In the early 2000s, when I was in fourth grade, a classmate claimed to have found a book that was ripping off Harry Potter . He showed me the first book in the A Series of Unfortunate Events series, titled, The Bad Beginning. He pointed at the young character, Klaus Baudelaire, on the cover and claimed that he looked exactly like the similarly young Potter. I agreed.

Neither of us had read A Series of Unfortunate Events at that time and, admittedly, I still havent. On top of this, I also remember being a huge Harry Potter fan and my loose recollection is that this classmate was one, too. Especially given our age, we likely had a comically large personal stake in believing the likeness of our favorite wizard was getting unfairly copied.

But still despite my clear bias from childhood dont these two characters objectively look way, way, way too similar for debuting just years apart?