Cartoon Wasteland

The Cartoon Wasteland (abbreviated as the Wasteland) is the world in which Epic Mickey takes place. It is home to forgotten characters such as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the Mad Doctor and the Shadow Blot. The locations in the Cartoon Wasteland are based on various retired or rejected theme park rides. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was the ruler, however, the Shadow Blot usurped power from Oswald, and ruled as a tyrant with an iron fist.

Creation of the Wasteland
A long time ago, the sorcerer Yen Sid began to work on "his latest and greatest creation," a paradise where Disney's forgotten, rejected and abandoned ideas and creations could live happily. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, being the first inhabitant of this new world and Disney's first great creation, took the role as the leader, along with his beloved Ortensia. As more creations appeared- both forgotten cartoon characters and discarded ideas from Disney's theme parks - Oswald took steps to make sure the world was a beautiful and pleasant place to live. He accomplished this with the help of the Mad Doctor and his Beetleworx, as well as the dozens of gremlins with their technical know how.

Thinner Disaster
While Oswald and the forgotten Toons worked from the inside, Yen Sid provided help from the outside with the aid of his magic Paintbrush. However, shortly after the sorcerer added his "finishing touches" to his world, Mickey Mouse inadvertently wandered into his workshop and played with the brush, accidentally spilling large amounts of thinner into Wasteland. He likewise unleashed the Shadow Blot on the world, and unknowingly doomed all the characters that inhabit it.

The catastrophic thinner spill caused much of the world to become damaged, polluted and warped. The area known as Wonderland was completely wiped out, being at the epicenter of the thinner spill. The oceans became corrosive to cartoon matter, rising up to swallow some areas beneath the waves (such as Disney Gulch), and the pathways between the many lands were destroyed. What had once been a marvelous haven was now a Wasteland.

Blot Wars
No sooner had the thinner spill passed than the Shadow Blot began to terrorize Wasteland. An epic battle for the fate of the Wasteland commenced, fought between Oswald and the Shadow Blot. Most of the Toons sided with Oswald, but the Blot generated armies of Blotlings to be its footmen.

Sometime late in the war, the Mad Doctor defected to side with the Shadow Blot, and lent his Beetleworx to the Blot's agenda. None were quite certain why the Mad Doctor changed alegiences, but it turned things against the inhabitants of Wasteland.

Sealing the Blot
Inevitably, the Shadow Blot's reign over the Wasteland began, and the already warped world became even more nightmarish. Driven to the brink of defeat, Oswald and Ortensia made a last-ditch effort to stop the Blot. Confronting the monster on Mickeyjunk Mountain, they apparently succeed in sealing the Blot inside a large jug - in truth the bottle of Thinner that Mickey spilled on Wasteland - but the Blot manages to steal Ortensia's paint, leaving her lifeless.

Epilogue
With Ortensia as an inert statue, and a second-in-command the Blot made before getting bottled up roaming free, Oswald exiled himself to a fortress on Mickeyjunk to make sure the Blot wouldn't escape. Since then, Oswald has been forced to contend with the Blot's cronies, who seek to free their master, and the Mad Doctor's Beetleworx.

Geography
The Wasteland is based on the Disneyland theme park. It is separated into Three Sections: Hub Worlds, Mission Worlds, and Travel Worlds. It also includes a train system that is accessible in Epic Mickey 2.

Hub Worlds - A Hub World is an area of Wasteland where Mickey can accept Missions, and talk with Non-Player Characters. They are designed after sections of various Walt Disney Theme Parks. Action Worlds - Where Mickey performs his Missions, finds Items, fights Enemies, rescues Gremlins, and continues his Heroic or Mischievous deeds. This is where the bulk of the Game takes place. Travel Worlds - Little areas that connect Hub Worlds to Action Worlds, and vice-versa. You are required to pass through these in order to reach a different Location. They are modeled after old Disney Cartoons.
 * Mean Street (Based on Main Street, USA)
 * Ventureland (Based on Adventureland)
 * Bog Easy (Based on New Orleans Square)
 * OsTown (Based on Mickey's Toontown)
 * Dark Beauty Castle (Based on Cinderella's Castle, with elements of the Beast's Castle and Sleeping Beauty's Castle added give it its name. Dark Beauty Castle's appearence is heavily based on Sleeping Beauty Castle (Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant) in Disneyland Resort Paris.
 * Mad Doctor's Lab
 * Courtyard
 * Throne Room
 * Fireworks Control Room
 * Utilidors
 * Sorrow Tower
 * Grief Tower
 * Loss Tower
 * Gremlin Village (Based on It's a Small World with elements of Fantasyland)
 * Slalom, Ticket Booth
 * Jungle Boat Ride
 * Asian Boat Ride
 * World of Gremlins
 * European Boat Ride
 * Clock Tower (Based on the outer facade of It's a Small World)
 * Mickeyjunk Mountain (Based on the Matterhorn Bobsleds and retired Mickey merchandising)
 * Mickeyjunk Mountain Piles
 * Further Up the Mountain
 * Mickeyjunk Mountain Slopes
 * Second Throne Room
 * Mickeyjunk Mountain Summit (The Blot's Prison)
 * Tomorrow City (Based on Tomorrowland)
 * Raise the Notilus (Based on Submarine Voyage)
 * Tommorow City Lagoon (Based on Carousel of Progress)
 * Mister Rover's Ride
 * Tommorow City Square (Based of the Rocket Ride, PeopleMover, and Skyliners)
 * Space Voyage (Based on Moonliner Rocket and Space Mountain)
 * Petetronic's Lair (based on the exterior of Space Mountain)
 * Ventureland (Based on Peter Pan and the Pirates of the Caribbean films)
 * Tortooga (Based on the "Pirate Town" in the Pirates of the Caribbean films)
 * The Jungle (Based on Hangman's Tree, and elements of the Jungle Book)
 * Pirate Voyage (Based on Pirate Town from Pirates of Carribean ride)
 * Skull Island (Based on the retired facade of Skull Rock in Neverland)
 * Captain Hook's Jolly Roger (Based on the retired Restaurant on-board Captain Hook's ship in Fantasyland)
 * Lonesome Manor (Based on the Haunted Mansion)
 * Graveyard
 * Foyer
 * Stretching Room
 * Library
 * Ballroom
 * Attic
 * Clock Cleaners (linking Gremlin Village to Village Tower/Gremlin Village to European Boat Ride [secret route])
 * Alpine Climbers (various links in Mickeyjunk Mountain)
 * Lonesome Ghosts (linking Mean Street to Bog Easy/Bog Easy to Lonesome Manor)
 * Jungle Rhythm (linking Mean Street to Ventureland/Tortooga to the Jungle)
 * Steamboat Willie (linking Slalom to World of Gremlins/World of Gremlins to European Boat Ride/European Boat Ride to Clock Tower Battle)
 * The Castaway (Linking Ventureland to Tortooga/Tortooga to Pirate Voyage)
 * Mickey and the Beanstalk (linking Dark Beauty Castle to Slalom)
 * The Mad Doctor (Various links in Lonesome Manor)
 * Great Guns (an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon)
 * Plutopia (linking Mean Street to Tomorrow City/Tomorrow City Lagoon to Tomorrow City Square)
 * Mickey's Mechanical Man (Various Tomorrow City links)
 * Mickey's Steamroller (Links OsTown to Mickeyjunk Mountain)
 * Oh What a Knight (an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon)
 * Shanghaied (Linking Pirate Voyage to Skull Island)
 * The Sorcerer's Apprentice (from the movie Fantasia)
 * The Whalers (Linking the Jungle via Hangman's Tree to Tortooga)
 * The Haunted House (Various Lonesome Manor links)
 * Thru The Mirror (Links Mean Street to Ostown)
 * Trolley Troubles (an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon)
 * Ye Olden Days (Links Oswald's Fortress to Mickeyjunk Mountain summit)
 * Sleeping Beauty (Links Mad Doctor's lab to Throne Room)
 * Fantasia (Various links around Dark Beauty Castle)

New Places in Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
The following is a list of the places in Wasteland that Mickey visits in Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two.

Action Worlds Travel Worlds
 * Disney Gulch (Wasteland equivalent of Frontierland)
 * Rainbow Caverns (based mostly on Mine Train through Nature's Wonderland, and Rainbow Caverns Mine Train)
 * Fort Wasteland (based off of the Fort Wilderness attarction in Disneyland California)
 * The Float Yard (a sort of organised junkyard of forgotten Disney parade floats)
 * Autotopia (based on Disneyland's opening day attraction, Autopia)
 * Blot Alley (inspired by the rejected Disneyland area Edison Square)
 * Yen Sid's Castle (based on the castle in The Sorcerer's Apprentice segment in the 1940 film, Fantasia)
 * Dahl Engineering Corridors (inspired by urban legends stating that Disneyland had underground tunnels)
 * Building a Building (based on the 1933 Mickey Mouse cartoon)
 * Mickey's Service Station (based on the 1935 Mickey Mouse cartoon)
 * Music Land (based on the 1935 Silly Symphony cartoon)
 * A Night on Bald Mountain (based on the segment of the 1940 film, Fantasia)
 * The Band Concert (based on the 1935 Mickey Mouse cartoon)
 * The Old Mill (based on the 1937 Silly Symphony cartoon)
 * The Skeleton Dance (based on the 1929 Silly Symphony cartoon)

Development
Wasteland was present in the earliest concepts for Epic Mickey, originally conceived as taking on more of a dumpster shape in the Disney Interactive Think Tank pitch, before being gradually developed into a very Disneyland inspired form.
 * Lonesome Manor is the ghost house.
 * There are bushes at the Fair that look like Donald Duck, Dumbo, and various other Disney characters.
 * The Fair has various attractions that look like the attractions at Disneyland

Inhabitants

 * Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
 * Ortensia
 * Horace Horsecollar
 * Clarabelle Cow
 * Animatronic Captain Hook
 * Mr. Smee
 * Gremlin Gus
 * Shadow Blot
 * Gremlins
 * Big Bad Pete
 * Lonesome Ghosts

Trivia

 * In the opening sequence of the game (the attract video), there are locations on the map of Wasteland that are never seen in the actual game; these were most likely removed from the final version, or completely destroyed by the Thinner Disaster. Some, however, do get a description under the Wasteland map in the Epic Mickey app.
 * According to Warren Spector in an interview with Nintendo Power, a Cartoon character doesn't realize that they are cartoons made for people to watch until they enter the Wasteland. And even then their grasp on the Real World that we inhabit isn't strong. This is why there is references to Disney animators and media in the game. However the one contradiction to this is that in the Introduction to Epic Mickey, Mickey can be seen accepting an award.
 * In Epic Mickey: The Graphic Novel, it is revealed that the waste that makes up the Cartoon Wasteland is brought from the Disney Theme Parks by Yen Sid's magic, explaining the alleged neatness of the parks.
 * Wasteland was originally going to be a world of "trash" that is literally in a garbage dumpster behind the Sleeping Beauty Castle in California's Disneyland. The concept art showed it as a steampunk post-apocalyptic world.
 * An earlier look would've had Wasteland be similar to Mount Purgatory from Dante's Inferno; with Mickey descending to meet the other characters.
 * The name 'Wasteland' is simply 'Walt Disney Land' with some letters removed or rearranged.
 * Yen Sid also appears in the Disneyland show Mickey and the Magical Map.