and
Will Arnett's mother and father characters whose children end up at the same school as
the Baudelaires.
Over the course of season one of the show, there are a number of nods to All The Wrong
Questions, a collection of four books that serve as a prequel to the Series of Unfortunate
Events novels.
In episode 3, Klaus asks Violet, 'How did he find us?'
when Count Olaf turns up disguised as Stephano at Uncle Monty's house, to which Violet replies,
'That's the wrong question.'
And in episode 7, after the children discuss whether Count Olaf will find them at the mill,
narrator Lemony Snicket says, 'Violet was asking the wrong questions.'
Also, in episode 2, when Violet and Klaus are looking for their missing sister, Sunny,
the dastardly Count asks them, 'When did you see her last?', which is actually the title
of the second book in the All The Wrong Questions series.
In real life, Lemony Snicket is actually the pen name for author Daniel Handler.
And, although actor Patrick Warburton plays the part of Snicket on screen, Handler does
actually appear three times in the show as well!
In episode 5, when Aunt Josephine is shopping at the market, Handler pops up selling fish
heads at a street stall!
And in episode 6, as a storm's coming, he runs across the street yelling 'save the fish
heads!'
Then in episode 7, he makes another appearance, this time interacting with Mr Poe, who's desperate
to find the Baudelaire children, who he doesn't realise have run away to the Lucky Smells
Lumbermill.
Mr Poe looks at the camera and cries 'It's a catastrophe!
It's unprecedented!
It's off-book!
It's unfortunate!', then he turns to Handler's fish-head seller and says, 'The Baudelaires
are lost and unsupervised!
Do you know what that means?', to which Handler replies, 'Without supervision.'
This is an ingeniously meta moment as, in the original books, Mr Poe knows exactly where
the children are because he takes them to Paltreyville where the Mill is to meet their
next guardian, so that part of the story in the TV series has quite literally gone 'off-book'!
In Part Two of The Wide Window, after Count Olaf has forced Josephine to write a will
leaving the children in his care, she rushes into her library to try to figure out a means
of escape.
And when Olaf, who's disguised as Captain Sham at the time, notices that Josephine has
shut the library doors behind her, he hobbles up the hallway after her, saying 'Here's Shammy!'
Which is an homage to Stanley Kubrick's movie The Shining and Jack Nicholson's famous line,
'Here's Johnny', which he says as he breaks down the door to the bathroom where his character's
wife is hiding.
In 2004, the first three books in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events were adapted
into a movie starring Jim Carrey as Count Olaf.
And, like Netflix's version of the Baudelaires' story, that movie featured the character of
Justice Strauss, who was played by an actress called Catherine O'Hara, whose name should
ring a bell if you've watched the closing credits of A Series of Unfortunate Events
on Netflix as this time Catherine O'Hara plays the scheming optometrist Dr Georgina Orwell
in the show!
Which adds another meta layer of humour to the scene where Dr Orwell tells Klaus about
an optometrist who changed her looks 'to assume a new identity in a faraway town'.
In the season finale, there's a lovely easter egg to the books as well as a tease for season
two when our narrator Lemony Snicket explains hypnosis to us, saying that, 'The 'Encyclopedia
Hypnotica tells of […] a man who, upon hearing the word "Nero," could suddenly play an instrument
he'd never studied.'
Then the camera cuts to a woman playing a violin in a movie that Snicket's watching
on TV.
This is a nice nod to the character of Vice Principal Nero, who runs the boarding school
where we see the Baudelaire children at the end of season one.
In the books, Vice Principal Nero is a nasty character and an awful violin player who forces
students to listen to his performances.
His name and violin obsession were likely inspired by the Roman Emperor Nero and the
expression 'Nero fiddled while Rome burned.'
And, towards the end of the eighth episode, we also see the silhouette of a person playing
the violin, again, letting us know that we'll be seeing Vice Principal Nero in season two.
Of course, there are tons more easter eggs and references in the show, but what were
your favourites?
And what are you looking forward to seeing in season 2 and who would you like to see
cast in some of the new roles?
I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments below!
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Thanks for watching and see ya next time!
Yippee ki-yay movie lovers!