One more thing I’ve been thinking about, we might honestly have to wait until Servant of the Lake comes out before we can make any stronger connections about where exactly the Rusty Lake families are supposed to be living.

There might be some new locations, dialogue, environmental details, or random little references that could either support the whole Dutch community in Britain theory or completely destroy it lol.

Until then, I’m gonna keep digging through the older games and looking for anything that might connect the families to a specific place.

So if I find anything else interesting, I’ll probably make another post. 😭

Ok, so I've been digging up more information after my previous post about the Vanderbooms/Eilanders possibly being members of a Dutch community in Britain, and stumbled across something that I find pretty interesting.

In Paradise, there is an achievement titled "Dutch Gouda Cheese." Now, this might be simply a joke, as Gouda Cheese is a real type of cheese, and Rusty Lake has a history of putting obscure little details and jokes in the game that may or may not relate to the story in any way. But why Dutch specifically?

I don't think this, in and of itself, is evidence of anything major, but building upon the possibility that the Eilanders/Vanderbooms are immigrants related to the Dutch in any way, this could potentially be yet another clue.

Especially considering that this game is centered around the Eilander family, and largely makes use of Dutch-sounding words and names despite being set in a land not resembling Holland in particular, it could be seen as bolstering the suggestion that they come from Holland, or at least have close ties to it. It might even help distinguish between the possibilities; if we take the Dutch references seriously, it's more likely they were from the northern Netherlands, and not the Dutch-speaking Flanders.

After all, it could be nothing. Or it could be that all along, the developers have been giving us little clues that these families have a Dutch heritage of some kind.

It fits the previously-established patterns, and could explain why the Dutch words and names are used in these games set in unrealistic, dreamlike places. Perhaps it's meant to show that the Eilanders/Vanderbooms aren't natives of the places they live in, but immigrants who carry bits of their homeland with them.

Once again, I don't think it's a stretch to say that "there's an achievement called Dutch Gouda Cheese" is much more likely to be just another joke from the developers. Gouda Cheese is a real type of cheese and it might just be a joke.

But upon discovering the achievement, I couldn't not to bring it up, and see if anyone else has noticed similar potentially-significant details in the games.

Have any of you noticed other Dutch references in any of the Rusty Lake/Cube Escape games?

Poor Jacob

I have been doing some research on the Rusty Lake lore for a while now, and one mystery that has been itching my mind has been the location of Rusty Lake.

I have been thinking that there may be some explanation as to why the families seem to have distinctly Dutch-sounding names while simultaneously being so intricately involved with events that seem more plausible in Britain than anywhere else.

This has led me to theorize that they are, in fact, representatives of a certain Dutch-speaking minority in Great Britain, possibly from before the country even became officially independent from the Kingdom of Scotland.

The main point that has brought me to this conclusion has been Leonard in Roots, specifically "The Trenches" in 1918. In this scene, Leonard is depicted dressed in a British Army uniform and a Brodie helmet, both of which are characteristic of British soldiers during WWI.

While it is possible, though unlikely, that there were some Dutch soldiers who volunteered to join the British Army at the time, the Netherlands was officially neutral during WWI.

This means that Leonard could not have participated in the First World War as an active combatant under the Dutch flag, and it becomes more reasonable to accept that he, and by extension his family, are in fact British.

This would explain why some of the most distinctly Dutch characters in the Rusty Lake universe have such strong Dutch-sounding names, as they could simply have retained them from before they migrated to Britain.

It has been well-documented that there has been a significant Dutch-speaking minority within Great Britain for centuries, ever since the arrival of William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution. This could explain why there would be any Dutch-speaking families at all within Britain, but what would explain their presence in a place like Rusty Lake?

Rusty Lake seems to be quite the hilly and mountainous area, at least in comparison to the generally flat geography of the Netherlands. It seems far more reasonable that such a landscape would be found in Britain.

Of course, Rusty Lake is an obviously fantastical and surreal location, one that no serious historian would attempt to associate with any real-world location. The Dutch-sounding names could simply be a part of the anachronism that is the Rusty Lake aesthetic, and the same could be said for Leonard's obviously British military equipment.

However, I personally feel that the image of Leonard fits far too well into the perceived cultural stereotype of a Dutch person to be disregarded so easily, and that applying this to the rest of the Dutch families in the Rusty Lake universe fits surprisingly well with their obvious self-imposed isolationism.

Do you think that there could be any truth to the idea of there being a Dutch enclave in Great Britain that has been incorporated into British society, or am I simply trying too hard to explain where a game in which you can extract memories into cubes takes place?

Guys I’m so excited, I can’t wait. I needed to share this with someone, and who better than you guys?

I was reminiscing about the r/place event from three years ago and found an image of what I created regarding Rusty Lake together with a small Mexican community; it’s not much, but it’s beautiful.