Trivia for
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) More at IMDbPro »

• The bizarre car seen in the previews is a Tatra 603. Built in the present-day Czech Republic, it was designed as a limousine for Communist Party officials and VIPs. It was first designed in 1955; the model in the previews is from 1968-1975.
  
  
• The mysterious initials V.F.D., which appear throughout the books, are hidden in the end credits on drawings of zeppelins hovering over the city.
  
  
• Director Brad Silberling admitted on the director's commentary that in some scenes the stand-ins for Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman, the Knight babies, often appeared on camera instead of the original twins (but with their faces covered slightly).
  
  
• The train scene is full of cameos from the books. First, the store is the 'Last Chance', as seen in Book 8, the Hostile Hospital. The man working there is reading the newspaper 'The Daily Punctillio", as seen in Book 7, the Vile Village, and on. Also, the headline reads 'Orphans to Blame', which is in the books as well. The window of the Last Chance advertises 'Parsley Soda', as seen in Book 6, the Ersatz Elevator. Finally, the magazine Olaf reads advertises a Veritably French Diner, which has the mysterious initials V.F.D.
  
  
• In the stairwell where we first meet Count Olaf, there is a portrait of Olaf in Shakespearian garb, reaching out with his hand. This is almost an exact duplicate of a picture of John Barrymore playing "Hamlet".
  
  
• When Count Olaf locks the orphans in the car, you can briefly see the words, "Last Chance" painted on the slanted roof. The Last Chance General Store was featured in the eighth book, "The Hostile Hospital".
  
  
• The duck that nearly gets a stove dropped onto it is well known to American audiences as the Aflac Duck. He's the mascot for the American insurance company Aflac. Their ads feature a pair of people discussing Aflac insurance, but being unable to remember the company's name while he tries to shout it out but simply sounds like a quacking duck. Paramount and Aflac also ran a series of movie tie-in ads.
  
  
• Violet tries to sign the marriage document with her left hand and Count Olaf says "Right hand please". This is a reference to the book in which Violet does sign the document with her left hand, after which Justice Stauss declares the marriage invalid since she did not sign it in her "own hand".
  
  
• Count Olaf's car is a 1960 Chrysler Imperial Limo.
  
  
• The movie has elements from the first three books, "The Bad Beginning", "The Reptile Room", and "The Wide Window".
  
  
• Early in pre-production, Scott Rudin was attached to produce this movie, with Barry Sonnenfeld as director. Rudin later left the project over "budgetary conflicts", and Sonnenfeld left soon after. However, both are still credited as executive producers.
  
  
• Christy Carlson Romano was originally supposed to play the role of Violet.
  
  
• During production, Liam Aiken grew four and a half inches (11.4 cm), requiring adjustments to his costume throughout. By the end of the movie, he is visibly taller than Emily Browning who portrayed his older sister.
  
  
• Jim Carrey's make-up and hair took three hours to finish.
  
  
• Triplets were originally cast to play the role of Sunny Baudelaire. But when the trio developed stage fright and separation anxiety and would do nothing but cry, they were replaced by twins Shelby Hoffman and Kara Hoffman.
  
  
• In the film, Liam Aiken's character's home burns to the ground. During the premiere, Liam got word that his house was on fire.
  
  
• When the children first meet Count Olaf and Jim Carrey says, "Wait, give me that last line again," was not actually in the script, it was Carrey staying in character and wanting to try it again, but they kept the cameras rolling and felt it worked the way it happened.
  
  
• After scouring ballet schools looking for a girl to play Violet Baudelaire, the casting director was exercising at the gym when she spotted Emily Browning on television, and decided to get her for an audition.
  
  
• At the end of the movie, the children receive a letter. When turning it over, it reads: "Groeten uit Antwerpen", which translates from Dutch as "Greetings From Antwerp".
  
  
• Two weeks before the end of shooting, DP Emmanuel Lubezki had to leave due to work commitments for the upcoming movie The New World (2005). 'Robert Yeoman' was brought in for a shot in the last half of the third act (The Wide Window). Yeoman was given a special thanks in the credits.
  
  
• Filming stopped on several occasions after one of the twins playing Sunny (Shelby Hoffman and Kara Hoffman) fell asleep.
  
  
• Originally, the director wanted Sunny to be pure CGI. While he eventually used real babies for the part, at least four of Sunny's scenes have a CG baby because they would be impossible or dangerous for a real child to do. Among these are shots of Sunny hanging on to a table by her teeth, and catching a spindle with her mouth, and the scene where she is entangled with the Incredibly Deadly Viper.
  
  
• The silhouettes of the Baudelaire parents are actually the silhouettes of production designer Rick Heinrichs and director Brad Silberling's wife, actress Amy Brenneman.
  
  
• In the train scene, when Olaf is reading a magazine, the cover has a picture of Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera (1925).
  
  
• The strange, menacing-looking engine in the railroad crossing scene very strongly resembles Pennsylvania T-1 4-4-4-4, an experimental engine built in 1942 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and used exclusively by the Pennsylvania Railroad. All of the real T-1's were sold for scrap by the early 1950s.
  
  
• The movie was entirely filmed on soundstages, even the "exterior" scenes, which involved 360 degree sets and lots of blue screens.
  
  
• When Aunt Josephine and the orphans look through her scrapbook, there is a photograph of a younger Aunt Jo on safari in Africa. The photograph is actually a still of Meryl Streep from Out of Africa (1985), and the person next to her is her co-star, Klaus Maria Brandauer.
  
  
• Meryl Streep replaced Glenn Close as Aunt Josephine.
  
  
• Because the train scene was filmed on a forced-perspective set, Industrial Light & Magic did something called "lattice deformations "to squeeze the computer-generated train (including the smoke) onto the forced-perspective tracks.
  
  
• Industrial Light and Magic did over 505 visual effects-shots for this movie.
  
  
• Many scenes of Sunny talking were actually partly virtual. The lower part of the face was replaced and tracked onto the real face.
  
  
• The Tatra's reel-to-reel tape machine is a miniature Nagra Kudelski, a brand very familiar to sound recordists.
  
  
• The beginning of the film features a false-start opening sequence called "The Littlest Elf". The sequence was created in CGI, but designed to resemble the stop-motion animated children's specials common in the 1960s and '70s, most famously by Rankin-Bass.
  
  
• Tim Burton was attached to direct at some point, with Johnny Depp playing Count Olaf and Glenn Close playing Aunt Josephine. When Tim Burton left the project, Johnny Depp left as well. Brad Silberling replaced Glenn Close, feeling that Meryl Streep would be better for the role.
  
  
• Meryl Streep's daughter loves the book series that the film is based on. According to the audio commentary on the DVD, she accepted the role of Aunt Josephine upon her daughter's request.
  
  
• When Klaus finds a spy-glass in his father's desk, there is a box of green cigarettes lying beside it, labelled VFD. This is a reference to the book series (specifically Book the Tenth), in which Sunny uses Verdant Flammable Devices (mistaken for green cigarettes) to signal her siblings. Book the Tenth also mentions that the Baudelaires' father had the same devices hidden in his desk.
  
  
• At the house of Count Olaf, one of the walls of the dining room is decorated with his portrait. The portrait is a parody on Cecil Beaton's photograph of Maria Callas.
  
  
• Tim Burton was attached to direct the film at one time and Johnny Depp was attached to play Count Olaf. When Burton left, Depp left as well.
  
  
• During the final act of the film, the play preformed by Count Olaf, "The Marvelouse Marrige" is written by a man named Al Funcoot. Al Funcoot is an anagram of Count Olaf.
  
  
• Haley Hudson was considered for the role of Violet.
  
  
• The clothes the Baudelaire orphans are noticeably different from the books. Violet wears a dress with the V-cuffed lower sleeves, which is very common in space operas, Klaus wears a sweater with a button-down shirt underneath, and Sunny wears a small dress.
  
  
• Cameo: [Helena Bonham Carter] An uncredited appearance as Beatrice Baudelaire.
  
  
• It is the only Nickelodeon Movie to win an Academy Award.
  
  
• Each Baudelaire orphan has one major flaw in their wardrobe according to the books. Klaus in the books is nearly blind without his glasses while, in the movie they are only needed for reading. Sunny in the books hated wearing a pink dress, but in the film her dress had a lot of pink in it. Violet in the book was unable to put braids in her hair because they would stay together, but in the movie she has braids nearly the entire time.
  
  

• SPOILER: According to the letter the children receive at the end of the film, the Baudelaire Mansion, is at 23 Prospero Place, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  
  

Related Links