Video Game Alice Is Dead Discussion

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Koveras Mastermind Rational Since: Jan, 2001

Mastermind Rational

Sep 25th 2010 at 1:48:12 PM •••

OK, let's try to piece together what happened in the story:

Presumption #1: Rabbit is an Unreliable Narrator, who shows much less than he remembers.

Episode 1:

Rabbit wakes up in the hole, having lost all his memories. Next to him is a decomposed corpse of a girl. Presumably this is Alice from the book, and her state means that she died a long time ago. On the other hand, he clothes and hair look quite well-preserved. On Alice's body, the Rabbit finds a note saying "Kill the Rabbit".
The walls of the hole are covered with writings made in Mad Hatter's ink that can only be viewed with a special lens (Rabbit's diary, June 15). Most of the ink can be found on the corpse's hand. These writings contain last messages of someone dying of sickness AND the Rabbit's suitcase code (mentioned in Rabbit's diary, June 29).
Rabbit escapes from the hole, kills the Caterpillar for the lens and the key, and finds his briefcase with a mirror, returning his memories.

Episode 2:

Rabbit's flashback shows his One Last Job that went bad. He killed some green dude with antennae (presumably, that was just a guard, his target was Alice, see Rabbit's diary, July 1) but was busted, shot, and had to flee. However, Alice was waiting for him at the hideout.
Rabbit is caught by his enemies and brought into Wonderland Jail. There, he meets Mad Hatter. Hatter was arrested recently for countless assaults and murders. Hatter gives the Rabbit advice on how to escape, then escapes on his own, killing the guards and opening the Rabbit's door. He may have let himself be captured on purpose to meet the Rabbit.
Through the hole in the wall outside his cell, the Rabbit can see a landscape with the monstrous Cheshire Cat floating in the distance. If you wait long enough, he will float closer to the whole and then for a split second the word "OYSTERCLOUD" will flash on the screen
The police records reveal that the Rabbit's late cell mate, Lewis, was arrested for stealing from the Wonderland Scientific Research Center and died only recently. His connection to Dr. Burr (if existent) is unclear.
The newspaper clip in the watch room reveals that Mad Hatter has been associated with the Queen for a long time until "terrible, mysterious accident" that turned him into a mad killer.
A note from the Hatter tells Rabbit the password to the safe containing photos of him fighting Alice (who looks just like the corpse in the first game would have during her lifetime), then throwing her body into a hole.
The portrait of Dr. Raymond Burr reveals that he was "a coward with a big heart until he lost all his money".

Episode 3:

The dialogue at the beginning (between two unidentified individuals, "Speaker 1" and "Speaker 2") reveals that Alice was told to kill the Rabbit by Speaker 2. Alice and Rabbit fought (this is confirmed by Rabbit's flashbacks), Alice was killed, and Rabbit lost his memories. Speaker 1 is then killed by the Rabbit. Speaker 2 may be the Queen.
In his hideout, Rabbit finds his old diary, which reveals that Hatter ran a Career Killers cartel, which included Rabbit, Alice, Ann, and Caterpillar (presumably, this was before the "accident" mentioned in the newspaper in episode 2). Detailed breakdown of entries:
1. June 11&12: Mary Ann is imprisoned, but escapes. Still, the Hatter decides to assume direct control over operations.
2. June 13&14: Alice and Rabbit go on a risky job for Hatter, and Alice saves the Rabbit's ass. Around the same time, Dr. Burr starts performing experiments on cats in the basement of their hideout. The goal of these experiments is never known.
3. June 15: Hatter brings in the ink, with which the walls of the starting location were covered.
4. June 16: Hatter is being stressed by the Queen, presumably about Dr. Burr.
5. June 17: Rabbit disposes of some cat remains from Dr. Burr's tests. Burr is said to be "the Queen's scientist". Alice is bodyguarding him.
6. June 19: Last confirmed sighting of Alice. But she seems distant due to her work in the basement.
7. June 20: Rabbit reveals that he has memory problems.
8. June 24: Dr. Burr brings his little daughter to the hideout. Rabbit explicitly doesn't know her name.
9. June 25: Rabbit notes Alice's prolonged absence.
10. June 28: Last confirmed sighting of Ms. Burr. Power goes out.
11. June 29: Hatter wants to talk about Alice.
12. June 30-July 1: Hatter presumably tells Rabbit that Alice has defected and sends him to kill her, otherwise the Queen will kill her much more painfully.
13. July 2: Last entry. Rabbit starts to see things. He also speaks of "this last job".
Rabbit receives a message from the Hatter on the phone, telling that the Queen is in town and should be killed. He sneaks into the night club, where Mary Ann says the Queen is staying.
Hatter has left a message for Rabbit in the club's bathroom, leading him to Dr. Burr's secret lab (implying that the Hatter's hideout has been in the club all along).
In the basement, Rabbit finds the body of Dr. Burr, killed by being stabbed with a multitude of sharp objects. He believes it couldn't have been him. A plaque next to his body says "Project Oyster Cloud" (the same as during the sighting of the Cheshire Cat in episode 2).
He also receives three messages from "Unknown" sender. Two of them tell him to collect the Dr. Burr's experiment tapes, and the third received afte collecting all three tapes, calls Burr "Daddy" and claims the sender has fixed the elevator. The sender is presumed to be Ms. Burr's ghost or spirit.
The tapes reveal in order:
1. Lab 4: Burr's experiments killed his test subjects (the cats).
2. Lab 6: Test subject 11 survives, becoming Burr's first success. Then, however, the cat escapes and is picked up by Ms. Burr. She then says she doesn't feel good, and Dr. Burr grieves for her. It can be presumed that she died upon contact or was somehow disembodied (keeping in mind that she contacted the Rabbit later). Subject 11 presumably escapes. The tape also contains two flashes of what may be the monstrous Cheshire Cat (subject 11?).
3. Crack Time: Contains no useful information except some random advertisement.
Mary Ann believes that the Rabbit is in trouble an sneaks a pistol into the club. The Rabbit finds it and takes the elevator up from the lab, but before he can react, he is shot in the forehead and killed by the Queen who is waiting for him at the top. The game ends.
In The Stinger, the Queen leaves the scene and goes to his car. In the car, however, a red-headed girl wearing a gray uniform with a star is waiting for him, gun ready. After a short flashback, she kills him.
In the girl's flashback, we see her walking away from a hole, wearing Alice's suit and pulling a blond wig (like Alice's hair) off her head. In the second flashback, we see her standing over what is presumably Alice's corpse.

Edited by Koveras Hide / Show Replies

Koveras Since: Jan, 2001

Sep 25th 2010 at 2:48:47 PM •••

OK, so let's try to reconstruct what really happened:

A long time ago, a blond girl named Alice fell in the hole and died on impact. Her body lay in the hole until another girl, a redhead, found her there. This redhead girl was some kind of an agent or assassin and decided to assume Blond!Alice identity for whatever reason.
The Rabbit is a killer for hire suffering from memory problems. He forms a partnership with Redhead!Alice (in following, simply "Alice"), whom he considers a friend. Knowing about his problems, she recommends him to keep a diary.
Mad Hatter formed a Career Killers group, containing himself, Alice, Rabbit, Ann (on the controls), and Caterpillar (in unknown function). He has also allied himself with the Queen, a powerful crime lord with a good publicity.
On June 13, Hatter allows a scientist working on the Project Oyster Cloud for the Queen to use their hideout's basement as a lab. Dr. Burr mostly experiments on cats, but his goal is not revealed. Alice is assigned to serve as his assistant and bodyguard, making her distant even to the Rabbit.
Around June 20, Alice disappears, presumably tired and disgusted by Dr. Burr's experiments. Rabbit tries to talk to the Hatter about it, but he just laughs.
On June 24, Burr brings his daughter to the hideout, possibly for better protection.
On June 28, Burr succeeds in keeping one his test subjects alive through the experiment. Immediately thereafter, however, subject 11 escapes, is found by Burr's daughter and kills her, before leaving the lab for good. Burr is struck with grief. Subject 11 henceforth becomes the monstrous Cheshire Cat. Power outage follows.
On June 29, someone (either the Rabbit in a forgotten fit of madness over Ms. Burr's death, or Alice) brutally kills Dr. Burr.
Around July 1, Hatter and the Queen decide to get rid of both killers (since whoever killed Burr pissed off both crime lords) and set them up to go after each other.
On July 2, Rabbit's memory condition worsens and he stops keeping diary, then leaves on his last job to take out Alice.
Rabbit goes after Alice, but screws up and has to flee. Alice meets him at his hideout. However, having seen through the Queen and the Hatter's plan, she offers a truce to keep both of them alive. The two stage a fight, making sure it's captured on cameras, then Alice lets it appear like she was killed. The Rabbit throws her body into the hole, where Blond!Alice body has been lying since a long time, so that this event is also captured on cameras.
What the camera's don't see is that Redhead!Alice dressed Blond!Alice's corpse in her dress and wig, then covers the walls of the hole with the Hatter's ink, hiding the Rabbit's suitcase code among fake Apocalyptic Log (she also dumps most of the ink on the corpse's hand to make it appear as if it was the dead girl who wrote it). She also hides a note "Kill The Rabbit" to let the Rabbit know he's in danger. This implies that they've expected the Rabbit's memory to act up and make him forget their arrangement.
Simultaneously, the Hatter falls out with the Queen (it can be presumed that with both Hatter's killers away, the Queen tried to usurp his turf) and goes rogue. The Queen controls the media to present him as a bloodthirsty killer, and he finds the disguise quite good. All in all, a covert Mob War breaks out.
Meanwhile, Alice has gone underground, Rabbit lost his memories and fell into the hole, Mary Ann has hidden herself, too, Hatter is on a rampage, and Caterpillar is probably bought over by the Queen to tail the Rabbit.
The Rabbit wanders out of the hole, kills the Caterpillar, and remembers his identity thanks to the mirror that Alice has left for him nearby (it's Alice's mirror, he mentions it in the diary).
Immediately thereafter, the Queen's men sneak up on him, knock him out and bring to a jail. While he is there, the Hatter lets himself be captured to help the Rabbit break out, since he hopes to take out the Queen with his hands. He also helps the Rabbit uncover some photos showing his past.
While in jail, the Rabbit has a brief encounter with the Cheshire Cat.
Upon escaping the prison, Rabbit tracks down one of the Queen's flunkies and kills him.
In the Rabbit's old hideout, he receives a message from the Hatter, telling him to go after the Queen. Mary Ann directs him to the night club (where their gang old hideout was also located), where the Hatter has left a message for him, allowing him to access Dr. Burr's laboratory.
In the lab, the Rabbit finds Burr's corpse and is contacted by the Queen upstairs impersonating Ms. Burr's ghost. After making the Rabbit collect incriminating tapes, he activates the elevator going upstairs, where he is already waiting for him and shoots him dead.
Believing both Alice and Rabbit to be dead, the Queen lowers his guard and is ambushed and killed by Alice in his car. It is possible that Alice and Hatter have been manipulating the Rabbit all along to be killed by the Queen, so that the two of them can kill the Queen in turn.

Edited by Koveras

Koveras Since: Jan, 2001

Oct 1st 2010 at 5:07:19 AM •••

Alternate interpretation by Shin: subject 11 didn't kill Ms. Burr but merged with her to create the Cheshire Cat. It was also he/she/it who messaged the Rabbit in the lab.

Edited by Koveras


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Discussion VideoGame / AliceIsDead