| Deluded Depths | |||||||||||
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| Location | Southern hemisphere | ||||||||||
| First appearance | Chapter 2 | ||||||||||
| Dress gained | Siren | ||||||||||
| Series | Alice: Madness Returns | ||||||||||
| Location on map | |||||||||||
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| Image gallery (22) | |||||||||||
| “ | We must all play our assigned roles. Are you a pawn or a queen? An idiot or a practiced fool? However this turns out, consider the prospect that you have been misled, Alice. Then ask, by whom? |
” |
The Deluded Depths was the underwater province of Wonderland located underneath of Tundraful. Due to being a part of Alice Liddell's mental state, she was able to breathe underwater.
As well as the home of the Carpenter, the Deluded Depths also housed a variety of underwater creatures, such as the Oyster Starlets, the Octopus, the Walrus, and the Music Fish. Three different colored species of jellyfish also resided in the area, either helping Alice or preventing her journey. The red jellyfish was poisonous and electrically charged, which was dangerous to Alice, the white jellyfish acted as a platform, while the blue jellyfish acted as a trampoline. Deadly clams also existed, often using Teeth, Memories, or bottles as bait to lure Alice into their mouths to try and kill her if she stayed for too long.
History
Alice: Madness Returns
Mock Turtle talking to Alice.
After Alice and Mock Turtle were shipwrecked at the bottom of the sea, Alice tried to get information about the Infernal Train out of Turtle, but he was too upset about been made redundant from the Looking Glass Railway and the loss of his ship to be of any use.
However, he did give Alice a ticket to the opening night of Carpenter's new show, Totentanz: The Dance of Death, to get her mind off the Infernal Train. Alice was not distracted from her task but she traveled to Barrelbottom in search of Carpenter, hoping that he could help her.[2]
Carpenter promised Alice information in exchange for a helping hand.
When Alice arrived at Dreary Lane Theatre, Carpenter greeted Alice warmly and talked about how excited he was about the opening of Totentanz, but he was obviously not ready. Alice tried to ask him about the Infernal Train, but instead he changed the subject and asked Alice to complete three important tasks for him: fetch the finished script, check the orchestra is ready, and wake up the acting troop. If she did these tasks, Carpenter promised to talk to her.[3]
Alice first went to the Octopus for the finished script, but due to his bitterness over his failing career, he wasn't cooperative and forced Alice into playing hide-and-seek with him, with Alice always being the seeker. After three rounds, Octopus was happy enough to start work on the script again and he promised to bring it in time for the show.[4]
The Music Fish needed help with clearing the Ruin-covered instruments.
Next, Alice went to the Music Fish for the orchestra, but found that everything was out of tune, so the girl had to fix the instruments which were covered in ruin.[5] Finally, Alice went to wake up the Oyster Starlets and helped the troop leader fix a poster advertising Totentanz.[6]
Finished with her tasks, Alice headed back to the theatre but was stopped by Carpenter and Walrus who destroyed the bridge. Alice finally realized that the two showmen had much darker goals in mind, and had just used the tasks to distract Alice to prevent her from stopping them. They then left her to face the Lost Souls, enemies she had already encountered in her previous tasks.
However, it turned out that the Sailors were not mindlessly hostile, but wayward souls in need of saving. After Alice helped the crew, they helped her out in return by showing her another path to the theatre.[7]
The show about to start.
Alice arrived just in time for the show, which was being shown to a full house. It started innocently enough, with the Oysters performing a dance number, but it suddenly took a turn for the worse as Walrus, in the role of Death, started to eat the Oysters and any other fish in sight.
As Alice shouted at Carpenter for his selfish, murderous ways, the man insisted that he was not an enemy and was trying to protect this piece of Wonderland from the new threat, telling her "appeasement's never clean!" He then went on to say that Alice was actually being duped by someone who wanted to destroy Wonderland. As the Infernal Train plowed into the theatre, Carpenter put himself between the train and Alice, and told her that the Caterpillar might be able to help before the Train hit him.[1] Alice was then back in London again.[8]
Locations
Barrelbottom
The town center.
Barrelbottom was the underwater town of the Deluded Depths at its heart. The residents of the town were sea life, particularly fish, who hold Carpenter's shows in high regard at the Dreary Lane Theatre.
The buildings of the town were made from large barrels and other pieces of flotsam and jetsam. In the middle of the town center there was a statue of Carpenter, possibly in honor of his great directing career.
Dreary Lane Theatre
The front of Dreary Lane Theatre.
The Dreary Lane Theatre was a majestic playhouse located on the edge of Barrelbottom, where Carpenter put on his shows. It had one large stage and many doors that concealed exits and possibly dressing rooms.
Under the theatre was a bloody, horrific mess of fish and sea creatures alike, dead or barely alive, implying that Walrus and Carpenter had been killing fish for a while, maybe even years.
Residents and creatures
- Cannon Crabs
- Carpenter
- Colossal Ruins
- Drifting Ruins
- Drowned Sailors
- Fish couples
- Ice Snarks
- Insidious Ruins
- Jellyfish
- Mayor
- Music Fish
- Octopus
- Oyster Starlets
- Walrus
Trivia
Alice swimming in the Beta trailer.
- In the Beta trailer for Alice: Madness Returns, it shows that Alice was going to be able to swim the waters of the Deluded Depths, possibly to reach hidden items or to travel around. This was cut from the final version, so Alice simply runs across the ground as she does in other areas of Wonderland.
- To delude is to impose a misleading belief upon someone; to deceive or fool them. So, to be deluded is to believe in someone who is not what they seem or false information. This name is fitting for this province as Alice and the other fish residents were made to believe that Carpenter and Walrus were simple showmen, while in reality they were actually murderers. This is also the place where Alice learns that she was being deceived by someone who wished to destroy Wonderland. The "depths" could relate to how deep down in the ocean the province is, or the many levels of deception it contains.
- The name of the theatre ('Dreary Lane') is a pun on Drury Lane, a street in London that has been famous for its theatres since Elizabethan times.
- Though not seen before Alice made her way backstage in the Dreary Lane Theatre, a nautilus-man was shown in a crucifixion-like manner on an anchor at the center of the slaughter with a saw through his head. He is surprisingly still alive as his moans are heard among the various dead bodies of the citizens of Barrelbottom.
References
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