The Mock Turtle's line, "We called him 'Tortoise' because he taught us!". With a non-rhotic accent (like most accents of England), "tortoise" is pronounced "TAW-tus", sounding virtually the same as "taught us". This pun also works in r-dropping American accents, such as a Brooklyn accent (as demonstrated by at least one community radio theater adaptation).
Through the Looking-Glass contains an orthographical example: while American readers could easily guess that Hatta is an Expy of the Hatter, they would be far more likely to pronounce the G in "Haigha" than a British reader, potentially missing the fact that he is a stand-in for the Hare entirely if they don't see the illustrations. Some may also interpret the letter combination "ai" as being pronounced "i", rather than "ay", so a speaker of a non-rhotic accent might think the word is a homonym of "higher" rather than "hare". Fortunately, the text specifies that the name is pronounced to rhyme with "mayor" ("mayor" as pronounced with a British accent, that is).
Adaptation Overdosed: Let's see — 16 films, a TV series, countless re-imaginings and sequels in book and film form... That's not even getting started on the anime, video games and Visual Novels!
Baby Name Trend Starter: Millions of baby girls were named Alice after the success of the book.
Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Carroll never refers to the Hatter as the Mad Hatter. Nor does the White Rabbit ever say "I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!" except in the Disney version. The Tweedles are never referred to as "Tweedledee and Tweedledum"; Tweedledum's name always comes first. A minor case appears in Jabberwocky. The birdlike creatures in the first stanza are borogoves, but many misread it as borogroves, which isn't helped by some printings getting this wrong, too.
Missing Episode: There was a "lost chapter" of Through the Looking Glass that Carroll omitted because Tenniel didn't seem to like it.note Mainly, it seems, because he thought he couldn't do the artwork justice.Discovered at Sotheby’s in 1974, it was named "A Wasp in a Wig" and detail Alice meeting a Grumpy Old Man with a wasp-like face. You can read it here.
Sequel Gap: Through the Looking Glass was released six years after Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.
Science Imitates Art: Minor planets are named for characters from the story include 6042 Cheshirecat, 6735 Madhatter, and 6736 Marchare. The Jabberwocky from Through the Looking-Glass also has 7470 Jabberwock.
The Wasp in a Wig. Some editions actually publish this chapter in its proper place at the end of Chapter 8 in Through the Looking Glass.
Carroll had originally intended the illustration of the Jabberwock to be the frontispiece for Through the Looking Glass, but he worried that it might be too frightening for children; he requested feedback from some parents he knew, and eventually decided to move it to the second chapter (where the poem appears) and use a picture of Alice with the Knight as a frontispiece.
Tenniel's original illustrations for Alice as a Queen had her dress transformed into one with a hooped crinoline (resembling the White Queen's). Carroll disliked crinolines and had the pictures revised so she kept her original dress.
Word of God: According to Lewis Carroll, Alice's canon surname is Pleasance (from Alice Pleasance Liddell).
The members of the boating party that first heard Carroll's tale show up in the Caucus Race; Alice's sisters Edith and Lorina, are inserted as the Eaglet and Lory, respectively. Rev Robinson Duckworth is the Duck and Carroll himself is the Dodo.
Alice and her sisters appear again as Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie in the Dormouse's story. Elsie (L.C.) is Lorina (middle name Charlotte), Tillie is Edith (nickname Matilda), and Lacie is an anagram of Alice.
Alice's two other, lesser known sisters (Rhoda and Violet) make appearances in the second book, as the rose and the violet in the talking flower garden. The mouse who gives the "dry lecture" and the Red Queen were seemingly based off of Alice's governess. The Queen of Hearts and the Duchess were seemingly caricatures of Queen Victoria and her mother respectively.
The Ballet
Billing Displacement: From the promotional materials and Opus Arte's DVD trailer, you'd think that the Mad Hatter was a much bigger role. If this were a musical, he'd qualify as Minor Character, Major Song.
Production Nickname: "The Mad Tapper" for The Mad Hatter. It first cropped up in the documentary short about the ballet and has been making the rounds ever since.
Throw It In!: An unintentional Funny Background Event on the DVD: the gavel head breaks and flies off (violently!) when the Queen of Hearts tries to end the Mad Hatter's and March Hare's testimony. Cue some quick improvisation from both the King and Queen, who initially aren't sure where the gavel head even is, along with mimed amusement from the Hatter once he notices what's happening.
Not to mention the fact that one of the Tweedles is played by Robbie "Rubeus Hagrid" Coltraine.
The 1985 version also features a lot of names in the cast, like Sammy Davis Jr as the Caterpillar, Telly Savalas as the Cheshire Cat, Carol Channing as the White Queen, Roddy McDowall as the March Hare, and Ringo Starr as the Mock Turtle.
A 1933 version includes W.C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty, Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle and Gary Cooper as the White Knight, among other stars.
The 1951 Disney version has a cast of well-known voice actors like Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter, Jerry Colonna as the March Hare, Richard Haydn as the Caterpillar, and Verna Felton as the Queen of Hearts.
The 1972 version includes Michael Crawford as the White Rabbit, Ralph Richardson as the Caterpillar, Roy Kinnear as the Cheshire Cat, Michael Hordern as the Mock Turtle, Spike Milligan as the Gryphon, Peter Sellers as the March Hare, Dudley Moore as the Dormouse, and Flora Robson as the Queen of Hearts.
The 1983 TV version features Eve Arden as the Queen of Hearts, Donald O'Connor as the Mock Turtle, James Coco as the King of Hearts, Richard Burton as the White Knight, Maureen Stapleton as the White Queen, and Colleen Dewhurst as the Red Queen.
Dawson Casting: Alice is pre-pubescent in the books but most TV and movie adaptations depict her as a teenager or twenty-something (e.g. 19-year-old Charlotte Henry in 1933 or 16-year-old Fiona Fullerton in 1972). The few exceptions are 12-year old Sarah Sutton (UK) in 1974, 9-year-old Natalie Gregory (USA) in 1985 and 7-year-old Krystina Kohoutova (Czechoslovakia) in 1988). May Clark, the first actress to portray Alice in film, was 14 at the time (1903). The reason Alice is often aged up on film is that the role is a demanding one, unsuited to a young child.
Averted in Disney's 1951 adaptation which featured 11-year-old Kathryn Beaumont in the lead. Later played straight when 61-year-old Beaumont reprised the role of Alice in Kingdom Hearts.
Kate Beckinsale plays Alice in a 1998 version of Through the Looking-Glass. It's interesting to note that the film starts out with Beckinsale reading the story to her daughter, only becoming Alice when she falls asleep and dreams that she's in the story, and that when she becomes Alice, she still describes herself as "seven and a half exactly".
Janet Waldo, a.k.a. Judy Jetson, was 42 when she voiced Alice in the Hanna-Barbera version, and 68 (!) when she reprised the role in 1987's animated Alice Through the Looking Glass. Of course, adults voicing children is very common in the voice acting industry and the character was drawn as a preteen, but it still might make her the oldest person to play Alice.
