Characters / Gravity Falls - Mystery Twins

Gravity Falls Main Character Index
The Mystery Shack (Dipper and Mabel Pines) | The Author | Main Antagonists | Adults of Gravity Falls | Youth of Gravity Falls | Creatures and other Oddities

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Soos: Dude, this is awesome. You two are like: The Mystery Twins!
Dipper: Don't call us that.

The main characters of the show, Dipper and Mabel, are a pair of Polar Opposite Twins who run into multiple mysteries and monsters during their vacation in the town of Gravity Falls.

Dipper Pines

Mason "Dipper" Pines

"Yes! Time to show Grunkle Stan how a real mystery hunter does it. Dipper out!"

Voiced By: Jason Ritter

"When life gives you lemons, extract the juice and use it to draw a treasure map in invisible ink. That really works! Seriously!"

Dipper is a curious, clever, inventive 12-year-old, nicknamed for a distinctive birthmark that resembles the Big Dipper constellation. With his twin sister Mabel along for the ride, he dares to uncover the secrets of Gravity Falls. He represents the pine tree on the Zodiac.

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• Acting Your Intellectual Age: A mild case, but Dipper is rather intelligent, and doesn't have many friends his own age. He prefers hanging out with 15-year-old Wendy, and the plot of "The Inconveniencing" is partially put in motion when he tries to befriend her group of friends.
• Achilles' Heel: Several of them...
  • His attraction to Wendy. It often gets him in more trouble since he tries SO hard to impress her, but often enough just winds up blowing it in some fashion or simply is unable to do anything about it at all. Doesn't help that most episodes showcasing it involve plots that force him to go against his desire to impress her in order to keep everyone safe.
  • A couple of episodes show he's pretty ticklish, just like most other boys his age. Oddly enough this isn't really used against him himself, but it DOES come into play when Bill Cipher steals his body, and Mabel, who knows this weakness, uses it to her advantage to beat Bill and get Dipper's body back.
• Action Survivor: He's not as tough in a fight as Mabel is and prefers keeping out of conflict as much as possible, but he's still more than capable of holding his own when he has to. In "Weirdmageddon Part 1", he's the only member of his family and one of the few people not captured or killed by Bill's nightmares during the three-day Time Skip: Gravity Falls had literally become Hell on Earth during those three days from an Apocalypse How. There was little food, no real shelter, the water had turned to blood, and Bill's drones and creatures were specifically looking for him.
• Adorably Precocious Child: He's 12 but tends to act much older, though there are times he acts exactly like the preteen he is.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Mabel occasionally calls him "Dipping Sauce" or "bro-bro".
  • Wendy sometimes addresses him as "Doofus" in the form of friendly banter.
• Agent Mulder: Dipper kicked off the plot when he found Journal #3 and immediately began using it to identify the supernatural in everything around him. Although she came around after the incident with the gnomes, Mabel indicates in "Tourist Trapped" that Dipper was like this even before he came across it.
  Mabel: Norman and I are going on a date at five o'clock and I'm going to be adorable and he's going to be dreamy and I'm not going to let you ruin it with one of your crazy CONSPIRACIES!!!
• All of the Other Reindeer: He is known to have been teased about his birthmark by other children until he started hiding it, which may be how he earned his nickname when he was no older than five.
• Always Someone Better: "Little Dipper" reveals that he's this to Mabel since he's usually beaten her at everything. The fact that she's now taller than him meant that she was finally first/better than him at something. Ironically, Alex Hirsch says he apparently sees Mabel as this to him.
• Animal-Eared Headband: In "Boss Mabel", Dipper wears a headband with wolf ears as part of his Pre-Teen Wolf Boy costume.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Highlighted in "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality": Dipper knows that the world can be an unfriendly place, but decides to live in it because it's the people that make it worth living.
• Appropriated Appellation: He disliked when Soos called him and Mabel "Mystery Twins" in "Headhunters". By "Irrational Treasure", it's grown on him.
• Author Avatar: He's based on Alex Hirsch from when he was a kid. To wit, during a series of tweets where Hirsch joked about going mad with power, he claimed he'd be able to add a self-insert OC into the show with no resistance before remembering that he already had one in the form of Dipper.
• Badass Adorable: Though you may not want to mention the adorable bit where he can hear you. Dipper takes on supernatural beings on a weekly basis and trumps them regularly. He and Soos also went toe to toe with Grunkle Stan in "Not What He Seems", a man who beat three government agents. Eventually lampshaded by Grunkle Ford when he asks Dipper to be his apprentice.
  Ford: How many other twelve-year-olds do you think are capable of doing what you've just done?
• Badass Boast: He says one in the trailer for the series finale.
  Dipper: Bill wants us to be afraid. He wants us to hide. Those are our friends, and if we don't do something, it'll be our entire universe! So I say we band together and take the fight to him! We are canceling the Weirdpocalypse!
• Badass Bookworm: Dipper is a very rational, observant, resourceful nerd who loves reading, whether it's the Journals, the newspaper, or a mystery novel. He's capable of putting up a fight all the same, and he gradually becomes more and more badass as the series goes on.
  • In "Headhunters", he has an epic sword fight with wax Sherlock Holmes, and even tricks him to go outside so that the sun can melt him. This kid right here, outwitted Sherlock bleedin' Holmes.
  • In "The Inconveniencing", he singlehandedly breaks into a convenience store after Robbie was unable to even open the door, by punching through metal with his bare hands. Everyone is rightly impressed.
  • In "Dipper vs. Manliness", he completes 49 tests of manliness from the testosterone-poisoned Manotaurs, then for the final test he fights a huge multi-headed bear monster with only a crude bone spear and wins...then stands up to the Manotaurs when he refuses to kill Multi-Bear.
  • In "Fight Fighters", Dipper manages to live even after getting beat up by Rumble McSkirmish, an Expy of Ryu from Street Fighter, and still stands up to Robbie's challenge afterward.
  • In "Boss Mabel", he managed to subdue the Gremloblin, a very powerful and dangerous creature over twice his size, with nothing but a mace and Journal 3.
  • In "Gideon Rises", he jumps off a cliff onto a giant robot to take down Gideon and save his sister.
  • A headline photo in a newspaper in "Northwest Mansion Mystery" was of Dipper rescuing Deputy Durland and Sheriff Blubs from a Vampire Bat.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: In "Northwest Mansion Mystery", when the Northwests insist that he wear a suit. He likewise dons a nice suit in "Boss Mabel".
• Badass Normal: Dipper relies entirely on his wits and his resourcefulness in order to defeat foes and overcome obstacles.
• Berserk Button: Do not call him adorable or imply that he isn't smart enough to solve something. In "Weirdmageddon Part 1", Bill Cipher nearly got punched in the eye for the latter.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Don't make him angry. He's not afraid to step up when someone he loves is in danger.
• Big Brother Instinct: Although the younger twin, if his sister is in danger, his usually cool head goes straight out the window. Sometimes he takes it a little too far.
• Book Smart: He's confirmed/hinted to be academically striving out of and in-universe respectively, has shown obscure knowledge of history ranging from American to Belgian Martinism, can process his own photos and is rather well-spoken for his age. and is into the in-universe game Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons, which is shown to be math-and-science heavy (to an outright ridiculous degree, in fact). Notably, Mabel always backs up his being the formative "brains" of a group, and Alex Hirsch's Reddit AMA mentions Mabel secretly being jealous that Dipper's always been more academically successful, which is supported by Journal 3 having a passing reference to him being a three-time middle school spelling bee finalist.
• Blue Is Heroic: A courageous, resourceful Kid Hero who wears a blue and white hat and a blue vest.
• Boyish Shorts: Wears short grey pants for nearly the entire show, paired with sneakers and white athletic socks. He's a Kid Hero actively running around the woods and also younger and more immature than teens and other characters that he comes in conflict with. This puts him in contrast not only with his adult Grunkle Stan, but with deceptive, conniving Gideon Gleeful (who is certainly not childlike) and aloof teenage Robbie (who sees him as a child tagging along with the teens).
• Brains and Brawn: Usually the Brains to Mabel's Brawn, but both he and Mabel function as the Brains to Soos's, Wendy's, or Stan's Brawn, depending on who's with them at the time. On a rare occasion, Dipper proves he's fully capable of fulfilling the Brawn dynamic himself, but only if you really push him.
• Brainy Brunette: A male example. He has brown hair and is one of the most intelligent characters in the series. He's extremely strategic and quick-witted, adept at solving problems and mysteries, and thoroughly enjoys the intricate gameplay of Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons. His sister also falls under this trope, though her intellect is more creativity-based.
• Broken Pedestal: After discovering that his Grunkle Stan was not the real Stanford Pines in Not What He Seems, Dipper lost all faith in him, to the point where he also believed the machine that Stan activated was going to destroy the world. Fortunately in A Tale of Two Stans, after learning Grunkle Stan's backstory, Dipper ultimately forgave him.
• Brother–Sister Team: With Mabel.
• Brutal Honesty: Unlike Mabel, he often has no problem telling it like it is. In "Northwest Mansion Mystery", he bluntly calls Pacifica "the worst" right to her face. In "The Stanchurian Candidate", he tells Stan in no uncertain terms that he doesn't think the latter would do well if he ran for mayor.
  Mabel: BLAARRGG! (Flails her arms) He asked me out again and I didn't know how to say no.
  Dipper: Like this: no.
• Butt-Monkey: Dipper has his moments.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Discussed; according to Soos, his jokes are terrible.
• The Cassandra: Almost no one believes him about the strange things going on in Gravity Falls. Subverted after "Society of the Blind Eye", though, since the memory-censoring Society of the Blind Eye was taken down. By "Northwest Mansion Mystery", the paranormal is relatively common knowledge in the town, and Dipper's adventures even make it into the newspaper.
• Character Development: His time in Gravity Falls has changed him greatly:
  • Throughout most of season 1 and in the first episode of season 2, Dipper would use the journal to try and fix whatever problem he had, either to get back at someone else or be taken seriously. However, for the rest of season 2, he stops doing such rash actions after experiencing the disastrous results that came with them.
  • In an earlier episode he states that he could never win in a fight, but Dipper managed to protect Ford by taking on an alien machine.
• Character Tics:
  • He has a habit of clicking his pen repeatedly when in deep thought, or when very excited.
  • He also has an Oral Fixation, and has been seen chewing pens until they burst while thinking. In "Sock Opera", it's revealed by Mabel that on occasion, when Dipper gets incredibly sleep-deprived, he will unknowingly eat his own shirt.
  • He also tends to scratch his head quite often, particularly when nervous or unsure.
• Chick Magnet: No really, this actually happened in "Roadside Attraction". After taking advice from Stan on practicing to talk to girls, he manages to get three girls to give him their email addresses without making a joke of himself, and they all seem eager to keep in touch with him. This increases his confidence, so much so that he manages to unintentionally woo Candy. However, Stan's advice backfires when all the girls he talked to catch him on a date with Candy, thus his charm to get them went as quickly as it came...for now. There's also the fact that during a time travel incident, a younger Wendy thought he was cute. Then there's Pacifica who shows signs of having feelings for him, originating from the episode "Northwest Mansion Mystery".
• Child Prodigy: Dipper is undoubtedly a genius, which is how he is able to understand the game Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: He often plays this to Mabel with varying degrees of success, although on some occasions he's just as goofy as she is.
  Dipper: I just feel like I'm one puzzle piece away from figuring out everything.
  Mabel: Don't worry, Dipper. [picks up Waddles] Lord Mystery Ham is on the case! "I play by me own rules! Wot wot?"
  Dipper: I don't know why I tell you things.
• The Comically Serious: Anytime he attempts to look smart and mature, expect it to be ruined by Mabel's or Soos' antics or his own hidden goofiness. Take a look at these images◊ for proof◊.
• Coming of Age Story: Several of Dipper's experiences in Gravity Falls include learning about himself, defending a first crush, and boldly standing up for what is right, all elements of this trope.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Dipper sees supernatural secrets and hidden conspiracies wherever he looks. In "Tourist Trapped", Mabel asserts that he's been like this even before they came to Gravity Falls. Considering the town he's in, however, he more often than not is Properly Paranoid.
• Control Freak: Justified. Dipper's over-attention to detail, general trust issues, and occasional irritation with Mabel and Soos lead him to be insistent on his own direction of things. However, when the other two members of the group are a Cloudcuckoolander and a Manchild, someone has to take charge or nothing will ever get done. "Double Dipper" deconstructs Dipper's Control Freak tendencies by pitting him against himself with devastating consequences to his social life.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Had Dipper just told Mabel about the dimensional rift and what it could do, then Weirdmageddon may never have happened.
• Crazy-Prepared: Dipper brings seventeen disposable cameras for a monster hunt in "The Legend of the Gobblewonker". This is because he's smart enough to realize that cameras keep getting destroyed or lost during monster hunts. Sure enough, by the end, he was down to one camera.
• Crush Blush: He's very prone to doing this when talking to or about Wendy.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Due to the art style it's usually impossible to tell the characters' eye colors, but Dipper's are brown as confirmed by Alex Hirsch.
• Cute Bruiser: Not as much as Mabel, but he has enough moments to qualify: punching through an HVAC cooling tower that was almost his size, giving Gideon a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, going behind Stan to semi-playfully give him a half-nelson (which the latter even compliments), etc.
• The Cynic: A mild example in contrast with Mabel's eternal idealism. Dipper nearly always suspects something to go wrong, or things are not what they appear. This stems from his Properly Paranoid side. It's because of this that Dipper is grounded enough to see reality.
• Deadpan Snarker: Quick-witted and calm, normally in response to the silliness going on around him.
• Deal with the Devil: In "Sock Opera", Dipper desperately and begrudgingly makes a deal with the dream demon Bill Cipher. The laptop containing the secrets he's been looking for is about to erase all data due to too many failed entries. Bill appears in the nick of time, requesting a puppet for his end of the bargain. This lets Bill take Dipper as his puppet.
• Death Glare: Occasionally, when he's severely unamused or even outright pissed. His usual targets for the "unamused" part are Stan and Mabel.
• Decoy Protagonist: Happens in "Northwest Mansion Mystery": he acts as the main character for the majority of the episode before falling victim to the Monster of the Week, leaving Pacifica to save the day.
• Delusions of Eloquence: Dipper admits in "Society of the Blind Eye" that he sometimes uses big words he doesn't actually know the meaning of.
• Demonic Possession: Gets his body stolen by Bill in "Sock Opera". In order to communicate with Mabel, he had to possess a sockpuppet of his likeness.
• Determinator:
  • In "Weirdmageddon Part 1", he gets the crap knocked out of him when Wendy's truck overturns. Upon spilling out of the side door, covered in bruises, he looks up to see how close he is to Mabel's prison bubble and starts dragging himself toward it.
  • In "Weirdmageddon Part 2", he resists Mabel's prison, a Lotus-Eater Machine that grants the captive's deepest desires, something that Bill stated required a will of titanium to do to rescue Mabel.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Like Mabel, any form of romance goes nowhere with Dipper. Wendy lets him down easy because of the age gap, Candy loses interest in him and the friendship with Pacifica just has some romantic undertones that's open to interpretation.
• Didn't Think This Through: Despite being The Smart Guy, Dipper tends to make some foolish decisions.
  • In "Boss Mabel", When Dipper finally gets the chance to bring an actual creature to the Mystery Shack, he decides to capture a dangerous monster called the Gremloblin. Once the creature shows two tourists their worst nightmares, Dipper realizes that he made a huge mistake.
  • In "Scary-oke", Dipper attempted to prove to agents Powers and Trigger that there is real evidence of paranormal activity by randomly chanting a forbidden spell from the journal without reading what it could do. The end result caused Dipper to accidentally unleash a Zombie Hoard.
• Distinguishing Mark: The birthmark is shaped like the Big Dipper on his forehead.
• Distracted by the Sexy: More attractive than sexy (considering that he's 12 and she's 15), but he's repeatedly distracted by Wendy performing mundane actions, such as laughing or tossing her hair.
  • In general, he has a habit of messing things up with girls for this reason, most notably in Roadside Attraction.
  You're funny. And cute. I mean, not cute. I mean, you're not not-cute. Phew, let me start over. My name is Dopper.
• Distressed Dude:
  • In "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel", where Gideon uses magic to capture him and tries to cut him in half with sheep shears.
  • He gets captured by Probilatator in "Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons", who intends to eat his brain.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Deconstructed. One of his reoccurring flaws is that he constantly seeks validation and acceptance, usually to the detriment of himself and others. A lot of his mistakes stem from his fear that he's actually unwanted or useless to the people around him, which Stan and Mabel's frequent Innocently Insensitive comments don't exactly help with. As shown in "Society of the Blind Eye", he sees his intelligence as his only worthwhile quality and doesn't know who he is without it, and thus takes being disregarded as not smart enough very badly. Unfortunately for him, his attempts to prove he's worthy of the acceptance and appreciation he desires are usually what causes the episode's conflict. Everything he's learned ultimately pays off in the end, and he's recognized as the hero of Gravity Falls.
• Embarrassing First Name: According to the Bill Cipher AMA, this applies to Dipper, being one of the reasons he decided to adopt the nickname. According to Alex Hirsch, his true name is similar to Mabel's in a way. According to the Defictionalization of Journal 3, Dipper's real name is Mason.
• Everyone Can See It:
  • His crush on Wendy wasn't exactly subtle because Mabel, Soos, and even Wendy herself were able to figure it out almost immediately because of how Dipper spoke to her.
  • Even though this has been debated and reduced to Ship Tease, he's very bad at lying to Mabel about his interactions with Pacifica. In Journal 3; Dipper wrote his personal thoughts about Pacifica and it's written with romantic undertones. Dipper did eventually cross this out, obviously having written it absent-mindedly and he wanted to cross it out before anyone could read it.
• Exhausted Eye Bags: He sports these at all times. They're so bad that even Mabel, Candy, Grenda, and Waddles's bodies get them when he switches bodies with them in "Carpet Diem". They somehow get worse in "Sock Opera", after he stays up for days trying to hack into a laptop.
• Facial Markings: Dipper gets his nickname from a birthmark on his forehead shaped like the Big Dipper. Interestingly, children being "marked" with an affinity for the supernatural by being born with stars on their foreheads is an old Fairy Tale trope (Aarne-Thompson 407) that's survived into modern fantasy literature (Smith of Wootton Major, The Riddle-Master of Hed).
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Dipper's desire to be taken more seriously often puts himself and others in harm's way for much of season one, culminating in the zombie rampage in "Scary-oke".
  • Dipper's severe lacking confidence and self-worth and his general insecurity over whether he is actually valued by his friends and family have driven many of the conflicts centered around his character. Actually, this is likely the direct cause of the above flaw.
  • He also at times can have a defeatist mentality due to said insecurities, something that can damage his ability to fight back in tough circumstances. He's so far only been able to overcome this mentality when others are in danger and need him, something that again ties in with his doubts over his worth.
• Fire-Forged Friends: A Double Subversion in "Northwest Mansion Mystery". At first, it seems he and Pacifica are becoming friends as a result of saving her from the ghost, but when he learns the ghost was haunting the Northwest family for holding extravagant parties and not keeping their promise of inviting the townsfolk and that they knew this all along, he reverts and says she's just as bad as her parents. Later still, however, after seeing that she's genuinely upset by her family's history, he makes amends and the two get past their animosity.
• Foil:
  • To Mabel, the two heavily contrast in personality, maturity, goals, and philosophical outlook. While Dipper is cynical and struggles with self-confidence issues despite sporadic bouts of anger, he can be very determined when push comes to shove. Mabel, on the other hand, tends to look on the bright side, has an inflated view of her own importance, and can totally lose it when things don't go her way.
  • To the Author, his Grunkle Ford. They are interested in the paranormal and are dedicated to unlocking the secrets of Gravity Falls. The difference is that Ford mostly favors researching independently, while Dipper prefers having his friends and family by his side when going on adventures.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The responsible to Mabel's foolishness. Dipper is always the one most concerned about the others and his own safety, worried about the implications of what will occur (except on occasions where his pride blinds him) and prepared to deal with the consequences. His big-picture anxieties and Mabel's small-picture optimism begin to clash more in season 2.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Realist. Dipper is mostly reasonably cynical, he always suspects something will go wrong and is distrusting till proven a reason to trust. However, he's also not so far gone that he can't appreciate the wonder of the things they find or be taken by the sheer joy of activities he likes.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic: Independent, organized, analytic and occasionally beside himself, but ultimately having emotional self-discipline.
• Generation Xerox: Discussed in "A Tale of Two Stans". Dipper has similar interests and talents to his Great-Uncle Ford, while Mabel more closely follows in their Grunkle Stan's footsteps. Mabel is afraid that this means she and Dipper will eventually grow apart, while Stan is worried that Dipper will end up in danger because of his obsession with the supernatural, just like Ford did. While Dipper tries to reassure Mabel, she's still worried—and, in the very next episode, we see that Mabel's incessant teasing of Dipper (shown, in "Little Dipper", to stem from her own insecurities) has already begun to drive a wedge between them.
• Genius Slob: Robbie states that he wears the same pair of shorts every day. He even wears the same shirt and shorts when sleeping. During "Carpet Diem" he argues that he's too busy and has too much to do to waste time with laundry.
• Gleeful and Grumpy Pairing: The usually snarky and serious Dipper tends to be paired with either his cheerful and silly twin sister Mabel or fellow goofball Soos.
• Good Is Not Soft: A trait he shares with Mabel, albeit in a different way. Mabel is an All-Loving Heroine who tries to see the best in people and treat everyone nicely regardless of how they treat her, but she has her limits. Dipper, despite being a compassionate and friendly Nice Guy, is more cynical and has significantly less tolerance for bad behavior. He also has no reservations about treating antagonistic people accordingly.
  • Before Pacifica Took a Level in Kindness, Dipper had no qualms about springing the knowledge that her ancestor is a fraud on her and gladly rubbing it in her face.
  • In "The Love God", while Mabel expresses sympathy for Robbie after seeing him in pain over his break-up with Wendy, Dipper leaves with everyone else and insinuates that Robbie's Jerkass personality makes him deserving of his current miserable state.
• Good with Numbers:
  • "The Time Traveler's Pig" shows him doing complex equations◊. Though the math he uses is a lot simpler than it looks (sums, exponents, and a dizzying amount of bracketed functions), the equations are ultimately nonsense (though if he bothered to define his variables, he might have been on to something).
  • The titular Tabletop RPG in "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons" uses an extremely convoluted and complex mathematical system for standard play. Naturally, Dipper loves it.
• Guile Hero: Dipper commonly relies on his wits and cunning. He's also not above manipulation and trickery to achieve his goals or defeat his opponents. For instance, in the episode "Headhunters", he tricks wax Sherlock Holmes onto the roof of the Mystery Shack so that the rising sun will melt him. Sherlock then exclaims that he was "outsmarted by a child in short pants."
• Guilty Pleasures: In "Dipper vs. Manliness", Dipper is embarrassed to admit that he enjoys listening to Icelandic pop sensation BABBA, an Expy of ABBA.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Funnily enough, the Disney wiki actually describes Dipper as "sometimes [having] a short temperament." It can only really be purely identified as anger whenever he and Grunkle Stan come to blows for whatever reason or when it gets lampshaded as a quick joke (i.e. Stan telling him not to get "short" with Mabel in "Little Dipper" or when Mabel can't help but find his pissed-off face when he possesses a puppet in "Sock Opera" funny), while other times it's hard to tell whether it's a genuine emotional outburst or just a justified case of stress. That said, "The Time Traveler's Pig", "Land Before Swine", "Dreamscaperers", "Sock Opera", and, to a lesser extent, "Weirdmageddon Part 2", "Not What He Seems" and "Northwest Mansion Mystery" all have him be noticeably confrontational.
• Half-Identical Twins: With Mabel. Downplayed, as they dress and act differently and have different haircuts.
• Hammerspace Hair: Implied by Mabel, who mentions in Journal 3 that she tried to comb his hair once, only for the comb to get stuck and somehow permanently buried. Ironically, he actually does have a perfectly-kept hairstyle.
• Has a Type: Redheads and girls with redhead features. He's attracted to the very redheaded Wendy, and the Bill Cipher AMA reveals that his Internet history consists of "A LOT OF PICTURES OF REDHEADS!" In "Roadside Attraction", the first girl that Dipper approaches once Stan gives him girl advice has reddish hair and freckles, not too unlike Wendy.
• Hates Being Called Cute: Being condescendingly referred to as "adorable" gets him miffed.
• Heartbroken Badass: Downplayed at the end of "Into the Bunker". Having confessed his feelings to Wendy, Dipper is left feeling awkward and itchy for a moment by the fact that she doesn't reciprocate, but the two quickly agreed to remain friends and leave on a high note. Though after she bikes away, Dipper looks despondent and describes how he feels about all that's transpired as "so amazing and so terrible all at the same time."
• He Cleans Up Nicely: Looks surprisingly dapper whenever he wears more formal clothing, which happens twice in the series; once while he briefly substituted for Stan as Mr. Mystery in "Boss Mabel", and again when he investigated the haunting at Northwest Mansion in "Northwest Mansion Mystery".
• The Hero: Along with Mabel, he's the central character of the story and series.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Despite having done some seriously amazing things for a twelve-year-old and occasionally acting pretty cocky, Dipper actually has trouble seeing anything good about himself besides his brains. He also has the awful tendency to internalize this and bottle it up until the absolute worst moments, because he genuinely thinks his family and friends would rather laugh at him than take his feelings and concerns seriously (as shown in the story he made up in "Bottomless Pit").
• Heroic Will Power: He alone is able to resist the lures of Bill's prison bubble, while everyone else succumbed easily.
• Hero with a Unique Name: Dipper goes by an unusual nickname as his real name is never spoken on screen. His actual name, Mason, isn't shown until Journal 3.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He can play the sousaphone.
  • If his drawings in Journal 3 are any indication, Dipper is actually a pretty talented artist. He also sketched a very intricate drawing of Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls: Dipper and Mabel's Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun!.
  • It isn't explored much, but Dipper has a notable affinity and finesse for video games. He beats Wendy at an arcade game called Fight Fighters in the episode of the same name, and he's shown intently playing a handheld game in "Tourist Trapped" during the How We Got Here montage. In Gravity Falls: Dipper's and Mabel's Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun!, he includes a Tiger Fist arcade game in his "ultimate hideout".
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Invoked trope. Dipper tries to become this to flirt with girls in "Roadside Attraction", but he never actually pulls it off since he's pretty genuine and friendly to all the girls he talks to (the worst thing he actually does when talking to them almost drops a girl's camera, and the "jerk" comment there is a joke). When the flirting attempts backfire on him he stops trying this.
• Hopeless Suitor: His crush on Wendy.
• I Want to Be a Real Man: The plot of "Dipper vs. Manliness" is Dipper's quest to learn masculinity from the Manotaurs. Eventually, he learns to be his own man and not let the expectations of others define him.
• Iconic Outfit: Dipper is always seen in a blue cap with a pine tree on it; and his orange shirt, blue vest, and grey shorts. Lampshaded by Robbie, who teases him for wearing the same shorts every day.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Much like how Mabel is handed the Jerkass Ball whenever she becomes preoccupied with a cute guy, Dipper occasionally gets the Idiot Ball when trying to hang out with or impress Wendy.
  • He also makes a deal with Bill because he wants to know the password of a computer. It’s like he forgot that Bill previously worked with his enemy Gideon to invade Stan’s mind and that the author of the journal strongly discouraged association with Bill. (Though, in Dipper's defense, he WAS extremely sleep-deprived and under pressure due to the laptop being about to delete its data, and had already demonstrated earlier in the episode that, in his right mind, he wouldn't have said yes.)
• Improbable Hairstyle: Perhaps unintentionally, he has the most unique hairstyle of the main cast, having a lilypad-shaped cowlick that's abnormally bushy, almost to the point of bordering on a Jewfro/afro. The only person that comes even slightly close to matching his hairstyle patterns is Ford, whose maintenance of hair generally varies based on both his age and what dimension he's in— him and Stan had virtually identical hair shapes as a child, for example, but his hair now is a slightly-rounded mullet. While the frizziness of his hair is suggested to be mental, similar to his Exhausted Eye Bags (in "Carpet Diem", Mabel's hair gets more wavy after after the two switch bodies), the hairstyle itself is never stylized on-screen, only changing in a couple of Imagine Spots or simple drawings.
• Improbable Infant Survival: For every brush with death he's worked his way out of in the series proper, a conversation with Stan in Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets reveals that Dipper was born with his umbilical cord (or possibly Mabel's) wrapped around his neck, nearly killing him via asphyxiation.
• In a Single Bound: After training with the manotaurs Dipper gains a Downplayed (but still quite impressive for a twelve-year-old) version.
• The Insomniac: Tends to forget sleep when more pressing concerns engage his attention, as highlighted in "Sock Opera" when he pulled a string of all-nighters in an attempt to crack the laptop code.
  Mabel: Don't stay up all night, Dipper. Last time you got this sleep-deprived you tried to eat your own shirt.
  Dipper: (spits out shirt collar)
• Insufferable Genius: Light example. He's one of the more intelligent members of the main cast and (often) shows a lot more common sense. His neurotics can be irritating, however, and he can be a bit prideful if over-aware of his logic to cover up his low self-esteem, not to mention he's an apt Deadpan Snarker.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: Downplayed or Zig-Zagged. He has few qualms about showing his emotions (especially in comparison to his Grunkle Stan), he tends to eschew violence and use it as a last resort, he's the Brains to Mabel's Brawn, and he likes girly Icelandic pop sensation BABBA. However, his affinity for the aforementioned music group is treated as a Guilty Pleasure, and many of the qualities that form the crux of his character are traditionally masculine; he's very brave, rational, resourceful, and he takes the initiative on adventures. He also adapts to his training with the Manotaurs fairly quickly, he enjoys bonding and swapping macho banter with Stan, and hygiene isn't exactly his strong suit.
• It's All My Fault: Stan and Mabel's constant teasing exacerbates his insecurities, and when coupled with Dipper's own frequent mistakes and often brutally-learned episodic lessons, this eventually causes him to have serious emotional and confidence issues. Over time this evolves into an increasing tendency for Dipper to hold himself accountable for everything that goes wrong and equally increasing distance between him and the members of his family.
• Jerkass Ball:
  • In "Land Before Swine", Dipper vocally complains about Soos' frequent mistakes throughout the episode and eventually snaps at him, blaming Soos for getting them lost and deeply hurting his feelings when Dipper tells him he didn't want to bring him along.
  • Dipper shows shades of this at the beginning of "The Love God" when he joins Wendy's friends in treating Thompson like a Butt-Monkey.
  • In "Scary-oke", after Government agents Powers and Trigger visit Gravity Falls to investigate any supernatural occurrences, Dipper becomes infatuated with them. This prompts Dipper to do anything to get Powers and Trigger's attention. Even against the wishes of Grunkle Stan and Mabel. When Dipper meets up with the two agents, he tries to prove that there IS abnormal activity by foolishly chanting a forbidden spell from the journal. This ultimately causes a zombie hoard to appear, and Dipper is rightfully called out for his actions.
  • Dipper's desire to leave Grunkle Stan's mind in "Dreamscaperers" as quickly as possible so as to find the combination to the Shack becomes an outright callous disregard towards protecting the entire Shack and Bill from Stan's mind after Dipper sees Stan seemingly calling him "weak" and an "utter embarrassment," without even bothering to find out the full context. Thankfully, after stumbling upon the memory again when trying to find a way out and seeing that Stan was actually talking about himself and how he pushes Dipper so as to toughen him up and not see him have to hear those same things he was told as a kid, he craftily makes his rescue and joins the others in shooing Bill away.
• Jerkass Realization:
  • He has one in "Little Dipper" when Mabel tells him that the reason she'd been teasing him relentlessly about his shorter height is that he bests her at most activities (chess, checkers, ping pong, etc.), and tends to rub it in her face. He apologetically says he feels like a "big jerk", laughs at Mabel's retort, and the two of them reconcile.
  • In "Scary-oke", after Dipper accidentally unleashed a hoard of zombies just to impress Agent Powers and Trigger, he realized how his selfish act ultimately endangered Mabel and Soos, who was just turned into a zombie. Dipper even tried to apologize to his sister, just as he is being attacked by a zombie.
    Dipper: Mabel, I'm sorry! Ahhhhhh!
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Definitely not quite to Grunkle Stan's level on the "jerk" part, but his overlapping vices tend to show in his short-temperament and occasionally letting his grudges blind him to others' safety. That said, it rarely, if ever, lasts an entire episode, and he'll stop at nothing to do the right thing and remain the deeply compassionate person he truly is.
• Just Friends: He has a crush on Wendy, who considers him a great friend that really livened up the summer but nothing more. When he finally confesses to her, she casually admits she always knew, but he's just too young for her.
• Kid Detective: He's 12, and he's investigating the weirdness in Gravity Falls.
• Kid Hero: Despite being only 12 years old, Dipper regularly saves the day on his adventures. Saving his great-uncle's brain from demons, defending outcasts from overbearing Manotaurs, and beating up a giant robot is all in a day's work.
• Kissing Warm-Up: According to Mabel (assuming she wasn't just exaggerating), Dipper's been known to kiss a pillow with Wendy's face drawn on it.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Sometimes crosses into this when people pick on Mabel, holding offenses against her far more personally than Mabel herself does and holding long grudges against those who actually manage to hurt her. Even mere insults to Mabel matter more to him.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": When Dipper finally meets the Author of the Journals, he can barely contain his excitement. In "A Tale of Two Stans", he lets out a high-pitched squeal of joy when Ford's story reaches the point where he began writing in the Journals.
  The Author: I began to keep a Journal.
  Dipper: (Squee) THE JOURNALS!!! ...sorry, sorry. I just got excited there. About the Journals. ...keep talking.
  The Author: I began to keep a Journal—
  Dipper: (squee)
  The Author: …Just going to ignore that.
• Laugh of Love:
  • In "The Inconveniencing", Dipper chuckles nervously while bidding Wendy goodbye as she leaves with her friends, which results in the following exchange:
    Mabel: Uh-oh!
    Dipper: [defensively] What?
    Mabel: [pokes Dipper in his cheek] Somebody's in lo-ove!
  • In "The Deep End", when Wendy says that being lifeguard lets her have the best seat in the house, Dipper remarks "Yeah, you do!" and laughs for an overly-long time. Lampshaded when he says in a mortified whisper, "I've been laughing for too long."
  • In "Northwest Mansion Mystery" Dipper and Pacifica laughing together on two occasions make for quite a bit of ship tease.
• Like Father, Like Son: Well, Grunkle Stan isn't really Dipper's father, but close enough. He sure did pick up a few things from Stan.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Towards Mabel, especially apparent in the final episodes. When she realizes how much school is going to suck and that she'll have to leave her friends behind, she consoles herself with the knowledge that at least she'll have Dipper by her side...only to find out that Dipper has taken up Ford's offer to be his apprentice and stay in Gravity Falls while she goes back home. The possibility of them being separated is one of her motivations for trying to prevent the future by freezing time (she fails, but it results in The End of the World as We Know It instead).
• Living MacGuffin: He is one of ten who can truly defeat Bill Cipher.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Being with Wendy tends to cause lapses in his sense of judgment.
  • In "Double Dipper", Dipper concocts a long-winded master plan to try to win Wendy's affection, rather than simply talk to her as a person. To accomplish it, he creates several clones of himself to do the work and ensure everything goes off without a hitch. This backfires miserably; Dipper finally realizes that he and Wendy get along great if he just talks to her normally, but the clones don't experience the same epiphany and remain determined to follow the ridiculous plan, even if they have to circumvent Dipper to do it.
  • In "Summerween", during his overzealous attempt to try and impress Wendy, Dipper throws a wheelbarrow of candy into some bushes without checking to see what was behind it. Turns it out was a cliff leading into a creek and all the candy winds up dumped into it. If that wasn't bad enough, the kids were just one candy short of getting their goal (which Mabel managed to acquire) and the Trickster comes calling soon after. Throughout the episode, Dipper cares more about going to a party that Wendy will be at than the fact that he and his friends might die.
  • In "Into the Bunker", all Dipper has to do is confess his feelings to Wendy and Mabel will open the door to safety. With a giant monster bearing down on him, Dipper chooses to grab Wendy and flee in the opposite direction in hopes of finding some other exit rather than just saying the words that will solve everything.
• Made of Iron: His noodle arms may make him look fragile, but he's survived a beating from Rumble McSkirmish, almost was able to walk off the ordeal Bill put him through in "Sock Opera" (he admitted to desperately needing a hospital visit), has bashed his head against numerous hard objects, being sent flying the whole way (trees, UFOs, sky trams, etc.), survived and resisted a car crash that even Wendy couldn't take without immediately being knocked unconscious in "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape from Reality", brushed off a literal wolf chewing on his leg, and as if all that's not enough, survived being asphyxiated via umbilical cord not even five minutes out of the womb! This even gets lampshaded by Bill in the former episode:
  Bipper: Boy, these arms are durable!
• Magnetic Hero: In spite of his own cynicism, he's willing to see the good in people and attract even the most unlikely of friends throughout the series. Of all people, Pacifica Northwest and Gideon Gleeful redeemed themselves because of Dipper.
• Meaningful Echo: The way he says that "everything hurts" after he gets his body back from Bill in "Sock Opera" neatly mirrors the way Stan said the same line after fighting off a horde of zombies with a baseball bat and brass knuckles in "Scary-oke", right down to clutching his back and hunching over slightly.
• Meaningful Name: His nickname comes from a birthmark on his forehead that's shaped like the Big Dipper. His real name, Mason, is also one of these, as it's pointed out that the freemasons are an incredibly famous secret society. It matches with the Stans' both stone-themed names, as 'Mason' means 'Worker with stone'. He worked with both of them. And also, all of them are not easily swayed: hard as stone. There's also the fact that Mason and Mabel's names are also counterparts to Stanly and Stanford.
• Mirror Character: A major plot point of "Dreamscaperers" is that, despite being frequently at odds with each other and having entirely different interests, Stan and Dipper are actually a lot alike, something Stan is at least partially aware of. They're both highly determined individuals with low self-esteem that they cover up with prideful bluster, cynicism and irritability. They're both willing to do some pretty underhanded things to achieve their goals, but they ultimately prioritize their family before everything else. It's also made clear later that both feel like the lesser-liked and lesser-valued of their respective twin sets.
• Morality Pet:
  • Shares this role with Mabel to Stan. While he and Stan don't always get along and Mabel is closer to their great uncle, Dipper does bring out Stan's softer side. It's his and Mabel's teamwork that makes Stan and Ford realize how petty their antagonism towards each other is and work together to stop Bill.
  • Is this to Pacifica in "Northwest Mansion Mystery". He ends up acting as her conscience and in turn, Pacifica does respect him and didn't argue when he spoke his mind.
• Muscle Angst: It's most prominent in "Dipper vs Manliness" and "Fight Fighters", but his perceived lack of physical prowess does bother him a bit. This begins to decrease after the Season 1 finale, and by the middle of Season 2, he's gained enough confidence in himself that he's moved past it, enough to more regularly take on daunting physical tasks.
• Nephewism: His and Mabel's summer caretaker is their great uncle aka "Grunkle Stan". Their parents are known to be alive and well, they just sent them there to get them out of their hair for the summer. Stan is more like a surrogate grandfather than anything else, so would it be called "Great-Nephewism?"
• Nerds Love Tough Schoolwork: Despite actual homework being out of the *ahem* equation, his favorite RPG, Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons, uses highly complex math as part of its game mechanics, to the point that Mabel disparagingly compares it to homework.
• Never My Fault: Downplayed in the Lost Legends story, Don't Dimension It, where it was shown that Dipper placed a sign next to a large crack caused by the dimensional rift called, Mabel's Fault. Signifying that Mabel alone caused Weirdmageddon to happen. Even though Dipper withheld information about the rift.
• Nice Guy: While Dipper is flawed, he is usually friendly and kindhearted.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In "The Deep End", Dipper becomes a pool assistant to spend more time with lifeguard Wendy. However, his sister inadvertently causes trouble by trying to rescue merboy Mermando, stealing pool supplies to do so and smashing two holes in the fence. Given the choice between his job and Mabel's latest crush, Dipper surrenders the pool's megaphone so that Mermando's voice can reach the ocean. This costs him his job.
• No-Respect Guy: Tends to be made fun of by those closest, despite usually being the most down-to-earth one. He's becoming a deconstruction, as this treatment has fed into a lot of his insecurities throughout the series, particularly in "Little Dipper", "Bottomless Pit!", and "Dreamscaperers". By "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons", Mabel seems to realize that her and Stan's constant jokes at Dipper's expense are driving him away from them now that he isn't entirely reliant on them for the company and has finally found someone with his interests who doesn't make fun of him.
• No Social Skills: He's noticeably awkward and has a hard time making friends. He gets better (even if he's still equal parts "awkward and sweaty").
• Not So Above It All: He tries hard to act like an adult and radiate a serious persona... but he's still a kid at heart. His inner goofball often comes out when he's with Mabel or Soos.
• Obsessed Are The List Makers: In "Double Dipper", Dipper makes a long, complicated checklist of steps toward his goal of dancing with Wendy, the girl he has a crush on. Items on the list include wearing fitted clothing, describing how she smells, and making her laugh.
  Mabel: Why can't you just walk up and talk to her like a normal person?
  Dipper: Step 9, sister! (points to Step 9 on list: "Talk to her like a normal person")
• Occult Detective: Gravity Falls is a very unusual place, and Dipper's trying to get to the bottom of its mysteries.
• Other Me Annoys Me: In Weirdmageddon II: Escape From Reality, Dipper is shocked that his sister Mabel made a more radical version of him called Dippy-Fresh. Whose overly radical personality greatly annoyed Dipper.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: As revealed in "Double Dipper", Dipper's name isn't his real one, being a nickname derived from a birthmark on his forehead in the shape of the Big Dipper constellation. His birth name is unknown in the series but is revealed in the tie-in Journal 3 book to be Mason Pines.
• Only Sane Man: Dipper is one of the few people in Gravity Falls to acknowledge the town's supernatural occurrences and the citizens' wacky antics.
• Outdated Name: Downplayed with his real name, Mason. Like Mabel's name, it's meant to be old-fashioned, but in 2012 (the year the series is canonically set) it was starting to make a comeback, as it was the second most popular boy's name in the United States that year.
• The Pig-Pen: As he's just begun going through puberty, jokes are frequently made about how sweaty he is. Also, Mabel complains about how little he bothers to wash his clothes in "Carpet Diem", and mentions that he could "stand to shower more" in Gravity Falls: Dipper's and Mabel's Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun!. Ford's entry on the boy in Journal 3 has him note strong B.O., indicating a lack of general hygiene, likely from Dipper being busy with his paranormal investigations.
  Dipper: Washing clothes is a waste of time - I'm a busy guy!
• Polar Opposite Twins: While both of them are generally good-natured, he and his sister contrast in personality. Mabel is a Cloud Cuckoo Lander Pollyanna while Dipper is serious and snarky. Dipper often seeks validation and acceptance, while Mabel does her own thing regardless of what anyone else says. Both of these outlooks on life have their virtues and flaws. These differences become more pronounced after Ford comes to stay with them.
• Pragmatic Hero: He's on the side of good but more than willing to do what needs to be done to save the day, even if his methods are a little morally questionable or aren't in line with the rules.
  • In particular, he doesn't have a problem with cheating if he feels it's justified or necessary.
    • In "The Golf War", he convinces Mabel to use the Lilliputtians to cheat against Pacifica during a putt-putt game.
    • In "The Stanchurian Candidate", he's on board with Grunkle Stan using a mind-control tie to cheat during the campaign for mayor.
  • In "The Deep End", during his stint as an assistant lifeguard, he (reluctantly) hands the community pool-owned megaphone over to Mabel for her to use to help Mermando get back to the sea; a violation of pool rules.
• Precocious Crush: Downplayed with his crush on Wendy. She's only 15 years old, but Dipper's 12. She's not an adult, but she's still too old for him.
• Properly Paranoid: Usually a straight example, but this trope is notably played with in "Tourist Trapped". Dipper quickly identified Mabel's boyfriend as a zombie based on his general appearance. He was wrong and right; he wasn't a zombie, but he was a mystical creature. Or rather, creatures; they were a group of gnomes.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue to Mabel's Red. Despite often being overwhelmed emotionally, Dipper knows the right way to work through his issues and (usually) keeps himself calm and collected, as opposed to Mabel's off-the-wall wackiness leaving her much less reserved.
• Rule of Cool: In Gravity Falls: Dipper's and Mabel's Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun!, he describes a blue pine tree hat as the most important clothing item you can bring on a paranormal investigation, "because, well...it's just really cool."
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Non-romantic example: Dipper is the Savvy Guy to Mabel’s Energetic Girl. Dipper's cynical and stern personality makes a contrasting pairing with Mabel's cheerful and upbeat one.
• Secret-Keeper: At the end of Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons, Dipper was entrusted by his Grunkle Ford to keep the dimensional rift a secret from everyone. Including Grunkle Stan and Mabel.
• Seeker Archetype: Dipper's primary motivation is to uncover Gravity Falls' secrets.
• Series Goal: To find Gravity Falls’ mysterious author of the journals so he can learn the mysteries of the strange town.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: He's on both sides of this trope, oddly enough:
  • Him and Grunkle Stan, respectively. Dipper regularly longs to come across as stronger and more manly, however his few more feminine interests aside, he is quite a sympathetic and compassionate guy. He's also not above periods of sadness or insecurity.
  • It's a bit more subtle, but he's the Manly Man to Soos' Sensitive Guy. Soos has more "geeky" interests such as anime, LARPing and comic books, has more Companion Cubes than one can count (Corn Chip, anyone?), tends to be possessive of Stan at worst and looks up to him as a surrogate parent, generally tries to keep tensions low, is more of a follower than a leader and can't grow facial hair, while Dipper has more typically masculine hobbies (Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons notwithstanding) such as chess, ping-pong and video games, is quite the headstrong type and has little issue going alone on his adventures if the situation calls for it, won't hesitate to criticize Stan if he disagrees with him in any way, has a shorter fuse and is much more willing to confront or even fight people if necessary, tends to be The Leader on his adventures and has a bit more physical male attributes (a fairly deep voice, occasional chest hair, etc). This example is still fairly ambiguous, though, since they both have masculine and feminine qualities (Soos is a handyman, often acts as a mentor for Dipper and has a certain boyish sweetness to him, and Dipper often more outwardly possesses the emotion and compassion mentioned above).
• Shared Family Quirks: Dipper has some things in common with his Grunkle Ford. Both are the smart brother to their respective, more social and charismatic twin sibling. They also have an interest in studying the supernatural.
• Ship Tease: In "Northwest Mansion Mystery", Dipper bonds with Pacifica Northwest while hunting a ghost. Midway through the episode, they share a hug and then awkwardly back off from each other. After that point, Pacifica takes Dipper's opinion of her very seriously. When Dipper turns on her over the discovery of the ghost's intentions, his scathing words are enough to convince her to turn her life around, standing up to her abusive parents and taking charge of her life in the process. Journal 3's entry that Dipper wrote about that night has him mention she looks "okay" in an evening dress and that she smells like champagne and flowers, the latter information crossed out. The last sentence, also crossed out, is him wondering if there was some vibe going on. He even draws a picture of Pacifica in the same style as a drawing he made of Wendy while he chronicled the events of "Into the Bunker".
  Pacifica: We did it!
  [Pacifica hugs Dipper, then awkwardly pulls away. Avoids eye contact, she holds out a dollar toward him]
  Pacifica: [clears throat] Can I... pay you to pretend that never happened?
• Shorter Means Smarter: One millimeter shorter than Mabel and one of the smartest members of the main cast.
• Signature Headgear: After his brown hat was taken by a gnome, he chooses a white and blue trucker cap with a blue pine tree from the Mystery Shack gift shop. It also hides the birthmark on his forehead. His hat is now in Wendy's possession, and vice versa.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Robbie Valentino, his short-lived rival for Wendy's affections.
• The Smart Guy: An odd deconstruction. Dipper's certainly the bright one of the group and takes it as a point of pride. In spite of his many insecurities, his role as The Smart Guy has come to mean everything to him, to the point where he admits to using large words he doesn't understand in order to keep up appearances. It's implied that this is because Dipper doesn't feel proud about anything else about himself, and so measures his self-worth in his intelligence.
• Smart People Play Chess: In "Little Dipper", Dipper's proficiency at chess is used to illustrate the intellectual gap between him and Mabel.
  Mabel: Little guy to black space nine!
  Dipper: It's a pawn, that's not your color, and stop stealing the tiny horses!
• The Snark Knight: Even if it's just his own moroseness prodding at him, you can bet that Dipper has many a dry comment to make.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Dipper is courageous enough to regularly face danger in the course of his supernatural investigations, but tends to avoid social situations and is easily flustered in the presence of his crush, Wendy. Or girls in general, really.
  • This trait lessens somewhat over time, and in "Roadside Attraction", he learns to talk to girls after receiving advice from Stan, which results in him becoming a temporary Chick Magnet. Though he's still learning of course, and at the end of the aforementioned episode, he describes his newfound confidence as a power he needs to learn to use "for good".
• Steamrolled Smart Guy: Dipper tends to properly research things about the town and any supernatural creature before taking action. Mabel and Soos on the other hand, prefer to take action immediately, much to his annoyance.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Though his association with this trope all but vanishes by the end of the first season, his level of strength, even before he trains with the Manotaurs, is fairly inconsistent. In some episodes he's strong enough to angrily hold half a dozen beavers at once (with a single hand, no less!) and chuck them far across a lake with ease or restrain, carry and drag a creature several times his size to the Shack without missing a beat, while in others he's easily overwhelmed by his equally-adept clones or struggles to lift a simple twig. Justified, as he's still a kid and his brain won't always be able to keep up with the growth of his muscles.
• Strong Family Resemblance:
  • The resemblance between Dipper and Grunkle Stan becomes apparent when the former dresses up like the latter in "Boss Mabel".
  • In "Dreamscaperers" one of Stan's memories shows that Stan as a kid looked a lot like present-day Dipper. Likewise, "A Tale of Two Stans" shows the same resemblance with Stan's Twin/The Author.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy:
  • With Mabel. He's the logical twin who is a Guile Hero and she's the one more accustomed to fighting.
  • Also shares this dynamic with Wendy, with Dipper being academically and strategically inclined while Wendy takes very much after the rest of her lumberjack family.
• Successful Sibling Syndrome: While Dipper is the smart one of the Pines twins, he sometimes feels that Mabel is better at socializing with others and making friends.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Tries to invoke this trope on himself in "Dipper vs. Manliness". Dipper seeks the assistance of the burly Manotaurs to teach him how to be a real man.
• Took a Level in Badass: Definitely steps up a lot more in Season 2, which is lampshaded by Stanford and why he asks him to be his apprentice.
• Trauma Conga Line: His general, everyday life isn't really that happy to begin with, considering he's often Mabel and Stan's insecurity-riddled Butt-Monkey and every mistake he makes is paid for in an insane amount of self-blaming and self-doubt, but "Weirdmageddon Part 1" takes the cake. His family is captured or scattered, an Apocalypse How occurs and the world becomes Hell on Earth, and Dipper survives on the streets alone for days, hunted, starving, and believing the horrifying Apocalypse unfolding around him is all his fault.
• Theme Twin Naming: Mason and Mabel Pines. Both names begin with the letter M, are five letters long, related to stonemasonry, and are somewhat old-fashioned.
• Unabashed B-Movie Fan: In the opening of "Into the Bunker", he and Wendy enjoy a cheesy, clearly low-budget zombie movie called Nearly Almost Dead But Not Quite!. It's a fitting choice of the film given his nerdy, eccentric interests and Wendy's affinity for indie things.
• The Unfavorite: He was convinced he was this to Stan until the conclusion of "Dreamscaperers". He still appears to have this mindset at times.
  Dipper: He's always picked on me and now I know why. Stan hates me!
• The Unreveal: We never do learn his first name in the show itself, but it is revealed to be Mason in Journal 3.
• Vocal Dissonance: Jason Ritter was in his thirties throughout the series' run, and made no attempt to sound younger. Alex Hirsch has joked Ritter was hired for his "natural puberty squeak".
• Weirdness Magnet: Somewhat justified considering their environment. Lampshaded by Robbie in "Fight Fighters".
  Robbie: Why is it that whenever you're around, there's always ghosts or monsters, or whatever?!
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: As seen in "Dreamscaperers", it turns out that Grunkle Stan had good intentions—he was trying to protect his nephew, but in his own, crazy way (toughening up so that when the world hits, he can hit back).
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: His relationship with Pacifica has shades of this in "Northwest Mansion Mystery". For the first half of the episode, they argue and exchange catty behavior while trying to rid Northwest Manor of a homicidal ghost. However, once the ghost is dealt with, their opinions of each other change, and they eventually become friends.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Every character in the main cast has a moment like this, but Dipper gets these the most often as his flaws are the most in-focus to the audience. The most crushing example comes from "Scary-oke", when, as zombies close in on them, Mabel calls out Dipper for summoning them.
  Mabel: Dipper, what's the one thing I asked you not to do tonight?
  Dipper: [sounding ashamed] Raise the dead.
  Mabel: And what did you do?
  Dipper: [sounding ashamed] Raise the dead.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Subverted. "Dipper" has been revealed to be a nickname due to a birthmark he has that resembles the Big Dipper.
  Wendy: [after seeing said birthmark] The Big Dipper? That's where you got your nickname! I thought your parents just hated you or something.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: The Other Wiki uses this exact phrase to describe him. He tends to take matters more seriously than Mabel or Soos on their adventures, and generally takes on a leadership role when they investigate the paranormal. He's also placed himself in no small amount of harm to fix a problem and tends to take full blame/responsibility when it's a problem he himself created. When Ford finally reads the entries he made in Journal 3 following the events of "Dungeon, Dungeons, & More Dungeons", he puts it thusly.
  Ford: Sure, he's rough around the edges (and prone to romantic distraction), but he possesses bravery, cleverness, imagination, and drive far beyond his years.
• Would Hit a Girl: While he tries not to relish in the chaos of a fight (unlike Mabel), it's been noted that he's not exactly picky when it comes to the gender of his opponents:
  • Alex mentioned a BigFest Q&A that there's a single "Womanotaur" in charge of all the other Manotaurs. When questioned on it, he mentions having wanted to include her in the episode for Dipper to challenge, but he felt more like going with the idea that even the burly Manotaurs won't challenge her, not because they would have had umbrage with Dipper's use of the trope, but because he felt more like going with the idea that even they are are afraid of her mere existence and won't even say her name.
  • In the "Little Gift Shop of Horrors" story "Hands Off", which is implied by Journal 3 to be at least partially canon, Dipper fights the Hand-Witch's dismembered hands, with the witch later mentioning that all the men she's had return their hands will put up a fight, but only when she doesn't take their hands; if she brings them back without doing so, they just run for the hills.
  • Played for Laughs/Discussed in Journal 3, where he remarks that he'd rather avoid ever getting Grenda mad at him, since he'd understandably have a pretty hard time taking someone like her on regardless of the circumstances.
  • Lost Legends is the only time where this is explicitly implied rather than shown: having helped fight off a legion of cliche superheroes (the so-called "Indestructi-buddies"), at least one of whom was a girl, Dipper vocally ponders whether he should feel morally conflicted about leaving the bodies of a bunch of quickly-made-defenseless superheroes behind, thrown in with some subtle Lampshade Hanging while he stands next to Mabel.

Mabel Pines

Mabel Pines

"Don't worry, brother. Whatever happens, I'll be right here, supporting you every step of the–OH MY GOSH A PIG!!!!!"

Voiced By: Kristen Schaal

"When life gives you lemons, draw faces on those lemons and wrap them in a blanket. Ta-daaa! Now you have Lemon Babies."

Dipper's quirky, intuitive, creative, energetic, and optimistic twin sister. Mabel makes the best out of every situation with a big smile while also playfully annoying her brother. She represents the shooting star on the Zodiac.

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• Absurd Phobia: In the "Little Gift Shop of Horrors" segment "Clay Day", Mabel is shown to have an irrational fear of claymation. Fortunately, Mabel managed to overcome her fear at the climax when she had to save her family from actual claymation monsters.
• Aesop Amnesia: A case of realistic outcome given her age, and that real people can struggle with these kinds of problems for decades even while fully aware of their tendencies. Her lack of forethought doesn't help much, either.
  • In "Sock Opera" she learns not to push aside important people in her life for a guy and to appreciate her brother's efforts to make her happy. However, she backslides in "Northwest Mansion Mystery", again pushing aside important people in her life for a guy and talking her brother into taking a potentially dangerous job offered by people they know are corrupt so she and her friends can go to a fancy party. Her respect and appreciation for her brother continues to be a work in progress in future episodes, but the "not chasing after a guy at the expense of others" aesop seems to have stuck the second time, as she doesn't repeat this mistake again.
  • Downplayed in "Roadside Attraction". Despite proclaiming that she has a plan to set up Candy and Dipper (clearly going against her lesson from "The Love God") she doesn't much act on this plan besides making them share a seat and her forgetting the previous Aesop is neither the driving force nor the focus of the conflict that occurs.
  • In "Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Future", this is deconstructed. Despite her acknowledging the two Aesops of "if I love it set it free" ("Boyz Crazy"), or that she shouldn't always expect Dipper to give up everything he cares about for her sake ("Sock Opera"), neither of the two seem to have stuck in Mabel's head. Mabel becomes distraught after learning how hard growing up is going to be and can only take solace in knowing Dipper is going to be there for her, so she flips out when learning he might pursue his dreams away from her—while also not understanding that her often insensitive treatment is what drove him away to Ford to start with, which she had briefly acknowledged in "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons". This ends up actively causing those she loves more problems because she shows no awareness for the very applicable lessons she'd previously learned that could have helped her avoid contributing to them.
  • It also gets Deconstructed in the comic story "Don't Dimension It". The story deals with Ford, Dipper and Stan sealing some remaining rifts, and they find out Mabel helped Bill cause the apocalypse out of misguided selfishness. They don't blame her, apart from Dipper jokingly calling one of the rifts "Mabel's Fault," but they tell her to be careful. Mabel's It's All About Me attitude comes to the forefront just a few days after defeating Bill where she brings Waddles on the mission to seal the rifts, against Dipper's protests. Sure enough, Mabel chasing Waddles causes her to get sucked into the Multiverse...where she counters millions of her parallel selves stuck on a barren planet due to making a similar decision. Mabel starts getting horrified on realizing most of her cutesy flaws are annoying in a dire situation and that each Mabel is too self-centered to focus on returning to their dimensions. At the end of this story at least, she vows to work on that so time will tell if that sticks.
• Affectionate Nickname: Mabel has both received some and given some.
  • Soos occasionally refers to Mabel as "hambone".
  • Stan calls her "sweetie" or, more rarely, "pumpkin".
  • Mabel is fond of calling Dipper "DipDop".
  • She also nicknames them "Mystery Twins". Dipper initially dislikes it, but it soon grows on him.
• All-Loving Heroine: Mabel tries her best to be nice and friendly with everyone. She was willing to overlook Gideon's creepy tendencies and remain friends with him until he tried to murder Dipper with lamb shears, attempted to ease her rivalry and befriended Pacifica, and aided Robbie with his love life despite his conflicts with her brother.
• All Take and No Give: This, along with Innocent Insensitivity and Aesop Amnesia, is her Fatal Flaw. Mabel has a problem with selfishness and often takes advantage of her brother's love to try to get him to put aside his own wishes and goals and do what she wants, usually without realizing (until far later) that what she's doing is manipulative or damaging. But while she does suffer from Aesop Amnesia and thus repeats this mistake often, she also tries to subvert this flaw and genuinely make amends during moments of greater self-awareness. In "Carpet Diem" she gives Dipper the key after understanding that he was having a rough time, in "Sock Opera" she sacrifices her sock puppet performance to defeat Bill, in "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality", she tells Dipper she's okay with his decision of becoming Ford's apprentice, and in Gravity Falls: Lost Legends Mabel gives Dipper a pine tree journal and apologizes to him for her selfishness during the summer after nearly getting stuck in a different dimension.
• All Women Love Shoes: Somewhat Downplayed. While Mabel doesn't make a big deal about them, she does own at least four pairs of shoes.
  • Her basic black dress shoes which she wears throughout the series.
  • Pink light-up sneakers (The Time Traveler's Pig)
  • Pink cowgirl boots (Scary-oke)
  • Pink golf shoes (The Golf War)
• Ambiguously Bi: Constantly calls her female friends beautiful and is curiously earnest in her attempts to get closer with Pacifica. She also wears a rainbow sweater in "The Love God", which Alex Hirsch did intentionally in response to not being allowed to have explicitly gay characters in the show.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Mabel occasionally uses Yiddish phrases such as "Mazel tov!", and "sweet Moses!", but also owns a Christmas sweater and depicts her puppet self getting married by a priest in "Sock Opera". It puts a rather interesting spin on her adopting a pig meant for food and refusing to eat a lobster. Alex Hirsch originally stated that the Pines family is not canonically Jewish, but after the release of Journal 3, which mentioned Stan having a bar mitzvah and therefore canonized the kids as being Jewish on the Pines side at least, he responded that the Pines twins probably had a similar upbringing to his own, with Stan raised Jewish while Dipper and Mabel were raised non-religiously, though both Christian and Jewish holidays are celebrated at Mabel's insistence.
• Apology Gift:
  • In "Golf War", after Dipper, Mabel and Pacifica escape from the golf course, Mabel gives to her former rival a sticker of "A-Paw-logize" to apologize to her about the Lilliputians. Pacifica accepts, claiming it's just because it looks good on her.
  • After Mabel returned from Dimension MAB-3L in "Don't Dimension It", she gave Dipper a brand new journal as an apology for all of the trouble she caused over the summer.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Not as bad as Soos, but chances are she will be distracted by something. The more shiny, unusual, or an animal, the better. There's this moment from "The Time Traveler's Pig":

  Mabel: Don't worry, brother. Whatever happens, I'll be right here, supporting you every step of the OH MY GOSH, A PIG!!!

• Awesome Moment of Crowning: After the 8 1/2th President was released from his Peanut Brittle hibernation, he dubbed her a Congresswoman.
• Badass Adorable: A cutey patootie with a mean right hook.
• Badass Driver: As seen in "The Legend of the Gobblewonker" when she takes up driving Soos' boat.
• Badass Normal: Like Dipper, except her wits are a lot more...unconventional.
• Balloon Belly: Happens to Mabel in "The Inconveniencing" after she eats too much Smile Dip.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Subverted in Society of the Blind Eye. Mabel spends the episode distraught over how poorly her love life has gone and realizes she can use the memory wiping gun to forget about it. Wendy warns her against it by pointing out how messed-up everyone else became after erasing their memories, but is tempted by the prospect of forgetting an annoying song. However, just as the girls are about to go through with it, they come to their senses and decide forgetting things won’t solve their problems.
  • In "Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Future", she makes a wish for time to stop so she wouldn't have to face her problems and Dipper wouldn't leave her so soon. "Blendin" offers her a "Time Bubble" to do just that, if only she'd hand over a mysterious item in her brother's possession. She does, is immediately sealed inside a bubble, and gets her wish fulfilled in the most brutal way possible. Even more in line with this trope, she's then trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine that creates her idea of the perfect paradise, making it simply too hard for Mabel to reject.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The Beauty (The emotionally connected leader of the trio) to Candy's Brains and Grenda's Brawn. Also the Beauty to Dipper's Brains and Soos's Brawn.
• Benevolent Boss: Mabel starts out this way when she gets to run the Shack in "Boss Mabel". Ultimately deconstructed as she can't bring herself to say no to Soos' ridiculous mascot idea, Wendy takes advantage of Mabel's niceness to go goof off with her friends, and Dipper's attempt to liven up the Shack with an actual monster, the Gremoblin, goes horribly wrong (first by no one believing it's a monster and then it escaping in part of Mabel's attempt at being nice). After the twins scare the Gremoblin away, Mabel ends up snapping at Soos and Wendy after the two try to get out of fixing the damage done to the Mystery Shack, and she ends up barking orders like Stan to get things done.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Mabel is the sweetest person one can meet, but she's something else when she gets angry. She'll stand up for herself and others when she has to, and she goes absolutely ballistic against unambiguously evil people like Gideon (pre-Heel–Face Turn) and Eldritch Abomination Bill Cipher.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Mabel comes off as (and mostly is) a jovial Cloudcuckoolander, but she's more than capable of keeping up with Dipper on an adventure, she's a capable and enthusiastic combatant, and she isn't afraid to step up or put someone in their place when necessary.
• Big Eater: It's a trait that's never pointed out directly, but she's shown eating on-screen more often than any other character besides Soos. Pick an episode and she more than likely eats something in it. She especially loves junk food and...things that aren't traditionally eaten. In "Dungeons, Dungeons & More Dungeons", Mabel made a contraption that lets her eat all of her favorite snacks at once.
• Big Stupid Doo Doo Head: She tends to use insults that fall into this category, like "butt-faces" or "poop-heads".
  Mabel: (To Bill Cipher) Oh, yeah? Well, you're a...a stink face!
  Xyler: Awesome comeback, Mabel!
  Mabel: Don't treat me like a child, Xyler.
• Big Sister Bully: Played with. While she thinks of it more as lighthearted teasing than outright bullying, she does like to poke at Dipper's insecurities at times, often alongside Stan, because she genuinely thinks she's being funny and charming while doing so. This becomes Deconstructed as the show has long hinted, and "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons'' confirms, that it isn't very lighthearted to Dipper and he's been genuinely hurt by her teasing, which has resulted in damage to their relationship.
• Big Sister Instinct: Not as protective of Dipper as he is of her, but comes fairly close. The "big sister" aspect is also played straight in that she is five minutes older and a millimeter taller than Dipper.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio: With Grenda and Candy, Mabel is the thin one, Grenda is the big one, and Candy appears as the shortest of the trio.
• Birds of a Feather: A platonic version with Soos—while both of the twins are close with him, it's clear that he has a lot more in common with Mabel. They both have Cloudcuckoolander tendencies that sometimes inconvenience those around them, but are also intelligent in their own ways and quite competent when necessary. They both also eat a lot, love to hug, and don't always recognize sarcasm.
• Blithe Spirit: To both Stan and the townsfolk, though sometimes for her own personal gain.
• Blood Knight: She enjoys kicking butt and takes any opportunity to do so.
  Mabel: Alright, here's the plan. I'll take out those two guard guys, you karate chop the other dude in the neck and then we'll back flip through the front door!
• Blowing a Raspberry: Befitting her fun-loving personality, she likes doing this. She does it to Dipper in "The Legend of the Gabblewonker," for example.
• Blush Sticker: Seems to have perpetually rosy cheeks.
• Book Dumb: In contrast to her studious twin. Though she is uninterested in content such as the titicular "Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons" board game, citing it as "this is like Homework: The Game", she has great interpersonal skills and is highly creative.
• Brains and Brawn:
  • Usually the brawn to Dipper’s brains. She is a Cute Bruiser who cheerfully walks around with axes, grappling hooks and random blunt objects, while her brother is physically wimpy but usually the one who does the planning or utilizes the various supernatural objects they come across to their advantage. Eventually deconstructed as we see that both of them have become pretty fixated on their respective roles to the detriment of their individuality: Mabel is still very imaginative and by no means stupid, and Dipper once took down a Humongous Mecha unarmed while deprived of his usual source of arcane knowledge.
    Dipper: I mean, I'm supposed to be the smart guy! If I'm not the smart guy, then who am I?
  • Both she and Dipper function as the Brains to Soos's, Wendy's, or Stan's Brawn, depending on who's with them at the time.
• Brainwashed: Downplayed. In Weirdmageddon II: Escape From Reality, it's lightly implied Mabel's perception was messed with to help disguise the less positive qualities of Mabel Land; after Mabel agrees to return to reality with her brother, she exhibits a far less positive opinion of the qualities she herself imbued in Mabel Land.
• Brainy Brunette: Mabel may not be as academically agile as Dipper, but she is smart in her own way:
  • She's extremely artistically-inclined, which she seems to be aware of, given that she once referred to herself as an "arts and crafts master".
    • Throughout their entire summer vacation, she regularly knits sweaters with different designs and patterns, and a few of them are electric sweaters that can light up or play music.
    • In "Headhunters", Mabel crafted a lifelike wax figure of Stan by herself.
    • She's also very skilled at wood carving (having a collection of very intricate, painted wooden figurines of her friends and the townspeople of Gravity Falls in "The Love God").
    • In "Irrational Treasure", she makes an origami hat out of a map in a few seconds.
  • In "Sock Opera", she coordinated a puppet show in a span of a week complete with an opera theater, crafted some of the sock puppets and props, had written the script and at least 36 musical numbers.
  • Mabel is better at making split-second decisions than her brother, whom often doesn't bode well without planning in advance: She used a Nyarf gun to make Bill drop the door with the safe's combination in "Dreamscaperers", saved Dipper and herself with her grappling hook in "Gideon Rises", sprayed spray paint at Bill's eye during his spiel, and broke through the Fearamid's wall using Dipper's size altering flashlight in "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back The Falls".
  • Mabel can also pick locks with hairpins, as seen in "The Deep End" and "Boyz Crazy".
• Break the Comedian: Throughout the series, Mabel is by far the funniest and most exuberant member of the Pines family, delighting in bad jokes, madcap schemes, and luridly colorful art projects. Though a few episodes hit her with a Heroic BSoD, she always manages to bounce back. However, in the episode "Dipper And Mabel vs The Future," she finds herself facing a few too many misfortunes at once: summer is almost over, high school is just around the corner, her friends admit that they won't be able to make it to her birthday party, and she's out of contact with Dipper all day, leaving her deeply depressed. Then she finds out that Grunkle Ford has offered to take Dipper on as an apprentice — meaning that Mabel will be at home without her twin brother for the first time. This discovery sends her running out of the Mystery Shack in tears. Worse still, Bill Cipher is able to exploit her depression by tricking her into giving him the Rift in exchange for "just a little more summer" — allowing him to break free of the Nightmare Realm and begin Weirdmageddon. When Dipper sees Mabel again, she's in much better spirits, but she's retreated into the Lotus-Eater Machine Bill has built for her, and needs to be given a lot of coaxing before she's willing to leave and regain her old sense of exuberance.
• Break the Cutie:
  • In "The Time Traveler's Pig", Mabel wins a pig she names Waddles. She spends some time adoring and playing with him, then has to repeatedly re-win Waddles while her brother tries to correct a poorly-aimed ball throw from the past. The attempt where he succeeds required her help, and ends with her not getting Waddles. Mabel becomes conflicted between making Dipper happy or losing Waddles to Pacifica that she spends what is implied to be a month standing and banging her head against the totem pole before he reverts his win.
  • In "Not What He Seems", she breaks down in tears over the secrets uncovered, the life-threatening situation everyone is in, and the stress of having to choose to listen to Stan or Dipper.
  • In "A Tale of Two Stans", she's visibly afraid of the idea that she and Dipper will grow apart and have a poor relationship with each other, and lightheartedly asks him if they would end up the same as Stan and Ford. Despite her brother's reassurances that they won't and after he falls asleep, Mabel quietly and somberly lies awake.
  • In "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons", she is visibly upset at the realization that she may have already caused the start of this from jokingly picking on Dipper with Stan on a few occasions.
  • In "The Last Mabelcorn", she is told by Celestebellebethabelle that she is not "pure of heart" enough to be given some of the unicorn's hair. It gets worse when Mabel performs good deeds to try to make herself more pure, and Celestebellebethabelle tells her that performing good deeds just to look good isn't pure of heart at all. Mabel then spends most of her time curled up and struggling to list reasons why she might be considered impure of heart.
  • The entirety of "Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future" is this for her: Wendy breaks it to her how awful high school can be, Candy and Grenda are unavailable for her and her brother's 13th birthday, Dipper has accepted a position as Ford's apprentice, which will mean she's returning home alone at the end of the summer, and to top it all off, she gets tricked into giving the Interdimensional Rift to a Bill-possessed Blendin Blandin, whom starts Weirdmageddon.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Alex Hirsch has stated that Dipper and Mabel are of equal intelligence, but since Mabel's main concern is having fun and enjoying life, she doesn't apply herself like her brother does.
• Broken Pedestal: Mabel loved unicorns all her life and the word "unicorn" was even her first word. Then she actually met one and soon realized what awful, pretentious and judgmental creatures they actually are.
• Brother–Sister Team: She has a refreshing one with Dipper, as they are not constantly bickering and make a remarkable duo. They frequently work together to face the various supernatural creatures in the titular town. Mabel provides support and improvises while Dipper often comes up with the plan. This lack of arguing is deconstructed in the latter half of the second season, as them ceasing to discuss their problems with each other results in Poor Communication Kills.
• Buffy Speak: She slips into this at times.
  "This is some kind of magicky thing, isn't it?"

  "That's it! We can melt them with hotty, melty things!"

  "Ghosty sounds! Cemetery ghosty sounds!"
• Butt-Monkey: Not as much as Dipper, but she has her fair share.
  • She usually does plenty of foolish stuff, like when she uses a leaf blower to hold up a picture of Norman so she can practice kissing him, which leads to her mouth being sucked in sticking to her face.
  Mabel: That was fun.
  • This is not in a comical sense, but it's when she meets the Guy of the Week and unfortunately doesn't hook up with one of them at the end.
• Cheerful Child: It is rare when she doesn't have a smile on her face.
• Childish Older Sibling: She likes to playfully annoy Dipper from time to time. She's the older twin, having been born five minutes before Dipper. She never lets Dipper forget this.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mabel has an... interesting way of thinking. She is enthusiastic about everything ("Yay, grass!"), prone to outbursts of silliness (like folding an encoded map into a paper hat), and full of ridiculous ideas for arts and crafts projects (from her hundreds of hand-knitted sweaters to stuff like "caticatures" or a drawing of "a waffle with big arms"), but she and her brother Dipper are savvy enough to cope with the weirdness endemic to the eponymous town. This is deconstructed in "Irrational Treasure" when Pacifica chastises her for being silly, and Mabel tries to be more serious thereafter. Her Cloudcuckoolander tendencies end up saving the day, resulting in her proudly embracing her oddness.

  Stan: Oy! You are never gonna make sense, are you, kid?

  Mabel: No, I'm not, Grunkle Stan. No, I'm not. Mabel, away! (Jumps backward and a crashing sound is heard)

  Mabel: I'm okay!

• Consistent Clothing Style: Mabel's various outfits always consist of a colourful hand-made sweater, a skirt, and a headband, coupled with the same white socks and black shoes.
• Control Freak: A trait she shares with Dipper, though each tends to express it differently. While Dipper often feels he needs rigid self-control and massive planning to compensate for his lack of self-confidence socially, Mabel generally has less self-control and directs her need for control outwards onto others. While Mabel's generally very relaxed in regards to others' behavior, in the instances wherein Mabel's friends or family do something that goes against Mabel's own priorities, Mabel manifests her control issues in ways arguably more extreme than Dipper does. When Dipper gets controlling over others, he tends to hold them to the same rigid steps, plans, and standards he holds to himself—especially in the first season, during which he slowly develops out of this. Mabel displays a far more frequent tendency to undermine people's basic autonomy and free will for the sake of her own priorities. This most often comes up regarding romance, in which she considers herself an expert, but her unwillingness to let Dipper (or the rest of the town) make independent life choices due to how these choices upset her personally actually causes a significant portion of the finale's conflict. While this flaw of Mabel's isn't addressed in the finale despite its key role in the plot, it is thematically touched on in earlier episodes, such as "Boyz Crazy," "Love God," and "The Stanchurian Candidate" (the latter being an aesop she shares with Dipper), among others. Also, a plot point in "Sock Opera" uses a direct visual metaphor for this: Bill is only able to take control of Dipper through a deal because Dipper offers Bill one of Mabel's puppets—and due to how Mabel treats Dipper, Bill considers Dipper one of Mabel's puppets. Mabel usually expresses regret over this behavior once the conflict is over.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: When it happens, watch out. In the pilot alone she takes down a hundred gnomes using only a leaf blower.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: In "Irrational Treasure", Mabel is helping Dipper uncover a historical conspiracy, in order to prove that she's not "silly" like Pacifica said. However, throughout their quest she keeps unconsciously doing goofy things (like folding a map they find into a paper hat) which help them solve the clues. Ultimately, it's revealed that the person who laid the clues was just as big of a Cloudcuckoolander as Mabel is.
• Cuddle Bug: Big time. She's shown giving bear hugs and tackle hugs, especially to Dipper and Stan, quite often. In "Society of the Blind Eye", when she is listing cool things about herself, she mentions that she hugs a lot. She also loves cuddling with her pet pig, Waddles. She's been known to cuddle and fall asleep on Soos's belly as well, according to Gravity Falls: Dipper and Mabel's Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun!.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Due to the art style, it is impossible to tell the characters' eye colors. Alex Hirsch confirmed that Mabel's eyes are brown.
• Cute and Psycho: Mabel is a mild version of this trope. She's a high-intensity-low-stability type of girl. Who else could wield an axe with a great big grin on her face?◊
• Cute Bruiser: A cute kid. Will beat you up in without the need for Waif-Fu.
• The Cutie: She's so cute because of how cheery, imaginative, friendly, playful, and bright-eyed she is.
• Deal with the Devil: Bill Cipher, possessing Blendin Blandin, offers to put a time bubble around Gravity Falls if Mabel would give him the strange snowglobe in her brother's backpack. Mabel, unaware of the importance of the item and having spent the entire day convinced of how awful her future is going to be, agrees, believing that "Blendin" is a friend returning a favor. She hands it over and Bill breaks it, starting Weirdmageddon, and encases an unconscious Mabel in a bubble.
• Deconstructed Trope: Mabel is a deconstruction of Aesop Amnesia.
  • In "Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Future", despite Mabel acknowledging the two Aesops of "if I love it set it free" ("Boyz Crazy"), or that she shouldn't always expect Dipper to give up everything he cares about for her sake ("Sock Opera"), neither of the two seem to have stuck in Mabel's head. Mabel becomes distraught after learning how hard growing up is going to be and can only take solace in knowing Dipper is going to be there for her, so she flips out when learning he might pursue his dreams away from her—while also not understanding that her often insensitive treatment is what drove him away to Ford to start with, which she had briefly acknowledged in "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons". This ends up actively causing those she loves more problems because she shows no awareness for the very applicable lessons she'd previously learned that could have helped her avoid contributing to them.
  • It also gets deconstructed in the comic story "Don't Dimension It". The story deals with Ford, Dipper and Stan sealing some remaining rifts, and they find out Mabel helped Bill cause the apocalypse out of misguided selfishness. They don't blame her, apart from Dipper jokingly calling one of the rifts "Mabel's Fault," but they tell her to be careful. Mabel's It's All About Me attitude comes to the forefront just a few days after defeating Bill where she brings Waddles on the mission to seal the rifts, against Dipper's protests. Sure enough, Mabel chasing Waddles causes her to get sucked into the Multiverse...where she counters millions of her parallel selves stuck on a barren planet due to making a similar decision. Mabel starts getting horrified on realizing most of her cutesy flaws are annoying in a dire situation and that each Mabel is too self-centered to focus on returning to their dimensions. At the end of this story at least, she vows to work on that so time will tell if that sticks.
• Demonic Possession: In "The Inconveniencing" by the convenience store ghosts.
• The Determinator: Being the bubbly Pollyanna that she is, she stops at nothing to do something once her mind is set on it.
  • This is especially the case when she plays matchmaker.
    • In "The Love God", she doesn't give up trying to find Robbie a new girlfriend even when Wendy tells her he's a hopeless case.
    • In "Dipper vs. Manliness", she tries relentlessly to make Stan attractive to women, even after seeing the ineffectiveness of her efforts.
  • After Grunkle Stan lost his memories after Bill Cipher's defeat, Mabel was determined to get Stan to remember by showing him photos of their adventures in her scrapbook. Which fortunately worked.
  • In the Lost Legends story "Don't Dimension It", After Mabel ends up in Dimension MAB-3L, her main goal was to find a way back home.
• Did Not Think This Through: Emotional and energetic, Mabel rarely reconsiders her actions before doing them. She often favors impulsiveness and silliness, which on some occasions backfired on her.
  • In "Soos and the Real Girl", her random decision to eat candy still in its wrapper nearly causes her to choke.
  • In "Society of the Blind Eye", Wendy tried to point out that using Laser-Guided Amnesia to forget failed romances might not be a good idea, and Mabel declared, "All ideas are good ideas!"
  • At the end of "Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Future", it's her thoughtlessness mixed with emotional turmoil that lets Bill initiate Weirdmageddon. She gives a possessed Blendin Blandin the Interdimensional Rift under the assumption that he was a friend returning a favor.
• Dork in a Sweater: A sweet Cloudcuckoolander who regularly wears hand-made sweaters.
• Eccentric Artist: A self-proclaimed "arts and crafts master" and one of the biggest Cloudcuckoolanders on the show. Her creations are often as unconventional as her personality, and include things like novelty sweaters that can light up or play music, drawings of muscled waffles, and "caticatures"—cat-like caricatures of people. In "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel", she bedazzled her entire face with sequins.
  "I'm unappreciated in my time..."
• Emotionally Tongue-Tied: Since Mabel is Fun Personified and prefers seeing people happy, she struggles whenever she thinks she will disappoint or upset someone. Any time she is put into a moment where she has to deny ("Norman's" proposal, Gideon's initial advances) or confront someone with the truth or a personal worry (apologizing to Candy and Grenda that she didn't win the party crown, attempting to admit to Stan that he's unlikely to win the election, deciding to let the portal activate despite Dipper's warnings, confronting Dipper about her fears of possibly having a poor relationship with him), she tends to look away and fidget, fumbling with her words and/or tries to phrase her replies lightly.
  • She seems to be growing out of it after the events of Weirdmageddon, as she gradually looks at Candy and tells her that they have to leave Gravity Falls (without Dipper helping), and tried to tell Waddles that he couldn't come back home with her.
• Enmity with an Object: One of Mabel's entries in Journal 3 strongly hints that she has disdain over the Electron Carpet from Carpet Diem, and hopes that she never sees it again. ^note  As luck would have it, Dipper told Grunkle Stan to get rid of the Electron Carpet at the end of the episode.
• Everyone Has Standards: She tries to be friendly with everybody and tolerant of the eccentricities of others, but there is only so much bad behavior (Gideon, formerly Pacifica, etc.) and weirdness (Toby Determined, Mr. Poolcheck, etc.) she can take. In "Sock Opera", when Gabe Bensen (the boy she had been trying to impress throughout the whole episode) passionately makes out with his puppets, she states that she "might have dodged a bullet there."
• Exposed to the Elements: Inverted. She regularly wears sweaters despite it being summer. The only time the weather bothers her is in "The Deep End", when there is a heat wave. Though to be fair, the town does appear to be in a mountainous area of the state, meaning that the temperatures usually stay moderate even during the peak of the season.
• Extreme Omnivore: Implied in "Fight Fighters" when we see one of Mabel's drinks contains a strange cyclops troll doll and several dice, all in a green fluid. In the later episode "Sock Opera" she offers her brother a drink from a blenderful of the same vivid liquid, referred to as "Mabel juice", which also contains plastic dinosaurs. A few shots of Mabel juice gives her the energy to outrun that episode's villain hours later, and Stan describes the taste as "if coffee and nightmares had a baby".
  • Mabel's list of snacks also includes an entire tube of sparkly toothpaste, an industrial-sized can of sprinkles of the sort you put on ice cream labelled "not for individual consumption", several lone sugar packets, and enough expired (and banned) Fun-Dip–style candy to make her catatonic and hallucinating. She's been seen projectile-coughing up a handful of sequins. She also swallowed a holographic sticker in "The Golf War" (for plot reasons in that case, since she was trying to get the Lilliputtians to stop fighting over said sticker), and in "Blendin's Game" she attempted to eat a bunch of candy from the vending machine without taking any of the wrappers off, but just ended up choking and having to whack herself in the stomach to cough it out. Also, according to a Reddit discussion with series creator Alex Hirsch, she was once sent to the hospital after attempting to eat scratch-and-sniff stickers.
  • One of the unseen example segments of "Mabel's Guide to Life" supposedly taught the viewer about "eating non-foods". All we see is Mabel shoving a leaf into her mouth and shrugging aggressively.
  • An Inverted example in "Blendin's Game" where after being given a lot of candy from the vending machine, she declares her intent to eat it all with the wrappers still on. Seconds later, she's choking on the still-wrapped candy, calling her plan a mistake, and whacking herself in the gut in order to cough it all back out.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Selfishness. Mabel often gets so wrapped up in her intense feelings about her own creative ideas, wants, needs and emotions that she neglects to consider the needs, ideas and emotions of others around her, which causes a lot of her conflicts throughout the show. This flaw is portrayed throughout the series but not openly discussed as a problem until "Sock Opera", and it takes many more plot-heavy episodes for Mabel to start growing out of it.
    • This comes to a head in "Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Future", when she puts her misery and fear of growing up over Dipper's desire to make decisions for his own future, throwing a fit over it. She attempts to make a deal with Blendin Blandin using the mysterious orb in Dipper's backpack to freeze Gravity Falls in time so she wouldn't lose Dipper and could have a little more time for Summer. The deal doesn't work, but only because Blendin was actually possessed by Bill, who takes advantage of Mabel's various weaknesses to jumpstart the Apocalypse.
    • Her self-centered tendencies is thoroughly addressed in Gravity Falls: Lost Legends, where she puts up with alternate Mabels that are too caught up with their own interests to help or return to their own dimensions, and comes to a Jerkass Realization on her selfish tendencies before rallying the Mabels with a Rousing Speech, admitting that she caused an "entire apocalypse just to get one more day of summer" and promising to never be selfish again if she can return to her dimension.
  • Both "Little Dipper" and "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons" point out that Mabel's insensitivity crosses into this. Mabel loves picking on Dipper with Grunkle Stan to get a laugh whenever the situation arises and often even builds on those jokes for long periods at Dipper's expense ("Alpha Twin", anyone?), which (since Dipper is a Deconstructed Butt-Monkey) alienates Dipper from the both of them and damages his trust in her. Oddly, she never really apologizes for this in either episode despite recognizing how much this hurts her brother, instead trying to justify her actions in the former and simply going silent in the latter.
  • It's less directly addressed than the other above flaws, but underlying both is Mabel's tendency towards excessive control of others when their priorities differ from hers. This is highlighted in many episodes, particularly "Boyz Crazy," "The Love God," and the plot of the Weirdmaggedon finale. Mabel's lack of awareness towards boundaries in this matter is why she accepts Billendin's offer to freeze Gravity Falls in time and doesn't seem aware of just how much of a moral wrong that is against others' free will and autonomy. It's also a plot point in "Sock Opera": Dipper makes a deal with Bill—Bill gives him the laptop's password, and in exchange, Bill gets one of Mabel's puppets. But because of how Mabel treats Dipper, Bill considers Dipper to be one of Mabel's puppets.
• Foil: Is this to Dipper, as the two heavily contrast in personality, maturity, goals and philosophical outlook. While Dipper is cynical and struggles with self-confidence issues, he can be very determined when push comes to shove. Mabel tends to look on the bright side, has an inflated view of her own importance, and can lose it when things don't go her way.
• For Happiness: Mabel's fun-loving and optimistic outlook means she loves seeing others be happy too. She genuinely can't bear seeing people be upset, and has occasionally sacrificed her own happiness in exchange:
  • In "The Hand That Rocks The Mabel", she had a rotten time declining Gideon's advances, as she favored keeping their friendship. When Mabel tried to tell him the truth in a restaurant, she ends up not doing so after being pressured by overzealous patrons.
    Mabel: Oh, Gideon, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to say-
    Blubs: I'm on the edge of my seat!
    Tyler: This is gonna be adorable.
    Old Woman: If she says no, I'll die from sadness.
    Doctor: I can verify that that will indeed happen.
  • Mabel literally has a happiness chart in "The Love God", which depicts Dipper, Wendy, and her friends with happy stickers. When she notices that Robbie is stickerless and has been sulking in a grave. Mabel's so determined to help him get over it that during a failing set-up date between Robbie and Tambry, she asks the Love God for help, and ends up stealing the love potion when he refuses.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The foolish to Dipper's responsible. Of the two, Mabel is the more interested in having fun, and often rushes into things without fully thinking of the potential consequences and implications. She is the 'small-picture' kind of girl, focusing on what's directly in front of her rather than the big picture or future, in direct contrast with Dipper's generally big picture concerns and tendencies for extensive planning and preparedness.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The Optimist: Mabel is highly optimistic and tries to be constantly cheerful. She always expects the best out of others and often hopes that their adventures will play out in a way she would like.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Sanguine: Outgoing, optimistic, and a bit of a space case.
• Friend to All Living Things: She's got one heck of a soft spot for them! There's various photos of her hugging animals. She's also hugged a cat during the How We Got Here moment of "Tourist Trapped", allows Gompers to chew on her sweater, saves a lobster from a restaurant, owns (and happily spoils) a pet pig named Waddles, and has let caterpillars crawl on her face.
  • She also bluntly states in "Land Before Swine" that Waddles should be kept inside like a person, and that maybe it's people who should be put outside.
  • In the Mystery Shack Mystery web game, Dipper's letter to their parents mentions that Mabel has actually fed baby birds in the attic—with her mouth.
  • The "Mabel's Scrapbook: Petting Zoo" short has Mabel fawning over all the animals in the petting zoo, and insists on saving Octavia, a mutated eight-legged^note (actually has nine legs) cow. After The Reveal that Octavia has more than just extra sets of limbs, she still takes a moment to take a photo of the cow even when everyone else ran off.
• Friend to Bugs: Her fondness for animals extends to the creepy-crawly variety. As stated above, she happily let a group of caterpillars crawl all over her face in "Into the Bunker". Another time she adoringly referred to a group of moths as butterflies.
• Fun Personified: A very cheerful and silly character. Warm welcomes and excitement typically follow her everywhere she goes. She evidently sees herself as this trope as well:
  Mabel: What? I'm delightful to live with! Get ready to be poked by the fun stick! Boop! (takes a stick and pokes Dipper with it)
• Gamer Chick: She's been shown playing a video game with Dipper, and beating him at it.
• Gargle Blaster: Mabel is shown to make a strange concoction called "Mabel-Juice"◊, which is a very sweet tasting drink that makes one who consumes it have a burst of energy. Apparently, one of the ingredients is plastic toys.
• Gasshole: Never demonstrated such tendencies on screen, but in "Society of the Blind Eye" she claims she can burp the alphabet. She does burp once in the book Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure!, but this is non-canon.
• Genius Ditz: Mabel's an energetic Cloudcuckoolander who has trouble keeping her feet on the ground, but when she focuses, she's just as intelligent as her brother (being skilled at improvising a plan versus his careful planning) and has a number of artistic skills. For example, all those colorful sweaters Mabel wears are knitted by her, and some of them have embedded technology, such as one with a light-bulb on it that actually lights up when pressed (as seen in "Into the Bunker"). She also is capable of solving a puzzle others have been trying to solve for centuries, though admittedly most of the clues were discovered on accident while she was goofing off and is capable of keeping up with Dipper when they're investigating what happened to Grunkle Stan's wax statue.
• Genki Girl: Mabel is a very excitable and outgoing ball of energy whose mouth runs a mile a minute. Justified, since the show has frequent references to her sugar intake.
  Wendy: What is she talking about?
  Dipper: Nothing! Mabel's just been eating raw sugar packets again.
  Mabel: (Eating sugar packets) Om nom nom...that's beside the point!
• Girly Bruiser: Mabel loves kittens and glittery stickers, but she also packs a mean punch and she'll take any opportunity available to use her Grappling-Hook Pistol. She's the Brawn to Dipper's Brains and is always up for kicking some butt.
  • In "Tourist Trapped", she made a gnome throw up after she kicked him in the stomach, and accidentally gave Dipper two black eyes in while trying to get a vicious gnome off his face.
  • It comes in full force in "Headhunters", where she swings a decapitated wax Coolio's head at the wax figures that surrounded her.
  • Stan learned in "Little Dipper" that Mabel high-fives HARD.
  • A conversation with Stan in Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets reveals that her first act as a newborn was to punch the doctor who delivered her.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Mabel is extremely girly. She likes kittens, knitting, makeup, and bedazzling her face, and adores stuffed animals. But beneath that long-haired, pink-wearing, cuteness-obsessed exterior is a very rough-and-tumble Girly Bruiser who loves to fight and get dirty, opting for a Grappling-Hook Pistol instead of a doll as a gift (much to Stan and Dipper's surprise), can apparently burp the alphabet, and enjoys beating her brother at video games. She also has a pet pig named Waddles, and she gets down on the ground with him quite frequently.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: The girl adores them. Stuffed animals can usually be seen on her bed and side of the bedroom, and they often feature in her Mabel's Guide to Life shorts, including Mabel's Guide to Dating, where she has several of them as guests sitting in front of a talk show-like table. A figure in Mabeland, is the Stuffed Animal Tree, which is a tree that has a myriad of stuffed animals hanging from it.
  • In "Society of the Blind Eye", she reveals her deepest, darkest secret:
    "I only love some of my stuffed animals, and the guilt is killing me!"
• Gleeful and Grumpy Pairing: The perpetually happy Mabel normally hangs out with her serious and snarky twin brother Dipper.
• Glurge Addict: Mabel loves anything cute, sparkly and colorful, no matter how sickening others find it. It comes out in full force in "Weirdmageddon Part 2: Escape From Reality", where her imaginary world that Bill Cipher has trapped her in is brightly colored, constantly blaring cheerful 80's style music, populated by walking, talking stuffed animals and cute little creatures. Ironically, when she breaks free from the world's trance, she complains about the colors being too bright and the overly repetitive songs, proving that Mabeland is too much even for her.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Mabel may be the goofy and energetic sibling compared to Dipper, but she has her own brand of intellect that's just as useful as his.
• Good Is Not Soft: Mabel tries to see the best in people and treat everyone nicely regardless of how they treat her (i.e., continuously being amiable to Pacifica even when the latter was a complete snob to her), but when her buttons are sufficiently pushed, she's downright scary. For example, in "The Last Mabelcorn", she's manipulated and tricked by a rotten unicorn who then rubs it in Mabel's face—and is shocked when Mabel responds by punching her in the snout and instigating a fight. Mabel also goes into attack mode when she sees Gideon hurting her brother.
  • The episodes "Boss Mabel" and "The Last Mabelcorn" both deal with Mabel coming to terms with the fact that being a nice, good person doesn't equate to being a pushover.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: One of her iconic items, in “Tourist Trapped”, Great Uncle 'Grunkle' Stan Pines allows his niece and nephew Mabel and Dipper to take whatever they want from the Mystery Shack gift shop. While Dipper chooses a hat with a pine tree emblem, Mabel pulls out a GRAPPLING HOOK! It actually comes in handy in the season one finale. At the end of "Gideon Rises", Mabel uses the grappling hook to save Dipper and herself from certain death.
• Guile Hero: Mabel's mostly a Girly Bruiser who prefers to shoot now and ask questions later, but she has her occasional moments of cunning. For example, she pulls a Batman Gambit in "Tourist Trapped" when she tricks a gnome into separating from his fellow gnomes by offering to kiss him, and then uses a leaf blower when he's close enough to suck him in and shoot him into the forest.
• Half-Identical Twins: Downplayed with Dipper. Dipper and Mabel, are twins with identical bodies and faces with the exception of small skin details (rosy cheeks for Mabel, eyebags and a red nose for Dipper); Mabel also has braces. The resemblance isn't generally brought up, as their clothes and personalities are closer to Polar Opposite Twins. In the defictionalized Gravity Falls: Journal 3, Dipper writes that Mabel looks like him but with "girl hair."
• Has a Type: Mabel definitely has a thing for Pretty Boys, especially long-haired ones. No fewer than three of the guys she develops crushes on can be called a Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Mermando, Gabe Bensen, and Marius von Fundshauser. She's also attracted to Xyler and Kratz, in addition to the members of Sev'ral Timez, whom Stan refers to as "bright and radical young men" and "darn beautiful men", respectively. She also mentions a previous crush on "the guy on the $10 bill" — the pompadoured and powdered Alexander Hamilton. Meanwhile the two random boys she's invading the personal spaces of in the music video of the parody song "Call Me Mabel" seem to be boys with glasses.
• Hates Being Alone: It is shown in various points in the series that Mabel doesn't like being lonely or the idea of loneliness in general. During the second half of season 2, Mabel notices that her brother Dipper was spending more time with the Author, making Mabel worried that she'll wind up alone without her brother.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": In the episode "Irrational Treasure", Mabel gets a laugh out of Dipper's use of the phrase "booby traps".
• Heroic BSoD:
  • After losing Waddles, her pet pig in "The Time Traveler's Pig", Mabel goes through one that lasts at least a month.
  • In "The Hand That Rocks The Mabel" Mabel becomes overwhelmed when Stan says she should marry Gideon. Mabel screams and runs off to hide in her sweater and refuses to come out, saying she's "in Sweater Town".
  • Spends much of the later half of "Not What He Seems" freaking out over feeling betrayed by Grunkle Stan when she and Dipper find out he's an imposter. She has a blank stare when she realizes the real Stan might have died over thirty years ago.
  • In "The Last Mabelcorn", Mabel is told by Celestebellebethabelle that she's far from pure of heart, she falls into a deep depression, complete with Troubled Fetal Position.
  • Returns to Sweater Town at the end of "Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future", where after a full day of nothing going right for her, Dipper tops it all off by choosing to stay in Gravity Falls as an apprentice to The Author.
• Hidden Depths: Alex Hirsch has stated in an interview that this was the reason for having her pick the grappling hook from the gift shop in the first episode: to show that Mabel, in addition to loving boys, sweaters, and pink, is more than willing to take a "crazy Batman gadget" when she gets the chance.
  • Being boy-crazy, Mabel has a long list of crushes, including Xyler and Kraz, a pair of Totally Radical dudes from her favorite movie, Dream Boy High. In addition to being pretty, they have law degrees and can quote Jean-Paul Sartre. Considering they're her idea of the perfect boys, Mabel has very high standards. On that same note, considering that both the Dream Boys and the Judge cat quote philosophical lines, this implies that Mabel is a very philosophical person.
  • In both "Scary-Oke" and "Into The Bunker", Mabel’s sweaters light up and in the former, play music. Because she hand knits all of the sweaters seen on the show, Mabel also seems to possess skills in electrical wiring, sound machinery and safely installing them in knitted garments.
• History Repeats: In "A Tale of Two Stans", the disconnect in Stan and Ford's relationship began when Stan, fearing his future and the thought of being separated from his brother, accidentally broke Ford's science fair project while under emotional distress and ended up getting kicked out of his home and estranged from his brother. In "Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Future", Mabel also suffers from the same fears. She accidentally takes Dipper's backpack instead of hers, and while emotionally distraught, she gets tricked into giving the rift to a Bill-possessed Blendin Blandin, whom breaks it to trigger Weirdmageddon and traps her in a bubble.
• Hypocrite:
  • In "Mabel's Guide to Dating", she wholeheartedly states "If love doesn't work, force it!" - even though she herself is greatly uncomfortable with Gideon's attempts to force a relationship between them.
  • In "Blendin's Game", Mabel calls Dipper a "creep" for his Precocious Crush on Wendy — despite the fact that she's had crushes on older boys herself, most notably Sev'ral Timez, whom she tried to keep to herself by locking up in the attic.
• Iconic Outfit: Mabel almost always wears one of her self-crafted turtle-neck sweaters. One of the most (if not the most) popular ones is the one that starred in the season one premiere, of hot pink color and with a shooting star. It is Foreshadowing about her role on a prophecy.
• Improbable Weapon User: When she's not kicking and punching, she tends to grab whatever's handy. She uses a leaf blower to blow away a hundred gnomes back into the woods in "Tourist Trapped" and in "Headhunters", uses candles and wax Coolio's head to take down a group of wax statues that surrounded her. In "Scary-Oke", she uses a Karaoke machine.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Her name is often misspelled as "Mable", even though her name appears in the opening credits. Even the back cover of Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets made this mistake. In-Universe, Soos confesses in "Society of the Blind Eye" that he thought her name was "Maple, like the syrup" for a while because no-one corrected him.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Implied. In Journal 3, it states that Gideons amulet corrupts its users soul, yet she remained a hero even after using it to save Dipper.
• In Love with Love: One of her goals is to have an "epic summer romance" in the pilot and spends some time flirting with every unrelated male of approximately compatible age she can find. She's also very keen on helping other people get their own romance as well. However, she seems to have a pretty poor idea of how love works, considering how often she tries to force love when it isn't there. In one of the shorts, she exclaims that if love doesn't work, "force it."
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Why she brags about being one millimeter taller than Dipper in "Little Dipper" and jokes that it was proof she was evolving into the "Alpha Twin". She feels as if Dipper is better at her at everything, and his tendency to brag after winning when playing games with her made her feel insecure. Alex Hirsch also states that Mabel is secretly envious of Dipper for being academically better than her, in contrast to Dipper being jealous of Mabel's social skills.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • Can sometimes be this, like in "The Deep End" when it came to Mermando's heritage and inability to walk.
  • Comes up again in "Sock Opera" when she realizes that her expecting Dipper to just roll with whatever her new-found obsession may be is actually quite selfish of her and causes Dipper to sacrifice a lot more for her than she does for him.
  • Discussed briefly by Dipper in "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons". Despite Mabel honestly believing her quips are funny and charming, many of the jokes she and Stan make at Dipper's expense have actually hurt him deeply over the series. Dipper directly confesses this to Mabel within the episode, explaining that he prefers spending time with Ford because he doesn't treat Dipper like Stan and Mabel do. Mabel deflects this with a "joke" about how Dipper should just give Ford time with that. Hurt from this to the point of disappointed silence, Dipper's only response is to turn away from her, and Mabel is left upset by what she herself has just said, miserably mumbling "you got me."
• Instant Expert: She was able to use Gideon's mystic amulet to save him and Dipper after both fell down a cliff, even though she got it mere seconds earlier.
• Irony: At the end of "A Tale of Two Stans", Mabel is extremely worried about Dipper and her growing distant or even antagonistic to each other like Stanley and Stanford. She makes Dipper promise he won't "get stupid" like they did, and he jokingly replies, "Not stupider than you." The very next episode has distance developing between them, largely because Mabel's Annoying Younger Sibling tendencies throughout the series start catching up to her—when Dipper gets someone to play with who shares his interests (Ford), he admits the best thing about Ford is that he doesn't make fun of him like Stan or Mabel.
  • In "Not What He Seems", Dipper is afraid of what will happen when the Portal opens and wants to shut it down, but Mabel decides to trust in Grunkle Stan despite his seemingly evil actions and opens it anyways. At the end of the very next episode, Dipper seems content with what happened and trusting in the future, and Mabel is afraid of what will happen, since this is her first episode realizing the future may hold consequences she won't like.
• It's All About Me: Shares this flaw with Ford, of all people. Like him, she has a problem with selfishness and a tendency not to consider the value of other people's opinions or desires if they differ from her own. She usually considers her way of doing things to be 100% correct (even at one point proclaiming to her brother that she "do[es] everything right, all the time!") and has to go through tough Jerkass Realizations to even consider that whatever she's done maybe wasn't the best thing after all. Unfortunately, she also shares Ford's tendency towards forgetting hard-learned lessons, so she slips back into this just as often.
  • Dipper possibly leaving to become the Author's apprentice and chase his dreams by himself actually scares her into admitting that she doesn't care if it's a good opportunity for Dipper, what matters is if it's a good opportunity for her. This was, of course, after she had a really awful day, and she gets over it during "Weirdmageddon".
  • Discussed and addressed in Gravity Falls: Lost Legends wherein after realizing her bad traits and returning to her dimension, she gives Dipper a pine tree journal she received from an alternate Mabel and apologizes to Dipper for being selfish.
    Mabel: It's time for us to start some new adventures! And this time I won't always hog the spotlight.
• Jerkass Ball: In "Sock Opera", where she breaks a promise to help her brother to impress her guy of the week, and in "Northwest Mansion Mystery", where she breaks her promise with Grenda not to hit on another cute boy in order to conspire with Candy to get said boy's attention.
  • Pretty much any time Mabel's given an object of affection to adore, actually. See Love Makes You Evil.
• Jerkass Realization:
  • She has one during "Sock Opera", realizing that the combination of Dipper's relative passiveness and her own oblivious selfishness often results in her own desires being put before her brother's. Mabel appears to be trying to correct for this by the end of the episode, but she still tends to forget this lesson when she gets extremely emotional or excited.
  • She has another during "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons" Dipper, when talking about Ford, mentions that one of the best things about him is that he doesn't make fun of him like Mabel and Stan do. When Mabel laughs and says he should just give Ford time with that, Dipper simply turns his head away from her in disappointment. Mabel's face shows she realizes how hurtful what she's said actually is, the most she can do is give a little "you got me there" and turn over in bed.
  • Mabel has one in Gravity Falls: Lost Legends, where she's in the middle of an angry outburst at the alternate Mabels for being easily distracted and self-centered, realizing that they are mirroring her own flaws.
    Mabel: What's wrong with you guys! This is an important mission and you're all just being totally self-center— [shocked realization] Ohhh... [covers her face] Oh, Mabel, you gotta work on yo'self.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Downplayed in Gravity Falls: Lost Legends' comic, "Don't Dimension It." In this comic, it's stated that Mabel confessed to making the selfish deal with who she'd thought was Blendin Blandin and subsequently accidentally starting Weirdmageddon, leading to Dipper placing a sign next to the initial crack in reality labelling it "Mabel's Fault." In the comic proper, Mabel is sucked into a dimension portal and ends up in Dimension MAB-3L, where she has to deal with numerous alternate versions of herself. Unfortunately, the other Mabels aren't willing to help "Mabel Prime" get back home due to their own personal quirks. The only one who seems willing is Anti-Mabel, an evil Mabel who intentionally caused the damage Mabel Prime caused by accident. Dealing with these conflicts leads Mabel to have a Jerkass Realization, and she vows to become a better person once she retuns home. However, she still faces little to no consequences for her selfish wish that started Weirdmaggedon outside of the jab about "Mabel's Fault," and Dipper still returns to Piedmont with her, so she still keeps her benefits from accidentally causing that disaster.
• Kid Detective: Same case as Dipper, often accompanying him in his investigations.
• Kid Hero: She's twelve like her brother and one of the heroes.
• Kiddie Kid: Mabel is a more balanced, realistic example of this trope. She's almost 13, yet still loves unicorns, stickers, light-up sneakers, and owns a very childlike bicycle◊, complete with a flower basket and handlebar streamers. She also likes plenty of things preteens are expected to like, including and especially romance/boys.
• Kissing Warm-Up: She attempts this in the pilot episode with a photo of Norman and a leaf blower set to reverse. Naturally, it gets stuck to her face.
• The Lancer: Secondary character to Dipper and more than willing to put Dipper in his place if he needs it.
• Large Ham: You take a Cloudcuckoolander, feed her a bag of sugar, give her a massive collection of home-made sweaters and a Cute, but Cacophonic voice that seldom goes below 75 decibels, and you've got Mabel Pines. Sometimes she can be really over the top. The creator even describes her as this. She's especially like this around her pet pig, Waddles.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: During Weirmageddon, it is implied that Bill Cipher wiped Mabel's memory of her unknowingly giving the dimensional rift to him.
  • However, the Lost Legends story "Don't Dimension It" heavily implies that Mabel regained that memory after Bill's defeat.
• Laugh of Love:
  • In "Tourist Trapped", after Mabel flirts with a boy whom she has a crush on and inadvertently knocks him over, she laughs happily.
  • In "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel", Lil' Gideon is attracted to Mabel (who sees him as just a friend) and they tend to laugh when they hang out together, at least until Gideon reveals himself to be utterly psychotic in his attraction to Mabel.
  • In "The Deep End", Mabel laughs and says "You're so funny!" when Mermando, a merman she develops a crush on, jokingly compliments her on her lack of water wings. Soon afterwards, Mermando laughs as she combs his hair, which causes her to think that he likes her.
• Leitmotif: She is musically represented by a theme that sounds similar to Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". Notably heard during the credits of "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel", when they turn Soos into a human disco ball.
• Lethal Chef: Literally. Her "Mabel Juice" has plastic dinosaurs in it.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Whenever something pushes her too far, such as her brother being put in danger or someone manipulating her, she'll always step up, and often the results aren't pretty.
• Little Miss Badass: Mabel's a twelve-year-old girl who loves nature, animals and everything feminine. She's also quite capable against the calamities that Gravity Falls throws at her on a regular basis.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Dipper. While it doesn't reach unhealthy standards like Mabel, Dipper relies on Mabel for emotional support whenever he is upset over blunders.
• Living MacGuffin: Her importance is revealed in the finale: She is one of ten who can defeat Bill Cipher.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Mabel was never told about the dimensional rift and what it could do. Bill Cipher used this to his advantage to jump start Weirdmageddon.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Her hair reaches down to her waist and she's quite girly.
• Loon with a Heart of Gold: She's a quirky girl with strong, sometimes troublesome Cloudcuckoolander tendencies, as well as the tendency to inadvertently hurt people when trying to help them. She's still an All-Loving Heroine whose heart is nonetheless in the right place.
• Love Makes You Evil: Many of Mabel's worst Jerkass moments are when there's a cute guy on the line. It starts in "Boyz Crazy", when she decided to keep Sev'ral Timez oblivious prisoners. In "Sock Opera" she breaks her promise to help Dipper so she can obsess over Gabe Benson, even momentarily giving into Bill Cipher's demands to have a shot at Gabe despite knowing that doing so would enable Bill to continue endangering Dipper. And then despite supposedly learning from this in "Sock Opera", she knowingly and willingly isolates Grenda to hit on a cute rich guy because she thinks Grenda will get in her way of flirting with him. She usually gets a Heel Realization at the end.
• Magic Skirt: For some reason, her skirt stays in place despite the crazy stunts she does. In Irrational Treasure, Mabel lies on a bench UPSIDE DOWN. Her skirt stays defiantly upright. Gravity must work differently in Gravity Falls.
• Magnetic Hero: Lampshaded by Ford, who claims he once watched her become pen-pals with a pizza delivery man in the span of a minute.
  • In "Headhunters", she quickly befriends a biker (that had aggressively growled at her) with a paper fortune teller.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: A non-romantic example. Despite her love of sweaters, glitter, and unicorns, Mabel Pines is adventurous and aggressive (her gift of choice from Grunkle Stan is a grappling hook) while her twin brother Dipper is so nerdy and intellectual that it takes the help of mythical creatures to help him become manly (and Dipper ultimately decides he wants nothing to do with the Manotaurs and their ideas of masculinity).
• The Matchmaker: She really wants to be this, but her attempts to pair people (and animals) up usually fail due to her rather... forceful methods. The only successful match she's made thus far is Robbie and Tambry, and it's debatable as to whether it was a genuinely good match or morally unethical Squick, since she drugged them both with a Love Potion.
  • One of the Mabel's Guide to Life shorts is Mabel's Guide to Dating, where Mabel describes herself as a dating expert. She sets up a dating quiz that Soos, Dipper, and Grunkle Stan partake in, and also matches up some animals, including two toads, two squirrels, and an owl statue with a real owl.
• Meaningful Name: Mabel means "lovable", and pretty much everyone in the show adores her. Too much, in the case of Gideon. Her name also means "loving", which makes sense since Mabel is driven by her heart, as she tries to find the perfect summer love for herself and be a matchmaker for Robbie and her friends.
• Morality Pet: To Stan, even before his Character Development. He genuinely adores her, and treats her incredibly well, comforting her when she's upset and calling her by affectionate nicknames. It's her and Dipper's teamwork that makes Stan and Ford realize just how petty their antagonism towards each other is and work together to stop Bill.
• Motive Decay: Suffers this in both "The Love God" and "The Last Mabelcorn". In both episodes, she started out wanting to do something good for others (helping Robbie to be happy in the former, and protecting the Mystery Shack in the latter), but her goals quickly descended to bolstering her own ego (by proving herself "the greatest matchmaker ever" and of being "pure of heart").
• Motor Mouth: Downplayed. She's loud, chatty, opinionated, and has no trouble saying whatever comes to mind no matter how strange or unsettling, but it's not the extreme example common for this trope.
• Ms. Imagination: Is prone to wild and vibrant flights of fancy, ranging from sparkling, glittery rainbows to Aoshima the dolphin and waffles with muscular, humanlike arms. In "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality", these come to life in Mabeland.
• Nephewism: Her and Dipper's summer caretaker is their great uncle aka "Grunkle Stan". Their parents are known to be alive and well, they just sent them there to get them out of their hair for the summer. Stan is more like a surrogate grandfather than anything else, so would it be called "Great-Nephewism?"
• Nice Girl: Although she can be insensitive at times, Mabel is a very compassionate person and generally tries to help others, though her methods don't always produce the ideal results.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In "Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Future", Ford talks Dipper into becoming his apprentice, which would require Dipper to stay in Gravity Falls after the summer is over. Mabel, freaking out already over how terrible everyone older than her says growing up is, tries to freeze Gravity Falls in time with Blendin Blandin's help so Dipper can't leave her to grow up alone. Only problem is, Blendin was possessed by Bill and used Mabel's desperation to get the Rift, which he then used to start the Apocalypse.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Mabel had dated a couple of cute vampires without mentioning it to Dipper.
    Mabel: [to Mermando] Same here. Except for a zombie, a gnome, and a couple of cute vampires.
    Dipper: I don't remember the vampires.
    Mabel: I don't tell you everything.
  • In "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back The Falls", she states that she's accidentally gotten spray paint in her eyes... several times.
• The Nose Knows: Mabel has sensed Robbie coming in "The Time Traveler's Pig" from smelling a gallon of body spray, and "Fight Fighters" due to smelling anger and hormones.
• No Indoor Voice: She tends to get loud when she's excited—which is nearly always.
• No Sense of Personal Space: She has a habit of playfully punching, poking, bear hugging, and tackle hugging people she is especially fond of. Dipper, Stan and occasionally Soos are usually on the receiving end of these.
  • In "Gideon Rises", she couldn't resist touching Soos's Abuelita's face.
    Mabel: Oh, Soos, your grandma is so adorable! And her skin is old lady soft. [touches Abuelita's skin with one hand, then both] Haaahhh!
• Occult Detective: Not as much as her brother, but she's perfectly comfortable investigating the strange occurrences in Gravity Falls.
• Odd Friendship: With Robbie. The two of them make friends by the end of "The Love God", after Robbie expresses his appreciation to Mabel for her hooking him up with Tambry. A scrapped animated Polaroid was supposed to play in the credits of the series finale that shows Mabel painting Robbie's nails. Mabel is an optimistic All-Loving Heroine who wears bright clothes and is almost always smiling, whereas Robbie is a pessimistic Jerkass (at least initially) who wears dark clothes and is quite moody.
• Only Friend: Heavily implied to be Dipper's closest and most trusted friend pre-series. Which is sad, considering Alex Hirsch has stated they weren't as close then as they are in Gravity Falls.
• The Only One I Trust:
  • In the first episode of Gravity Falls, the journal Dipper finds has an entry that says, "Remember, in Gravity Falls, there's no one you can trust." By the end of the episode, he realizes that there is someone he can trust: his twin sister, Mabel.
  "...But when you battle a hundred gnomes side-by-side with someone, you realize that they've probably always got your back."
  • In "Not What He Seems", both Stan and Mabel have betrayed Dipper's trust in them - Stan when the twins learn that he may not even be their Great-Uncle and that he's been hiding crucial information from them of possibly apocalyptic proportions, and Mabel when she chooses to trust Stan's judgment over Dipper's in the matter of letting the portal under the Mystery Shack reach its fully active state.
  • In the following episode, "A Tale of Two Stans", Stan regains Dipper's trust after the boy learns that his entire motivation in opening the portal was rescuing his own twin brother, Ford. While Mabel possibly regains Dipper's trust as well, their relationship as siblings becomes slightly more distant.
• Other Me Annoys Me: In the Gravity Falls: Lost Legends storyline "Don't Dimension It", she quickly becomes annoyed with the alternate Mabels' self-centredness and inability to focus on what's important. However, Mabel does warm up to them towards the end of the story.
• Outdated Name: "Mabel" was a popular name during the late 19th century and early-to-mid 20th century, but is now largely considered to be old-fashioned. It's lampshaded by Pacifica, who says it "sounds like a fat old lady's name", but Mabel decides to take that as a compliment.
• Outdoorsy Gal: A rare Girly Girl example. She enjoys being out in nature considerably more than Dipper.
• Parental Favoritism: Is obviously shown this from Grunkle Stan, who is far more familial with her than with nearly anyone else at the Shack.
• Perpetual Smiler: It takes a lot to wipe the smile off her face.
• Pink Means Feminine: She's a Girly Bruiser whose Iconic Outfit consists of a pink turtleneck sweater and headband.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Not always, but she has no problems fulfilling this role.
• Plucky Girl: Although wacky, Mabel is very resourceful and will use whatever is available to help with the situation at hand.
• Polar Opposite Twins: While both of them are good-natured, they contrast in personality. Mabel is a Cloud Cuckoo Lander Pollyanna while Dipper is serious and snarky. Dipper often seeks validation and acceptance, while Mabel does her own thing regardless of what anyone else says. Both of these outlooks on life have their virtues and flaws. These differences become more pronounced after Ford comes to stay with them.
• The Pollyanna: Mabel has been described as a "glass half full" kind of girl. No matter how sad she is or how dire a situation she's in is, Mabel's recourse is to make the best of it.
  • Dipper lampshades her tendency to bounce back quickly in the episode "The Time Traveler's Pig" when he says to Mabel, "I know you. You're gonna forget about this in a day!" regarding her despair over losing Waddles when Dipper changes circumstances via a time travel device. He turned out to be wrong, however.
  • In "Gideon Rises", when Gideon has seemingly succeeded in taking over the Mystery Shack, resulting in the twins having to be sent home, Dipper is completely devestated while Mabel tries to lighten the mood and cheer herself up by playing a game involving finding hidden items under the bus seat.
  • Best shown in "Not What He Seems", when, despite Dipper imploring her to shut down Stan's portal on the grounds that Grunkle Stan's duplicitous nature could endanger the universe, she instead chooses to let the portal activate completely, trusting that Stan loves her and only wants what's best.
  • Subverted when she finally begins considering her and Dipper's possible future and begins growing paranoid over it. Notably, this paranoia causes a good portion of the emotional conflict that develops between Dipper and Mabel, because she's so hysterical by the time Dipper learns about her concern that she refuses to actually talk with him about it, instead yelling at him and running away.
  • This gets deconstructed in the second season, where her attempts to see the best of any bad situation, despite all evidence to the contrary, can lead to Break the Cutie moments (such as when the possibility of Stan being a criminal imposter seemed like an actuality), or even full-fledged denial. Her belief that everything will work out in the end also regularly gets challenged and hit with realism, like in "Sock Opera" and "The Love God", where her actions don't result in entirely positive outcomes like she thinks they will.
• Properly Paranoid: Her fears that she and Dipper will eventually drift apart like Ford and Stan, which Dipper brushes off, begin to become legitimate as Dipper starts to spend most of his time with Ford, while Mabel spends even more time with Stan, Grenda, and Candy. But rather than any dislike towards each other, it's more a case of Poor Communication Kills—neither of them are talking to each other about their deeper concerns due to outside forces and inner issues, so when problems between them arise, they both internalize it rather than discuss it, and thus aren't made aware of what bothers the other. See Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, however, for how she caused some of these fears to happen herself.
• Proud Beauty: A very mild example, but Mabel does seem to be aware of and prize her beauty. In "Gideon Rises", she refers to herself as beautiful, and in "Dreamscaperers", when Bill Cipher turns her into an ugly, green monster while she's inside Stan's mind, she flips out and exclaims, "My cuteness! What did you do to my cuteness?". Downplayed considerably given that she isn't stuck up, and that she gives her female friends boosts of confidence all the time by complimenting their appearances.
• Psychic Powers: For a brief instance in "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel", while she was holding Gideon's amulet.
• Pubescent Braces: Mabel and Dipper are 12 years old during the summer when the show takes place, though only Mabel wears braces which, according to Dipper in "Carpet Diem", whistle when she breathes. Mabel is less concerned than Dipper is about "acting mature" (though she does show a lot of emotional maturity for her age). (Also: a photo flashback reveals she's had braces at least since she was 9 years old.)
• Quirky Curls: She is shown to have distinctive curls on the ends of her hair. Which reflects her Cloudcuckoolander personality quite well.
• Reconstructed Trope: Along with Dipper, she reconstructs Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling. Instead of their differences pulling them apart, it makes them stronger: Mabel’s social skills and quick thinking help them out as much as Dipper’s smarts and planning do.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Dipper is the (usually) calm and collected Blue, as opposed to Mabel's off-the-wall, wacky Red. Coincidentally, Dipper wears a navy-blue vest, whereas Mabel wears red (or any different shade of the color) on several occasions.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Non-romantic example: Mabel is the Energetic Girl to Dipper's Savvy Guy. Mabel's cheerful and upbeat personality makes a contrasting pairing with Dipper's cynical and stern one.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Sarcasm sometimes goes over Mabel's head. It's a trait she shares with Soos.
  Stan: Look, you guys got a problem with how I run the Shack, take it up with the complaints department. (holds up a trash can.) Zing!
  Mabel: I am going to write them such a letter! (Starts writing a letter, covering what she's writing with her arm.)
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Mabel does this on a fairly regular basis. WOMP WOMP!
  "Check it out, Dipper. I successfully bedazzled my face. Blink! (Blinks as she says this and some of the sequins fly off her face) Ow."
• Security Cling: While both Pines twins do this when they are both frightened, Mabel does this more so, frequently reaching for Dipper's hand, shoulder, or vest when she is scared.◊
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Mabel's fear that her relationship with Dipper will become more distant actually does start to manifest in reality; however, one of the major reasons Dipper stops spending as much time with her is because he gains the option to spend time with someone who doesn't make fun of his hobbies, interests and quirks like she does. Also, when Dipper's finally made aware of Mabel's fear of drifting apart and tries to talk to her and work things out, Mabel's so upset at him for unknowingly forcing her to confront this fear that she refuses to talk with him, instead yelling at him and running away crying, which quite literally causes the Rift between them to go from manageable and controllable to uncontainable and unpredictable.
• Serial Romeo: Unlike Dipper, who had a crush on Wendy for all the first season and got a Ship Tease with Pacifica in Season 2, Mabel has the largest amount of Temporary Love Interests, as it's her goal to have an "epic summer romance." She flirts a lot trying to find "the one" and when things don't go well she moves on to another boy. But unlike other examples, she remembers her affections for every boy she took a shine to, as seen by the illusions made by the Love God.
• Shipper on Deck: A self-proclaimed matchmaker.
  • Mabel helped Soos find a girlfriend.
  • She "married" Waddles the Pig with Gompers the Goat.
  • "The Love God" shows that she ships Dipper with her friend Candy, and Grunkle Stan with Soos's grandmother.
  • Mabel and Candy agree to be "co-bridesmaids" at Grenda and Marius' future wedding.
  • Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets reveals she knows about Dipper and Pacifica hugging in "Northwest Mansion Mystery" and teases them about it. In Lost Legends Pacifica accidentally texts Mabel a message for Dipper and Mabel quickly assumes she has a crush on him, which Pacifica vehemently denies.
• Small Name, Big Ego:
  • In "Tourist Trapped", she believed she was "irresistible" to guys, in spite of the Montage showing her heavy-handed attempts at flirting failing miserably.
  • In "The Love God", she considered herself "the world's greatest match-maker", even though she has a very poor idea of how love works.
  • In "The Last Mabelcorn", she fully believed she was of "pure, perfect heart."
  • In "Don't Dimension It", she finds herself in a dimension filled with other versions of herself. When asked which Mabel she is, she replies that she's "The best Mabel, obviously!" She is instead labelled "Slightly Arrogant Mabel" (which she awkwardly tries to deny).
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Ford doesn't seem to have considered how badly Mabel would take his offer to essentially raise Dipper (just Dipper) through his teenage years in Gravity Falls. Her It's All About Me response and subsequent desperate deal with Blendin Blandin to try to freeze time (thus preventing her or Dipper from growing up for as long as she wanted) screwed over Dipper and Ford's hard-won solution to the slowly cracking Rift and led directly to the start of the Apocalypse they were trying to prevent, because as it turns out, Blendin was possessed by Bill.
  • However, had Mabel not unknowingly gave the dimensional rift to Bill, Stan and Ford would never have rekindled their friendship.
• Stating the Simple Solution: In "Double Dipper", she urges Dipper to throw away his long-winded plan to win Wendy's heart, and just talk to her like a normal person.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: With Dipper. Mabel's strength is rarely brought up, but she is a lot stronger than most girls her age and she is the one more accustomed to fighting. Dipper is obsessed with the titular town's mysteries and secrets, he is the logical twin who is a Guile Hero.
• Stunned Silence: In the Establishing Series Moment in the pilot, this was her reaction to finding out that her new boyfriend was actually a bunch of gnomes standing on top of each other. Notably, this is the only time in the whole series that Mabel's rendered speechless. (Though it makes sense, considering this was her first-ever encounter with the supernatural. After that, it's safe to assume not much would shock her anymore.)
• Successful Sibling Syndrome: Mabel sometimes feels at odds with her brother Dipper due to the latter having more academic finesse.
  • In "Little Dipper", she spends most of the episode teasing Dipper about being slightly shorter than her. She eventually reveals that the reason why is because he bests her at most activities—chess, checkers, ping pong, etc., and that her being taller meant she "finally felt like [she] was winning at something for once."
• Sweet Tooth: She's a twelve-year-old girl, so there are plenty of indications that she has this:
  • One piece of promo art shows her lying on the floor with a popsicle stuffed in her mouth.
  • In "The Inconveniencing" she eats "bleventeen" packages of Smile Dip.
  • In "The Time Traveler's Pig" she has two cones of cotton candy and is pissed when Robbie takes a chunk out of one of them. Though she dropped them when she was distracted by the "win a pig" sign.
  • In "Mabel's Guide to Stickers" she trades Stan a "Baby on Board" sticker for an industrial-sized bucket of sprinkles. We don't see her eat the whole thing, but she definitely plans to.
    Mabel: [grinning] I'm gonna get so sick.
  • In "Little Dipper", she ate a gummy bear the size of a large teddy bear (except for the head, which she saved for later).
• Sympathy for the Devil: Mabel feels this way toward Pacifica at the end of "The Golf War", and even Dipper concedes that she really is just a kid like them... except utterly, ridiculously rich, in which case sympathy is mixed with envy.
• Talking in Your Sleep: In Gravity Falls: Journal 3, one of Dipper's notes mentions that Mabel sings in her sleep.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: She's very much a Girly Girl and knitting cute, colorful sweaters is one of her hobbies.
• They Just Dont Get It: In "The Last Mabelcorn". Despite being informed that doing good deeds just to look good isn't good at all, she goes right back to trying to think of a good enough deed to make her "pure of heart."
• Toilet Humor: Mabel loves this type of humor. In "Society of the Blind Eye," she scribbles "BUTTS" on Blind Ivan's phrenology-map skull tattoo, and in "Fight Fighters", she gets Rumble McSkirmish to shout, "POOP! POOP AND BUTTS!". She's also very amused (as is Stan) by the DD&MD rule-book's use of the word "buttress" in "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons".
• Tomboy and Girly Girl:
  • Mabel is the Girly Girl to Wendy's Tomboy. She's into things such as knitting, bejeweling, boy bands, and teen romance movies, while Wendy likes tree climbing, pranking, indie rock bands, and zombie flicks. Though the two of them have some notable things in common—they both adore stuffed animals, enjoy the outdoors, and love to brawl. Hanging out with Mabel tends to bring out Wendy's girlier side.
  • Conversely, Mabel is the Tomboy to Pacifica's Girly Girl. Mabel is an unapologetic goofball with no qualms about eating an old taco from behind a car seat, whereas Pacifica is a vain Alpha Bitch (later Lovable Alpha Bitch) who's repulsed by the idea of eating in a car, period. While Mabel does love makeovers and bejeweling her face, she isn't nearly as interested in looks as Pacifica is. She's also a rough-and-tumble Girly Bruiser who looks forward to adventure, while Pacifica (despite being a capable Girly Bruiser when necessary) seems to view adventuring and fighting purely as a means to an end.
• Took a Level in Badass: In "Headhunters", she beats the majority of the evil wax figures mostly by herself.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • In "Little Dipper", Mabel responds to Dipper's smug and open glee at his multiple game victories against her by continuously mocking him for being 1 millimeter shorter than her and claiming that this indicates she's "evolv[ed] into the superior sibling" and is now the "Alpha Twin," using this to cheerfully deride Dipper for supposedly being inherently inferior to her for the rest of the episode—all of this to the point where others around join in, with Stan gleefully calling Dipper the "object of ridicule" and of course doing his best to make it worse. Even after Dipper uses magic to make himself taller in an attempt to get everyone to stop making fun of him, Mabel has the gall to say that it doesn't matter because she'll certainly end up taller—and thus is still superior to him. Mabel doesn't even have a Jerkass Realization at the end like the other examples, instead justifying her actions by claiming Dipper made her feel bad first.
  • In "Boyz Crazy", she keeps Sev'ral Timez prisoner in her bedroom until Candy and Grenda can talk her out of it.
  • In "Sock Opera", she puts her desire for her Boy of the Week over her promise to help her brother decrypt the laptop password, pushes Dipper into promising to help her construct a puppet show on the fly to impress said boy, and steals Journal 3 to use as a prop in her play, almost giving it to Bill Cipher for the play's success before having her Jerkass Realization.
  • In "Weirdmaggedon Part 2," Mabel creates Dippy Fresh to be, according to her, a better and more supportive replacement for her brother. With the exception of basic physical features, Dippy Fresh is absolutely nothing like Dipper in any way, ultimately demonstrating, in that moment, Mabel's complete rejection of value in the real Dipper's traits and personality—directly to Dipper's face. To her credit, Mabel was implied to be under light brainwashing and rescinds her preference for Dippy Fresh in the resolution of the episode after choosing to return to the real world with the real Dipper.
• Took a Level in Kindness: After her experience dealing with the alternate universe Mabels and realizing her own self-centered behavior, Mabel ultimately vowed to become a much better person. Once she returned to her home dimension, Mabel's first act of kindness was giving Dipper a brand new journal. Stating that the journal will have all of their new adventures in it, and Mabel promising that she won't hog the spotlight.
• Town Girls:
  • The Genki Girl Femme to Candy's Asian and Nerdy Neither and Grenda's Brawn Hilda-ish Butch. Mabel is the most feminine of her friend group, practically personifying a Girly Girl.
  • She's also the hardy and adventurous Girly Bruiser Neither to Pacifica's vain Alpha Bitch (later Lovable Alpha Bitch) Femme and Wendy's athletic, axe-wielding, Ladette-ish Butch.
• Theme Twin Naming: Mason and Mabel Pines. Both names begin with the letter M, are five letters long, and are somewhat old-fashioned.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Became so frightened by the idea of growing up and being separated from her brother that she gave the Rift her brother and great uncle tried so hard to protect over to Blendin Blandin, who promised he would use it to freeze time for her so she and the rest of Gravity Falls would stay the same as long as she wanted. Instead, Blendin revealed himself to be possessed by Bill, who promptly broke it and began the Apocalypse.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Mabel seems to have an infinite amount of custom sweaters, and wears a different one every episode, and sometimes more than one in the same episode. Though she always wears turtleneck sweaters, they all have different patterns. Mabel switches sweaters every episode and if the episode takes place over the course of a few days she'll switch. She wears at least 6 sweaters in "The Hand That Rocks The Mabel" alone. Justified since Mabel knits the sweaters herself. Apparently she just owns a lot of yarn. This is in stark contrast to her brother's Limited Wardrobe.
• Unwanted Assistance: She frequently tries to "help" people by coercing others into taking up her methods. While she does this in many areas, it's most prominent in romance, where she's gone to extreme lengths to "support" others in relationships that she approves of.
  • In "Into the Bunker", she locks her brother into a closet with Wendy and refuses to let them out until Dipper confesses his love to her, after he told her he was giving up on his crush and asked her to leave it alone. This nearly gets them killed, because it wasn't a closet, it was the chamber of a very deadly (and now loose) experiment.
  • In "Roadside Attraction", when Dipper's still not over his rejection, she supports the idea that Dipper should get into a rebound relationship and tries to hook him up with her friend Candy, only to blame him when he was uncomfortable with Candy's really forward advances and gets angry at him for "betraying" Candy by talking to other girls before Candy even asked him out.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: She certainly thinks so.
  Mabel: (To Dipper) I'm obsessed? Look at you! You look like a vampire! And not the hot kind!

  Norman: Uh, Mabel, now that we’ve gotten to know each other, there’s... (exhales) ...there’s something I should tell you.
  Mabel: Oh, Norman, you can tell me anything! (Thinking:) Please be a vampire, please be a vampire!

  Mermando: Mabel, I have never met anyone like you.
  Mabel: Same here. Except for a zombie, a gnome, and a couple of cute vampires.
  Dipper: I don't remember the vampires.
  Mabel: I don't tell you everything.
• Weak-Willed: Her focus and dedication to a matter can easily be broken if she sees something she wants (especially if it's a boy).
  • In "The Love God", when the titular Love God is trying to take the Anti-Love potion away from Mabel and Dipper, he summons "Visions of Heartbreak Past," a spell that causes visions of all of Mabel's ex-crushes to appear, to trick Mabel into handing the Anti-Love potion over. Dipper punches one of these visions in the face and asks who would fall for it. Cut to Mabel surrounded by her exes...
    (Giggles) Sure you can all marry me. Oh, guy from the $10 bill, I forgot I had a crush on you.
  • In "The Time Traveler's Pig", Mabel tells Dipper she'll stick with him all day to help him keep Wendy away from Robbie, but then sees a pig (Waddles when he was still Ol' 15 Poundie) and runs frantically to win him.
• Weirdness Magnet:
  • Possibly moreso than her brother. Weird stuff is always gravitating toward her (the gnomes and Gideon, for instance). In "The Inconveniencing", she was possessed, rather than "punished" by the ghosts.
  • Ironically, Mabel missed out on the first four days of Weirdmageddon, due to being trapped inside a Lotus-Eater Machine.
  • In the "Lost Legends" story Don't Dimension It, After Mabel got sucked into a dimensional rift, she was transported to Dimension MAB-3L, where if any Mabel in the known multiverse got sucked in, they all end up in the same spot.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Bringing Stan up to the water tower to cure his fear of heights, shoving Dipper and Wendy into a closet to make Dipper confess his crush, shouting at women to leave the bathroom and talk to Soos to get him a date, that sort of thing. The first two end up accidentally putting people in life-threatening peril.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Bill of all people gives this to her in "Sock Opera", after she brushes off her promises to Dipper, makes him put his own plans on hold to help her win over her guy of the week, and even takes Journal 3 without permission to use as a prop.
  Bill: How's about you hand that book over?
  Mabel: No way! This is Dipper's! I'd never give it away!
  Bill: Hmm, you didn't seem to have a problem taking it for your own play or ditching him when he needed you. So come to your senses. Gimme the book or your play is ruined. [Mabel sighs and begins to hand over the journal] There it is. I mean, who would sacrifice everything they've worked for just for their dumb sibling?
  Mabel: ...Dipper would.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She has a phobia of Claymation that she realizes is perfectly rational in "Little Gift Shop of Horrors", though it's unknown if she really has this fear or if it was just part of Stan's story.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Tends to believe the best of everyone and that any situation will have a happy outcome. It's put to the test in "Not What He Seems".
  • In "Boss Mabel", she and Stan arrange a bet involving her being the Mystery Shack's boss for three days. In keeping with her all-loving, Pollyanna personality, prior to and at the beginning of the arrangement, she honestly believes that just being nice and letting the Shack's employees do absolutely anything they want will yield positive results. It doesn't work out as planned, and she eventually realizes that sometimes in life, you have to put your foot down. She spends the first half of the episode looking literally wide-eyed.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Though Mabel is ignorant of a lot of the complexities of others and often accidentally offends without meaning to, Alex Hirsch says she understands that Dipper's desire to grow up fast is inherently childish. This is shown in "Summerween" when she admits that she knows that she and her brother would inevitably grow out of trick-or-treating.
  Dipper: Mabel, you know that's not true. I just felt like I was getting a little too old to go trick-or-treating.
  Mabel: That's exactly why we need to go trick-or-treating, Dipper! We're getting older, there's not that many Halloweens left! I guess I didn't realize it was already our last one.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In "Sock Opera" towards the end:
  Mabel: Don't worry, I have seen enough movies to know this is the part where the audience thinks this was All Part of the Show and loves it. Cue applause!
  [audience boos and leaves]
• Yaoi Fangirl: About as blatant as one can possibly be in a Disney show. She enthusiasthically takes a picture of her own brother's CPR with Mermando and the original storyboards for "The Love God" have her sweater be a more blatant pride flag.

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