Alice: Madness Returns/YMMV

• Alas, Poor Villain: After "defeating" the March Hare and the Dormouse, the Hatter mourns that all he wanted was a tea party and holds a mock one while ignoring both Alice and the falling debris.
• Anticlimax Boss: Wouldn't it have been the awesome to fight the giant drill-armed robot in the Hatter's realm, or the Executioner in a climactic boss fight? Too bad, because both of them die in cutscenes... and the former is dead in the same one where it's introduced!
• Badass Decay: Literally. Last seen as a towering, shrieking 300-foot tall monstrosity spread across Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts is now trapped in her rotting kingdom, physically resembles Young Alice (Alice's superego according to Mcgee), and besides Caterpillar is among the few helpful people in Wonderland.
• Bonus Feature Failure: Collecting bottles unlock concept art that's already available in other media.
• Complete Monster: Dr Bumby. He rapes a young girl and then burns down her house, killing her and her parents just because her little sister (Alice) happened to witness it, leaving Alice insane from the survivor's guilt caused by the fire, tries to "help" her by getting her to forget her memories so that he can pimp Alice as a prostitute. Not to mention all his other patients. What makes him even more despicable is his complete refusal to own up to his actions. He thinks that the girl he raped was simply playing hard to get, that he was providing a service to the community, and that Alice would be better off as a prostitute.
  • His Wonderland counterpart, The Dollmaker, is naturally just as bad, to the extent even the Big Bad of the first game despises him.
• Darker and Edgier: Some feel this way about Madness Returns compared to the original.
• Demonic Spiders: Depends on the difficulty being played on. Once the 3x damage multiplier gets applied on Alice, the various enemies that usually connect hard hits frequently(and dodging from Alice's attacks quite often) will start to look like these.
• Fail O'Suckyname: Let's face it, the name Angus Bumby is kind of hard to take seriously, even after you find out what he did to Lizzy and the other orphans.
• Fridge Brilliance: The visual difference between Reality Alice and Wonderland Alice may initially be of how she chooses to perceive herself as, but in the case of her hair, once you've gone through the Madness Returns storybook prequel it reveals what happened to her hair anyway.
  • The reason the Big Bad manifests itself as a train; it's actually a train of thought, specifically the one Dr. Bumby's implanting in Alice's head to Mind Wipe her and turn her into his corrupt whore.
  • Why the Jabberwock isn't back for this game unlike the Queen? Because the Train made his presence useless, just like in the Queen's case.
    • Also, the Train is trying to destroy Alice's memories of the fire. As it represents her guilt about the fire, the Jabberwock might have been killed by the Train before the game began.
  • In one of the first three trailers, Alice is talking to Dr. Bumby, and he says "Alice, tell me of your Wonderland." and then she opens her mouth and blood and teeth fall out. In dream interpretation, your teeth falling out indicate that the words you're saying should have stayed in your mouth.
  • Think about it. Bumby is warping Alice's wonderland and trying to make her forget her memories. He only knows of Alice's Wonderland because she told him about it. This is why her words should have stayed in your mouth.
  • The black sludge of the Ruined enemies and the Dollmaker could actually be coal of some sort: it can burn Alice, hardens in a brittle substance when the enemies are killed and it's related to trains....
  • And it does take place in Industrial Revolution London.
• Game Breaker: The fully-upgraded Teapot Cannon. Shatters enemy defences with one hit, is able to kill them with another.
• Goddamned Bats: Quite a few enemies may qualify, but especially the Bolterflies and Ink Wasps if they make contact.
• Good Bad Bugs: This, which will in about twenty minutes get you an 80G achievement you'd normally have to replay the entire game for.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The things the orphanage kids say to Alice during the frst London segment come off as innocent, if a little odd, first time round. Then you look back on them with the knowledge of what Dr Bumby is using them for. One notable example is this conversation between two little boys- "She [Alice] hates being touched" "Who likes it, then?". They're being used as prostitutes. You do the math.
• Hell Is That Noise: That scream you hear when you miss a jump...
• It Gets Better: The Foundry, which is only the second area you visit, is easily the dullest area of the game, and one of the longest. This led to many a bad review from people who didn't know it gets better after that.
• Most Annoying Sound: "A good worker is a live worker! Paid to live and work! A bad worker, is a dead worker; and vice versa! Don't be a bad worker, bad workers are slaves! And dead! Payday for good workers has been suspended indefinitely! Payday for bad workers is CANCELED! A good worker is a live worker! Paid to live and work! A bad worker--"
  • Don't forget his other speeches.
  • Mini!Alice's hiccups.
• Nightmare Fuel: A great deal of the game, but the Dollhouse level deserves special notice: it looks like a giant city of dollhouses, only that the houses are ripped apart and disembodied doll parts are everywhere, as well as Dollgirls waiting to kill you with scissors and fire. Gets Worse as the game progresses, everything gets darker and darker and it feels like you're traveling through some sort of abandoned orphanage/hospital/asylum, with even more disembodied doll parts, skeletons in glass displays, dolls with parts cut and ripped out, hell, even the levers are with a bloodied eye or a doll head with it's brain exposed floating in liquid, watching you as you pull the lever. The soundtrack does not help at all.
  • And, in the real world: Dr. Bumby, and his...profession.
  • The Dollmaker. It doesn't help that he's Dr. Bumby's avatar.
  • Did you know that the innocent, implicative, something's-definitely-off kinda horror; creepy, desolate, eerie horror; suspensive, non-climatic horror; mind-screwingly reminiscent, sorta-familiar horror and oppressive, bloodcurdling, soul distorting horror are supposed to be, at least to the extent that they don't ALL are in play at the same time, mutually exclusive, and that for a good reason? ...Yeah, American McGee didn't know that, so he created the DollHouse world. Wasn't that sweet of him?
    • To put it into perspective; when end up there there and start exploring, you can go from longing to the point where things would get worse and the world would transform into an Eldritch Location so you can just get away from all the deformed, broken, creepy dolls; to longing back to the deformed, broken, creepy dolls when things GOT WORSE without even easing up on the creepyness...
  • The line "Lizzie wasn't 'talking in her sleep'" was a was pretty damn creepy, largely because of what it implies.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Averted. The Radula rooms lock up after you complete the events. Not like they're particularly interesting or addictive anyway.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: Children forced into being sex workers. This is a massive problem, especially in third world countries, that doesn't get much attention.
• The Woobie: This game makes Alice look a lot more like one than the previous game. Also several other characters, some from the first game, are (still)this.
• Uncanny Valley: Not just the wonderlanders, but if you really find those prostitutes in London attractive, you have an awful taste in women.