Sucker Punch/WMG

Babydoll is Haruhi Suzumiya
After her lobotomy, Babydoll created a world inside her head "that she controls." Eventually, she starts to desire a more realistic world to live in, so she constructs the world in which the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series takes place (she obviously is at least -somewhat- interested in Japanese culture or Anime at the very least, considering how she imagined herself in a Sailor Fuku uniform).

In the asylum level, Blue is running a girl-in-coma raping scheme.
That's why Baby Doll paralells the lobotomy doctor with the "High Roller". The "High Roller" would take her virginity in the bordello level, and if/when the lobotomy gets done, Blue would "rent" her, in an "I'm Buck"-style. That's also why Blue, a simple atendant in the asylum level, turns into a mafioso pimp.
 * Also, his "playing with my toys" and attempted raping of Baby Doll turns a lot more dark and have a logic reason.

The whole movie is basically the girls' escape from the asylum Through the Eyes of Madness.
As in, they are actually already insane when their escape starts and their awesome fights against zombie Nazis and mini-gun samurais are actually struggles against the asylum guards which their delirious minds perceive differently. The four items from the trailer are the clue: the map is obviously the blueprint of the asylum, the fire is needed to create a diversion, the knife is a weapon, the key opens doors. Not like anyone would watch this movie for the story, of course ...
 * This is actually spot-on, although

The whole movie is Sweet Pea's warped memory of events.
Which explains the Wise Man/Bus Driver and the boy in the trench/on the bus. These are people from the end of the escape, and her mind imposed them back on the earlier details. This may still be reconcilable with the "Fantasy!World is our fantasy" concept ... it would mean that the viewer is having an Imagine Spot in the middle of Sweet Pea's Through the Eyes of Madness / Imagine Spot recollections.
 * And also, it explains the "Theater" scene, where Sweet Pea projects herself to Baby Doll. Baby Doll could be a real person, but Sweet Pea project her as a protagonist character, until the garage scene where Baby Doll discover that she was not the real one to be saved.
 * This also means that the final scene is the first scene, and all the movie is a mental retelling of the previous events, including two hallucinatory levels created by Sweet Pea. Hinted by the same voiceover.
 * This is probably the most likely scenario. It explains why Babydoll doesn't speak in the beginning or even has a name; because Sweet Pea wouldn't know any of that, especially if Babydoll was catatonic like Dr. Gorski said. Sweet Pea sees Babydoll as her 'guardian angel,' per the opening monologue, and makes up a fantastic story in her mind to explain how and why she could be saved by a complete stranger.
 * Also, final scene with Babydoll could be also hallucinatory. Hinted by the lack of lobotomy's scars on Baby Doll in the last image.
 * Transorbital frontal lobe lobotomies don't always leave marks/bruises/scars, though.

Baby Doll is you, and the whole movie is a commentary on the Hollywood blockbuster and the moviegoing experience in general.
Baby Doll escapes from her real life into an elaborate fantasy world, the same as you do when you step into a theater. Her fantasy world is populated with stock characters played with over-the-top hamminess who are thrown into epic action setpieces with only the most tangential connection to the overall plot, just like every big-budget tentpole movie in recent years. In the end, she emerges from the fantasy back into her horrible reality, none the richer for it and no closer to a solution for her problem, just like you do when the movie's over. And do we even need to get into the obvious parallels between actors and whores?
 * No, we're the audience that's making Baby Doll perform. At least that's what Word of God said.

The entire film, all three layers, is in the imagination of the mentor/bus driver.
All of the steampunk dreams are in Baby Doll's imagination, including the "Mentor" in each dream. However, the only person who meets the bus driver is Sweet Pea. He knows who she is and knows that she is running away, even though she has never met him before. The reason? She is fictional and he is real, and the entire move is his imagination, not Baby Doll's.
 * Unlikely because, his character was never given anything as small as a noodle incident as a back story, nor was he given a name or a signifying characteristic like one would expect a "real world" person to maintain. He is a guardian angel and a mentor, that's all.
 * The Wise Man is meant to be Babydoll's/Sweet Pea's guardian angel and also 'the voice of reason.'
 * They're all in his imagination because, let's face it, he drives a bus all day for a living, he is bored.

Artistic endeavors are a link between alternate, intertwined dimensions and every version of reality is equally valid.
In the beginning, the movie opens with a theatre that then warps into reality. Later, we see a stage on which Sweet Pea is performing. Later, in a hugely stressful event for Baby Doll, we get a shift into the brothel reality where Sweet Pea is performing on stage. (Possible sub-theory: The initial scene opens up both the asylum reality and the brothel reality, which, when they converge on the lobotomy scene, cause a jump between the two.) Music cues every jump to the action reality. This makes the scenes where they steal objects in the brothel reality make much more sense, as it isn't clear how Baby Doll would distract the guards and orderlies on the asylum level, since Gorski mentions that she didn't respond to anyone.

The Brothel is Sweet Pea's imagined control world, the warfare is Baby Doll's.
In the club, Baby Doll doesn't have much more control than she does in the real world, she's still awaiting a horrible fate just a few days away. Further, the Club scenario initiates while Sweet Pea is undergoing treatment. In the club, though, for Sweet Pea, further she asserts that she should have the authority to call the mission off when she sees fit. Baby Doll is consciously in the asylum the whole movie except when she's undergoing treatment, at which point she goes straight into the war scenarios.
 * Word of God suggests that the war scenarios aren't Baby Doll's fantasy, but ours.
 * Even deeper: The Asylum is real, The Brothel is Blue's fantasy, the Warzone is ours.

Sweet Pea and Baby Doll are actually the same person, and Brothel!World is the real world as seen Through the Eyes of Madness.
In the beginning of the brothel sequences, "Baby" strips off her wig to reveal Sweet Pea playing her part. The rest of the movie is Sweet Pea coming to grips with her own insanity and figuring out how to escape. The asylum is only in Sweet Pea's head, and.

All of the Brothel scenes are in Sweet Pea's head.
Sweet Pea has the first line in the burlesque club. Likewise, it replays the events of Baby Doll's arrival. Add in the fact that the psychiatrist was treating Sweet Pea at the time and telling her that the mind can help her escape, this might have actually been Snyder's intent.

The Brothel isn't a hallucination, but the madhouse is.
Baby Doll was really an orphan sold by the father, the dead of her mother and sister was actually a play by Sweet Pea, as well as the lobotomy (which was also played by Sweet Pea. Do you see a pattern here?) the plot actually happens in the brothel and the bus scene happens in the reality as well. Baby Doll never had a lobotomy but lost her virginity to the High Roller. Sad thing is, she's stuck in a world where everyone she cared for is dead or away with no way out.
 * I've actually seriously considered this as being true.

The Brothel is an alternate universe.
The Asylum and Brothel both exist separately but follow similar paths. A group of girls try to escape their predicaments acquiring a list of items to cause enough of a distraction so they can leave. While in the Brothel, Baby Doll uses the fantasy world to escape the experience of dancing for an audience, in the asylum perhaps she uses the fantasy world to escape being sedated as a distraction for the girls to get the items. While in the asylum, being lobotomized leaves her broken, gives her freedom and makes her undesirable to Blue, in the Brothel losing her virginity leaves her broken, and undesirable to Blue as his 'toy' is no longer new. What gives her the freedom there was apparently in a deleted scene where the High Roller actually offered her freedom when she would sleep with him.

Both fantasy worlds are Blue's fantasy depictions of the events in the asylum.
He's perverted to imagine himself as running a brothel, as well as coming up with insane fantasies whenever he observes whatever the "dance" was in the Asylum world.
 * More broadly: The Fantasy Worlds are the perverted imaginations of the (male) asylum staff in full action.

This movie is strongly influenced by Gnostic themes.
It looks so far to be stepped in Gnosticism.
 * Can you elaborate, please? I don't see it.

Sweet Pea and Rocket are two sides of a split personality.
The movie is about Sweet Pea finally returning to sanity. When, it is her finally coming to grips with her delusions.
 * This Troper could've sworn he saw both Sweet Pea and Rocket in the opening sanitarium scene, but he could be misremembering.
 * Sweet Pea is on the stage, working with Gorski, Rocket is sitting at a card table in that scene. Baby Doll looks at them both, smiling at Sweet Pea.
 * Abbie Cornish has explicitly stated in interviews that Rocket really was Sweet Pea's sister.

The Mentor/Bus Driver is actually Baby Doll's Grandfather.
One who served in WWI.
 * Possible, but probably not likely, considering he doesn't attend the funeral for Babydoll's mother.
 * Obviously, because he was Put on a Bus... because he was the bus driver, and he had to stay on schedule.

All the characters were Baby Doll, parts of her psyche made manifest, as people she saw in the "theater".
How about the idea everything was in her head and all the girls were aspects of Baby Doll's psyche, appearances based on people she saw in the asylum. So Sweet Pea is actually the "main character" she created, the fact she has a sister is because she projected her own situation onto the characters Sweet Pea and Rocket as a way to come to terms with her real sister's death. In the end the Sweet Pea that goes on the bus is the new representation of Baby Doll who has come to terms with her reality and decided to find paradise in her fantasy instead of fighting it. In an interview the actress actually commented on their characters standing for different things, such as Rocket is "Hope", Blondie is "Fear" etc. So hope dies and fear betrays her plans, she had to sacrifice herself physically, give in to the lobotomy, to find freedom. Also think about it, why would the psychiatrist not report deaths and murders but report a forged signature for a Lobotomy to the police. How likely is there there were that many girls in the asylum that were sane, heck more sane than the doctors and orderlies?
 * Well, the doc does mention her helping Sweet Pea escape, but the rest seems spot-on
 * Or, possibly, all of the characters are psychic manifestations of SWEET PEA.
 * And Rocket could be the Dead Little Sister which is why there's such focus on her.

Baby Doll is a Reality Warper.
The words from Blue as he is dragged away are “You don't want me, its your father you want!” Which means he is addressing Baby Doll, not the people dragging him away, but why would he believe she could change the outcome? Because she can and he knows it. When she accidentally shoots her sister, it is so stressful that she warps reality a bit. She realizes at some point that, like with her sister being shot by the gun, many innocents could be killed by her ability to warp reality, so she decides to render her ability to logically think void via allowing the lobotomy to happen. But she can't just leave the others there. The Wise Man is the detached part of her rational mind manifesting to direct events to her goal. Since Sweet Pea deserves to be free and has no outstanding mental issues and somewhere to go home to, a life worth living without warping reality, Sweet Pea escaping becomes the other focus (along with Blue getting his punishment and the step father's crimes being exposed.) Baby Doll also avoids A God Am I this way. The elaborate reality shifts both represent how hard it is to consciously direct that power, and allow the things they need to be acquired. Baby Doll has to empty her minds of thoughts to use the ability safely, and focus on the goal rather then how to accomplish it, allowing her imagination to create the rest. The three golums from the first action sequence represent her fear of using the knife (pole-arm) her fear of misusing the gun (mini-gun) and the fear of her anger controlling her (sword). The German zombies are lingering fear of both the orderly's and being dead while still moving (like after the Lobotomy). The Dragon is the terrible power of the fire getting out of control and killing innocents. The bomb is her fear of failure costing others their lives (which is so powerful that without the mnemonic of the music to empty her mind of stray thoughts, it goes off.)
 * Blue actually says "you want her father."
 * Actually, Blue says, "It's not me you want, it's the Stepfather."

The sequence showing Sweet Pea's escape is just another of Baby Doll's hallucinations.
Baby Doll has just assisted another patient in escaping, but has no idea how she has escaped and has been lobotomized. We never truly find out what happened to Sweet Pea, and the sequence with the bus station is just another hallucination of Baby Doll's where she has finally found peace after the lobotomy has "freed" her. Note the repeating themes with the old man, the young boy, and the sign that says "Paradise" on it - there's no way that those could be real when they were only previously seen in Baby Doll's imagination.

Baby Doll's friends only play this part in her fantasy.
Rocket, Amber and Blondie are only seen in the background on the Asylum. The fact that Madam Gorski never mentions anything about their deaths (or even their characters) and that three girls who show no actual reason to escape join her (only Sweet Pea is given a reason - and she's also the only one who realistically doubts Baby Doll plan), made this troper think Baby Doll, friendless and in an hostile environment, made up a world where she has a reason to escape - new friends who like her. That's why those three are killed: even if she escaped, she wouldn't have their companionship because it wasn't true.
 * This also explains why Sweet Pea is OK leaving Rocket behind (It's highly unlikely she or anyone else was killed for real, covering up three murders in an Asylum would be beyond even this movie's level of corruption) and if they were really sisters she would be unlikely to leave without her.

The rabbit head painted on the huge steampunk mecha is a reference to Frank.
Considering that Jena Malone (Rocket) played Gretchen Ross in Donnie Darko, this doesn't seem unlikely.
 * Also, Babydoll is an orphan in the brothel reality, just like Emily Browning's role in another film.
 * Browning also plays crazy in The Univited too, where
 * And Vanessa Hudgens' (Blondie) outfit is very cowboy/Native American in style, which is interesting given Hudgens' Native American heritage.
 * You could even say too that the mecha is a reference to Jamie Chung (Amber) having played Chi-Chi.

Baby Doll is a descendant of Dilios.
Both have vivid, out of this world imaginations, and like to imagine themselves as kickass warriors with mad jumping skills. And apparently they both think in slow-motion.

Sweet Pea is an ancestor of Scott Pilgrim.
Adorable, spunky, slightly girly badass begats adorable, spunky ... yeah, you see where I'm going with this ...

Sweat Pea is actually Ariadne on her way out of limbo.
A dream within a fantasy within a fantasy within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a movieverse.

Gorski is The Doctor, Blue is The Master and the various realities are the effects of a Negative Space Wedgie around the asylum/brothel/warzone.
Alternately, The Bus Driver is The Doctor and his bus is the TARDIS. Sweet Pea will be the next companion.

Babydoll will recover.
She's trapped in her own head at the moment, the lobotomy putting her in a comatose state in which she is, once more, creating fantasy worlds. She's slowly regaining her senses, retaking control of her own body, fighting imaginary battles on the road to recovery. And one day she'll be completely recovered (with Gorski's help) and leave and take possession of her inheritance which she'll use to finance Gorski's work, helping disturbed girls all over the world. Fix Fic? Mais oui. Oh, and she turns Lennox House into a humane, forward-thinking, state-of-the-art psychiatric care facility.

The asylum will close down due to the crap that had gone down.
For that is what would happen if this stuff happened in Real Life.
 * Extending to this, the chef would be fired

Babydoll died in the opening sequence. The movie takes place with her internally dealing with her issues before entering the afterlife
Not as wild as you would think, there are actually a number of subtle hints, making me think this was actually what we were meant to conclude. My interpretation of the events is that Babydoll died that night. The girls in the rest of the movie are aspects of herself (with the exception of Rocket, who represents her actual sister. The reason everything is so erotically charged, is because she is still dealing with the attempted rape of her and her sister (note that this aspect disappears completely (unless you have certain fetishes) after Babydoll is lobotomized). Babydoll is the person she was who was when she came in. Amber is the aspect of her that stays distant from her conflicts, represented by her always piloting the vehicles. Blondie is the part of her that just wants to give up or seek help, represented by her revealing her plans to Madame Gorski. This is also why these two don't seem like actual characters within the movie; they aren't, just aspects of one. Amber and Blondie die, showing that Babydoll/sweet pea is now over her issues and ready to face her problems, culminating in the lobotomy of Babydoll, the part of her personality that couldn't deal with reality. In the end, Sweet Pea doesn't yet move on, but still needs some therapy, as evidenced by the final line of the movie: "you have a long way to go".
 * Recall the beginning of the movie. Babydoll shoots and misses her step-father, but the camera shortly focuses on two things she did hit: a light bulb that starts flaming, and a gas-pipe which she ruptured. In the movie itself it doesn't lead to a fire. In fact, it's rather glaring in that it is never in a shot again, despite the camera focusing on it for that brief moment.
 * It does show up again. When Babydoll gets lobotomized, we get a quick shot of those three elements again (the gun, the bulb, and the punctured gas line.)
 * Because of all the glaring Anachronism Stew within the fantasy sequences, people rarely notice that the asylum itself is also an Anachronism Stew: the most glaring example is one of the guards wearing earpods, with, again, the camera briefly focusing. Another good example is that the buses near the end are of a modern design.
 * At the beginning of the asylum sequence, the main character, Babydoll, is a girl whose sister was nearly raped and died, partly due to her actions, and she was unable to deal with this fact. At the end of the movie, the character we follow, Sweet Pea, is a girl whose sister was nearly raped and died, for which she feels responsible, yet she is able to deal with this.
 * The most obvious clue is the appearance of the wise man in both reality and in fantasy, leading to the question whether the reality is real.

Only two people in this film are real.
Gorski is actually a patient in an asylum, Blue is her doctor, whom Gorski greatly distrusts be it for any real reason or due to simple paranoia. None of the girls actually exist but are mere figments of Gorski's mind, this way she can play out fantastic nonsense revenge scenarios. The reason she imagines these scenarios is that it is part of Blue's therapy, which has gone wrong. Instead of creating a calmer environment for her mind to be in Gorski creates an even more violent reality. Being the only real people the two take the opposing sides of power inside the fantasy world and like true gods in any story are only partly active.

Sweet Pea is experiencing Inception Shared Dreaming
Come on; multiple levels of reality, each more outlandish and unstable than the last? A Group of people going from level to level? Symbolism? It's Shared Dreaming! The Part where the mom dies is level one of the dream. When the Sister dies and Baby Doll is sent to the Bedlam House, it goes to level two. Then, the Bordello is level three. Finally, the fantasy bits while Baby Doll is dancing would be Limbo. So, when

Babydoll's sister is still alive
She just ended up in the hospital and didn't end up getting out until after the movie then receiving the money her stepfather tried to steal. And speaking of the above therory...

Babydoll's sister is Beatrice Baudelaire

 * It makes sense, both were wealthy and had a tendency to be menaced by people who wanted her fortune (and Count Olaf almost succeeded.)

Babydoll's hallucinations are her being crazy
At the action-hero level, the girls get their items through violence. At the brothel-level, the girls get their items by distracting the men with Babydoll's dancing. At the asylum level, Babydoll is distracting the men by freaking out, possibly violently (as opposed to with sex).

Dr. Gorski's method of treatment is stated to be having the girls act out their various abuses and traumas, so that they can be shown they aren't their fault. We see Babydoll slip into her first action-sequence through the lens of the brothel, with Gorski insisting she dance. In the asylum, she is coaxing Babydoll into acting something out. Babydoll freaks out, drawing everyone's attention, but Gorski is pleased to see any reaction at all from her.

To get the map, Sweet Pea brings Blue over to watch Babydoll dance. Babydoll is staging another meltdown to grab everyone's attention. Blue is excited, either because her behavior will smooth his and her stepfather's story, or because he gets off on it (once she is lobotomized and can't attack, he loses interest in her).

Blue wants to show Babydoll's dance to the mayor, but Gorski is initially reluctant. In reality, they're demonstrating the therapy to someone important, bringing all the orderlies into the theater and giving Amber a chance to nab the lighter from the guy who is usually on the other side of the locked doors.

Babydoll stages another meltdown in the kitchen to distract the cook, so that Rocket and Sweet Pea can steal a weapon. However, the chef doesn't know how to react trying to contain her, draws his knife, and accidentally stabs Rocket.

Wiseman is the angel mentioned in the voice overs
He's the only character that doesn't have an analog at the beginning of the movie in the real world, he appears at the end to, for no apparent reason, help Sweet Pea and he prods Baby Doll along in the Adventure World with cryptic advice

The movie is set in Changeling: The Lost
Gorski is a True Fey, Blue is a mortal (or other supernatural) that has somehow gained control over her (tricked her into a pledge, and has at some point made the fatal mistake of wording: "You can't harm me as long as i'm in charge of your girls" or something to the same effect, meaning she could do something to harm him if he wasn't in control of the changelings). Baby Doll's stepfather makes a deal with Blue for him to take Baby Doll away so she can't testify against him.

The asylum is in the real world, Baby Doll being lobotomized is so that she won't be able to remember anything, so she doesn't have the strong connection she needs to get out through the hedge.

The Brothel is in the Hedge, or some variant of it turned into more or less Faerie, Here the Encorcelled mortals play roles of power, and enjoy the erotic dancing the Changeling girls perform.

The Fantasy world, is the Dreamscape, Baby Doll has strong connections to the Astral plane (or something similar), and is able to respond to Gorski's music, which sends her to the Dreamscape, and eventually makes it possible to have everyone partially enter their target's dreams.

The Wise Man, is an experienced Changeling with some or other contract that enables him to know what advice to give (whether by perception, or by simply reading Baby Doll) who meets Baby Doll in the Dreamscape when she first performs (alternate theory, he's an alternate personality of Gorski, who've learned human compassion from being trapped and slaved for so long as well being forced to watch over the ones she needs to free herself and so decides to keep helping Sweet Pea in the end), he proceeds helping her, meeting Baby Doll and her companions in the dreams of the people she needs to mezmerise in order to get the things needed for their escape.

He uses some foresight contract in order to tell them what to look out for, but they fail to heed his warnings in the dreamscape and so alert their two first targets of their actions (By splitting up and working seperately instead of wroking together as he said, the map almost reaches the Kaiser, and some extra damage has to be inflicted in order to get the map, Blue knows this damage has been inflicted and so notices that the map has been ripped down and copied. By awakening the mother of the baby dragon they killed, when the Mayor's sigar goes out, he pays it notice enough to ignite another and so notices that the next sigar won't be lit since they took it's fire.)

With the third target they're interrupted because the music enabling Baby Doll to use her power starts fizzling out since they weren't quick enough with the job (since one of the were missing) the music fizzles back on, but it's too late for Baby Doll to save Rocket from being stabbed.

The events afterwards where Blue kills two of the girls, gets stabbed by Baby Doll happen, Baby Doll takes his key and quickly goes to find Sweet Pea, they escape back into the real world, and make their way out of the asylum after starting a fire, Baby Doll gives herself up so that Sweet Pea can escape, and eventually escapes herself with the lobotomization (which may or may not still let her live normally in the dreamscape).

With all of the girls escaped (three by death, one by being brain dead and one by running away) Gorski can now act to have Blue taken down by the mortal police (seeing as there are no girls under her custody anymore) and is eventually free when he somehow breaks their pledge due to being incarcerated (and probably excecuted as well) and so earns her own freedom. Sweet Pea makes her way to the bus station (as goaded by Baby Doll, probably at the behest of the Wise Man) where she recognizes the Wise Man as a fellow changeling, and he recognizes her and helps her out.

The Wise Man is God.
And the reason Babydoll went through what she did was to prepare her for her future, in which she'd do a great act of heroism that probably helped in destroying an Eldritch Abomination possibly Cthulhu (her outfit is sort of like bait.)

The Dance sequences are flashbacks to her dream of the events
She had these three or four dreams about getting various things and she has flash backs to these dreams while she's dancing and that's why the prespective changes. She's escaping into her dream world, and she in a sense predicted what was going to happen from her dreams/hullucianations before she 'dances'/dances/Dances for whoever.

Baby Doll gets lobotomized at the beginning
And the rest of the sequence is what she wished she had done in the time she was there and abilities she wanted to have and ladies she wanted to know and protect and rescue.

Its all in the mind of Moth Man
A person being dragged to an insane asylum in the fifties? ow could this escape detection?

Different visions of themselves
Blue see's the girl, like the way that they are dressed in the brothel, The girls see themselves as action girls, Vera see's herself as both sexy and comforting to the girls in her care, so we see the girls actions in the Brothel from Blues point of view of them being ladies to fantasise about, the girls see themselves as actions girls and want to fight these battles and win and that's symbolized by the dancing worlds. The first dance is how she came up with the idea for escaping

Baby Doll is an insane Channel Awesome reviewer
Once upon a time there lived a CA reviewer named Baby Doll. She was a american otaku who loved pop culture and Zack Snyder. So much that she had an unhealthy obsession with all of them when she was secretly a schizoid autistic. After getting into a fight with a troll she met, she killed or maimed him and had to be sent to jail. She was analyzed and put into the insane asylum but she treats it like a fanfic she made up, including the Downer Ending.

All the dance sequences happen in the same mountain range area

 * All the sequences seem to take place within mountain ranges, the first sequence being up in the mountains in a building and then there is a castle in the middle of the WW 1 sequences which they attack in the third sequence which happens in a mountain side which THEN has a train through it in the final "Dance" sequence..If not the exact area, in the same mountain side.