They always give this advice to aspiring chemists: spread your wings, use the whole palette of the Periodic Table and improvise, because there is likely a lot of unexplored reactivity at the fringes. While this might be true, I sometimes wish we could all take it easy and allow ourselves to appreciate the chemistry of super toxic elements such as thallium, lead, and mercury… While relatively inexpensive, they are all outcasts that are truly offensive from today’s green perspective. Look at the delightful molecule featured below. I was going through a folder of old papers on the ride home and came across this mercurial (no pun intended) aldehyde. My interest in structures of this kind stems from our lab’s quest to expand the scope of metal- and metalloid-containing aldehydes. The crystallographic characterization of the mercury derivative reveals some interesting stereoelectronic features, which result in unusual bond angles. The synthesis of these Hg(II) derivatives comes from the seminal work by Nesmeyanov in the 1960’s. I am positive that there is a ton of interesting chemistry awaiting compounds of this type, yet we will never find out.