Alice Allusion

"Could you please... die for me..?"

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a pretty well-known work: it can be associated with world-crossing fantasy, drug imagery, lolita fashion and other aspects of Victorian England, political satire, and who knows what else. No wonder it shows up a lot in anime, shock horror (it's a frequent target of Grimmification, usually with lots of blood), and emo teen novels. (You know the kind—usually involving vampires, eating disorders, or vampires with eating disorders.)

The name "Alice", when used in a reference to Alice in Wonderland, therefore tends to be used for fantastical, ethereal characters or concepts. Especially when most of the cast is Japanese, and that goes double if her last name is a variation on Carroll or Liddell. Dolls are also often involved, presumably by their association with the Victorian era.

Other frequent references to Alice in Wonderland include magical white rabbits, rabbit-holes, play-card iconography, and so forth.

Adaptations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are not part of this trope. Allusions, however, are.

Note that this trope is only for cases where a clear connection can be made between the name "Alice" and a reference to Alice in Wonderland. This trope is not intended to be a general list of every work (or even every fantasy or fantastical work) containing anyone named Alice, only when that name is clearly used in an effort to evoke the book. If you can't make a clear connection to Alice and Wonderland beyond the name "Alice" and a fantasy or magical-realism genre, don't list it here.[1]

Conversely, references to Alice in Wonderland can be listed even if they don't specifically use the name "Alice", since they are not a distinct trope.

Examples of Alice Allusion include:

Anime and Manga

  • Alice McCoy, the mysterious, possibly dead Deus Ex Machina of Digimon Tamers. She's also a blonde gothloli, for extra points. Writer Chiaki J. Konaka favours this trope.
  • In Gakuen Alice, the gift that gives people supernatural powers is called Alice. This is deliberately supposed to invoke Alice in Wonderland, as the currency is called "rabbits" and the main character is trapped at a Wizarding School chasing someone who's evading her.
  • Fujisaki Arisu of Angelic Layer names her Angel, Alice, after herself. This does not explain why the Angel is dressed as a classic lolita with blonde hair and white bunny ears.
  • The Alice Game from Rozen Maiden, the deadly tournament and reason for being of eight beautifully made Victorian dolls. Not to mention they are guided by a white rabbit demon in a tuxedo. There's also lots of roses and tea parties.
  • Pandora Hearts has a rabbit character named Alice along with some other Alice in Wonderland-related imagery.
    • That is quite an understatement. The amount of Alice Allusions are far too many to list here, but suffice to say, practically every event, theme, character and idea from the books shall be referenced in some way, though it probably won't be obvious to the reader unless they have a very good knowledge of the books. The plots even sort of parallel at times, so in some ways the series could be described as a darker, more complex take on the books. As well as this, some references are even made to Carroll and the real-life Alice, Alice Liddell.
  • Alice 19th, where the protagonist (who has magical powers, of course) is called Alice and her guide/teacher takes the form of a white rabbit. The magic system? Based on wordplay...
  • Alice Mizuki from Serial Experiments Lain, as confirmed by Word of God: Writer Chiaki J. Konaka states "Alice" is Lewis Carol's (sic). I often use the "Alice" as the metaphor in my scenarios. Alice in "lain" is same.
  • An episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has a creepy doll named Alice.
  • "Arusu (Aluce?)", from Tweeny Witches. Ellis, in at least one translation.
  • Alice Carroll from Aria — look at her full name, her hair style, her relative youth, her unflappability, and her habit of commenting on her companions' actions.
  • The first episode of the Pet Shop of Horrors anime (she doesn't show up until later in the manga) features a white rabbit named Alice, who is given to a pair of grieving parents whose only daughter died of a drug overdose. The "new" Alice also ends up dying, in a truly horrific way.
  • Arisu Sakaguchi from Please Save My Earth is named after Alice from Alice in Wonderland, but her parents actually made up kanji to spell it with rather than using katakana.
  • Project ARMS has all ARMS named after characters from the Alice books. Later, it is revealed that one of the Egrigori team members and experimental child is a blonde girl named Alice (she even reads Alice in Wonderland to the other children at one point). After she is absorbed by an alien life form, she refers to the world she creates as Wonderland.
  • The Ending Theme for Vampire Knight, "Still Doll", starts off with the lyrics "Hi, Miss Alice" in English, with the rest of the lyrics seeming to be about a melancholy young girl. The song is sung by Kanon Wakeshima, an Elegant Gothic Lolita, and the Music Video is full of spooky Victorian atmosphere.
  • King of Thorn has a Mysterious Waif named Alice. Naturally, when she needs a protector, she creates one in the form of a giant white rabbit.
  • Are You Alice? the protagonist strays to Wonderland and was given the name Alice, and is about to join the "Game to Kill the White Rabbit". Is there a need to mention that Alice and the Queen of Hearts are both male? Talk about Rules Don't Apply Here.
  • Kagihime Monogatari has Arisu/Alice Arisugawa as its main character, and the series in general is drowning in Wonderland motifs.
  • Heart no Kuni no Alice[context?]
  • In Black Blood Brothers the vampire that turned the main character is a source blood named Alice. She appears in flash backs and occasional references but she died ten years before the start of the series.
  • No use of the name Alice, but Ouran High School Host Club contains an episode titled "Haruhi in Wonderland". The contents of the episode are exactly what the title implies.
  • Kyousogiga is supposed to be based off Through the Looking-Glass, though you'd have a hard time knowing it if not for the whole "finding the rabbit" gig, chess imagery, and quotes from the books.
  • An episode of Cardcaptor Sakura invokes this by having Sakura wear the dress while having to catch a rabbit-shaped Clow Card. A later episode had her trapped in Wonderland for a while.
  • Another Studio CLAMP story, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, has Miyuki live through an ecchi version of the Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass stories.

Comic Books

  • The main character in Lullaby is named Alice, and dresses as you might expect. The series begins with her parents dying in a car accident after swerving to avoid a white rabbit in the road.
    • Lullaby somewhat blurs the line between allusion and adaptation though due to its crossover nature.
  • Alice in Sunderland is a brilliant exploration of the history of the character of Alice, among many other subject, by Bryan Talbot.
  • Alice is the name of a villain in Greg Rucka's Batwoman run, who speaks almost entirely in quotes from Lewis Carroll's Alice stories.
  • Another Batfamily rogue counts as an inversion. The Mad Hatter is obsessed with finding "his" Alice, who likely isn't much more than a figment of his insane imaginings.
    • There's also the cousins Tweedledee and Tweedledum. In fact, Batman seems to have a large amount of Lewis Carroll-themed villains in his rogues gallery. He even has Humpty Dumpty!
    • There's also the Teen Titans villainess Cheshire.
  • Marvel Comics has its own Lewis Carroll-themed villain, the White Rabbit. At least for a while, she was written as an utter joke of a villain, meaning she could be a Take That against other Alice inspired villains.
  • A minor sympathetic villain in the Astro City comic calls himself "The Mock Turtle" and is a huge fan of Carroll's novels.
  • Doctor Strange's mystical ally Agamotto appears to him as a giant caterpillar on an equally-large mushroom, smoking a hookah. Justified, since Agamotto assumes A Form You Are Comfortable With out of Strange's memories of Alice in Wonderland.

Films -- Live-Action

  • The Resident Evil movies' main character is named Alice, and in the first film there's a supercomputer called the Red Queen with a little girl as its avatar.
  • In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Alice is a Deceptively Human Robot. With some degree of naughty tentacles.[2] In the adaptations, it's stated that she scanned her disguise from an Alice in Wonderland animatronic.
  • A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 The Dream Master has Alice Johnson, who over the course of the film acquaints herself with spectacular control over dreams ("Wonderland" anyone?), and faces her newly-uncovered looking glass before her final showdown with Fred Krueger (who she defeats by showing him a shard from a mirror).
  • The Avengers 1998 has a Ministry agent named Alice. This is just one of the five Shout Outs to Alice in Wonderland in the movie.
  • There's also the Woody Allen film entitled Alice. It's the main character's name, and definitely playing with the Alice in Wonderland thing.
  • John Carpenter's The Ward, a story set in an insane asylum with a toy rabbit as a plot point, has Alice as the name of a ghost that apparently haunts the asylum but then it is revealed Alice is the protagonist's real name...
  • After the identity swap in Lost Highway, Eddie encounters a doppelganger of Renee. Her name, "Alice Wakefield", seems to refer to "Alice in Wonderland", and to imply that Alice and Eddie are alternate universe, "down the rabbit-hole" versions of Fred and Renee.
  • The Sight, stars Andrew McCarthy as Michael Lewis Carroll, an architect who ends up following a child murderer across London with the help of the dead. There are a lot of Alice references, such as Lewis being hired to work on the Hatter's Hotel and Alice being the name of one of the victims.


Literature

  • Alice Samara of Michelle Latiolais' A Proper Knowledge is known for her intriguingly unconventional floral sculptures and becomes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl for Luke, the brooding male protagonist.
  • Neil Gaiman's short story Keepsakes and Treasures, as well as The Monarch of the Glade contains a Mr. Alice.
  • French-Canadian horror novel Aliss by Patrick Sénécal is a very dark, gory and sexually explicit retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Wonderland is a strange neigborhood in Montreal, the white rabbit is a ashamed pedophiliac based on Lewis Carroll, the Red Queen is a sadistic bordello owner and the Cheshire Cat is smiling junkie. Yeesh.
    • The Mad Hatter and the March Hare are lovers, their names are Bone and Chair ("Bone" is from the english and "Chair" is French from "Flesh" and they kill and dissect people to prove that humans have no souls.) The Knave of Heart is Alice's lover (at least, from her point of view.) The Catterpillar (called "Verrue" which mean "Wart") is a drug addict junkie who think that he'll became a butterfly one day. (Even if he's human like all the others characters.) The Duchess and the White Queen are fused into one character who's name is Andromaque; she's also a a bordello owner but she's nicer and more classy than the Red Queen... And she always talk in rhymes. The Cheshire cat (called Chess) is not just a regular smiling junkie, he's a smiling junkie whose only drug is souls of dying humans!!
  • In Girl in the Shadows by VC Andrews, the protagonist was named Alice in the hope that she would one day "fall into a Wonderland" and escape the fate of her mother, who is in a mental institution.
  • Go Ask Alice — natch.[context?]
  • "Never Seen By Waking Eyes" and "The Vision of a Vanished Good" by Stephen Dedman feature an eight-year-old girl named Alice... who's been eight years old long enough to have known Lewis Carroll personally.
  • In Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery, Jane explicitly tried sitting before mirrors in hopes she could emulate Alice. She finally stopped when accused of doing it for vanity.

Live-Action TV

  • Alice DeRaey, the protagonist on the appropriately-titled This Is Wonderland, which also started its opening credits with Lewis Caroll's poem "You Are Old, Father William". Other characters included a Stepford Smiler with a heart-motif coffeecup, a perpetually grinning and capricious judge, a man who loses track of time and runs away, a tea-drinking man who wears a big hat sometimes, and a scruffy, over-excitable March Hare type. A few of these connections may be Fan Wank, however. Unlike most Alices, she was a Deadpan Snarker who swore under her breath.
  • A 2008 series produced by HBO Latin America is named Alice. The namesake protagonist is a 26-year old woman who goes from her small town to the big city to solve some inheritance affairs, and then she decides to stay and become a party girl, or something. It seems there is no actual Wonderland symbolism in the series, but since it's just beginning it's too soon to be sure.
  • In Heroes, Angela Petrelli's sister is named Alice. Her favorite book was Alice in Wonderland.
  • Alice Pieszecki of The L Word
  • Alice shows up on Warehouse13 after she gets out of the mirror, but she's Ax Crazy. Bonus points awarded for using the Jefferson Airplane song in the soundtrack of the episode.
  • Subverted in The Honeymooners. Alice was more practical and down to earth than her husband, Ralph.
  • Variation: Mary Alice Young of Desperate Housewives.
  • An episode of CSI features three college students doing research into the afterlife involving heavy use of paralytics, hallucinogenics, and sensory deprivation. The sole female student and the only one to make it out alive was named Alice. Especially jarring given she was Japanese.
    • CSI did this more explicitly with an episode called "Malice in Wonderland," in which an Alice in Wonderland-themed wedding ended up with the groom dying when the force from a blank round propelled the button on his Mad Hatter hat into his brain.
    • CSI: NY used the title "Down The Rabbit Hole" in its Second Life-themed episode, making a 'Second Life/Wonderland' comparison.
  • One of episode of Raines has a victim named Alice. The connection to Wonderland shapes some of Raines' hallucinations of her.
  • Lost is filled with literary allusions in general, and is especially fond of stories where someone is magically transported to another place. This goes for The Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Alice books. For example, Christian Shepherd is compared to the White Rabbit in a first season episode of the same name. In the sixth season, sideways-Jack finds his old house's keys under a White Rabbit statue.
  • On Leverage, Parker often uses the alias Alice White.


Music

  • Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick has always said that White Rabbit was intended as a slap toward parents who read their children stories such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (in which Alice uses several drug-like substances in order to change herself) and then wondered why their children grew up to do drugs. For Grace and others in the '60s, drugs were an inevitable part of mind-expanding and social experimentation.
  • Alice Cooper. He even wears a big top hat, like the Mad Hatter.
  • Hey Alice by Rachel Macwhirter is essentially an entire song of, well, asking Alice.
  • Vocaloid... there are countless songs based on Alice In Wonderland; the most famous example being Hitobashira Alice/Alice Human Sacrifice.
  • Arika Takarano from ALI Project used to wear this image quite often. "Megalopolice-ALICE", "Atashi ga ALICE datta Koro", etc.
    • Not to mention their Rozen Maiden openings, because the ALICE metaphor was a key one in this anime, and we have Allica's photo with Shinku's doll in her hands...
  • Alice Glass from the band Crystal Castles.
  • Emilie Autumn uses a lot of Alice imagery, such as lolita fashion, Victorian furniture and Magical Realism.(most notable in her book, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
  • There are references to Alice in two different Nightwish songs in the album Imaginaerum.

Follow the madness Alice you know once did...
Where's dear Alice knocking on the door? Where's the trapdoor that takes me there? Where the real is shattered by a Mad March Hare.


New Media


Tabletop Games

  • In SLA Industries there is a drug that causes severe hallucinations that replace the users normal senses so well that he thinks the hallucinations are the real world. The drugs name: Alice.
  • JAGS Wonderland is all about the chaotic, infectious, hungry mess that Wonderland really is.


Theater

  • In Cirque Du Soleil's Mystere, Alice is the unofficial name of the toy snail and lovey that the baby girl loses at the beginning of the story, which results in a journey through a Magical Land to find it.


Video Games

  • In Shin Megami Tensei, Alice is a spoiled little girl under the care of the Baron in Black and the Count in Red. She's actually a powerful Dark Magical Girl who Came Back Wrong and the two nobles are Belial and Nebiros, powerful demons who turn innocent people into undead to make sure they won't leave Alice. She returns frequently in many sequels and spin-offs, start since Shin Megami Tensei II as a Bonus Boss.
    • Persona series.
      • In Persona 3, Alice is the second highest-leveled Death persona, just below Thanatos. Furthermore, she's the only one who learns the most potent Darkness-type attack: Die For Me?! According to the description, she's 'the ghost of an English girl who died in 18-something'... and she looks sort of like the traditional depiction of Alice. Add on top of that that the animation for the attack Die For Me?! involves card soldiers falling out of the sky...
      • In Persona 4, Human!Teddie dresses up as a fairly convincing Alice in a beauty pageant. The Alice persona also returns, again holding the second highest rank among the Death personas.
    • In Raidou Kuzunoha VS King Abaddon, she is a boss looking for friends. Once you beat her, she can join you, and is one of the few demons that can max out magic.

"Will you be my friend? You can only be my friend if you're dead...will you die for me?!"

    • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey she's chasing a rabbit.
    • In Devil Survivor 2 Alice is the ultimate Bonus Boss. On your second playthrough you can encounter a slew of optional bosses. Two of those are Belial and Nebiros, if you defeat them instead of dying they just run away. On Saturday you can fight Alice, Belial, and Nebiros all in one battle.
  • An Alice-lookalike also appears in Atlus's Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City as one of the optional Farmer designs.
  • In the Bloody Roar series of fighting games, where every character has a furry Super Mode, Alice can turn into a white rabbit.
  • Alice Carrol (not the one from ARIA) of the Rage of the Dragons fighting game looks almost exactly like the traditional depiction of Alice, except more... moody. She's an obvious reference to the character, though, despite her dark backstory and personality.
  • Touhou: Alice Margatroid's Extra Stage in her PC-98 incarnation had most of the Mooks be card soldiers, and the BGM for the stage was even titled Alice in Wonderland. Heck, another character in the game she first appears in can be though of as a red queen.
    • Not to mention the creative team's (kind of, it's only one person) name is Shanghai Alice.
    • Her later incarnation also uses dolls, as per the trope.
    • The fan comic Touhou Nekokayou gives the future Alice Margatroid and Marisa Kirisame a daughter (they won't say how) named Carroll Kirisame.
  • Alice Elliot in Shadow Hearts is a good example of the loli interpretation. While she herself isn't particularly gothy, the surreal nature of the entire rest of the game makes up for it. Plus she dies in the end.
    • If you fail to read the new tomb stone in Yuri's graveyard. Reading it get's you the good ending.
  • Alice Hazel, a young girl psychic in Metal Gear Acid
  • Cutesy sadist Alice from the Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Her colour scheme is inverted (white and pink) but the style of her clothing is unmistakably gothic loli flavoured. Also, she had at one point a Deal with the Devil to control monsters, until the heroes defeated the demon... and she's since relegated to torturing them with Mind Control Devices instead. The contrast between her almost doll-like appearance and her sociopathy is extremely unnerving.
  • The online game trilogy Something Amiss is about a girl named Alice who finds herself at the center of a mystery and keeps on wandering into places where things don't match up.
  • In the online multiplayer PC game Ragnarok Online, there's a mission gravitating around the story of Kiel Hyre. He's a genius robot maker who fell in love with a woman named Allysia, then accidentally killed her. Then he went on to make a robot looking and called after her, which poses as her secretary, and four more robots (whom attack you as monsters), Alice, Aliza, Alicel and Aliot (though Aliot is a guy).
  • Queen Alice of A Witch's Tale, the revered sorceress who sealed away the Eld Witch. The protagonist of the game is a young girl named Liddell implied to be Alice's daughter.
  • Reiji Arisu from Namco X Capcom, somewhat unusual since he's male. He and his partner Xiaomu are the only members of Shinra organization the player actually sees. Their job is to deal with the evil Ouma organization, which always involves inter-dimensional travel. Both of them later appear as major characters in Super Robot Wars OG Saga Endless Frontier, where almost (or perhaps literally) every character has some fairy-tale namesake, but Reiji's is the only one Lampshade Hanging by the protagonist.
  • Alice, the mascot character of 'AliceSoft.
  • Whenever there's a hentai game with a Token Mini-Moe character in the cast of romantic prospects, her name will most likely be Arisa, the Japanized pronunciation of Alice (Alice -> Arise -> Arisa). Seriously. Well, the ones in the '90s at least. For example, the notorious Jast USA english-licensed classics True Love and Nocturnal Illusion. Best illustrated in this example.
  • American McGee's Alice. The protagonist is implied to be the one who went down the rabbit hole in the first place, but considering she is in an insane asylum and literally battling through Wonderland to get her sanity back, who truly knows?
    • The sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, does state that her last name is Liddell, in a sequence taking place outside Wonderland. So she's probably the real thing.
  • Super Robot Wars L. The Hero's partner is Robot Maid AL-3 Alice who has ability to break the dimensional wall and draw energy from another dimension.
  • Lots in Kingdom of Loathing. In addition to the Looking Glass Clan VIP item, which takes you to Wonderland, there is also the Cheshire Bat, the Wild Hare (which carries a pocketwatch), a Mad Hatrack, a Frumious Bandersnatch, the Alice's Army card game (where the cards take the form similar to the soldiers from the disney film).
    • This is because each month new special donation content is added, and this usually has a theme related to the month. March = March Hare = Alice in Wonderland is the usual March theme.
  • Alice, the Token Mini-Moe in the Asura Series series.
  • The BioShock 2 ARG "There Is Something In The Sea" introduces us to Orrin Oscar Lutwidge (AKA Orson Orville Liddel, Ogdred O. Lewis and RØd Killian Quain), an Alice in Wonderland obsessed polymath trickster who found out about the existence of Rapture and became possibly the only normal person from the surface to visit it and return to tell the tale.


Web Original

  • Alice Jones, the shy, introverted (and later in the game, decidedly creepy) Survival of the Fittest version 3 character.
  • Anti-Villain of The Descendants, Vorpal, has an Alice in Wonderland motif. On top of her name, her friend Mr. Voice calls her Alice because he either doesn't know her real name, or is avoiding saying it.
  • Alice from Living with Insanity.
  • Alice Creek in Dark Mirror LLC [dead link] .
  • Alice of Alice and Kev.
  • Alice from Namesake.
  • In the Josie stories of the Whateley Universe, the Deuteragonist is Ecila Mason. The beginning is very clearly the start of Alice in Wonderland with Ecila as Alice. By the time Josie starts her story, Ecila has been away from Earth for so long that she has lost most connections with humanity.


Western Animation

  • Alice May from Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.
  • Elisa Masa from Gargoyles. Lampshaded in the pilot, when she, chased by mercenaries, runs into Alice in Wonderland-themed cafe.
  • Quite subtle, but do you think Odd Della Robbia's Lyoko form is a "giant purple [3] cat" just because?
  • Prisoner 775 from Ben 10: Ultimate Alien is clearly a reference to the Cheshire Cat. It has the exact same pattern as seen in the Disney version, and is a chameleon that can blend perfectly with it's surroundings, except for its teeth. At one point, the teeth are all that you see of it.
  • Young Justice has given us some thanks to Artemis's backstory: her sister took her codename from the Cheshire Cat and Artemis herself has long blond hair.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Swamp"

Aang: I heard laughing and I saw some girl in a fancy dress.
Sokka: Well, there must be a tea party here and we just didn't get our invitations!

  • Batman the Animated Series; Jarvis Tech (aka the Mad Hatter) began his Start of Darkness as the result of an unhealthy crush on a co-worker named Alice Plesence, whose resemblance to the fictional Alice was uncanny. Combined with his own love for the book, he eventually seemed to confuse fiction from reality, and finally snapped.
  • Bunnix from Miraculous Ladybug. The holder of the Rabbit Miraculous from the future, her rabbit-themed costume is mostly white, her Miraculous is a pocket-watch, and her Weapon of Choice is an umbrella. Even more of an indication is her special "Rabbit Hole" power, the ability to Teleport Spam. Pretty obvious which of Alice's friends was the inspiration.
  1. ↑ The Alice in Wonderland dress makes for a pretty good link.
  2. ↑ (but she's got nothing on Soundwave)
  3. ↑ Cheshire
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