Get ready for the Wild Wild West.
Rhine Canyon is the seventh district investigated in Criminal Case: Pacific Bay.
Primarily based on the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Rhine Canyon is a desert-based district known for its beautiful wilderness, small towns, archaeological wonders, its own rocket launch pad, and UFO sightings, with the last one playing an important part of its storyline as we get to know the district and the weird, alien-obsessed people inhabiting it.
Rhine Canyon focuses on the increasing amount of evidence regarding alien activity on the district, from UFO sightings to strange technology appearing out of nowhere, with everything pointing at the fact that there might be real extraterrestrial beings walking among us...
Cases Set in Rhine Canyon
- Road to Nowhere: A troublemaker teenager is found impaled on a cactus by the highway.
- Temple of Doom: An archaeologist is sacrificed by having his heart removed on an archaeological dig.
- The Seeds of Death: A scientist is tied up to a pipe and left to be eaten by vultures on an oil well.
- Crystal Death: A truck driver is decapitated near the site of a derailed train.
- Dead Space: An astronaut is found with a massive hole on his chest near a launch pad.
- The Ties That Bind: An army colonel is burned to death with a Molotov cocktail on a festival site.
- No Place Like Home: A supposed alien is autopsied to death on an abandoned fairground.
Tropes:
- Alien Episode: The entire district qualifies as this since its Additional Investigation revolves around the question of whether or not aliens are real. They are.
- Arc Villain: General Freeman, an army general who indulges into Fantastic Racism towards aliens and wants them to be exterminated to hide their existence from the public.
- Aliens Among Us: The main focus of Rhine Canyon is learning about the existence of aliens inhabiting Earth while pretending to be "normal" people, with the endgame goal of the district being helping a real alien return home after being stranded on Earth for decades.
- Breather Episode: Coming after the extremely high-stakes plots of Jazz Town and Ivywood Hills and the Trauma Conga Line Wham Episode that was White Peaks, Rhine Canyon is, in comparison, a much more relaxed and less tense district than its predecessors, focusing on a goofier storyline involving a Little Green Men alien and without much conflict going on other than an angry army general who wants to stop said alien from returning home but doesn't put much of a fight about it, basically making Rhine Canyon the Criminal Case version of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
- Crossing the Desert: The entire district takes place on a desert or desert-themed areas.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Chief Marquez, as we get to learn about her childhood and how it was ruined when the government painted her as a liar after she supposedly encountered an alien. By the end of the district, she manages to find inner peace after meeting said alien decades later, helping her understand that everything she experienced was real.
- A Death in the Limelight: Compared to his previous appearances, Colonel Spangler has a much stronger presence on this district, practically becoming the most important character as he's the one who reveals to you that aliens exist and that he's been trying to help one of them return home. This is also the district where he ends up biting the dust, but not before performing a Heroic Sacrifice and posthumously accomplishing his goals.
- Recurring Character: The main recurring characters for Rhine Canyon are Colonel Spangler, Randolph, General Freeman, and Agent Z. There are also a handful of characters that appear multiple times throughout the district but don't hold a lot of importance on the storyline other than a few alien-related comments, these being Otto Schmetterling, Pearl Montana, Zuma Tlaotani, Ezra Hope, and Astrid Saucer.
- Shout-Out: The entire district is a huge shout out to the Men in Black, with plot points like aliens existing on Earth and hiding in "human skins", the Galactic Intelligence Agency monitoring the aliens' activity, and wiping out the memory of civilians who learn about this fact.
