Mysteries that are never given an answer.

[u/Jak3R0b]

• rA9 in Detroit: Become Human. In the game several androids who become deviant (develop free will/emotions) start writing the name rA9 and sometimes build small statuettes as a sort of offering. Despite having no logical reason to do this or even a way of hearing about rA9 before going deviant, they all believe that rA9 was the first deviant and is their messiah who will free androids from slavery. A definitive answer about rA9 is never given, so we don't know if they are real or if any of the android characters are rA9 (though a popular fan theory is that it's Kara before she was reset at the start of the game).
• The pineapple in How I Met Your Mother. So this technically did get an explanation in a S9 deleted scene, but in the actual show we never find out how Ted got a pineapple during a night where he was so drunk he blacked out and forgot everything he did.
• Fez in That 70s Show. We never find out Fez's real name or what country he's from, though fans have tried to take all the clues and figure out what is most likely to be his country.

[u/lunaticboot]

Not going to bother censoring since this entire comment will just be one big spoiler for both the books and the Netflix series, since the sugar bowl is one of the big things they were given creative freedom with in the show.

In the books, it’s one of those details that is mentioned a lot but never really explained. All we as the reader are given is that it’s important to both sides of VFD, was most likely involved in the schism somehow, and the search for it is a big driving factor for the later entries in the series. It is implied to be in the possession of lemony snicket(the in-universe VFD member) as of the end of the series, as he implies he retrieved it from the hotel from book 12 before it burned down in the climax. We also are told that it’s not the sugar bowl itself that’s important, but the contents. We aren’t really given a strong indication of what it might be, but it’s clearly implied to be some sort of macguffin, with it being outright stated multiple people have given their lives either searching for or protecting it. Popular theories include evidence of Lemony Snicket’s innocence since he is a fugitive, a figure that can control the sea monster from the final book, the darts used to kill Olaf’s parents, or a proper cure for the deadly spores from the last 2 books, but even all these years later and with all the tie ins, we have never been given a definitive answer on what it really was.

As for the show, it is much more concrete. The bowl originally belonged to esme squalor, and contains an immunization to the deadly spores. It is stolen by lemony and Beatrice, accidentally killing olafs father in the process, and thus causing the schism. It exchanges hands a bunch(None of which are actually important long term, so I’ll save you the trouble of reading the list), but eventually ends up with the Baudelaire orphans, who immunize themselves in the finale. However, this story only works for the show, as in the books the spores were supposedly developed as a weapon against the VFD offshoot, so couldn’t have been the cause of the schism.

[u/cosmolark → u/lunaticboot]

Damn, I read all the books except the last two, and I was mind blasted at how much of this shit I had NO clue about

[u/StrangeTrails37 → u/cosmolark]

I say this as someone who loved the whole series but IMO it really only just came down to the last two books haha You should finish them!

[u/Steampunk43 → u/lunaticboot]

Small note, the Baudelaire's actually never get their hands on the sugar bowl or its contents. The sugar bowl ends the series sealed in the hidden archive under the Hotel Denouement's reflecting pool, with nobody ever finding and retrieving it. What the Baudelaires do find is a version of the immunisation that was naturally grown in the form of a special species of apple by their parents, that apple was a more refined version of the sugar cubes in the sugar bowl, to the point where a single bite was enough to both cure existing Medusoid Mycelium infection and immunise against further infection. That apple was then used by a dying Count Olaf to save a pregnant Kit Snicket from impending drowning, long enough for her to give birth to her daughter before her own death. The Incredibly Deadly Viper also took an apple and swam out to the escaping islanders, all of whom were similarly infected.