Gravity Falls

About

Gravity Falls is an American animated Disney television series created by Alex Hirsch about two pre-teen twins, Dipper and Mabel Pines, and their adventures on a summer vacation at their Great Uncle Stan's home and tourist trap, the Mystery Shack, in Gravity Falls, Oregon. The series premiered on June 15th, 2012 and ran for two seasons before concluding with a one-hour finale episode on February 15th, 2016.

Premise

The show follows 12-year-old twin siblings Dipper (voiced by Jason Ritter) and Mabel Pines (voiced by Kristen Schaal) on summer vacation in the small town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. During this time, they live with their great “Grunkle” Stan (voiced by series creator Alex Hirsch), owner of The Mystery Shack, a museum and tourist trap. The twins quickly discover the town’s mysterious history, and along with the Mystery Shack’s employees Soos (also voiced by Hirsch) and Wendy (voiced Linda Cardellini), they set to uncover the town’s secrets.

Mysteries and Cryptography

One of the most well known elements of the show is the large amount of secret or hidden content seen in the show which adds to the "mystery" theme of the show. Fans are quick to decipher and uncover these elements, with many videos and posts on blogs, forums and Youtube about their findings. Secret coded messages are seen during the credits of each episode, with the message either referring to the episode itself or a future/upcoming episode.

Near the end of the opening credits, a whispering message can be heard. When played backwards, this voice can be heard to say "three letters back", a guide to decoding the decrypted messages found at the end of each episode. Starting with episode 7, a new voice appeared in the opening credits, this one saying "Switch A and Z", the new method used to decode the secret messages.

History

The show was created by Alex Hirsch, who previously worked on shows such as Fish Hooks and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack; Alex also serves as the voice actor of several characters in Gravity Falls. On June 15th, 2012, a preview of the pilot episode was aired on the Disney Channel in the United States, followed by the official premiere of the series on Disney XD on June 29th. Over the course of the next four years, the series ran for two seasons and a total of 40 episodes were produced; On February 15th, 2016, the series concluded with a one-hour special finale episode titled "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls," following a 68-hour marathon encore broadcast of the entire series in chronological order on Disney XD.

Reception

Gravity Falls' first season earned a rating of 8.5 on IMDB^[1]. The season premiere had viewers 3.4 million viewers, while the season finale had 3.2 million viewers.^[2][3] The show was renewed for a second season on July 29th, 2013.^[4] The show is generally remarked for having endearing characters, meticulous background design, and humor for children and adults alike.

Accolades

The show was nominated for a 2013 Teen Choice Award for Choice Animated show, a 2013 Kid's Choice Award for Favorite Animated Animal Sidekick (Waddles), and won a 2013 Annie Award for Voice Acting in an Animated Television or Other Broadcast Venue Production (Kristen Schaal).

Online Presence

Though Gravity Falls has no official social media presence, as of March 2014, its Facebook show page^[10] has over 45,000 likes. From August 21st, 2012 to May 30, 2013, Gravity Falls ran a series of sponsored posts on Buzzfeed^[12] that included content directly related to the show ("17 Gravity Falls GIFs To Brighten Up Your Day") and content that matched the spirit of the show ("12 Characters Who Had The Best Creature Friends"). Show extras and clips can be found on Disney Channel's official YouTube channel.^[11] Alex Hirsch often converses with fans on his personal Twitter which has accumulated roughly 160,000 followers.^[15] Brad Breeck is the composer of Gravity Falls and is another well known member behind the crew. Breeck has a twitter account where he posts links of his soundtracks with 2,385 followers.^[18] He also owns a SoundCloud with 4,008 followers where he uploads his soundtracks from Gravity Falls and various shows such as We Bare Bears. ^[19]

After the end of 2015, Tumblr's official Year in Review blog posted recap lists of different categories on the most popular subcultures and fandoms within the site. Gravity Falls was second place in the Most Reblogged Animated TV Shows category, falling behind Steven Universe, with top three being The Legend of Korra. ^[17]

Fandom

There are numerous fan sites offering news about the show including the Gravity Falls channel on Fan Pop^[13] and the Gravity Falls Wikia which has 1,356 pages^[14]. There are several Tumblr blogs dedicated to the show, such as fuckyeahgravityfalls^[5], gravityfalls^[6], and heckyeahgravityfalls.^[7] As of March 2014, the Fanfiction.net^[8] page for the show has more than 1,700 submissions and DeviantArt^[9] has over 32,000 submissions tagged Gravity Falls.

Fan Art

Cosplay

Still Shots & GIFs

Parapines

Parapines is the name used to describe fanfiction and fan art which feature crossovers between Gravity Falls and the stop-motion animated film Paranorman. Their frequent crossovers have been attributed to their close premiere dates (Paranorman was released on August 17th, 2012, about two months after the show premiered). They also both deal with children dealing with supernatural forces. Fan artists often cross the show with other fantasy series such as Doctor Who and Supernatural.

Characters

Bill Cipher

Bill Cipher is a dream demon character who acts as a major antagonist in the show. Since his debut appearance in the first season's finale episode "Dreamscapers," Bill has become one of the show's most popular characters celebrated by the fans for his memorable quotes.

Giffany

Giffany is a pixel art video game character who made her first appearance in the fifth episode of the second season, "Soos and the Real Girl." Since making her debut appearance, Giffany has gained a fan following due to her anime-inspired appearance and yandere personality traits.

Related Memes

Paper Jam Dipper

In the seventh episode of Gravity Falls titled "Double Dipper," which aired on August 10, 2012, Dipper creates a number of clones of himself with the use of a magical photocopier. During the printing of one of these clones, the machine suffers a paper-jam, causing the creation of the deformed Paper Jam Dipper.

Despite his limited screen time (the character dies before the end of the episode), the character became very popular with fans, with a number of pieces of fan-arts and other fan-works based on the character.

Dipper Goes To Taco Bell

Dipper Goes To Taco Bell is a fanfiction which takes place in the universe of Gravity Falls. The story and its contents became notorious within the fanbase for its highly gore-filled narrative. It is often compared to other notorious shockfics from the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom, such as Cupcakes and Sweet Apple Massacre.

The Author of the Journals, My Brother

The Author of the Journals, My Brother is a quote said by Stanley “Grunkle Stan” Pines while announcing the arrival of his twin brother, Stanford Pines, in the Gravity Falls episode “Not What He Seems." The climactic quote and scene (specifically the reveal shot) gained memetic traction and became something of a catchphrase in the fandom. The structure typically involves a mundane or irrelevant question, to which the answer “The author of the journals…my brother” is given.

Dipper Selfie

Dipper Selfie refers to the exploitable cropped image of Dipper Pines taking a selfie. The cropped image is superimposed on images showing dire situations both in the show and in other media, very similar to the Inappropriate Timing Spongebob Banner meme.

Search Interests

External References