WMG / Alice in Wonderland

This covers Wild Mass Guessings for both the original books as well as its adaptations.

Kitty was always the Red Queen.

Notice how Through the Looking-Glass ends with the Red Queen turning into said kitten. Also note how the Red Queen was in charge throughout Alice's surreal adventures. By encouraging her to become a Queen, she manages to forestall the White side's victory. Even Alice believes Kitty was the Red Queen, as evidenced by her behavior in the last chapter.

Alice is the third Alice from Alice Human sacrifice

Because she becomes the queen.

• Isn't this because of the promotion rule?
  • The third Alice went insane with power: "she now only sees rotting human flesh" or something like that. Alice didn't remain on the other side of the mirror long enough for this "dream of distorsion" to possess her (though it is not excluded that it would have, had the dream (?) lasted longer).
    • She's actually the fourth Alice (one of them, anyway) - entering the Wonderland and travelling through it from curiosity. Lots of people have tried matching the Alices in the song with characters from the books/movies - Second Alice is either the March Hare or the Hatter, Third Alice is one of the malevolent queens (Probably the Queen of Hearts), and the First Alice is...hard to figure out.

The Cheshire Cat is a hyper-dimensional being

He exists in four spatial dimensions. He moves parts of him in and out of Wonderland's space to make it seem to Alice they disappear and reappear.

• Then why wasn't he a mouse?
  • Cats evolved to catch and eat mice. To do this, they had to be able to go where the mice do. So, cats can freely enter and exit hyperspace; but, since they are of native Earth stock, doing this drives them insane. Not too insane to function, mind you, but insane.
    • Can someone explain to me why that's not canon? Seriously, it's awesome.
  • My God, it's true!

Everyone is high

Extremely high, it's a wonder Alice didn't damage her brain with this trip.

• It would explain all the hookah-smoking.
  • Actually, the Caterpillar was most probably smoking tobacco. AS well as this, he was probably intended to be a parody of British generals in India or something like that.

The carpenter from the animated Disney adaptation is the original Fix-It-Felix, and the father of Fix-It-Felix Jr of Disney's Wreck-It Ralph.

Hence why they look startlingly alike, and why the Carpenter carries a magic hammer.

Alice is schizophrenic.

Yes, it's cliched and bad, but so many Gothic Grimmifications had been made by the time that this troper had read the original that it made too much sense and brought down the humor at points.

The Mad Hatter is high on mercury.

It Makes Sense in Context, especially if you know where his name comes from.

The Mad Hatter suffered from lead poisoning.

• I always figured it was lead poisoning, though I'm not sure why a hatter would have come in contact with a significant amount of lead over the average person of his time and place. Perhaps Alice had heard the phrase, but was confused as to what kind of madness would result from mercury poisoning, and her misconception shaped that corner of Wonderland as it did other places, and behind the looking glass? (If you're talking about Tim Burton's Hatter, yeah, that's the intent.)

The Mad Hatter is Willy Wonka's real father.

...It could happen.

• Going by Tim Burton continuity, Willy did seem to be very estranged from the man who claimed to be his father. And since he and the Hatter are both played by Johnny Depp, it does seem to add up, doesn't it?
  • Someone write a fanfic about this!
    • Someone has.
  • Also, Willy has a pretty kickin' hat

The Mad Hatter IS Willy Wonka

• He found a way to build a factory that physically existed in Wonderland, but had a portal there in the form of a mysterious factory in Germany.
  • But their personalities are completely different! The Hatter is a demented loon, while Wonka is an eccentric genius.
    • OR, he was Willy Wonka first, but when he lost his awesome hat he couldn't find any more in the style he liked...SO he went into hat making, as well as continuing to make chocolate. The mercury started to affect his brain and he started to go wilder and wilder with his chocolate experiments, until he punched a hole between dimensions. Travelling through this sent him back in time (to the Victorian era), and made him younger (hence how he was able to be a younger version of himself in the flashback).
    • Also, Wonka is an eccentric genius; the Hatter is a demented loon AND an eccentric genius.
    • Not in the books. The Hatter's really just an antagonistic eccentric who sometimes borders on Jerkass. However, thanks to Draco in Leather Pants ...

Alice fell down the rabbit hole and broke her neck, and the whole book from then on was her Dying Dream

.Gotta get these DD-WMG's in there somehow.

• No wait, that's a different movie. It wasn't this one, but it was similar.

• How do you explain Through the Looking Glass then?
  • She got better, then smashed the looking glass with her face because she couldn't stand looking at her shriveled, wheelchair-bound body, and Through The Looking Glass was her Dying Dream Near-Death Experience as she bled to death. The focus on strategy and chess themes instead of lunacy and card themes is because she learned how to play chess to pass the time because she couldn't go out and play tag or hide and seek or any of the other games the kids her age played.
  • Jossed by this and this.

Because Alice is a Heart Princess she'll never grow up

Yes certainly Princess Alice hasn't grown up in over a hundred years thus can exist in both 1865 (anime/book/movie of Alice in Wonderland) as well as 1991 (television series Adventures in Wonderland). They are the same girl, simply adopted into a new family in second scenerio.

Why is a Raven like a Writing Desk?

• I haven't the slightest idea. -The Mad Hatter, Lewis Carrol
• Neither is a product of ANYONE'S imagination other than Carroll himself, neither of them is a product of a drug trip, and neither of them were invented by a goddamn videogame designer!
• Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front! -Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
  • While he gave that answer, I think he also said that that was only one of the possible answers and that it didn't really have an answer.
• Because they both have (inky) quills. -???
• Because Poe wrote on both. - Sam Loyd
• Because both generally have quills, both commonly have wings, and many of each are to be found with 'pinions on.
  • Both are in the Mad Hatter's riddle, and neither can swim very well.
• Poe wrote on both.
• They're both nouns?
• There's a B in both.
  • There's also an N in neither.^note  And an N in both, but no N in either. How deliciously absurd.
• There's an E in both. Why not?
• They're both made of matter.
• Correct answer: it isn't.
• "'Why', like a writing desk, is a raven."
• One is black as ink, the other black with ink.
• Because neither is much like a bicycle
• The higher the fewer!
• 42.
• Look out! She's RAVEN mad! - The March Hare, Disney edition
• They both produce rather flat notes.
• Neither is made of cheese.
• Because I Said So.
• No, chairs don't have purple feet.
• Both likely witnessed a murder story if you have seen a lot of them

Alice's "Dreams" are drug induced

With all the crazy things she's dreamed of, they can't be just normal dreams of any sane person. No, you'd have to be on some serious crack for those sort of hallucinations. In the first book, when she goes to Wonderland, what really happened was Alice had been running through a field of poppies before she tripped. Being only a child during this time, she most likely wouldn't have known that opium came from poppies thus was contently breathing in the scent before it started to take effect. She fell over in the field and her "dream" of Wonderland was only her hallucinating from the opium. In the next book, we don't necessarily see what Alice had been doing before she was playing with her cats. And after the first opium incident, one can assume that by now she's most likely an addict on the stuff and regular goes off to indulge in opium when no one is looking. So before playing with her cats she was already highly drugged up and just waiting to collapse in a slumber of a drug induced state. This of course led to another string of hallucinations.

• However, children are perfectly capable of coming up with some of the most messed up and freakish ideas, especially in dreams, while being completely free of drugs.
• Also, I don't think simply breathing in poppies would get you that ridiculously high. She would have had to be smoking some really hard core stuff to have a trip like that. I'm still for the dream theory.
• I have strange dreams like that all the time, and I've never taken any kinds of drugs. Seems more like the sign of a very active imagination, mixed with a child's somewhat skewed interpretation of the adult world, to me.

The Duchess is the Queen of Hearts' mother.

I think in the Annotated Alice, Martin Gardner mentioned that their relationship may have been a parody of Queen Victoria's with her own mother. So, perhaps the reason for their hatred of each other was because the Duchess tried to control her daughter or tried to prevent her from taking over Wonderland?

The Cheshire Cat is the only sane character there. Or is he?

There is a lot of mysteries left unexplained in the books, especially where Cheshire-puss is concerned. Now, Cheshire claims to be mad, right? But if he is aware he is mad, isn't he sane? But wouldn't only a mad person claim to be mad when they really were sane? Perhaps he's a character similar to the Joker and Deadpool and is gifted with medium awareness. Maybe he's even a boojum...

• or maybe he's just so sane, it seems like he's mad. Kind of like being permanently on Klatchian Coffee, maybe?

Wonderland is Faery and all its inhabitants are The Fair Folk

Those of you who are hardcore Carrollians are probably aware of the fact that while a devout Christian, Dodgson also had an interest in the paranormal. Therefore, he may have heard about Faery and the Fair Folk (though this is unlikely, seeing what the Fairies- noute the spelling -in Sylvie and Bruno are supposed to be like). Anyway, you have to admit that the way some of the characters Alice encounters possess elements of a Blue-and-Orange Morality. And could cheshire-puss be a Cait Sidhe (Irish for "faery cat")? Also note the whole idea of time having stopped during the March Hare's tea-party. According to most legends, time stops in Tir na n'Og.

Wonderland is our afterlife.

Just don't ask me how Alice got there.

• Near-death experience after hitting her head?

Alice is a human that was time-scooped into The Game of Rassilon

And everything else was time-scooped as well.

The story can be seen as a metaphor for Autism.

I know that's not the author's intent, but, hear me out. Many of the characters found in Wonderland can be seen as metaphors for the various traits of Autistic children. The White Rabbit represents the obsessive-compulsive nature many people in Autism have. Both the March Hare and Mad Hatter represent the classic ritualistic behaviors found in Autistic people. The Cheshire Cat represents the random quirks or unsusual sense of humor. And, the Queen Of Hearts represents the over-emotional side autistic people sometimes express.

• As an Autistic individual, I approve of this theory! Adding to this, the Caterpillar represents the tendency of Autistic individuals to memorize things easily and leanings toward above average intelligence, the Mouse represents oversensitivity (he's very easy to offend), the Dodo represents Lewis Carroll, and the Duchess represents the tendency toward mood swings. Alice herself represents an Autistic individual's tendency to feel out of place in the world.

Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land are both dream worlds, but they became real because Alice willed them into existence.

Alice is actually a budding Reality Warper whose dreams willed these strange worlds to life. As such, the Wonderlanders themselves are a collective group of Tulpas. Whether or not Alice figured out that she made them real is up to you to decide.

Wonderland was not inspired by any drugs, and runs purely on imagination and dream logic

...Because seriously, it's getting old. "She's on LSD" is about the most lazy interpretation of the book.



Wonderland is real, and after the events of the Disney movie the Queen murdered her husband.

It explains why when she appears in other Disney media she's always single or flirting with other men (Mortimer Mouse in House of Mouse, Luxord in the Kingdom Hearts manga). It's a little strange but you would believe this queen would do that.

• Small issue with this one: In House of Mouse, the king is occasionally shown to be alive and Mortimer's the one who flirted with the Queen, not the other way around (in fact, she seemed quite offended when he did).

The mustard would have fixed the rabbit's watch.

• Now let's not be silly.
  • Maybe it could've. The Hatter said it was 2 days slow. Maybe the oil in the mustard could've sped it up a bit.

Wonderland and Neverland are the same place.

Alice in the books is subconsciously suicidal.

Alice has multiple moments of Casual Danger Dialogue (seemingly unconcerned with the fact that she could be falling to her death while she worries dropping the marmalade might kill someone below, acknowledging that she'll likely drown in the pool of tears and only considers it "a queer thing") in the series, seemingly more concerned with the strangeness of the situation than the fact that she could die. Not to mention in Through the Looking-Glass, she encounters Humpty Dumpty who states that with "proper assistance"—as in, dying or being killed—she could have stopped aging at seven rather than being at her "uncomfortable age" of seven years and six months". Maybe Alice has some hidden Death Seeker tendencies that only shows up in her Dream Land, since it's an internal projection of her thoughts/people she knows/etc.

The March Hare's madness was actually caused by Time as a case of I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure.

The Hatter tells Alice that he and Time "quarreled last March—just before he went mad, you know". While out-of-universe it's a play on the phrase "mad as a March Hare", so of course it makes sense. In-universe, however, the argument between the Hatter and Time was just before the Hare went mad. The Hare might have been the Only Sane Man before the incident, and Time might have punished Hatter not only by making it always tea-time (until they were freed from it by Looking-Glass), but also causing the Hare to go mad in the first place.

Alice comes from a broken home life and has deep self-esteem issues as a result.

Her parents were never mentioned at all in the course of the books, either by Alice herself or in the narration. Her sister is mentioned several times and her brother once, but even then only by the narration, not Alice herself. The only one she mentions potentially missing her at home as she falls down the rabbit hole is her cat Dinah. She seems to spend much of her time pretending to be two people, and whereas in the animated Disney version she cries because she'll never get home after eating the cake, in the original book she cries because she can't get to the garden and she doesn't want to be alone. Along with seeming lonely and distant from her family (possibly as a case of Parental Neglect or worse), Alice constantly berates herself, and is described as not only having a tendency to scold herself so harshly she cries, but she also hit herself for cheating herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself. We don't know if the latter point is a frequent tactic to punish herself, as it's all only dwelled on for a single sentence, but since it's mentioned in the same sentence as her constant berating of herself, it could have one wonder if physically harming herself is a regular thing.

The carrot's and the mushroom's make the cookie's and Drink Me potions.

• Or maybe the other side of the mushroom make's the potions.
  • Either way. It could be that the White Rabbit's side job is providing Carrot's to make the Drink me! Potions.
  • What about the caterpillar's mushroom's?
  • The mushrooms are probably picked by bakers to make their cookies. Alice is the only affected by this because she isn't from Wonderland.

The universe is one where Belle accepted Gaston's advances.

• Alice inherits Belle's dress sense and imagination and Gaston's persistence and non-understanding of books without pictures.
  • Her sister takes after Belle.

The King from the 1951 film was trying to protect Alice from execution

Notice Alice is the only person who the King decides to give a trial for. Possible he thought Alice might be innocent and wanted to make sure she was.

Also, later during the trail, he summons the Mad Hatter who tells the court he was celebrating his unbirthday, prompting the King to remind the Queen it's her unbirthday. Perhaps the King set this up, as he was hoping that if the queen was in a good enough mood, she might forgive Alice or at least forget about executing her.

Of course, it all goes horribly wrong, and he's gives up.

All the characters in Wonderland are based off people (or animals) Alice knows in real life

Because it's a dream sequence, the whole world is based on Alice's mind. She subconciously draws on others she knows in the real world to match the fictional characters in Wonderland. Some examples include:

The Queen of Hearts: based on a mean teacher Alice had. This teacher was verbally, and at times physically abusive (it IS the 19th century after all)with her students.

The Mad Hatter: based on an eccentric (but harmless) scientist Alice knows. He's a friend to Alice's family. The March Hare is based on his assistant.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee: based on two Irish blue collar construction workers that Alice encountered many times in her neighborhood. They're a bit portly like the duo in her dream and enjoy telling Alice stories.

The Caterpillar: based on the dean of the school Alice attends. He's a bit of a serious, but very intelligent person. While stern, often gives students very helpful advice.

The Chesire Cat: based on a fat cat owned by Alice's grandparents. Alice always wondered what he was thinking.

The Walrus: based on a vagrant scam artist who conned Alice's grandparents out of money (he was eventually arrested)

The Carpenter: based on a real carpenter who fixed the stairs in Alice's home.