Alice's appearance is based off of the titular character of Alice in Wonderland, while her personality and demeanor derive from a European folk tale, used to scare children into behaving.
In Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, Alice is a young girl attempting to escape boredom. After chasing a talking rabbit down a rabbit hole, she ends up in a nonsensical fantasy world populated by anthropomorphic animals, personified playing cards, and the Hatter, who hosts a never-ending "mad tea-party." The character Alice herself is said to be taken from Alice Pleasance Liddell, a little girl who was close to Carroll.
In the myth, Alice is an Aryan girl who died at a young age. After becoming a spirit, she gained extreme magical power that drove her insane. Alice would visit misbehaving children at night and "befriend" them by killing them in their sleep, and taking them to the afterlife.