The sculk catalyst looks so much like the end portal frame- or perhaps, the end portal was designed to look like a sculk catalyst. But while sculk robs you of sight, and the Warden never had it, the end portal uses eyes. Endermen will kill you if you make eye contact.
The warden hides within the ground. A shulker pretends to be a block.
In the deep dark, nothing spawns but the Warden. In the warped forest, nothing spawns but endermen. Hoglins even fear warped fungus, as if they instinctively know to stay away.
I just realized I should have added purple in the warped forest and end overlap. The horizon fog in the warped forest is purple.
No music plays, in the warped forest. Only static, creepy ringing, creaking in the ground, and occasionally, distorted shrieking.
Putting aside what else shrieks in the game, since they're clearly not from the same thing. Did you know that the some of the ambience sounds in the warped forests are officially called Help and Here? The "here" ones are normal nether ambience, but "Help 1" contains a distorted scream.
"Warped forest"... interesting name, isn't it? Warped, twisted, corrupted. And just look at it. Clearly once a crimson forest, but changed by something. And yet, there's no sign of things that were once piglins, or things that were once hoglins. Only endermen. Unless, of course, the piglins are what's screaming, loud enough to be heard from... somewhere. Are they trapped within the blocks, like the souls within the other thing that shrieks?
Of the things that we know the origin of for sure, the vines have probably changed the most. They go up instead of down, now. With that and their appearance, they almost look more like the tendrils of a sculk sensor than the weeping vines they once were.
I put corruption as a link between the Warped Forest and the Deep Dark. But when you think of it, is the End not corrupted too?
The ender music isn't just static. You can clearly hear Overworld music, very distorted but still recognizable. The Endermen make those sounds.
So corruption should be in the center, unifying the three. With the teal of pearls and portals, of sculk and echo shards, of warped blocks. With not being a place of honor anymore. With the static of the warped ambience, of the end music, of the song that must be called Ancestry for a reason.
I've brought up endermen, colour schemes, sounds and lack thereof, sight and lack thereof, and corruption. All that's left is the end and the deep dark both being adjacent to the void.
You'd think it wasn't important. There's a wall of bedrock between the void and the sculk.
But the sculk can't have come from the other side of that portal. Ancient cities are as rare as strongholds, but it seems everywhere you go below y=0, you find sculk.
Nothing from the Deep Dark feels of this world. And it's always at the bottom of the world. Doesn't it make sense for it to have come from below the bedrock?
They say that's not end stone in the deep dark. But just because the similarities aren't from interaction with each other, doesn't mean they can't be from a third thing influencing them both at the same time. Leaving its mark through colours, entrapment, tendrils, static and silence, eyesight and blindness.
That does raise two more questions.
One, who was doing void-related things in what would become the warped forest, and why?
Two, how did the sculk come through the bedrock? Outside of warped forests, the nether ceiling is not teal, is not filled with static. Bedrock is stronger than that. So, are there weak points in the overworld's bedrock? Or did those who came before us find a way to break through it, and could only seal it when there were too many catalysts and shriekers to ever get rid of it all?
