Recap / Gravity Falls S2 E15 "The Last Mabelcorn"

"YOU HAVE NO DOMINION IN OUR WORLD!"

— Ford Pines to Bill Cipher

One night, Ford is visited in his dreams by none other than Bill Cipher. Bill welcomes his "Old buddy" back to Earth, explaining that he's been preparing for 'The Big Day'. According to him, Ford won't be able to protect the Rift forever. Upon waking up, Ford realizes, "He's coming. I have to warn them!"

The next day, Ford calls for a family meeting and shows the Twins a picture of Bill. To his surprise, the kids are more than familiar with the triangle demon. Ford finds Bill's increased activity very concerning, and determines that they need to prepare themselves. Dipper asks what Ford's history with Bill is, but the Author dodges the question by listing their defenses; He knows of a spell to 'Bill-Proof' the Shack, but the last component is unicorn hair, and unicorns only give their hair to the pure of heart. Mabel, self-proclaimed pureheart and lover of all things girly, eagerly leaps at the chance to go unicorn-hunting. Ford gives her Journal 1 for help, but doesn't like her chances. He's met unicorns, and knows they can be frustrating. Since Bill-proofing the Shack might be out, the next best thing is to Bill-proof their minds. Ford takes Dipper down to his private study, in the floor between the main Shack and Portal lab.

Meanwhile, Mabel, along with Wendy, Candy, and Grenda, find the sacred meadow where the Unicorn Celestabellebethabelle lives, claiming to be the last unicorn in existence. To Mabel's shock, Celestabellebethabelle refuses to give any hair, claiming that Mabel is impure of heart and unworthy. Recalling how she commonly makes fun of Dipper, Mabel takes this to heart, and decides that she needs to up her game in the good department.

Back at the Shack, Ford explains more about what Bill is. He comes from another dimension, and can only access Earth through the mindscape. Through that pathway, he can possess a body like he did Dipper's. There are two ways to protect their minds from Bill's control; either get a metal plate installed (Like Ford did. *Clang*) or use a machine he built, that can scan and encrypt anyone wearing the helmet. Dipper asks again about Ford's encounter with Bill, but the Author ducks the question again, and hooks Dipper up.

Mabel and friends go on a binge of do-goodering, and when they get back to Celestabellebethabelle, she tells them...that Mabel is still not pure of heart and that doing good deeds to make yourself look good doesn't mean anything. Mabel is crushed, whereupon Wendy decides that it's time for the 'Wendy way'; take the hair by force. After getting some pixie dust from a gnome, the other girls knock out Celestabellebethabelle, but are stopped by Mabel, who doesn't like their methods. Celestabellebethabelle wakes up, denounces the girls, claiming Mabel will never be pure of heart as she wallows in pity…and two more unicorns show up, revealing she lied about being the last of her kind and annoyed that "C-Beth" is pulling the 'pure of heart scam'. Mabel is confused, and they explain...

Pink Unicorn: Kid, unicorns can't see into your heart. All our dumb horns can do is glow, point towards the nearest rainbow, and play rave music.
Blue Unicorn: Yeah, the whole "pure of heart" racket is just a line we use to get humans to leave us alone.
C-Beth: Guys...? Shut up...

Outraged at being jerked around, Mabel realizes that all this time she thought she was bad, but C-Beth is the real guilty party and she's even worse. C-Beth reveals that the unicorns are indeed lying jerks and want to keep their hair all to themselves. Having had enough, Mabel instigates a brawl between unicorns and humans.

At the lab, Dipper decides to see into the napping Ford's mind with the mind-reader. The computer shows Ford and Bill making a deal, and upon further inspection, sees that the study is a tiny shrine to Cipher! Ford wakes up, and a terrified Dipper, thinking Ford is possessed, shoots him with the memory ray. The beam bounces off Ford's head, breaking the mind-encrypter. Ford calms Dipper down, showing his eyes are normal, thus, unpossessed. He's unhurt by the ray, his mind protected by his metal plate, and decides to come clean about Bill.

"Bill wasn't always my enemy, Dipper. In fact, I used to think he was my friend."

Ford's investigation of Gravity Falls had hit a wall. He couldn't figure out what was causing the town's weirdness. One day, he found an ancient cave painting about a being with answers. In spite of the warnings not to, the desperate Ford read the inscription aloud. Nothing happened, but when Ford slept Bill Cipher appeared in his dreams. Bill claimed to be a muse, who chose one mind once a century to guide. Won over by Bill's smooth talk, Ford gave the triangle permission to enter his mind whenever. Together, the two designed the Universe Portal. But after the incident with McGucket, Ford became suspicious. He confronted Bill over the Portal's true destination. Bill dropped his friendly facade and revealed that when the Portal opened, "The people of your world are gonna learn how to party!" Realizing he'd been tricked, Ford shut the Portal down and hid the Journals so no one could complete Bill's work...a plan that came to naught when Stan used the Portal to save Ford. All Bill needs now to finish his plan is the tiny Rift in order to merge Earth with the nightmare realm he comes from.

Up in the main Shack, Dipper and Ford ponder how to defend themselves from Bill with the mind-scanner broken. At this point the girls return triumphant, having obtained more than enough unicorn hair. Ford congratulates Mabel, and he and Dipper complete the ritual. But Bill Cipher is not stymied so easily…

Bill Cipher: I guess I can't possess anyone inside the Shack, so I'll just have to find my next pawn on the o u t s i d e.

---

Tropes in this episode:

• Acid-Trip Dimension: The realm Bill resides in.
• Action Figure Speech: Whenever the unicorns talk, they don't move their mouths, but their horns glow.
• Alien Blood: Unicorn blood is apparently rainbow-colored.
• Alien Catnip: The gnome wants butterflies as payment. They're banned where gnomes live, even though all they do is tickle beards.
• Alone with the Psycho: Subverted; Dipper thinks that Bill has possessed Ford in the hidden room, but Ford shows Dipper that his pupils haven't changed, and that he was just being his usual Poor Communication Kills self.
• Ambiguous Situation: When Ford gives Mabel the crossbow, it's unclear if he meant it merely for her to defend herself against pests like the gnomes, or if he was encouraging her to use violence against the unicorns. He did call them frustrating...
• An Aesop: There's no such thing as being purely good or purely evil, a person cannot judge your worth by that alone. Life is morally grey and your intentions are what matters.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Despite having encounters with the supernatural in previous episodes, Wendy insists that unicorns aren't real. Justified as in the town none of the fairy creatures are sweet or idyllic.
• Audible Sharpness: When Wendy pulls the scissors out.
• Audience Surrogate: Mabel serves as this for herself when she points out her flaws, namely making fun of Dipper.
• Bad Guy Bar: Wendy, Candy and Grenda break into a Gnome bar to find out about a unicorn's weaknesses.
• Bait-and-Switch: At the beginning of the episode, Dipper and Mabel take out a sinister looking board game resembling Jumanji and decide it will take up the next twenty-one minutes, but the rest of the episode revolves around finding a way to protect the shack from Bill.
• Battle Discretion Shot: After Mabel discovers Celestabellebethabelle has been scamming her, she and the other girls prepare to beat the snot out of the unicorns. Just as both sides charge towards each other, the scene cuts to Dipper getting his mind scanned. Once they've returned to the Shack, the girls are battered, bruised, and covered in splotches of rainbow-colored unicorn blood and tears.
• Better Than It Sounds: In-Universe example. When Dipper explains to Ford how they defeated Bill in the past, Mabel adds "Once with kittens, and once with tickles".
  Dipper: It was a lot more heroic than it sounds.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Mabel rarely gets angry with anyone, but when she finds out the unicorns tricked her, she is furious. It's clearly a little terrifying to Wendy, Candy, and Grenda. Then she punches Celestabellebethabelle in the nose for mocking her, tears the unicorn off her sweater while seething, and proceeds to go after the unicorns with her bare hands.
• Big Sister Instinct: Wendy is shown to be very protective of Mabel in this episode.
• Bilingual Bonus: One of the files on Bill Cipher shows an old man making a deal with Bill, with the words Alligans Contractus, Latin for "binding contract".
• Blatant Lies: Mabel says the bird is fine after punching it.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: The girls make it back to the house covered in unicorn blood. (Well, Candy says it's tears, but considering we saw how Celestabellebethabelle bled when Mabel punched her...)
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: One game called "Battlechutes and Ladderships".
• Break the Cutie: Celestabellebethabelle telling Mabel she's not pure of heart really does a number on her. But it's the realization that it was all just a lie that sends her over the edge.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Mabel abandons her love and respect for unicorns when she realizes how much of a jerk Celestabellebethabelle is; even tearing out the unicorn drawing from her sweater to drive the point. It's not like Ford didn't warn Mabel to ready herself for disappointment.
  • It nearly happens to Dipper when he finds out Ford was involved with Bill. Things get better after Ford finally discloses the whole story.
  • Ford himself experiences this when he learns why Bill was really acting like his friend.
• Call-Back:
  • The symbol of Bill that Ford found in the cave is identical to the tapestry image in the Northwest Manor.
  • Dipper's trauma from Bill possessing him comes back in full force when he thinks Ford has been possessed, causing him to fire the memory gun at his great-uncle.
  • Celestabellebethabelle plays on Mabel's Jerkass Realization moments from earlier episodes, like how she puts her needs before Dipper's and makes fun of her brother constantly.
  • McGucket warning "fear the beast with just one eye..." revealed to Ford that Bill couldn't be trusted.
  • Mabel's love for unicorns was hinted at two episodes before.
  • The only charge listed on Grunkle Stan's ridiculously long rap sheet in the previous episode to be addressed by Stan himself was "pug smuggling." When Ford calls a family meeting, Stan is helping put barrels full of pug puppies into a truck and giving the driver orders to take them across the border.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Deconstructed to Discworld levels: unicorns are a bunch of jerks who pretend to be noble and pure so they can judge people and avoid being bothered.
• Character Development:
  • Mabel comes to terms with the fact that just because she has flaws, doesn't mean that she's a bad person.
  • After freaking Dipper out into thinking that Bill had returned, Ford finally swallows his pride and explains how he came to make a deal with Bill.
• Character Shilling: Wendy calls Mabel "a saint" to Celestabellebethabelle despite the obvious instances that disproved that.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The gnome bar mentioned in the map becomes the place where Wendy, Candy and Grenda infiltrate to find a unicorn's weakness.
  • The mind-eraser gun makes another appearance here. Dipper fires it by the episode's end. Ford says that it would've been a good maneuver if he had been possessed by Bill, as it can provide a defense against him.
  • Near the beginning of the episode Ford mentions he has a metal plate in his head to keep out Bill. It's this same metal plate that prevents his mind from being wiped when Dipper shoots him.
• Cliffhanger: The Stinger shows Bill Cipher pondering which of Gravity Falls' residents he's going to possess next, their faces flashing through his eye like a slot machine, and ends without revealing which of them he decided upon.
• Consummate Liar:
  • Celestabellebethabelle claimed to be the last of her kind. There are at least two others.
  • As it turn out, unicorns can't tell if someone is pure of heart, and Mabel was being scammed by Celestabellebethabelle. Even the other unicorns are disgusted by Celestabellebethabelle's actions and proceed to tell Mabel the truth.
  • Bill told Ford that he was a muse that helped great minds in order to trick him into building the portal.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The objects in Ford's dream include a swing set, a ship that's probably the Stan O War, and the broken portal.
  • Stan's still trying to get rid of the pugs mentioned in the last episode.
  • Mabel and Dipper recount how they beat Bill with "kittens and tickles" to Ford when he asks if they recognize Bill's symbol.
  • Dipper's mind sings "Disco Girl".
  • Dipper's crush on Wendy has far from faded, and one of his thoughts picked up by Ford's Machine is "THAT RED BATHING SUIT, MAN!"
  • Dipper drinking soda after a rough day with his Great Uncle. Only this time it's with Ford.
  • Dipper still misses Tyrone as seen on the screen.
  • Ford is sleeping on the couch in his secret study, found in "Carpet Diem". The body-switching rug is rolled up and leaned into a corner.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Celestabellebethebelle is this for Princess Celestia. The latter is a kind mentor who guides her little ponies toward a better life, while the former is a manipulative jerk who sends little girls on snipe hunts and plays with their feelings for kicks.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Ford admits that he should have told Dipper from the start about Bill, which would have prevented their confrontation in the secret room, but he was too ashamed about Bill having tricked him so easily.
• Crop Circles: Well, triangles. Ford dreams he's in a field and one forms around him in the shape of Bill.
• Cutting the Knot: After Mabel fails to prove that she is pure of heart, Wendy decides to bargain with the nearby gnomes to find a unicorn's weakness and get the hair.
• Deal with the Devil: The one that Bill made with Ford comes back to bite Ford in the butt. When Ford tries to back out of the deal after realizing what Bill wants, the Eldritch Abomination invokes You Are Too Late and says that the portal will create the rift, one way or another.
• Debate and Switch: Rather than addressing the legitimate parts of Celestabellebethebelle's criticisms or showing why Mabel is a good person despite her flaws, the episode concludes with Celestabellebethebelle being revealed as a fraud with no ability to rightfully judge Mabel at all, thus dodging the issue entirely.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Ford, being a Fish out of Temporal Water, gives Mabel a crossbow to protect herself. Lampshaded when Ford immediately asks Dipper whether this is considered okay in modern times.
• Demonic Possession: Dipper briefly thinks this is happening to Ford, before Ford points out he doesn't have Bill's distinctive Hellish Pupils. He's also seen possessed when Dipper sneaks a peek into his thoughts and in the flashback.
• Didn't Think This Through: Wendy, Candy and Grenda are able to successfully knock out Celestabellebethabelle with the fairy dust. What they didn't plan on was getting caught by Mabel before they could cut a lock of the unicorn's hair.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The memory gun can do this to Bill if he possesses someone, according to Ford. It will "erase" him from a victim's mind.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Mabel is told by Celestabellebethebelle that doing good deeds to prove you're a good person doesn't actually prove you're good. Mabel's response is to try to find even better deeds to show how good she is.
• The Dreaded: Dipper and Mabel view Bill as this; it's shown most prominently when Dipper thinks that Bill has possessed Ford.
• Easily Forgiven: Ford forgives Dipper for thinking Bill possessed the former and nearly wiping Ford's memory, because he knows what it was like to be that paranoid. He even compliments Dipper that if he had been possessed, Dipper would've defended himself well.
• The End of the World as We Know It: This episode confirms once and for all that this is Bill's ultimate plan.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Grenda is disgusted about what the drug-dealing gnome does to get the fairy dust. While he never outright explains how he got it, he implies that it's literally made of ground-up fairies.
  • The other two unicorns thought Celestabellebethabelle scamming Mabel was kind of messed up; they even explained to Mabel that the 'pure of heart' bit was just a bit to get humans to leave them alone.
• Everyone Knows Morse: When the girls knock out Celestabellebethabelle, the satyr plays "SOS" on his pan flute.
• Exact Eavesdropping: It turns out Ford heard Stan call him "a dangerous know-it-all" and it was on his mind when Dipper read Ford's thoughts. While Ford and Stan aren't on speaking terms, it shows that Ford did care what his brother said.
• Exact Words: Ford's magical protections prevent Bill from entering the mind of anyone inside the Mystery Shack. As Bill himself notes in The Stinger, the key word here is inside.
• False Friend: Bill lured Ford to his side with a cup of tea, a game of interdimensional chess, and constantly flattering his intellect. Considering Ford got made fun of for being smart and a square peg, having what was purportedly a muse who only appeared to geniuses choose him must have meant a lot to Ford - but it was all a ruse to trick him into building the portal.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Ford has no problem giving Mabel a crossbow, reflecting the more lax standards for this kind of thing back in the '80s (think The Breakfast Club and its portrayal of bringing a gun to school only being punished with a Saturday detention). More subtly, Mabel's Harry Potter reference goes right over his head.
• Five-Finger Fillet: The gnome dealer does this with an acorn.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Ford gives Mabel a crossbow and Journal #1 before she goes on her unicorn quest. It turns out that the best way to get hair from a unicorn is beating the tar out of them.
  • When Mabel begs Ford to let her find unicorn hair, she screams she'd give him her blood in exchange. Later, donating blood is one of the good deeds she does to prove she's pure of heart.
  • Ford mentions to Dipper that unicorns are difficult to work with. It turns out that this is because they're lying jerks.
  • Ford remarks that the memory gun would have been a good way to deal with possession, if he wasn't immune already. Several episodes later, it's how Bill Cipher is ultimately defeated.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Mabel's list of good deeds.
  • Dipper and Ford's thoughts.
  • Bill's magic circle◊ is the last thing Ford sees before waking up from his nightmare.
  • "RIP Shmebulock Sr."
  • One of the board games is "Shhh... Don't Wake Stalin!"
  • Ford's file on Bill contains a page on pyramids which references The Lion King and National Treasure (or Conspiracy Hank Goes Overboard) and makes some...interesting claims about the Egyptian pyramids.^note The full text: "Pyramids, also known as square-cones, are found all around the globe and have deeply mysterious origins. Modern engineers marvel at their seemingly impossible construction, but many don't realize that they are actually just the skeleton remnants of an ancient race of large triangluar (sic) dinosaurs who had very blocky bones. The Cycloptostoneosaurus was a feared predator and roamed the plains of Northern Africa where it subsisted on a diet of warthogs and meerkats, is made tender by their carefree lives and trouble-free philosophies. or so my roommate says. I'm mainly getting this stuff from him. Anyway, the reign of the pyramid continued well into the 18th century, where a young George Washington once saw one on summer vacation and swore that he would found a nation with the sole purpose of putting it on the back of dollar bills. Pyramids today are mainly tourist attractions and settings for conspiracy movies. Like that one where the guy has to steal the declaration of independence. You know the one. "Conspiracy Hank Goes Overboard." If you ever get a skateboard, go to Egypt and try riding down the side of a pyramid. I hear that's really encouraged.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: Bill addresses Ford by his full name — Stanford Filbrick Pines — when boasting in his dreams about his impending return.
• Gilligan Cut: After the girls do all 1000 good deeds:
  Mabel: (as Candy, Grenda and Wendy cheer) Boom! A thousand good deeds! When that unicorn scans my heart, she's gonna say I'm absolutely 100% bonafide—
  [cut to Celestabellebethabelle scanning Mabel's heart]
  Celestabellebethabelle: Not pure of heart!
• Good Is Not Soft: Wendy, keeping in touch with her Action Girl side. Since getting unicorn hair "the nice way" didn't work, she ropes Candy and Grenda into getting it "the Wendy way." Likewise, when Celestabellebethabelle's true colors are exposed and she taunts Mabel over it, Mabel responds by punching her in the snout and instigating a fight.
• Gonk: Some of the faces the unicorn pulls while posing are... less than charming.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Grunkle Stan to Santiago the pug smuggler.
  Grunkle Stan: Alright, Santiago, you have 24 hours to get these pugs across the U.S. Border.
  Grunkle Ford: [off-screen] Family meeting! Family meeting!
  Grunkle Stan: No te preocupes, vamos! Vamos! ^note Don't worry about it, go! Go!
• Heroic BSoD: Mabel is sent into one when she's tricked into thinking she's a bad person.
• Heroic RRoD: For Grunkle Ford and Dipper, when the latter freaks out in the secret room. Ford has been half-confiding in Dipper, who has been dying to know the answers, treating him like a Replacement Goldfish for Fiddleford McGucket, who was an educated grown man. Dipper is still a kid, however, and one traumatized by the time Bill possessed him; Ford seems to realize this by the end and comforts him with sodas as well as the whole truth of the portal.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Grunkle Stan can speak fluent Spanish.
  • Wendy is very protective of Mabel and in trying to keep Mabel happy.
  • Ford was thinking about Stan calling him "a dangerous know-it-all", which means that on some level he took the criticism in.
• Historical Hilarity: Apparently Stalin has his own board game, which references how he died.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: When Ford tries to reason with Dipper, several things trip him up:
  • Ford's general problems with communicating the situation that he's in regarding Bill and the portal.
  • The memory gun that Ford used earlier to erase the federal agents' memory.
  • The "trust no one" Madness Mantra.
  • Ford Not Helping Your Case by saying "You shouldn't have done that" and approaching Dipper menacingly while wearing dark glasses.
  • The equally Not Helping Your Case Bill Cipher shrine Dipper finds right after discovering Ford's deal with Bill, complete with a gold idol statue and about half-a-dozen identical portraits.
  • Ford referring to Dipper as "kid" just like Bill does, when he usually calls him "boy."
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Inverted; Ford asks Dipper to look into his eyes to see that Bill is not possessing him.
• Immune to Mind Control: Ford has had a metal plate implanted into his skull to prevent Bill from possessing him. He has also built a machine that can encrypt people's thoughts, so that Bill can't possess them either, but it's accidentally broken before it can finish the job on Dipper. Fortunately, the episode ends with Ford constructing a device that provides this benefit to anyone inside the Mystery Shack.
• Irony: It's C-Beth herself who's not pure of heart, as since unicorns are indeed lying jerks who only say that to tick humans off and keep their hair to themselves.
• Informed Kindness: Downplayed. While Mabel is far from a bad person, to call her "a saint" is a stretch given the number of times she's been selfish when Dipper is called out for even thinking of being selfish in the fewer number of times he has been.
• I Shall Taunt You: Bill appears to Ford in his dream to taunt him about the rift and his plans for the apocalypse.
• Jerkass: Appears to be the unicorn species' trait. Especially Celestabellebethabelle, who's actually called out on it by the other two unicorns.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Stan had a point when saying that Ford's work was dangerous, since Ford nearly brought about the end of the world by creating a portal that links to Bill's world and wanted the instructions hidden rather than destroyed. Fiddleford would agree if he were in town and cogent enough to see Ford's return.
  • While she turned out to be a huge dick and didn't mean a word of her "pure of heart" shtick, Celestabellebethabelle wasn't wrong about one thing: doing good deeds to make yourself look good isn't all that noble.
    • In addition, Mabel was making the good deeds about herself instead of a way to protect the Mystery Shack (and ultimately her home dimension). Only when she beats the crap out of the unicorns for their hair, picking the greater good over her self-perception, does Ford tell her that she really is a good person.
• Kick the Dog: Celestabellebethabelle does this to Mabel so regularly that Wendy, Grenda, and Candy cheer when Mabel beats up the unicorn.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Happens to Ford twice:
  • Fiddleford catching a glimpse of Bill's true plans and leaving the project led to Ford's Heel Realization and revelation that Bill lied to him.
  • Inverted when Dipper believes that Bill is possessing Ford; Dipper's genuine panic and paranoia when firing the memory gun leads Ford to finally admit what his history with Bill is and how he was ashamed of his blindness.
• Lampshade Hanging: Dipper hangs a lampshade on how easy it is to rationalize his thoughts.
• Larynx Dissonance: Actually allows Grenda to chant the incantation that must be spoken "in only the lowest of voices" to summon the unicorn.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Ford in his quest for supernatural knowledge inadvertently gave Bill a means of causing an apocalypse, and he became a paranoid, Poor Communication Kills Broken Ace, as Stan witnessed first-hand. His concealment of My Greatest Failure and Dipper's curiosity leads to Ford freaking out Dipper in the secret room. Ford gets a glimpse of how he must have looked to other people when a panicking Dipper thinks that Bill has possessed his uncle. That said, he ultimately compliments Dipper on his paranoia — he hasn't yet quite learned his lesson.
  • Celestabellebethabelle after belittling Mabel for the whole episode just to make the girls leave gets beaten up by Mabel and is eventually forced to cede her hair, "tears," and treasure.
• Last of Her Kind: Celestabellebethabelle introduces herself as this. (She's lying, of course. There are at least two others.)
• The Last Title: The episode title itself.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Dipper and Mabel happen upon a supposedly possessed board game and believe it would "take up the next 21 minutes." They are then called away by Ford for a family meeting, leading to the actual plot.
  • Taken even further considering that there were exactly 21 minutes left in the episode when Dipper said this.
• Light Is Not Good: Celestabellebethabelle is a very pretty colorful pony, who spends an episode tormenting a young girl for kicks.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Stan, though in this case it's his fault for not attending the family meeting with Ford, Mabel and Dipper. Stan has no idea who Bill is, what he plans, and what danger the Pines face. Heck, when he sees the bounty from the unicorn fight, he just rushes in to grab the treasure.
• Madness Mantra: When Dipper thinks Ford is possessed by Bill and prepares to use the mind-eraser gun on him, he repeats "Trust no one! Trust no one!" to himself.
• Meaningful Echo: "Trust no one!" was written by Stanford himself in the first journal Dipper found. Dipper took the advice a little too well.
• Mirror Character: Both Dipper and Ford were deceived and possessed by Bill, and both are ashamed of it. This hits Ford especially hard when Dipper peeks into his mind and freaks out, thinking that Bill has possessed Ford.
• The Muse: Bill told Ford he was one meant for geniuses to get Ford to build the portal.
• My Greatest Failure: Ford regrets making his deal with Bill.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Despite outing Celestabellebethabelle as a Consummate Liar, the other two unicorns help defend her against the girls when they attack.
• The Needs of the Many: Why Wendy justifies knocking out the unicorn to get her hair. The shack needs protecting.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In his quest to find the answers to Gravity Falls' weirdness, Ford found a cave with the spell to summon Bill despite there being a a warning message against it. This is what allowed Bill to manipulate him, saying that building the portal was the answer.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Bill taunting Ford in his dream leads to Ford creating a spell to protect everyone in the Shack. However, Bill has a contingency plan; possess someone outside the Shack.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Wendy, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda beat the living crap out of a trio of unicorns off-screen. When next shown, they're covered in rainbow-colored fluids. Candy claims it's tears...
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Celestabellebethabelle says "What the hay?!" when the fairy dust hits her.
• Not Hyperbole: When Ford says that he installed a metal plate in his head as a defense against Bill, Dipper assumes he's joking... until Ford knocks on the side of his head to make a metallic clank.
• Not What It Looks Like: Mabel stops Wendy from cutting Celestabellebethabelle's hair. Unfortunately, when the unicorn wakes up, Mabel has the scissors in hand.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The girls vs the unicorns. It was a beating so fierce the girls are covered in "tears", got a clump of hair, and the unicorns paid them to leave.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Ford gets this during his nightmare with Bill.
  • Dipper upon seeing Ford's memory of the deal he made with Bill.
  • The unicorns when Mabel gets angry.
• Once More, with Clarity: In "A Tale of Two Stans", Ford made it seem like he had thought up the idea for the portal himself and refused to relent his studies on it until mysterious voices from beyond the portal spooked him into stopping the project. Here, it's revealed Bill gave him the idea, and after Fiddleford's brief glimpse into the portal, Ford realized he had been tricked with Bill confirming it when they meet up again in the dream realm.
• Out of Focus: Stanley only appears in a couple of gags and doesn't interact with the main plot.
• Paranoia Gambit: What Bill did this episode. He taunted Ford in his dreams, saying he was waiting for Ford to slip up, and to take advantage of the mistake. And it nearly worked, when Dipper thought Bill had possessed his uncle and shot the latter with the memory gun.
• Persona Non Grata: Mabel is banned from a petting zoo for taping a cone to a horse's head.
• Poor Communication Kills: Ford finally realizes this trope is his Fatal Flaw after Dipper mistakenly believes that Bill has possessed him. He promises Dipper "no more secrets" and reveals entirely his past with Bill.
  • Some Fridge Horror: he never told Stan in full what he was up against when asking Stan to hide the journal. And Stan still doesn't know!
• Properly Paranoid:
  • Fiddleford asking Ford about where his ideas were coming from, before Fiddleford got sucked into the portal.
  • Ford believes this is the best way to deal with matters regarding Bill.
• Pure Is Not Good: Mabel is told by Celestabellebethabelle that she can't have her hair since she is not pure of heart. This drives Mabel into despair, and it later turns out that the "pure of heart" thing was nonsense. Mabel eventually stops caring about looking good, and does good by getting the hair by force.
• Rage Breaking Point: Mabel snaps pretty hard after she realizes Celestabellebethabelle spent the episode lying about seeing into her heart and making her think she was horrible just to get out of giving Mabel some of her hair. Once the truth comes out, Mabel's literally trembling with rage as she crushes her notepad with her "sins" in her hands.
  Mabel: All this time, all this time I thought I was a bad person. But you're even WORSE THAN I AM!
• The Reveal:
  • Ford tells Dipper Bill's ultimate plan: it's to create a portal that will let him and his kind access Earth, thus bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.
  • It's also indirectly revealed why the Mystery Shack has so much Bill Cipher/triangle imagery; Ford used to believe Bill was a muse, so he inserted his image around his house as a way to worship him.
• Rousing Speech: Wendy gives a good one to Candy and Grenda that inspires them to take the unicorn hair by force:
  Wendy: Look, it's time we stop trying to be so "perfect" and be who we really are. We're crazed, angry, sweaty animals! We're not unicorns, we're WOMEN! AND WE TAKE WHAT WE WANT! [punches a tree]
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Ford after Dipper reads his mind, making it hard to tell if he's possessed or not.
• Screw You, Elves!: Mabel calls Celestabellebethabelle out for lying to her, saying that the unicorn is even worse than she is.
• Shout-Out:
  • The title of the episode is an homage to The Last Unicorn. The plot of the episode also involves a unicorn who is Last of Her Kind like in the book and movie, but in this case that turns out to be a lie.
  • Cthulhu appears surrounding the giant emblem disk with Bill in its center, right before Ford bolts awake from his nightmare before the credits.
  • When looking through Stan's board games, the twins find Necronomiconopoly and another game resembling Jumanji in its description and box art.
  • The bet that Mabel and Wendy made, ten dollars and all, appeared earlier in a previous Disney movie.
  • Wendy is wearing a Stark T-shirt.
  • Mabel asks whether the family meeting is to announce that they're old enough to attend wizard school, and whether there's an owl in Ford's bag. Ford, amusingly, has no idea what she's talking about.
  • Celestabellebethabelle appears to have Rarity's triple diamond cutie mark. She also says "What the hay?", has Rainbow Dash's color scheme, and her name begins with "Celest" as in "Celestia".
  • Ford's plan to keep Bill out is to create a magical barrier around the Mystery Shack, much like the protective barrier from The Spiderwick Chronicles.
  • The Cipher Files mentions that the pyramids were actually the remains of dinosaurs with blocky bones, which hunted warthogs and meerkat, but turned tender by their carefree lives and trouble-free philosophies. It then describes pyramids as "settings for conspiracy movies like that one where the guy has to steal the Declaration of Independence."
  • Celestabellebethabelle reads a book titled "Whinny, Pray, Trot".
  • After Mabel punches Celestebellebethabelle, Grenda shouts "Join the Dark Side!"
• Smart People Play Chess: Ford and Bill are shown playing chess in the flashback. Bill, playing black, immediately cheats by going first, but Ford either doesn't notice or lets it slide.
• Smash Cut: Just as Mabel and crew and the unicorns are charging at each other, the scene changes to Dipper right before impact.
• Snipe Hunt:
  • Averted by Ford when he says the unicorn quest is hopeless, and Mabel begs to go. He not only gives her the means of summoning the unicorns' enchanted glade and a weapon, but also warns her that unicorns are "frustrating". Although he didn't believe she could do it and went for plan B — to shield his and Dipper's minds — he praised her when she came back with the hair.
  • Played straight by Celestebellebethabelle when she tells Mabel to leave until Mabel has become pure of heart. The "pure of heart" idea was a scam to get them to leave, but Celestebellebethabelle crushes Mabel by saying how "bad" she is.
• Spoof Aesop: In the end Mabel learns that "morality is relative".
• Swiss-Army Tears: Inverted; when Celestabellebethabelle sheds a tear that falls on a flower, the tear kills it.
• Take That!:
  • This episode isn't exactly subtle in conveying its opinion of critics who heap coals on Mabel for being self-centered, since the twist of the episode hinges on the individual making the judgements having no moral high ground whatsoever.
    Wendy: Mabel's a straight-up saint, you judgemental hoofbag!
  • Celestabellebethabelle is a combined parody of Princess Celestia (a benevolent ruler of Equestria, who is a figure of wisdom and authority and possibly a Trickster Mentor) and Almathea aka The Last Unicorn. As befits the cynicism of Gravity Falls, Celestabellebethabelle pretends to be wise and able to look into humans' hearts just to torment people and get out of them asking her for favors. In the DVD commentary, Alex Hirsch admits that Celestabellebethabelle is basically Almathea without any of her redeeming qualities.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: Wendy sports this look in this episode.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Before Ford calls the family meeting, Dipper and Mabel are about to play a Jumanji Expy literally named "What Could Go Wrong?".
  • Wendy bets Mabel ten bucks that nothing will show up when Grenda's chanting the unicorn-summoning incantation. After she's proven wrong, Mabel happily gestures for the ten dollars.
  • Dipper deciding that "just one peek" into Ford's mind can't hurt.
  • Celestabellebethabelle taunts Mabel after her lies are exposed by smugly asking what she's going to do about it. Cue fist to the snout.
• That Poor Plant: When the unicorn sheds a tear over Mabel's "impure" heart, it lands on a rose which wilts and dies.
• Thinking Out Loud: The machine Dipper is hooked up with does this via voicing his thoughts, allowing him to basically have a conversation with himself.
• Time Abyss: Apparently Bill is older than the Milky Way!
• Time for Plan B:
  • Ford doesn't believe that Mabel can get unicorn hair. As a backup, he offers to shield Dipper's mind using a machine that can encrypt his thoughts.
  • This is Ford's current plan: to keep the rift from Bill. His initial plan was to make sure the portal was never turned on, though Stan interfered.
  • With everyone in the Shack protected from him, Bill decides to possess someone outside the Shack.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Invoked by Mabel when the unicorn Celestabellebethabelle told her that she doesn't have a pure heart, so she attempts to do good deeds all over town as self-improvement. However, it's later revealed that the whole "pure of heart" deal was a lie set up by Celestabellebethabelle.
• Troubled Fetal Position: Mabel does this after Celestabellebethabelle tells her she's a bad person.
• Unicorns Are Sacred: Played with; while the unicorn hair is a key ingredient to help protect the Shack from Bill, the unicorns themselves are actually jerks who only pretend to be pure and noble.
• Unicorns Prefer Virgins: When Mabel asks the unicorn Celestabellebethabelle for a lock of her hair, she scans Mabel with her horn and refuses the request because Mabel is not "pure of heart". Even after Mabel does a variety of good deeds and comes back, Celestabellebethabelle claims that it still isn't enough to make Mabel a good person. It turns out that unicorns made up the "pure of heart" requirement to prevent humans from bothering them, and Celestabellebethabelle just doesn't want to share her gorgeous hair.
• Wham Episode: In his previous appearances, Bill was depicted as a menacing but quirky trickster antagonist with unknown motives, but now we learn he's a proper Omnicidal Maniac who's planning the end of the world.
• Wham Line: From Bill, after Dipper and Ford shield the Shack from him entering through the mindscape.
  "I guess I can't possess anyone inside the Shack, so I'll just have to find my next pawn on the o u t s i d e."
• Wham Shot: Two more unicorns emerging before the girls, which reveals C-Beth lied and she's not the Last of Her Kind as she claimed.
• When Dimensions Collide: Bill is trying to fuse the nightmare world he comes from with Earth.
• You Are Too Late: Invoked by Bill when Ford confronts him; the portal has been built, and one way or another it will soon open. Ford tries to hide his instructions on how to run the portal, so that no one else can open it, but Bill's words come true when the fight between Stan and Ford leads to Ford going through the portal, and Stan creating a rift by saving his brother. Ford's Plan B is to make sure Bill never gets his hands on the rift.

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S UPYTYH DIP GAVO QETHI MCBK OHK XEXJB VRW YOUWCHIA VRSV OQ LRDIA. ^note A Simple Man With Eager Ears May Trust The Whispers That He Hears

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