WMG / Gravity Falls Pines Family

The main characters and resident Badass Family:

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Dipper and Mabel Pines

In the season 1 finale, either Dipper or Mabel will either disappear or be presumed dead.

And this will be a big Tear Jerker/Cliffhanger moment.

• Exactly what I was thinking. I can somehow see that quite easily...
• Gideon may have something to do with it.
• If it's Dipper, it might involve a Dead Hat Shot.
• It'll be Dipper. Notice the lamb imagery around him—not only his dance, but also the lamb shears Gideon tried using on him. This represents that Dipper is the sacrificial lamb and will die for the sake of Mabel and Grunkle Stan.
• Let's keep that lamb imagery in mind, though...
• Someone on Tumblr noticed a small but nagging detail in "The Love God": at one point during the cemetery scene, all the teens are shown in front of tombstones, while Dipper and Mabel are both in front of a single tombstone. They could potentially share a grave together when they die. Earlier on, in "Sock Opera" Mabel said that "one of [the sock puppet versions of the twins] survived," which also could foreshadow one of the Mystery Twin dying.
  • If a death does happens, it will be one massive Tear Jerker.
    • If it happens to both of the twins, it could be a Disney Death where one of them is willing to resurrect them in exchange of his/her life. Or that they were both given a second chance at life from the universe's grim reaper.
• Jossed. This is a children's show. They can't have one of the protagonists dying!
  • Unjossed. Alex Hirsch said someone important may die.
    • It's probably going to be a supporting or recurring character. I doubt that one of the main characters will wind up six feet under.
    • Jossed again. Mayor Befuftlefumpter died. He was a very old man, and a very minor character.
    • And thus my point still stands. In most works of fiction, the protagonists will be safe from death. Especially if it's a kid's show! "Anyone Can Die" does not apply here.
    • Unjossed yet again. Alex Hirsch's exact words were that AT LEAST one character would die, indicating more death to come.
    • Maybe he was referring to the death of Time Baby? Even though he'll eventually resurrect himself.
    • Jossed. Bill died.
    • Except he might have survived or came Back from the Dead.

Dipper and Mabel will gain Twin Telepathy.

Twins in a supernatural town? Obvious.

• Alternatively: They already have it, on some level, but aren't aware of it. It's not quite a Running Gag, but there have been several instances where Dipper says something and Mabel— without time to process what he's said—says the same thing. For reference, this happens in "Headhunters" and "The Time Traveler's Pig".
• Jossed.

There will be a falling out between Dipper and Mabel.

The author of 3 said not to trust anyone, but Dipper learned he can trust others. This will be Dipper's undoing: he will be (possibly accidentally) betrayed by Mabel or someone close to him, causing him to rip out the message about trust he wrote.

• Addendum: After "Not What He Seems," Dipper will not forgive Mabel for having trusted Stan. Even if Stan was right about what the machine did, Dipper will think that Mabel's trust was insanely ill-placed.
• Confirmed! As of D&M VS. The Future. They had a falling out about Dipper being Ford's assistant and staying in Gravity Falls.

Dipper and Mabel's birthday is February 29th.

Admit it, it makes sense. When Dipper told Mabel they were going to pose as thirteen-year-olds, she asked, "Is it a leap year?" She associates leap years with their birthday. This would mean they were born in 2000. It would also make them Pisces, which makes sense for Mabel — less so for Dipper.This would tie in with Gilbert and Sullivan's opera The Pirates of Penzance, which features a hero whose birthday is February 29th and a heroine named MABEL STANley.

• Jossed: Alex Hirsch has stated that Dipper and Mabel's birthday is on the last day of summer.
  • Double Jossed. In universe, their birthday has been confirmed as August 31st.

Dipper and Mabel are in a "Truman Show" Plot.

Stan needed to make them like their trip, so he set up a scheme in which Dipper and Mabel would like their town.

• Dipper and Mabel weren't supposed to discover Old Man Mc Gucket was the Gobblewonker. He made up his story so the twins would go with Stan.
• The things with Stan and Gideon that Dipper and Mabel don't see are just the actors getting into character.
• Behind the vending machine is the control room.
• Jossed. It's a portal.

Dipper is the sacrificial lamb, and Mabel is the one who will (at least try to) kill him.

We don't know Dipper's real name, Stan has a sister named Jan, and twins seem to run in the family. So having similar names may be tradition as well. Mabel is literally one letter away from being Abel, who was killed by his older sibling in the Bible. Dipper's real name may be Abel, and it would make sense based on what we've been shown so far. And finally, the book says not to trust anyone. When Dipper brings this up to Mabel, her reaction is along the lines of "Aw, you can't trust me?" The first person the show dismisses the warning in favor for someone Dipper undoubtedly can trust is Mabel.

Though this won't be too much of a setback for Dipper in the end, as there are plenty of (some only theorized right now) undead who seem totally cool with it.

• Jossed.

Dipper and Mabel are descendants of Quentin Trembley.

Why was the Quentin Trembley cover-up such a big deal? Because it was a shameful chapter in American history, right? There's more to that. A mysterious power lies within the Trembley bloodline, which could possibly have been the reason for Trembley to have been such an eccentric individual (either it corrupted him mentally as a side effect, or he feigned insanity to hide it from the crowds). It's probable that the people of Gravity Falls want to harness this power, and Trembley probably froze himself to stop this very thing from happening. In the meantime, a son or daughter of Trembley went on to live their own life, continuing the Trembley bloodline under the radar of the general public, eventually going down the line to one of Dipper and Mabel's parents, and then to the twins themselves. Why do Dipper and Mabel attract so much danger from outside forces? Maybe it lures monsters to signal Gravity Falls's higher-ups to their whereabouts and thus allow them to harness Trembley's power. And since Stan is not what he seems, chances are there's a reason the twins are in Gravity Falls with him instead of a more suitable vacation spot, and it involves him.

• Considering this was never adressed in-universe, Jossed.

There will be an episode where Dipper and Mabel get transported into a TV set.

One day, Dipper and Mabel find a mysterious TV remote. Then all of a sudden, the remote zapped them into the TV. From there, Dipper and Mabel visit parodies of TV shows like:

• Three's Company
• Law & Order
• The Flintstones
• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
• A reality series parody
  • Maybe even a parody of a shounen anime.
  • They visit a parody of a Disney Channel Kid Com and they lampshade how absolutely terrible those are.
• Alternatively they end up in a non-disney toon, like Transformers Prime or something, and drag (via Mabel being Mabel) a character over....like Megatron. Cause I want to see Ol'Bucket Head kick Gideon around and step on gnomes.
• Jossed. Unfortunately, no episode like that aired.
  • However, there was a Gravity Falls: Lost Legends story that had a similar concept called Comix Up.

Dipper and Mabel are bullied and/or have no friends at their home.

This is why in "Double Dipper" Mabel seemed so happy to have friends that actually wanted to hang out with her.

• It could just be that she was happy to have girlfriends, as she mentions in "The Hand That Rocks The Mabel".
• It could also be that she's happy to have friends that are as eccentric as she is. Given her personality, it's pretty likely that a lost of people consider her to be really weird, so it would make sense if Candy saying that having spoons (or was it forks?) tapped to one's hands like Wolverine's claws is an improvement to the human race was Mabel's indication that she had finally found some kindred spirits. Then again, it's always possible that the above guess is right, or a least not very far off: I can't see the twins having too many friends, since Dipper's obsessive, nerdy, and generally kinda awkward while Mabel's spontaneity can cause problems for people who don't know how to deal with it.
• Confirmed, as of Weirdmageddon Part 2.

The Season One finale, or at least an important episode, will be Dipper vs Mabel.

But it's not because of a mere sibling rivalry, oh no; it's for something greater, like a valuable artifact that they could kill each other over. Think about it; Mabel sacrifices for the needs of the many (Sev'Ral Times, Mermando and his family, Waddles) while Dipper sacrifices for the needs of the few (Himself). Whenever Dipper had a chance for Wendy, Mabel's kindness and compassion got in the way. Dipper is becoming more like Grunkle Stan, while Mabel becomes the exact opposite. If Dipper and Mabel ever have a climatic showdown, Dipper will represent his isolation by being alone using only Book 3's paranormal information, his wits and maybe help from Ford, while Mabel will represent teamwork and have Candy and Grenda (and a grappling hook) by her side.

• While the Season One Finale part of this WMG is Jossed, this might still happen in a later episode...
• This is more likely to happen as of Dipper & Mabel VS. The Future. Technically they did fight in Sock Opera, but Bill possessed Dipper, so it's not a true match.
  • Confirmed, as a court trail no less.

The time paradox Dipper & Mabel created when they were messing with the time travel device will come back to bite them somehow

I don't know how, but they probably affected history more than we know. And when that creates a problem, Blendin will return and have to help them fix it (and the twins will befriend him in the process) leading to An Aesop that TIME TRAVEL IS NOT TO BE PLAYED WITH!!!

• Look in the background of the scene where Gideon gets reveled as a fraud in "Gideon Rises". Blendin Blandin is there.
• Confirmed, as of "Blendin's Game," Blendin gets his revenge on the twins.

The Christmas special will feature Dipper and Mabel meeting Santa Claus

• Dipper is sceptical about Santa's existence, until he shows up and explains that Christmas may be ruined by some fiend. As he and Mabel set off to save Christmas, Dipper will come to reunite with his long-lost holiday spirit.
  • Santa may go missing, so Soos will temporarily take his place flying around the world, accompanied by Dipper and Mabel.
• There will also be a sub-plot where Grunkle Stan is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.

  • Jossed! The show takes place during the summer, not winter.

Wendy will fight back in the season finale.

She'll get her dad to kick Gideon's ass since she hates him as much as Soos and the Pines do.

• Maybe some sort of Call-Back to her "I hate it when guys fight" line from Fight Fighters?

• Sorry dudes, Jossed, at least for Season 1. Maybe in Season 2?
  • At this point, it's more likely, and she is fighting back against Bill in Weirdmageddon.
    • Confirmed!!

Dipper and Mabel will formally move to Gravity Falls

• Summer can't last forever (unless the above is true), which means that Dipper and Mabel will have to leave when autumn rolls around. However, the alternative is that they simply move to GF permanently. They don't seem to have much attachment to their home town (neither of them is ever homesick), and they both seem miserable at the thought of having to go home. They may just decide to live with Stan on a regular basis. That way we could get more episodes that take place in other seasons (phenomena like abominable snowmen?), or new types of plotlines with Dipper and Mabel going to school. Or better yet, being homeschooled by Stan.
  • To be fair, they were mostly upset about going home in the context of the Season 1 finale because not only would they be leaving Stan without the Shack, but Gideon would go on virtually unopposed. Keep in mind at the time, they weren't aware Stan knew about the town's weirdness and, and as of Into the Bunker at least, they still don't know that he had previous knowledge of the journals (plus the first journal itself) before Dipper showed him Number 3. And even with all that knowledge, in a hypothetical scenario where the twins did leave town, there's no guarantee Stan could put a stop to Gideon on his own. That being said, it's true the twins seem right at home at Gravity Falls without showing any signs of homesickness, and them moving in permanently could be interesting depending on how longer the series goes on.
• Confirmed for Dipper! Ford will make him his apprentice.
  • But Jossed. They leave at the last episode.

At some point, Dipper and Mabel will get trapped in separate dimensions

One where only Dipper exists, and one where only Mabel exists. It'd fit well into the setting and themes we've been given, what with them being twins, essentially opposites, but also really important to one another. Once in this situation, the two of them would be forced to think outside of each others' boxes in order get back home, since they've always needed one another in order to balance out their skills and world views. A possible twist/variation of the scenario would be that they're not actually in other dimensions: it's just an illusion caused by Bill/some other entity. Not to mention, them being sent to the other dimensions seemingly forever would make an excellent Tear Jerker/Cliffhanger season finale.

• Sorta confirmed. Mabel was trapped in a bubble called Mabeland during the first part of Weirdmageddon.
• Confirmed in the Gravity Falls: Lost Legends story, Don't Dimension It. Where Mabel accidentally ended up in dimension MAB-3L, where she meets several alternate universe versions of her.

The main characters of the show are actually Jewish or have Jewish ancestry.

What with the odd Jewish-influenced bits and statements in the show that they keep finding and keep turning up.

• Jossed. Word of God said that they were not Jewish.
• Technically Unjossed as of these tweets. Whether they are or not is entirely up to the viewer.
• Stan and Ford's parents have what looks like a mezuzah next to their door, further fueling the theory.
• Confirmed! Journal 3 mentions Stan (and presumably Ford) having had a bar mitzvah.

Dipper and Mabel are Thomas Jefferson.

In "Irrational Treasure", one of the secrets◊ is "President Jefferson was just two kids on each other's shoulders in a trench coat", and considering the next episode is about time travel...

• Dipper and Mabel don't pretend to be Thomas Jefferson in the time travel episode, though it doesn't necessarily joss this theory. Maybe they'll time travel in a future episode.
• They traveled back in time many times, so it is possible that they are Jefferson. True, we don`t see them pretend to be him, but its not outside the realm of possibility, especially with all other other crazy stuff going on...
• Jossed.

Mabel is taller than Dipper because of what happened in "The Time Traveler's Pig".

Mabel spent at least a month being upset over losing Waddles, and since she seems to remember everything at the end of the episode she must have gone back with Dipper for the final change. That means that she's a month older than her twin, which is why she is slightly taller.

Dipper and Mabel's hands will be a plot point

There is a very weird inconsistency with the number of fingers on the character's hands. It seems like all the adults have five fingers, while all the kids (except Gideon, for some reason) have four fingers. The journal on the two books concerning the phenomenon around Gravity Falls have six fingers on them. Possibly this might be brought up in a future episode of Gravity Falls, and might be a vital plot point.

• Confirmed, at least partially. It is revealed that the author does in fact have six fingers.
• But not really. Alex said that all hands, sans Ford, are just drawn with four or five fingers because of the stylistic appeal.

The twins will visit the distant future in one episode.

They may accidentally meddle with the fates of their future selves.

• Confirmed! Except the twins don't meet their future selves.

One of the last episodes will be on or centered around the twins' birthday.

Solely because it's been confirmed their birthday is at the end of the summer and that the show will take place all in one summer.

• The finale will take place on their birthday, and all the worrying and paranormal showdowning will ruin their celebration. There's tropes for that.
• "Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future" seems to support this possibility, as their birthday is referred to as the last day of summer and therefore likely also the last day they will spend in Gravity Falls.
• Confirmed, the last episode took place on their birthday.

In Season 3, the twins will be on horrible terms, like Stan and Ford.

Dipper won't forgive Mabel for causing the end of the world and believe she took his bag on-purpose. Mabel calls him out for thinking that, but is angry at him for choosing to stay, and reminded Dipper that he promised they won't end up like their uncles in "The Tale of Two Stans". Dipper believes they are like their uncles, and says that he's always been the smartest and Mabel just goofs around. To make this more tragic, Dipper tells Mabel after they somehow stop Bill Cypher, he wants them to go their separate ways. While that nearly got Mabel to tears, she said "Fine!". Stan and Ford (while believing its too late for them) will spend most of the season trying to get them to reconcile, not wanting them to make the same mistake they did.

• Yeeaaaah, no. Or at least, I hope not. This is an almost insultingly simplified take on both Dipper and Mabel's characters and the conflict between them right now, and I would consider this to be an Out of Character turn of the highest order if it ever actually happened.
• Jossed. The Twins' bond with each other has gotten better in Weirdmageddon 2. Also, there is no Season 3.

Dipper and Mabel will need to work together to defeat Bill Cipher

.In the promo for "Weirdmageddon", we see Mabel being abducted by Bill, presumably being taken into the Nightmare Realm. In order to defeat Bill, Dipper and Mabel have to work together from the Physical Realm and the Nightmare Realm respectively to thwart Bill Cipher's plans.

• I have a strong feeling that Stanley and Stanford will also be forced to put aside their quarrels to save the world.
  • Jossed. Stanley defeated Bill.

Dipper and Mabel will become Deconstructed Double Standards.

The GF team has shown a great deal of awareness in how they deal with the characters, so they can't have missed that Mabel is treated... admittedly a little more favorably than Dipper for the following reasons:

• There's a huge difference in treatment between her and everyone else, especially her brother. Dipper is constantly criticized for his flaws and constantly expected to grow to be better, but Mabel hasn't been because her equally flawed personality is accepted by everyone and is never asked or expected to change or do better (and when it is, the lesson is forgotten immediately after).
  • Anything Mabel has, Dipper can't or he's terribly in the wrong. Mabel's good at socializing and flirting, but the one time Dipper shows talent at it, he's portrayed as committing a grave moral error by daring to do so. Mabel has a great relationship with the Grunkle whose interests are most like her's, and even though this relationship has actively alienated Dipper from the both of them, Dipper's usually the one in the wrong for being upset by that. Dipper has a great relationship with the Grunkle whose interests are most like his, but it's slowly being portrayed as unhealthy because it's passively alienating Mabel from them, and she's portrayed as totally right to be upset by that despite the clear hypocrisy of this.
• Mabel has no problem lecturing people (usually her brother) about what they did wrong, but can't stand criticism herself, and all people who criticize her are treated as crossing a line at best or only saying those hings to hurt her at worst (and thus Mabel learns she shouldn't listen to them). In fact, Mabel's openly stated the belief that she "do[es] everything right, all the time!" The only major critics Mabel has had are Pacifica—who later became her sort-of friend but was treated as a horrible villain for saying childish insults—and Celestebellebethabelle the Unicorn, someone we were supposed to disagree with entirely due to her Jerkass behavior despite her fairly accurate points about Mabel's flaws.
• Everyone sees Mabel as more critical and important than Dipper, really. Everyone wants her to be their queen, everyone sees her as the serious threat and danger, or as the more personable twin, likable twin. Most side with her over Dipper if they're in conflict, no matter the circumstances. (All except Ford, who's relationship with Dipper is turning out to possibly be toxic). Heck, Wendy refers to her as "a Saint." Even Dipper clearly thinks she's better than him, and will sacrifice his own views and values to make up with her when arguing even if his perspective was justified.
• Despite Dipper's main talents being curiosity and conventional intellect, this curiosity and kind of intelligence—or rather, anyone's conventional intelligence—almost never actually helps him and more than not hinders him or makes things worse. Meanwhile, Mabel's creativity and brashness, while its just as useful in real life as conventional intelligence and curiosity, is almost always portrayed as more useful or 'better.' The flaws in curiosity and conventional intelligence have been exposed and exploited numerous times, but the ones in Mabel's creativity and brashness usually aren't. In fact, when Dipper is shown being better at something than Mabel, it either doesn't matter or is treated as wrong, or both. In "Little Dipper" Mabel bullies him for an entire episode because she feels he's more talented than her, and she never even apologizes. Instead her emotional response makes Dipper feel guilty for... daring to win at strategic board games.

All that negative stuff said, why do I think their clearly unhealthy dynamic is becoming a deconstruction? Because it is unhealthy, and the negative effects of this appear to be finally beginning to show themselves. Dipper's grown to expect himself to be in the wrong, to sincerely believe that Mabel is always the stronger, better twin and that he can't do anything without her or he'll fail. Unless she or another family member is there for him to fight for, Dipper now falls into a defeatist mentality. He's unable to stand up for himself, only for her, or Ford, or Stan, because Dipper's learned that if he does anything for himself, he's wrong and he'll fail. The consequences of accepting Ford's apprenticeship seems to have been the last straw for any value Dipper holds in himself. Mabel, on the other hand, has grown to expect this good treatment from everyone. She expects Dipper to drop everything for her (which he's already done multiple times before), she rarely if ever considers that what she wants isn't right, and always defaults to this behavior because despite the few times she's learned that it isn't acceptable, her selfish and flawed behavior almost always worked out for her in the end anyways. This is the exact mentality that allowed Mabel to break the Rift, despite it clearly being a horribly wrong thing to do even with Billendin's false description of what it did. This is why she genuinely thinks Dipper's wrong to consider his future without her input, and is so hurt she tries to trap her family forever in time to stop this.From all these characteristics, it's possible that all of twins' past unbalanced treatment is now going to be thoroughly deconstructed for all it's worth.

• Turns out no. Mabel leaves Gravity Falls pretty much the exact same person she went in.
  • Un-jossed, as in Gravity Falls: Lost Legends. Mabel got sent to another dimension filled with alternate versions of herself and learned that she was a narcissist elitist jerkass all this time, the hard way. But whether or not she kept her promise to be a better person was left vague.

The twins are going to have trouble living in normal society.

They went through a whole summer of incredibly disturbing stuff, and now that they're back in California, away from everyone else who would believe it, they need to bottle it all up away from everyone but each other, or risk being considered completely mad or at least childishly delusional if they talk about it. Neither of which are healthy options.

The twins from the pilot would have swapped ages. (As in, Dipper would be the older sibling and Mabel the younger).

The proof? The height difference that can be spotted in some of the scenes the two are standing beside each other (Pilot!Dipper is a good bit more tall than Pilot!Mabel, while its slightly the opposite situation in the finished series).

Dipper is not a transboy, just regular insecure, because if that is true then Mabel goes from being Innocently Insensitive to an actual horrible bully that her brother would have every right to want to get away from.

No ill-intent meant towards the people looking for some representation in their favorite show, but even as someone who really doesn’t like Mabel, this troper thinks that turning her into a TERF by implication is pretty thorough character assassination.

Dipper Pines

Dipper's real name is Stanley.

Or alternatively, whatever Stan's secret twins name is. Dipper's name has been passed down from his grandfather, Stan's twin, to his father to him. It will casually be mentioned that that's his real name when Stan's brother is revealed. This WMG of Dipper being named after his grandfather is of course only relevant if the Stan Twin theory proves to be true.

• And assuming that the twins Grandfather is the twin in question. People can have more than one sibling.
  • Assuming that the Author isn't Dipper and Mabel's paternal grandfather, I'm figuring that Stan and the Author must have at least one other brother who's the father of Dipper and Mabel's dad.
    • Well, the Author isn't— he's another Grunkle. Dipper and Mabel do have a grandfather belonging to the Pines family biologically, and their father comes from him.
    • Jossed. Alex confirmed that Dipper's name shares a similarity to Mabel.
    • Journal 3 confirms it to be Mason Pines.

Dipper's real name is Sherman.

Now that it's been confirmed that Dipper and Mabel's grandfather is 'Shermie' (short for Sherman), the Stan twins' younger brother, this seems more likely that him being named Stanley/Stanford.

• Jossed. Alex said Dipper's name is similar to Mabels.
  • His name has been revealed as Mason Pines.

The Book was written by Dipper's future self.

Being that the book had many different references to Dipper, Mabel, and everyone else.

• See this picture for some proof.
  • Dipper got his hat from gift shop, it could be emblem of the town.
  • Two of the symbols on the circle (the glasses and the crescent moon) likely represent Stan's eyeglasses and the identical symbol on Stan's Fez, respectively.
• Wouldn't Dipper list "Shovels and Leaf Blowers" as the gnomes' weakness? And recommend taking down their leader first?
  • A possible explanation - it doesn't operate on Stable Time Loop. In a previous timeline he didn't know Mabel would need his help, failed to her, then spent the next 6 years investigating her disappearance.
    • Building off of this, the machine in the tree is the control mechanism for some sort of temporal displacement device, which is hidden beneath the hatch that the second switch opened. Dipper moved the first switch twice before he used the second switch that revealed Book 3. What if the first switch sent books 1 and 2 further into the past?
    • The Unstable Timeline theory does make sense, especially when consider that without the book, Dipper wouldn't have suspected anything about Norman, and would've never saved Mabel.
    • There could be many timelines, and we're just watching the latest one. Every timeline would complete another few of the book. But wouldn't Gideon be doing the same thing too?
  • Perhaps the events of "The Time Traveler's Pig" made the timeline unstable.
• When Mabel is hallucinating on the candy in episode 5 her hallucination says, "The Future is in the Past."
  • I think just invented a new trope "Higher Revelation".
• Alternatively Future Dipper purposely left the gnomes' weakness in order to keep the time loop stable. Also, perhaps he started documenting strange occurrences in a similar journal which was for sale in the Mystery Shack as he discovered weird things not in "3" and only later realized he was the one who originally wrote 3 and so left some information that would have altered the past.
  • There are books with a similar-looking (though mirrored) hand on the cover seen in the background in the shop in a few episodes.
• More evidence for this theory. In the opening theme, just before the title is displayed, we can see what might be a picture of future Dipper in the pictures in the background in the upper middle of the screen.
  • This could also be a little portrait of Alex Hirsch as a joke (note the similar facial hair), but since the twins are based on Hirsch and his sister, there's little difference either way.
• Jossed. Stan's brother is the author.

Pacifica likes Dipper.

Pacifica has picked on Stan and Mabel, but not Dipper. When Mabel saw Waddles, Pacifica joked that Waddles was "Mabel's real twin," suggesting Mabel is a pig, but not Dipper. The pig episode came after "Irrational Treasure", so she may have respected Dipper for defending his sister, being more serious, or for giving into his need for revenge.

• Possibly after Northwest Manor Noir.

Dipper's first name is Kane.

Trust no one, after all.

• Kane and Mabel anyone?
  • OT: Exactly.
    • Dipper IS marked on his forehead...
• Alternatively Dwayne, which is why he prefers to use his nickname.
  • Shane and Mabel?
• After "Not What He Seems", Dipper and Mabel having a falling out, or coming close to one, seems inevitable.
• Jossed. Dipper's name has a similarity to Mabel, as confirmed by Alex.
  • Journal 3 reveals that Dipper's real name is Mason Pines.

Alternatively, Dipper is a direct descendant of Cain.

• And thus, bears his mark.
  • Compound that with the sacrificial lamb imagery surrounding Dipper, the possible Semetic ancestry of the Pines family, and this theory gets even more interesting.

Mabel was supposed to find the book.

Weird stuff is always gravitating toward her—the gnomes and Gideon, for instance—and, in The Inconveniencing, she was possessed, rather than 'punished' by the ghosts. In Irrational Treasure, she was even the one to solve the (ahem) mystery of Gravity Falls' founder. It's easy to imagine her stumbling across a metal tree and just rolling with it. On a side note, she would have a harder time getting the "Trust no one" thing than Dipper did, potentially explaining why it was written multiple times on one page—to drive the message.

• She kinda gets #1 though for an episode.

Dipper's first name is Roderick.

That's why Quentin Trembley called him "Roderick", Mabel told him Dipper's real name.

• Jossed. Dipper's name is Mason Pines, as stated in Journal 3.

At one point, Dipper will have to choose between saving Mabel's life or Wendy's life.

Or, a third option: He will need to sacrifice himself to save them both...

• Jossed!!

Dipper is the heir to the Hokuto Shinken.

His birthmark says it all.

• HEADCANON ACCEPTED.
• More likely as the world is coming to a end. But not by a nuclear apocolypse. YOU WA SHOCK!

Dipper is Disney's shot at Dib

They're both into mysteries, and they both have big heads and said thier arms are like noodles.

• Rather that or they're friends.
• Incidentally, Mabel is more or less the exact opposite of Dib's sister Gaz.
• Jossed.

In a future episode, Dipper will turn into a werewolf.

His wolf-boy costume in "Boss Mabel" and the way a Wolf (Coyote?) gnawed on his leg in "Carpet Diem" could be foreshadowing. Of course, if it does happen, he'll probably be back to normal by the end of the episode.

• And he'll be bitten by the mailman.
• Jossed.

Dipper will cross the Moral Event Horizon in his quest for Wendy.

Dipper uses paranormal stuff to forcibly attract Wendy. Examples include him altering fate itself and making clones of himself to do what no human could do on his own in one night, and it's glanced over and viewed as acceptable. When Gideon does it to attract Mabel or accomplish his goals, it's considered immoral and wrong-granted, his usually involve murder, like in his very first episode or in "Little Dipper" where he tries to kill Grunkle Stan, plus he's obviously insane, but Dipper still receives nothing of the sort when he wants to get his way. Dipper will get desperate if Wendy still is upset at him after Boyz Crazy, and use the CD (or something far worse) to get Wendy to love him. Mabel will have to break him out of it, and ends up rescuing Wendy and Dipper from himself. Or, if used in a different way...

• The difference between Dipper and Gideon is that Dipper eventually sees the error of his ways and makes it right, and Gideon does not.
• I think using time travel for his own selfish purposes (which, if you've seen Justice League Unlimited, you'd know is incredibly dangerous) would count as that.
• I guess the end of "Boyz Crazy" also counts, at least in Wendy's mind. After breaking up with Robbie due to the reveal that he brainwashed her, she becomes disgusted with Dipper when he asks to hang out with her. They DO get better after that moment, but still...
• This appears Jossed after the events of "Into the Bunker" and "Blendin's Game". Dipper seems content to stay Just Friends.

Ice is significant, and is a bad omen for Dipper.

The fact that a bag of ice is one of the symbols one the page of the book visible in the opening indicates that it is significant somehow. It's a bad omen for Dipper because the only time ice/bags of ice show up so far, something unpleasant happens to Dipper:

• In The Inconveniencing, Dipper goes to get a bag of ice for the teens, but sees the nervous-system thing.
• In The Time Traveler's Pig, Dipper runs to get ice for Wendy when he hits her eye with the ball, but Robbie steps in instead.
• One of the hints from Bill Cipher in Rumble's Revenge is "Dipper is playing with fire..." The phrase itself usually means "getting yourself in trouble". It's a double meaning-Dipper is getting himself into trouble more and more, but specifically and ONLY when he messes with ice.
  • Incidentally, Time Baby is frozen in an antarctic glacier, as established in a Blink-and-You-Miss-It moment in Irrational Treasure. Luckily, "Glaciers never melt!"
• And the fact how in the episode, 'Into the Bunker' the shapeshifter, before freezing in the cryogenic chamber, says his final words to Dipper, how Dipper will never find the author and his fate will be worst than he could ever imagine. He freezes with the form of Dipper screaming.
• Jossed.

Dipper is Domiclese the shepherd robot, displaced in time

Dipper shot lasers from his eyes in the dreamscape, and he's associated with lambs. Perhaps he is actually the robot shepherd Domiclese from ancient Greece (from "Mabel's Guide to Stickers"). Mabel may be a robot as well. This modification may have been protected, so new mind-wipes won't take. (Robot may be the wrong word. Dipper needs to be human enough for a mind-swap to work, so call him an android. But he's tougher than an ordinary human. He survived a super combo punch from an entity that can destroy a car with regular punches.) To see how all this might work together as a story, see "The Life of Domiclese" on fanfiction.net.

Dipper won't be getting over Wendy so easily.

Perhaps it's grasping at straws, but we still know from interviews and such that Robbie wants revenge against Dipper for the events of Boyz Crazy, not to mention that season 2 is supposed to have some focus on how Dipper is envious of how social Mabel is I have a feeling that that list of rebound crushes Mabel is compiling will be of little help, and that there'll be more to post-confession Dipper and Wendy. After all, you can be addicted to someone...

• In the other hand, perhaps Dipper just wants Wendy to be happy to whoever she's with. If it's towards Robbie again, perhaps he'll Take A Level In Kindness
  • Not likely on that second point; Word of God is that Robbie is jonesing for vengeance against Dipper, not to mention that Wendy has repeatedly expressed disgust at his clingy and, quite frankly, pathetic attempts to win her back.
  • It could go anywhere. It may stay platonic or may develop. If everything remains relatively stable and there's a happy end, I can picture the twins returning to Gravity Falls every summer as well as any chance they can and it wouldn't be unplausible that Dipper and Wendy may get together in a decade.
    • Dipper still has a minor crush on her, but they're still just friends.

Pacifica will be Dipper's new love interest.

First of all, she's one of the few female characters the same age as Dipper.I suspect they will get off to a bad start at first, Pacifica will gradually grow fonder of Dipper (and to an extent, Mabel). Kind of a Tsundere-type thing.

• There's no chemistry and while she may get some development, we don't know to what extent or if even if it's good or bad.
• This may be the case after the Northwest Mansion Mystery episode.
• Jossed: Dipper & Pacifica never got together in the finale, although it's still left open whether they should date or not.

Dipper will die or be seriously injured at some point during the series.

As pointed out elsewhere, Dipper has a whole load of Sacrificial Lamb imagery. In The Hand That Rocks The Mabel, Gideon tries to cut out Dipper's tongue with lamb shears. Later on, in the Inconveniencing, in order to save Wendy's friends, he has to put on a lamb costume and dance a humiliating dance. Thirdly, Dipper, or at least various iterations of him, seem to get maimed or killed in various ways. Dipper gets a vicious beating from Rumble McSkirmish in Fight Fighters. The clones from Double Dipper all melt to death, Paper Jam Dipper is deformed from the start, and Tyrone melts when he drinks a soda, starting from a hole in his chest. The last part is echoed in Dreamscaperers, when Bill blasts a hole through Dipper's chest. It doesn't hurt him because it's the dreamworld, but still. In Into the Bunker, the Shapeshifter takes the form of Dipper, screaming in abject terror, right before he's re-frozen in a cryogenic tube. There are several allusions to Dipper going down a path to his own destruction if he keeps going after the mysteries of this town, from the "DIPPER IS PLAYING WITH FIRE" cipher from one of the online games, to The Shapeshifter pretty much outright saying that Dipper will die if he keeps doing this. Considering that Dipper is the Author Avatar of Alex Hirsch, creator of the series, this theory might dip a bit into Fridge Horror.

• Jossed, he lives.

Dipper will resummon the zombies.

He will probably summon the zombies to trap someone or something with them. And then kill them all with a perfect harmony.

• Jossed.

The other switch Dipper flipped in "Tourist Trapped" released the Shape-Shifter.

One switch revealed the journal, the other appeared to do nothing. What it did, though, just wasn't visible above-ground. Instead, it was an emergency shut-off switch for the power in the Author's underground bunker. The power was only cut briefly, but that was long enough tor the experiment to bust open the glass on the cryo-stasis pod it was locked in and begin searching underground for Journal #3.

Unfortunately, now it knows that the book is no longer underground, so if Dipper tries the switch again, or if someone else stumbles across it, it will come to the surface. The town was safe from that particular danger until Dipper's two mistakes.

Dipper will eventually become a paranoid insomniac.

There's only so many horrifying things a twelve-year old can be exposed to before they break.

• He does seem to always have bags under his eyes.
• Not only does he do this in "Sock Opera", but according to Mabel this isn't the first time it's happened either.

Dipper clones 3 and 4 will return.

After stealing the bike, 3 & 4 are never again seen. While it might be difficult for the two to survive in a world full of liquids, they were not confirmed to be dissolved.

• Amazingly enough, confirmed. They can be seen during the end credits of the series finale, alive & well.

Dipper will meet the author of the Books, who will beg him to stop his crusade and forget about the unknown.

Dipper's answer won't be shown directly. We then see him living a completely ordinary life, writing and doodling innocently in a journal, and putting it down to run off and play... but then we see the journal's cover: a six-fingered hand marked with the number 4.

• Jossed
• The main point of the guess is somewhat played with; Ford tells Dipper he should stop getting involved in his research as it's too dangerous, but this seems mainly at Stan's insistence.
  • Jossed again

Dipper's birth name is Abel.

And it's going to be very important for one reason or another.

• The Pines family has a history of producing fraternal twins. Stan had a sister Jan, who then gave birth to a set of twins (the male half would later become "Mr. Pines") and finally, he and his wife made the two protagonists. They also keep the tradition of rhyming names. Dipper just thinks his birth name sounds stupid.
  • Jossed. It's Mason Pines.

Dipper's birth name is Alex.

And it's not that important.

• Alex confirmed that Dipper's name shares a similarity to Mabel. In Journal 3, it's revealed to be Mason Pines.

Dipper's birth name is Alejandro.

After all, it is the Spanish equivalent of Alexander, isn't it? And Alex is short for Alexander, which means it would be a stealth way of naming Dipper after the creator, without technically doing so.

• Alex said that Dipper and Mabel's name share a similarity.
  • Jossed, it's Mason Pines.

Dipper will find the scary skull from the opening credits.

Now, after Waddles appeared, it seems inevitable.

• Confirmed, it was Eight Ball!

Dipper Goes To Taco Bell is canon.

During the events of the time travel episode Dipper and Mabel travel a few days into the future and see their future selves murdered by the Taco Bell guy. They go to the photocopier from "Double Dipper" and clone copies of themselves and go to the day the original twins died and leave them there. Every episode after the time travel one features the clone Dipper and Mabel and Soos will never know he ate his friends.

• To remove the Poison Oak from this Epileptic Tree, could we say that the Dipper and Mabel that went to Taco Bell were the clones themselves? Created by the twins to trick out time.
• Jossed!! Dear God, WHY would you think that?!

The shipping focus will eventually shift to Dipper/Candy.

Am I seriously the only one who noticed Candy's reaction to the Trickster's ultimatum Clinging to Dipper's arm while cowering in fear? C'mon, Dipper's not gonna persue Wendy forever...

• are not the only one buddy.
• I ship Dipper and Candy. I can respect the fact if people prefer Dipper with Pacifica or Wendy, but I think Dipper and Candy would make a much more compatible couple, as they seem to have more in common, even if they haven't had much screen time together.
• Jossed. Not only the ship was sunk, but Alex also has expressed a lack of interest about shipping.

Dipper and Gideon will exchange a "Not So Different" Remark.

Near the end of the season, Dipper and Gideon will have a battle over Book #2. Whether it be physical or mental, Gideon will bring up that he's been watching Dipper the whole time and was aware of what he did to get his crush to love him. When he compares this fact to his attempts with Mabel, Dipper will have a Heroic BSoD.

• Jossed, at least for the initial WMG. Gideon does drive Dipper into a temporary BSOD, but over the fact that he can't do much without the Journal since he has no strength or (at least in Gideon's opinion) smarts.
• Confirmed as of "The Stanchurian Candidate": Gideon mocks Dipper and Mabel as being not so different for using the same tactic he did.

Dipper's real name is Darell

Mabel named her favorite moldy spot after her brother.

• Jossed, it's Mason Pines.

Dipper will shun Grunkle Stan.

Because he's been keeping secrets from him and Mabel since the beginning and he's not the real Stan. He'll call him out for not trusting them enough to let them in on what's been happening. Even though they actually are related, he'll refuse to acknowledge him as "uncle", or "grunkle" and will be on first-name basis. The next season will have Stan try to make things right between them.

• Jossed. Dipper got over it pretty quickly after Stan told him the truth.

Dipper's real name is Ash.

It fits with the tree theme.

• Jossed, Alex said in a tweet Dipper's name is related to Mabel's and Journal 3 states that it is Mason Pines.

Dipper's real name is Filbrick

.And he's named for his great, great, grandfather.

• Jossed, his name is Mason Pines.

Dipper is part Merman.

Thus explaining his super-deep voice for a 12 year old.

• Jossed. Dipper is full human.

Dipper will get over Wendy, and they will remain Just Friends.

In "Blendin's Game", when the young Wendy says he's cute, his reaction is not "Awesome, I still have a chance!" but "Oh wow, this is super awkward and now I know what it's like for her." This implies he understands that the relationship won't work and respects Wendy's wishes to be Just Friends.

This may also tie into the "Wendy is aromantic" theory — if Wendy is aromantic, Just Friends would have to be the endgame.

• Confirmed, they end the series as good friends, although it is still up in the cards if they will end up together in the future.

Dipper founded the Time Anomaly Removal Squad

This comes mainly from Dipper and Mabel's Guide to Mysteries and Non-Stop Fun. In the book (which is canon), there's a chapter where Dipper tries to explain the secret of Time Travel, but is interrupted by a Dipper from the future, who says he cannot allow his past self to reveal this information as it will destroy the stability of the timeline, and that in the future, entire histories and lives are rewritten every few minutes because too many people know the secret of time travel. He tries to destroy the book, but is intercepted by another Dipper from another timeline, who assures the reader that the problems eventually work themselves out and that it would be wrong to deprive the public of this knowledge. This other future Dipper goes on to write the apparent secret of time travel, but his writing is censored by Blendin Blandin.

If Dipper were to grow up and found the Time Anomaly Removal Squad, this would explain a great deal of his first future self's actions, as well as the branching of timelines and the intervention of Blendin Blandin. It would also explain why there seem to be so many fixed points of time around the Pines twins (both sets), as altering the course of events in their lives would create a mother of all anomalies (something similar to the infamous Grandfather Paradox; by changing the course of events, you eliminate the intervening force that would have changed the course of events in the first place, thereby allowing the events to happen, thereby stopping the events from happening, etc.)

Dipper is Shovel Knight.

He uses a time machine to go back to medieval times and fights evil with Shield Knight.

Dipper is somehow involved with aliens.

It's already known that Dipper has a birthmark shaped like the Big Dipper constellation on his forehead. In "Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future", when Ford is captured by the alien security system, it decides to send Ford to a prison planet located at one of the stars forming the Big Dipper. Perhaps Dipper or the Pine family in general have some connection to the aliens that crashed in Gravity Falls?

Dipper wasn't born with the Big Dipper mark.

In "Weirdmageddon Part 2: Escape From Reality" when Dipper shaved off his hair in 2nd grade his supposed birthmark wasn't there.

• He could have worn some makeup to cover it up.

Dipper's real name is Milo.

Mabel is based off of Alex's sister Alice. Both names are 5 letters long, but the verb-consonant order is swapped. Following that pattern:

• Alex to Milo does the same thing.
• Both Mabel and Milo start with an M.
• Another Disney property has a nerdy character named Milo. Since that movie came out in 2001 (and he's turning 13 in 2012), his classmates would be aware of the movie, giving them teasing ammunition.
  • Jossed, it's Mason Pines.
  • Also, Alex's sister is named Ariel.

Dipper's real name is Major.

First off, both Mabel and Major start with an M, and Alex stated Dipper's name is similar to hers. Secondly, Major is an actual boy's name, but embarrassing enough to be teased for. Also, Bill said at one point to Dipper "You're getting close to figuring out some MAJOR answers". But the most telling clue is that "Major" could reference the constellation Ursa Major—another name for the Big Dipper!

• Jossed, Journal 3 confirms it to be Mason Pines.

Dipper's real name is Mable.

He'd rather go by Dipper because he doesn't like his name.

• Jossed, his name is Mason Pines.

Following the events of the finale, Dipper swiftly slipped into a state similar to Marco Diaz in the episode Sophomore Slump

By all impressions given by the show, Dipper's life back in California was dull and friendless at best, and now he's living it after having been exposed to the potential of exploring the amazing mysteries of the universe alongside good friends and encouraging mentor figure. Life in normal society under those circumstances would quickly become suffocating and disappointing.

Dipper is a transboy.

This could explain his obsession with being seen as a male during the Manotaur incident, and why he hates his voice being made fun of. He wore a shirt to the pool as well, when really, he shouldn't needed to. Additionally, while it's hard to tell because of the medium, Dipper and Mabel seem to be identical twins, and identical twins are almost always the same sex. Dipper being AFAB would make a lot of sense.

• Considering how much of Dipper’s bullying the show Plays For Laughs this one has some DEEP Unfortunate Implications if true.

Dipper’s reasons for turning down Ford were insincere.

While there are a bunch of legitimate questions you could ask about the feasibility or morality of Dipper taking up Ford’s apprenticeship, the reasons he sprouts off in the bubble barely seem grounded in reality and are very clearly not based on anything he experienced during his “test drive” adventure with Ford, and he talks about needing to leave Gravity Falls to make friends when he has friends in town but none back in California. It seems more likely Dipper still did want to be Ford’s apprentice but is too psychologically beaten down to resist caving in to Mabel and is just giving out some poorly developed sour grapes justifications.

Dipper eventually legally changed his name to Dipper.

It's the only thing people have ever called him for his entire life, so why not? I imagine he would have done this in his early twenties.

---

Mabel Pines

The ending to Boss Mabel is not canon

I honestly thought the episode was setting this up and was surprised when it didn't end this way. This started out because Mabel is right when she makes her bet with Grunkle Stan. Stan is a pretty shady businessman, and a terrible boss, and he honestly doesn't need to be. The only reason that Mabel messes up is because she has 0 business sense and is practically hemmorrhaging money for no reason, except that she can't say "no". This isn't a reasonable way to run a business either, but it doesn't vindicate Grunkle Stan's practice either. However, I think there's a bonus, or alternate ending.

The Gremgoblin is established as making people see their own nightmares when he looks into someone's eyes. At the climax of the episode, Mabel looks into the Gremgoblin's eyes, and then Dipper gets the Gremgoblin to look in a mirror and see his own worst nightmare—becoming his father. From that point on, Mabel has to resort to Grunkle Stan's tactics to turn a profit on the store, and though it's a measly one, she ends up winning the bet. But there are a couple of twists that don't pay off.

• First of all, we never find out if Mabel saw her worst nightmare or not. She definitely got a good look into the Gremgoblin's eyes, and it's eerie that her ending plays out with her doing exactly what the Gremgoblin itself^note (Himself?) feared. Mabel has to become her parental figure by doing things "Stan's way"^note Maybe that wasn't even the Gremgoblin's worst nightmare, but what Mabel assumed it would be, depicted as a cutaway gag that reveals how her mind works.
• Second, there's the Gremgoblin's interest in the knick-knacks in the Mystery Shack, which is a gag that's ripe for a very characteristic Gravity Falls twist.
• Third, it's not really Mabel's fault that she loses, but the rest of the cast's. Wendy is slacking off, there's no reason why Soos can't wear clothes under his costume, and Dipper got a genuinely dangerous monster to display. None of this gets addressed!

Picture, then, an alternate ending where Mabel snaps out of it, either sometime around when Grunkle Stan gets back, or even tacked onto the end of the episode. Mabel wakes up from her worst nightmare, where she became Grunkle Stan and stopped being nice to make money. Dipper thinks to flash the mirror at the Gremgoblin, but Mabel stops him. She could then apologize to the Gremgoblin for capturing him, maybe give him one of the knick-knacks from the store as an olive branch. Mabel then begs the other three—maybe even the Gremgoblin, if he's up for it—to pull it together and help her make things better at the Mystery Shack for everybody. Her rousing speech inspires them—or, if it fails, she offers to share the money they make today between them. So, Wendy goes back to work, Soos puts on some clothes under the suit, and either Dipper gets a safer cryptid to display, or (I prefer this one) he works something out with the Gremgoblin so he doesn't put people in ambulances. Between these practices, they make plenty of money and Mabel is able to win the bet, but still gives the Shack over to Grunkle Stan, as she really doesn't know anything about running a business, so it still doesn't change the continuity, but it proves that Mabel was right all along.

I should also add that this is my first watch-through, so I don't know if there's something in the later episodes that contradicts all of this.

Mabel's grappling hook will make a return, either being a common or occasional tool for her and Dipper, or it will be a Chekhov's Gun.

They introduced it at the end of the first episode, and it will most likely have its uses.

• As of "Gideon Rises" this is confirmed.

Mabel is a imperfect cross-dressing clone of Dipper send from a parallel universe to stop Grunkle Stan from breeding gnomes with Manotaurs.

Look into your heart, you know it must be true. Anthyding can hadplen.

Mabel will lose the braces.

And with them, Chickification will happen. I've seen enough cartoons with identifiable geeky characters to know where she's going...

• Ugh, tell me about it. But since Mabel's not a love interest character, I have hope!
  • Possibly not. While obviously it can't be Jossed until the show finished or there's WordOfGod, the show has treated Mabel as extremely capable, if a bit odd. And she's also treated as desirable by many of the people around her, so there's little chance of a 'Suddenly she's gorgeous and therefore incapable!' reveal. Also, considering that the first three seasons have been confirmed to take place over the same summer, and braces are a long term work which you probably will want your orthodontist to remove for you. All in all, it's unlikely that her braces will be removed suddenly (though it could happen in between seasons and summers if the show goes that route), and even if they are, it's unlikely for that to significantly change her.
    • As of what's shown in The Golf War, Mabel's had her braces since she and Dipper were at least nine years old, so she's already had them for kind of a while. I would imagine that Mabel will probably get her braces off after the summer's over on the show.
    • Jossed.

Mabel, like Dipper, has a birthmark .

But it is not that.... "cool".

• It's a maple leaf.

Bill is having more trouble influencing Mabel than the others

The omelet Mabel made for Stan in "Carpet Diem" is significant because it had the old fez symbol. Stan ate it with extreme enjoyment because it made him feel like his old self. This may have been a setback for Bill. The fact that Mabel can still remember the old symbol and use it reflects that she is less under the influence of Bill than the others. Her changing wardrobe of sweaters may protect her. Bill seems to have dedicated a second symbol slot to her (the llama) to keep up the pressure.

• That happened before "Dreamscaperers", which was Bill's first appearance, and he doesn't seem to have been active in the show before then, although I could be wrong. Also, he almost convinced her to hand over Journal 3 in "Sock Opera".
• In fact, when Bill tries, Mabel turns out to be one of the easiest to influence: in "Sock Opera," Bill waited until Dipper was suffering from extreme sleep deprivation to play him, and never made an attempt to influence Dipper thereafter. But throughout the series, Mabel's selfishness makes it noticeably harder for her to mount a sincere force against Bill. In "Sock Opera," for example, she kept compromising Dipper's wellbeing and was very close to giving into Bill's demands despite what this would mean for Dipper, all for the sake of the success of a play she was only doing to impress her Boy of the Week. She actually had to be shamed into not giving in to Bill. In the finale's Weirdmageddon arc, Billendin's very convenient solution to Mabel's misery (to freeze Mabel's family and friends in time so they can never make her unhappy with their free will and futures) is an offer too tempting for her to refuse despite its clearly horribly morally wrong nature, and the subsequent Gilded Cage Bill puts her in keeps her too content to care or resist about the suffering she's caused in the outside world. Dipper, with what Bill refers to as his "will of titanium," has to work against Mabel to make her see sense and reject the paradise bubble Bill built her. Suffice to say, Mabel is the far more manipulated twin within the plot, mostly because it's easy to play her self-interest against her own allies, and Bill for some reason never plays Dipper's insecurities (over whether his family and friends genuinely value and respect him) in a similar fashion after Sock Opera, even though revealing the whys and hows of Mabel breaking the Rift in the middle of Dipper's attempts at resistance would be a good way to do that.

Mabel has a doppelganger named Lebam. She has appeared in several episodes in Mabel's place.

When Gideon first asked Mabel to visit for a makeover, he was preparing a spell from book 2 to make a doppelganger of her, possibly as a backup girlfriend. He took a sample of her hair and (possibly by accident) her llama-hair sweater. After she went home he completed the spell and Lebam was born. He took her around town in a plain sweater and got a photograph in the newspaper, and got a fan magazine quickly printed up featuring their relationship. Later she left her plain sweater in the warehouse (it can be seen draped over a table when Dipper enters). She eventually went to Mabel, who agreed to hide her and let her share her family life, wearing duplicate sweaters so they could switch back and forth. Credit for finding all these clues goes to "The Sqoou," who posted them on You Tube. To see how all this might work together as a story, see "The Life of Lebam" on fanfiction.net.

• "Headhunters" — foreshadowed with the llama sweater scene. The symbol in the mirror is the one on Cipher's ring.
• "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel" — appears in a photo with a blank sweater, and left the sweater at Gideon's warehouse. She may have been the one who saved Dipper that night. How would Mabel know to go there rather than Gideon's home, to break up with him?
• "The Inconveniencing" — shows Mabel writing with her right hand.
• "Fight Fighters" — Lebam's other clothes magically change color when she changes sweaters. She gets (temporary?) acrophobia.
• "Little Dipper" — Mabel shows no acrophobia during the flying escape from Gideon's house.
• "Boss Mabel" — Lebam writing left-handed. Since she's already a reflection, her mirror reflection doesn't reverse like normal (the fez symbol on the hat she's wearing is not reversed in the mirror).
• "The Deep End" — Mermando writes bottle notes to both Mabel and Lebam.
• "Carpet Diem" — Someone kissed Grenda, but Mabel and Candy show no signs of lipstick prints.
• "Boyz Crazy" — Lebam heads off Grenda and Candy in getting to Sev'ral Timez (Mabel was left at the bottom of the stairs and couldn't get there that fast, if there's even a second staircase), and she is addressed as "Mabel dog" by the boy band, instead of "Mabel girl."
• "Land Before Swine" — Lebam eating a phone book (like a llama might). Her self photo with arms crossed, and "We Are Not Alone" dance with Waddles has camera flashes throughout. Even though they "have the whole house to ourselves" they are not alone.
• Jossed.

Mabel and Bill Cipher have an unusual connection.

Mabel and Bill Cipher seem to have a lot in common. They're sort of silly, have strong associations with supernatural phenomena (Mabel is a Weirdness Magnet, Bill Cipher's connection should be obvious), and tend to mess around with Dipper (though in Bill's case, it's far more malicious). Probably near the end of season 2, we may learn that Bill Cipher may have ended up influencing Mabel's personality and birth through his "transmogrification ray", which can puncture the womb, bestowing the victim with his powers. Basically, Bill Cipher is Mabel's half-father.

• Conversely, despite being in the womb along with his twin sister, Dipper wasn't affected due to his Heroic Willpower. Or, Dipper was affected, explaining his obsession with the paranormal.

• Jossed. Seriously, why would you people even think that?

Lolph really is Mabel's direct descendant.

Only someone with her genes could've fallen for that time-trick.

There are two Mabels

In the image at the end of the intro, each symbol around the Pyramid represents one of the characters. However, two symbols have appeared only on Mabel's sweaters. Why is Mabel assigned two symbols? It could be possible that there is a doppelganger occasionally taking the place of the real Mabel.

• Jossed. The llama is Pacifica.

Mabel will be displeased with Dipper and Pacifica's friendship when she sees it in action.

Okay, so in episode 29 (The Love God), Mabel has little statues for all the citizens of Gravity Falls, and she has Dipper's right next to Candy's under "future matches." Given how much Hirsch loves to include visual hints, this will probably be significant in some way or another. That said, I can't see anything happening between Candy and Dipper in canon, so it probably just means that Mabel's a Shipper on Deck for Dipper/Candy.

Then, 210 happens.

• Jossed,

Between Dipper trying to act suave around her (and that working out every bit as well as can be expected), his bitter disappointment when he confronts Pacifica specially about lying to get him to exercise the ghost, and most importantly, his going back to the party after McGucket pulls him aside (which I believe is a major turning point for the character, and might ever represent the most development he's ever undergone over the course of a single episode), I think we can safely say that Dipper's starting to develop a crush.

Pacifica, for her part, genuinely enjoyed around Dipper (much more so than she did with Mabel, and this episode certainly developed her character much more than Golf Wars did), was thrilled when he came back, and was absolutely crushed when he said that she was just another link in the chain. Granted, in her case it could be because she doesn't have any other real friends, so finally having one was a big deal, but I think we're gonna see, at the very least, one-sided Dipper/Pacifica in the near future, similar to what happened with Wendy. (Whether he's really over her or not after Blendin's Game, who can really say, but he doesn't seem to be pining after her anymore, pun intended, so there's that.)

Poor Mabel, as the self-professed "world's greatest matchmaker," probably won't really know how to feel about this. On the one hand, Dipper's always been the one who's had a problem with Pacifica, but at the same time, Mabel can get kind of...intense about things that one wouldn't necessarily expect her to (such as demanding that Dipper burn a shirt that he "[isn]'t pulling off"), and Mabel can be somewhat impulsive and jump to conclusions, so there could be some friction there when next Dipper and Pacifica interact in front of her. It could be anything between "but what about you and Candy?" to slight disappointment that she tries to hide (very likely if she actually learned her lesson at the end of The Love God) to outright brain explosion, but I bet there'll be something.

• Jossed! Candy's crush on Dipper in Roadside Attraction didn't work out so well.

Mabel, in some form or fashion, is going to be the cause of Dipper's death.

Points of evidence:

• Mabel's "reverse" is referenced so often it's given rise to the "Lebam" theory, and mirror images, inversions, reverses, and twins are all major themes. Mabel would practically do anything for Dipper (and Bill is foiled by this exact trait in "Sock Opera"), so the only way to get her to turn on him is to somehow make her "backwards" somehow. If anyone do that, it's Bill Cipher.
• The teens in "Love God" all stand in front of tombstones; Mabel and Dipper are only in front of one, implying that only one of them is going to die.
• Dipper tends to get associated with sheep/lambs, as a sacrificial lamb.
• We don't know what Dipper's real name is, but "Mabel" rather conspicuously rhymes with "Abel", as in Cain and.
• As of "Not What He Seems", Mabel's major conflict has a lot to do with trust— and the risk of betrayal. Maybe it'll be a turn of dramatic irony for her to eventually (and possibly unwillingly) betray Dipper herself.
• What...? No, just... no. Jossed.

Mabel was once in 4H

• In "Fight Fighters", we see Mabel wearing a white sweater with the green four leaf clover, except it is missing the H's
• This would explain why she is so artistic and creative.
  • This would also explain why she takes leadership so well. That's one of the basic principles of 4H.

Mabel will break the rift

It seems a given, seeing as the main conflict between the twins now is a lack of communication. Neither really knows what the other is going through anymore emotionally, nor the severity of each others' concerns, and Mabel seems far more likely to get violently upset about it if she finds out Dipper's been keeping her out of things (as far back as "Tourist Trapped," she's shown to be by far the more aggressive one when the twins fight).

• Sort of Confirmed. It was Bill Cipher possessing Blendin Blandin, and broke the rift after Bill tricked Mabel into giving it to him.

Mabel broke Ford's science project

Mabel loves to fix relationships. She considers herself a matchmaker, a master of love, and even tried to play god at one point with it. She also strongly projects the future of her own relationship with Dipper onto the relationship between Grunkle Stan and Ford. Thus, Ford and Stan getting along is extremely important to her.

• Jossed

In this theory, Mabel goes back in time to try to fix Ford and Stan's relationship, possibly bringing Dipper along for the ride. They visit a couple of places in the past—the moment when the Stans find the wrecked Stan O'War, possibly—but definitely wind up during the day of the science fair, when Stan accidentally wrecks Ford's perpetual motion machine. But Ford's project was, like many things seem to be around the Pines twins, a fixed point in time. It can't be allowed to change. Thus, the time removal squad sends Blendin Blandin—newly reinstated into his job—to stop them from fixing the machine. Regardless of whether Mabel makes it worse, fixes it but is forced to break it again, or Blendin dismantles it, the machine is ultimately sabotaged and the timeline returns to normal, thus explaining the visibly worse condition the machine is in on the morning of the science fair, when it was still running the previous night (also why it was covered with a sheet with several plates unscrewed, when Stanley had left it uncovered and all the parts in place).

Mabel's prison bubble will have a lot of traps in it.

Obviously, Bill Cipher wouldn't want Dipper to free his sister so easily. But perhaps there's going to be a dramatic surprise — such as Mabel getting brainwashed and turning evil, or something like that?

• Confirmed.

Mabel's prison bubble will be an illusion of the eternally-frozen Gravity Falls Time Bubble she wished for.

And she won't want to leave because she's (again) created a fantasy so beautiful that real life could never match up—making her choose between facing her flaws and fears or hiding in denial forever. Or, alternatively, she'll slowly realize that a time-frozen eternity where you've forced everyone in your family to remain the same is less of a paradise and more of a nightmare in and of itself, which will help her get over her fear of change and the future.

• Jossed, it was part Gilded Cage part Lotus-Eater Machine.

Mabel's prison bubble is the direct physical embodiment of her personal Mindscape.

And we'll finally get a look into the twins' past within it. Also, Dipper will find out Mabel gave the Rift to Bill in an attempt to trap her family in time forever, which will be the apex of the conflict between them.

• It is some kind of mindscape and it did show a bit of their past. But not the rift part.

Mabel will die in the finale.

I know this is thankfully unlikely to happen, since Alex would be unlikely to kill off one of the younger Pines twins given that 1. they're the two main characters, and 2. they're kids. But [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GevLgwKnZVI Kristen Schaal's reaction to having just recorded her last Mabel line can be interpreted this way:

Kristen: -OOOOOOOOOO! Why would you do this? Why would you end Mabel? She's all the joy!

Alex: She still lives on in our hearts.

Kristen: Okay.

She may of course be devastated that she's no longer recording for the voiced character she most identified with, but what if it's something more? After all, Alex did say that just because the show is ending doesn't mean we'll never see Dipper, Mabel, and Stan again, which seems to imply they'll all survive past the finale. However, Stan is probably the most common character fans are speculating will be Killed Off for Real, with Ford as a close second. But hopefully Mabel—and the others, for that matter—will make it through Weirdmageddon alive.

• Jossed.

Almost related to the Asperger's headcanon above: Mabel has Turner's.

Ok, true, this is a wide shot but have patience. Turner's syndrome can cause many of the same mental symptoms Asperger's can, for one. For two, Dipper and Mabel look awfully similar for fraternal twins. Seriously, cut her hair, put on a hat, take away the braces and give her pants and shirts to wear and Mabel could be like Dipper's clone. And what's the only real way Half-Identical Twins can happen in real life (not counting clones)? If one of the pair has only an X chromosome, aka, Turner's syndrome. Why are they approximately the same height, though, despite short stature being one of the only symptoms that manifests in Turner syndrome? Because she's 12, so she's old enough to have been receiving growth hormones for it for years. This also makes her gaining a millimeter on Dipper (as seen in Little Dipper) that much more important to her: not only is it one of the very few fields she could "one-up" Dipper, she did it despite being genetically programmed to be the shorter one.

If a Sequel is ever made, Mabel will be the narrator of the first and last episodes instead of Dipper.

Mabel self harms

• She almost always wears long sleeved sweaters (despite it being summer) to hide the scars. The times that we see her with her arms exposed are when the scars have started to fade enough to not be noticed. While Mabel may appear constantly cheerful; many people with issues related to depression and self harm actually appear cheerful on the outside; but its mostly a façade.
  • Sorry, what?

Mabel used the Memory Erasing Gun to wipe her memories of The Talk.

In Carpet Diem, Grunkle Stan unintentionally gave Mabel The Talk ((in Dipper's body)). This traumatized Mabel so badly, that she developed a fear of procreation. In the Lost Legends story, Don't Dimension It, after realizing how bothersome she could be, Mabel vowed that she would never be selfish again. Now, since Mabel has that fear of procreation, she would be depriving her potential husband to be from becoming a father, and her brother Dipper from becoming an uncle. Which would be a very selfish thing of her to do. In order to rectify this, Mabel decides to use the Memory Erasing Gun to wipe the tramatizing memory from her mind. After that, Mabel felt that this will be the last time that the Memory Erasing Gun shall be used. This is why Mabel had said device in her hand and promptly destroyed it in Weirdmageddon part III.

---

"Grunkle Stan" Pines

In order to shorten the length of this section, move any theories about Stan's alleged relatives (brother, wife, etc.) to "Other Relatives" on this page, anything about his possible connections to the Author on The Author and Gruncle Stan, and anything about the portal in his basement to The Portal.

---

Stan will cause the forewarned Apocalypse.

Whether or not it'll be on purpose, we have yet to find out.

• Well, he's possibly playing a part, if Not What He Seems (s2e11) is anything to go by.
  • Jossed.

The Reason Behind Grunkle Stan's Greed?

Credit to /u/DevanteX of Reddit.

• Could it be because he's trying to buy all the gold he can? Bill Cipher himself said "Remember! Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold, bye!" and Stan also told Robbie "you've been buying gold, right?" Also, in an earlier episode, Dipper picks up one of Stan's magazines, called "Gold Chains For Old Men" This could be one of the many sources where he buys his gold from. So my question is, if he really is spending every dime he gets on gold, what could it be for? Does it have something to do with his twin?
  • The gold probably fuels that weird portal thingy in the bunker.
    • That's possible, though it doesn't explain why he brought up the matter to Robbie. Maybe Stan believes (wrongly or rightfully) that something big is going to happen and gold will somehow help.
    • Since the show pokes fun at various conspiracy theories, it could just be a throwaway reference to the stereotype that survivalist-types are obsessed with gold.
    • Its most likely intended to be a parody of the survivalist idea that gold would still retain its value after a social collapse, yes. Though it seems odd that Bill would mention that.
    • Maybe Bill Cipher gets a kick out of finding survivalist-types and telling them to buy gold and that the world is ending. Seems like it'd be his thing.
    • Jossed! His greed was because he was kicked out of his house by his father until he was rich.

Stan's ramblings about the apocalypse are more than it seems.

As said by many people when thinking up theories about him, "Stan is not what he seems." Stan is mysteriously and calmly expecting the apocalypse to happen. Soon enough that he's stocking up on food. Stan doesn't really seem like the kind of guy to plan ahead several years, so it's reasonable to assume he expects it to happen sometime soon. Like, within four episodes soon, the number of episodes remaining in this season. And it has been confirmed that something big is going to happen by the 21st episode. And now Robbie has reason to hate Dipper. Robbie. The guy the fandom has been speculating as a zombie since his first appearance. And what's one of the things Lil' Gideon comments on being hard to control? Zombies. The symbol as of yet only shown on his jacket is in the 3rd book. My current theory is that it will be a zombie apocalypse, as they are the only creature in the book that Dipper paid special attention to, that has not yet been shown to either Dipper or Mabel throughout the series whether onscreen or as a casual mention of them. And that Stan knows it's coming. Possibly because of whatever the hell he has behind the snack machine.

Stan originally summoned Bill Cipher.

He made a deal with him, resulting in him getting the Shack and all its mysteries. But after he gained all of that, Stan used his knowledge of magic and screwed Bill over. Bill went back empty handed. However he took precautions and encrypted Stan's mind, before Stan sent him back.Thus Stan has huge memory gaps.

• Jossed. "The Last Mabelcorn" shows that it was his brother Ford who summoned Bill.

The carpet in "Carpet Diem" belongs to (or was created/stolen by) Stan

Can tell by his reaction to the carpet that he knows what it is. He's not surprised by its existence or anything, and he seems pretty eager to get rid of it. Think about it for a second. The calendar in the room is dated in 1982. In "The Time Traveller's Pig", Dipper and Mabel are transported back to (what's implied to be) that time at one point during their time-travel montage. They run past the Shack back when it was just Stan's house, and he peeks out the door. In that scene, Stan is wearing the same glasses he picks up and hides in "Carpet Diem" when the secret room is found. Perhaps he invented and forgot about the carpet when it failed to work the way he planned, and he abandoned it in the room that was later discovered by Soos. It explains "Wow, this carpet is amazing!" "Yeah, if you're into things that are terrible." and why Stan happily obliges when Dipper asks him to get rid of it at the end of the episode. Also, the carpet is labeled 'Experiment 78', as if there are others. What if his other inventions are what's hidden in that secret room behind the snack machine? Maybe they're what's making Gravity Falls so weird.

• This troper had completely forgotten about that in the time travel episode, and now hopes this turns out to be true.
• If you see my pyramid guy history, this fits in because maybe the carpet is what the pyramid guy used to enter his bodies.
• Just because I feel this needs mentioning, the glasses are one of the symbols surrounding Bill the Pyramid Guy in the opener.
• Probably Jossed unless Stan stole the Carpet from the author's bunker as the Shapeshifter has a similar experiment.
• Probably Jossed more as that wasn't Stan and those weren't Stan's glasses, they're the Author's. The carpet (and that whole room) were his.

The warning "Stan is not what he seems" is not what it seems.

It's not saying Stan is untrustworthy; quite the opposite, in fact. It's stating that Stan's borderline evil Miser act is just an act, to throw suspicion off himself. Stan is some benevolent being that's been subtly leading Dipper & Mabel in their adventures.

• Well, he tried to make some bonds with the kids taking them to fish, who knows, he is not all that douche with his bloodline, maybe?
• Or maybe that's what it's talking about? Stan only really started being nice to them after Dipper found the book, and he is horrible at hiding it. What if it's his Jerk with a Heart of Gold thing he has going towards Dipper and Mabel is where the "not what he seems" comes into play?

• Stan will be revealed to be the Big Good
• The overall idea is confirmed.

STAN IS NOT WHAT HE SEEMS is misleading.

Everyone seems to think that he might be evil. Maybe the message means that he's a merman or something.

• Stan is evil. He's barely a good person by the most liberal standards. The message is misleading in that we're supposed to think he's a big bad guy, but he's actually a good guy in an antagonistic position in whatever revelation there is.
  • Stan is antagonistic, though it's hard to call him evil. He does often try to rip people off, he cheats and apparently steals, but as far as we know he's never tried to destroy anyone.
  • Further more, he's been shown to genuinely care about Dipper and Mabel
• If we accept the Stan-Twin-Theory is correct for now, then maybe the message (written by the author in the past) regards Stans long lost twin Stanley Pines, not Stanford. This could hint to some back story where Stanley betrayed/did something to Stanford and the author (and McGucket), causing him to write that message.
• Jossed if the episode title "Not What We Seems" is about happen.
  • Turns out it’s actually confirmed! All of Stan’s actions are simply for his family, and the portal was simply so that he could finally be reunited with his brother.

Regarding "Stan is not what he seems".

That statement really means "Stan is not just a fraud". It's to tell the reader that Stan does, in fact, know about real magical creatures and oddities, and isn't just about the fake stuff.

• Well, I think that the Universe Portal he activated at the end of the season josses all the theories about the clue being intentionally misleading, so probably.
  • Well, considering that within the show, he has a (rightfully earned) reputation as a con-man. He's only a protagonist to the viewer, to everyone else, he's a liar and a cheat.
    • At the end of the episode he's recognized as a hero by the town, and the viewer realizes he's been searching for the books all along. Truly, both in-series and to the audience, Stan is not what he seems.
• Confirmed. The Season 2 premiere states that Stan does indeed know about the supernatural occurrences in Gravity Falls, and was pretending not to so that Dipper and Mabel wouldn’t look into them.

Uncle Stan is some kind of supernatural creature himself.

The backwards phrase during the first episode's end credits already spelled "Stan is not what he seems", and in the show's intro, look at Stan's shadow at about 0:14.

• You're seeing the shadow of Mabel's umbrella. Stan's shadow is normal.His head does look triangular, however.
• Jossed.

Stan is training up both Dipper and Mabel to take over the shack should (or when) something happen to him, with them unknowingly becoming his apprentices.

In Tourist Trapped, he specifically chooses Dipper to go out into the woods instead of either Wendy or Soos, which is how Dipper finds the third journal. Also, as Dipper attempts to get Stan's attention to tell him about Norman, he completely ignores him and therefore forces Dipper to go out and fight on his own. In other episodes, like The Legend of the Gobblewonker and Double Dipper, he introduces Dipper and Mabel to the strange things Gravity Falls is hiding but remains an uninvolved force in the overall plot.

• As an added theory, he and the twins may not be related at all, tying in with the Stan being a supernatural creature himself theory. It's possible he foresaw the twin's importance to him for whatever reason, and therefore drew the kids to Gravity Falls in the first place. After all, we never see Mabel and Dipper's parents and aren't certain on their reasoning for sending their kids to a man they're very loosely related to in the first place.

Stan is using Obfuscating Stupidity.

Stan is definitely not what he seems. He's hiding something too, and he probably knows that Dipper has the book.

• On top of that, at the end of Episode 1, he moves aside a vending machine to reveal the entrance to a basement with ominous lighting, and he looks around to make sure no one else can see him.
• Confirmed. He owns Journal #1.

Grunkle Stan is way deep in whatever's really going on in Gravity Falls.

I realize this is super obvious, so I'm using this space to round up the evidence. There's the secret passage behind the vending machine, of course, but in "Dipper Vs. Manliness" we can see part of a tattoo on his right shoulder blade. I'd bet my lunch money there are a lot more little clues to come this season.

• Confirmed!

Stan lives a very kinky double life

• Why would he keep a goat around?
• Why would he hire attractive people to work for him?
• He thought about Soos making out with the twins and them being blindfolded in his car.
• Why would he keep a cloning machine in the shack?
• He revealed his body to 2 young boys.
• The bunker is where he hides his toys and magazines.
• Jossed. This is a kid's show, for Bill's sake!

A little on Stan's history

Stan used to be a lot like Dipper. To make sure someone will know how to defend themselves, he wrote the books (however many there are) One of them (probably 1) is in that secret room of his. That secret Gideon talked about? He either meant Dipper's book, Stan's, or something else in that room. Plus, ever wonder if there was some other reason he locked up the wax guys? Furthermore, he's well aware of the supernatural things going on in that town, and of Dipper & Mable's adventures, but he pretends not to for their own safety. (Otherwise, he's pretty much exactly how he acts.)

• Jossed! Stan's brother wrote the books

Stan knew about the hidden room.

Pretty obvious as he only seemed annoyed at it being found. Combined with him immediately going for and hiding something only he in the Mystery Shack would have any need of, those glasses on the desk.

• Confirmed!

Grunkle Stan is Satan.

First of all, the name. Second, the warning about him. Third, in "Boys Crazy", he predicts the apocalypse in the near future, and he seems to look forward to it.

• There was a joke in Gideon Rises, about a photo of him wearing a devil costume (which was "taken out of context").
• Jossed.

The golden pendant Stan had in his Self-Serving Memory about the dinosaur has some significance.

There was no explanation for it, and it was glowing!

Whatever reason the symbol on Stan's fez has switched from 'crescent moon' to 'Pac-Man' is important.

And I'm 100% sure it has something to do with the same moon symbol being on the circle in the opening.

• Finally, someone else noticed that! At first I was wondering if it was just to cut down animation time, but I think you might be right. Maybe it has something to do with "STAN IS NOT WHAT HE SEEMS"?
• Funny thing, in Dreamscapers, the symbol in the circle seems to have changed as well.
• In a show like this it's probably important that the hat symbol changed, but the last time we see Stan's old hat is at the end of Boss Mabel when it's being eaten by Gompers. Considering the wheel changed when the symbol on his hat did, it could have been done to demonstrate that the wheel changes to match the individual. Not because Stan purposefully changed symbols. From his perspective, he just got a new hat.

Stan's mind has ciphered words and such because his mind has been ciphered, possibly by Bill Cipher.

He actually doesn't remember anything, he isn't faking. His mind has been tampered with.

That golden pendant Stan wears is an amulet from one of the books

As stated above, it was glowing during his story in "Land Before Swine". Plus, we know that there's at least one other book out there, and both of the ones we've seen so far came with what look like amulets.

• Considering we find out he has Book 1 in the finale... Yes. Just yes. Stan has the pendant, Gideon has (had) the bolo tie, and Dipper has (had?) the monocle-magnifying glass-we-don't-know-what-it-does.

Stan knew full well he was under the truth teeth's influence

He just managed to use Half-Truth and You Didn't Ask to keep from giving away any important secrets. The whole thing was to teach Mabel a lesson. (The one she learned at the end)

Stan's fez used to belong to someone else. Someone important.

When Gideon was summoning Bill to go into Stan's mind, he drew an arrow pointing to the glasses, but not the symbol on the fez. Meaning the glasses represent Stan, but the moon/Pac-Man thing is someone else.

• Alternatively, the crescent symbol is Stan's, and the glasses◊ are someone else◊ (glasses have different thicknesses).

Stan has one of the books.

It's what he's hiding behind that vending machine and it's why Gideon wants the Mystery Shack so bad.

• Confirmed.
  • Not just one

Stan's tattoo is the symbol of the Secret Society.

And all the other members have similar ones.

• Jossed! It's a burn mark from when Ford pushed him in the Portal's control during a fight.

The changed fez symbol is significant. It shows Cipher gaining influence over Stan

The symbol changed from a crescent to a "pac-man." The outline of the cut and the new circle is the shape of Bill Cipher and his eye. The corresponding crescent symbol in Cipher's circle in the opening credits has also changed to the pac-man symbol in the third book. Cipher made this change to get Stan under his influence, to seek to open the portal for evil purposes. The other portal seeker, Gideon, also has a symbol that is very Bill-like (the eye in the pentagram). Gompers the goat was the agent of the change; the last time we see the old symbol is before the fez falls off and Gompers grabs it in the "sorry dance" at the end of "Boss Mabel." This means that Gompers works for Bill. Gompers also chewed the "Shooting Star" sweater of Mabel's, which is the symbol by which Bill addresses her. (In the episode before "Boss Mabel" we can see the beginning of the change on the face of the "Stan Bucks", which has the "pac-man" without the ball.)

In "Scary-Oke", he puts on a six fingered glove. In "Into the Bunker", the shapeshifter calls the author "that six fingered freak". Either Stan knows the author personally and has one of his gloves, or he is the author and used the six finger motif to throw suspicion off himself. If it really is McGucket, maybe McGucket used to be like a Big Brother Mentor to Stan when they were young, got Stan interested in the paranormal, and then something terrible happened and they stopped hanging out. Maybe something happened to his twin...

• If Stan were the author himself, he likely wouldn't need to possess all three journals to operate the machine under the Shack, and he would have known where all three were hidden regardless. You could justify that Gideon found journal 2 and took it before Stan returned for it, but Dipper's was still presumably in its original hiding place when he found it- why would Stan retrieve journal 1 but not journal 3 if he was the author and knew where they were hidden? I think he probably did know the author but didn't know the journals' hiding spots or how to work the machine.
• Another point against the theory of Stan being the author is in the aforementioned "Scary-Oke". When Dipper discovered the black light effect on the journal, the invisible ink shtick appeared to genuinely surprise him just as much as it did the twins. Now this doesn't completely debunk the friend of the author theory, as it is possible he kept that factor secret from him out of paranoia.
• It's likely jossed. The shapeshifter apparently knew the author (or knew of him) and described him as being "six-fingered". Stan clearly has five fingers. He could have had a sixth finger removed but that would leave a noticeable scar.
• Jossed.

Grunkle Stan's full first name is Stanley, not Stanford

Gideon just has it wrong, and Stan doesn't care enough to correct him. Or he corrected him once and doesn't bother now. Or Gideon's doing it on purpose to annoy Stan.

• Confirmed! He took Ford's identity when he started the Mystery Shack.

During the events of "Truth Ache" Stan figured out one of the twins was behind the sudden inability to lie

Which was why he started telling disturbing truths to both of them not knowing which one was behind it...

Grunkle Stan's eye patch has something to do with Stanley, Bill, and the Blindeye.

A blind eye is literally an eye that can't see. Grunkle Stan wears an eye patch despite clearly not needing one (the trappings of a charlatan, but we know he's more than he seems), and Bill, when possessing Dipper, points out that having two eyes makes him a "deluxe" human. It's easy to assume that's because he's only got one eye himself, so depth perception would be a new thing for him, but what if it's because he's possessed a one-eyed human before?

Stanley's glasses (if that's who they really belong to, anyway) are just lying around the secret carpet room in the Mystery Shack, and we've seen someone who was probably Stanley wearing them in a flashback. What if Stanley lost his vision in one eye and started wearing an eyepatch, and sometime after that, Bill possessed him and killed him?

Grunkle Stan is a servitor of Bill Cipher

But he may or may not realize it. The mystery shack is covered in symbols resembling the Eye of Providence, Stan is obsessed with money ("he's in my wallet!"), he echoes Bill's advice to buy gold, and he's been preparing for a coming apocalypse, probably the one that Bill has been alluding to. Also, somewhat creepily, in "Boss Mabel", when Stan makes the deal with Mabel over who can make the most money, he makes a perfect triangle when he puts his fingers together. One way or another, Stan is taking his cues from Bill. It's also incredibly suspicious that Bill tried to get the journal away from Dipper because he was getting close to some major secrets, but Stan is obviously way deeper into those secrets and has access to the information in all three journals but Bill apparently doesn't care. It may be that Stan is a Call Of Cthulu style cultist who worships Bill Cipher, or he's just being influenced, but he's in league with him somehow. Which would suggest...

• Jossed.

Grunkle Stan doesn't have a tattoo.

It's a weird birthmark, like Dipper's.

• Arguably Jossed. In one of the Guide to The Unexplained shorts, Stan himself called it a tattoo. Of course, he could be lying.
  • He was lying. It's a burn mark from his fight with Ford over the Portal.

Grunkle Stan was the author, and he was searching for the journals because the Society of the Blind Eye tried to wipe his memory of them.

They erased what he remembered from them, but not the journals themselves.

• Jossed. His brother is the author.

Stan doesn't want the twins safe from the supernatural. He wanted them trusting the supernatural.

Season 2 reveals that Stan is perfectly aware of the supernatural elements of Gravity Falls, claiming to have been keeping them hidden so that the children wouldn't be interested in all that supernatural stuff, and stay away from the danger it poses. However, if you look back at season 1, that doesn't exactly match up with his actions. For one thing, many of the supernatural things encountered by the twins were actually introduced to them by Stan. Stan sent them to use the magic copy machine for one. Stan had no problem with the kids living in a chamber where the carpet was marked 'experiment 78'. He actually takes them to go see the bottomless pit. Plus, his reaction to the kids going after the Gobblewonker is really not in line with him considering such a lethal danger.Now, what do all these things have in common? They weren't dangerous. The clones created by the copy machine were all helpful, having no problem with doing work for their creator and only the creator reaping the benefits. Even the failed copy wasn't dangerous. Experiment 78 switched minds around, but it had a very select area of effect, and was trivially easy to reverse. The bottomless pit was used as a simple trash dispenser, and even if you fell in, you'd simply pop out after a while. The gobblewonker remained hidden despite the search, and only turned out dangerous because some lunatic decided to make a mechanical copy, which Stan had no way of knowing (similarly, since the wax statues hid from him, he likely wasn't aware of their particular magical case and how dangerous they were).However, the biggest clue here is that the twins are here at all. Gravity Falls is positively bursting with supernatural stuff. If Stanford was trying to keep kids away from such things, why did he even agree to look after the kids in the first place? So, why would he do that? Because he needs them for something supernatural, most likely involving the weird device hidden in the secret cellar. To ensure that the kids will trust whatever supernatural stuff he needs them to do, he tried to expose them only to harmless, helpful and fun parts of the supernatural, shielding them off from more unsavoury stuff.

Stanley, not Stanford, is not what he seems

Simple theory. The cipher that says "STAN IS NOT WHAT HE SEEMS" is located in what looks to be a page of the journal. If the theory about Stan's twin is correct, it's most likely the twin that had a connection to the journals, living in the shack before Stanford. As such, it's much more likely that the book would be talking about Stanley. Though, of course, we've yet to see what Stanley seems like.

Stan is going to lose his left eye.

There was a lot of speculation about Stan's eye patch when he's in his 'Mr. Mystery' guise—most of it had to do with his possible connection to the Blind Eye Society. That seems to be jossed, but even so, there's still a lot of focus on Stan's eyes—or just eyes in association with Stan. There's the eye patch; the opening credits, which pointedly show Stan switching the patch from his right eye to his left (and he's in the Shack's living room, so there's seemingly no reason for him to be using to be 'Mr. Mystery' persona); there's also the likely significance of his (and possibly his brother's) eyeglasses; the inordinate number of disembodied eyes littering the Mystery Shack; his twice being hit with a glass-eye being used as a golf ball in "Carpet Diem;" Gideon's picture of Stan with with the eyes crossed out in red ink; and then there's a sequence in "Sock Opera," which really, really looks like foreshadowing: Puppet!Stan is thrown into the air by the detonation of a box of fireworks. As the flaming puppet flies through the air in a glorious, slow-motion arc to the tune of "Ave Maria," the puppet's left eye (also engulfed in flames) separates and falls out of frame. Stan's puppet is, notably, the only one that this happens to. In fact, Stan's puppet is the only one that looses a body part in the explosion at all.

It really looks like the show might be telling us that Mr. Mystery's eye patch is going to become a permanent accessory for Stan at some point.

The real reason people go to the Mystery Shack is because of Grunkle Stan's hamminess.

I know I'd pay to watch him try to con me.

• Doesn't that just mean he's succeeded?
• Comfirmed!

Stan is a member of a secret society that is somehow involved in the Gravity Falls conspiracy, his fez indicates his membership, his change of fez in between episodes 13 and 14 is representative of a change of rank in that society

• Jossed. He was not in the meeting we see in Society of The Blind Eye.

Stan has had problems with Doppelgangers.

In Headhunters, he massively freaks out when he first sees the wax figure of himself. He may have faced some kind of doppelgangers before. Possibly because of the copy machine they have that can clone things.

• As of s2e11 Not What He Seems, it's likely because of his lost twin brother

"Stan is not what he seems" is exactly what it says on the tin

Meaning, that the code is supposed to make you suspicious of Stan, when actually, he's not as suspicious as he seems, and really knows nothing.

• Jossed.

Behind the vending machine is....

The heart of the house. It is a living object by itself, it's personality and knowledge based on what it contains at the time. It will end up defending itself in some way against Gideon and his father, and go back to its dormant state after its settled, like nothing happened.

• Jossed

Behind Stan's vending machine is a room where a great evil is sealed.

When Gideon and his father destroy the place, the evil will be unleashed.

• Not exactly jossed, but as of season 1 finally, there's the Universe Portal behind there. No clue what it does though.
  • Turns out it was there to free Stan's brother.
• Semi-confirmed. Behind the vending machine is a Universe Portal leading to the Nightmare Realm, where Bill Cipher and the gang of inter dimensional criminals and nightmares Bill calls his friends reside.

The Cipher on the dream-shack will be important

No, not the one above the door, that just says Mystery Shack in the original Cesarean. If you look at the roof in the same scene, in big letters is "OAUVG" and this troper has run it through both Atbash and Cesarean and come up with bup-kiss, so it must be a cipher not used yet. And if you look carefully at Bill's Bloodstained chapter you'll see what might be conformation to the part about a new cipher, as scrawled at the top, in descending order, is Cesarean, Atbash, and A 1 Z 26, all crossed out.

• And that was someone smarter than me the OP's hint to try to crack the code ^note also I think Stan's vanity plate might be one too.
  • Stan's license plate is a shortened version of "Stanley Mobile". Why it's "Stanley" instead of "Stanford", the world may never know.
  • That's just the thing that makes me think it would be a cipher. To the average person it would just seem like a vanity plate of his name, but for some secret society type it might be a message (Or you know, just a vanity plate, and I'm reading to much into things)
  • This troper hasn't been able to decode it either, but I'm willing to bet it's "GIFTS". Another interesting one: In Land Before Swine during Stan's fake flashback, his tattoo is replaced with "OLHV" which, when decoded, reads "LIES"
  • (OP)Your probably right and it is something simple like that, but then why put it in a different cipher? I didn't even notice the tattoo though, so thanks for that!

Leaked Image Person and Stan's twin worked together on a government project to study Gravity Falls.

They did it For Science while the government agency that funded them was looking for something supernatural to weaponize. Leaked Image Person was assigned to the project first (or perhaps studying Gravity Falls on his own accord before the project began), and "Grandpa Stan" joined later and was the one making edits to the books.

They eventually found something so powerful (the thing in the Shack that Grunkle Stan is hiding and Gideon wants), they decided to hide it from their superiors and the world. They both went insane and paranoid of one another (and even their own family) while hiding it.

Grunkle Stan eventually stumbled across it or saw his brother attempting to use it and had no choice but to fight him. "Grandpa Stan" eventually fell down a cliff, uttering ominous words of vengeance as he fell, thus explaining Grunkle Stan's temporary fear of heights and why he was so terrified at Wax Stan at first. The thing he was hiding or one of the experiments he performed with Leaked Image Person has made him superstrong/immortal, so he has indeed survived (or become undead) and will return for revenge.

The thing they are hiding is instrumental in bringing about Bill's (the 2D triangle guy) true form (a 3D pyramid) into the mortal realm, and he is just using Gideon as a pawn to obtain it. The floating eyes are all fragments of Bill peaking into their universe.

Stan is Pyramid guy

The warning that Stan isn't what he seems is that he isn't human at all, he is somehow related to the pines family and maybe even gave Dipper his intelligence and Mabel her ability to think outside the box, only when they work together can they solve the mysteries and Stan may act like he doesn't believe them, but the bunker under the mystery shack and the fact the pyramid guy has the same hat that can change symbols and no one notices. now pyramid guy maybe the Big Good of the series or the big bad, but i have a feeling since Stan does genuinally love the kids he well turn out to be the big good well something connected to that B*stard Gidion well end up as the big bad

• Jossed.

The symbol on Grunkle Stan's hat is one half of an insignia.

Based on this image, the fez only has half of the completed image on it.

The Author is Stan's 6 fingered twin and he was lost to the portal

Spoilers and crackpot theories ahead, Bewarb!Don't know if this is anywhere else- this page is a BIT of a mess- but I'm going to go Big Hero 6 on everyone and say that the author got stuck in where ever the portal leads to and he is Stanford's all but confirmed twin Stanley. The former- and maybe even true- occupant of the Mystery Shack and all other properties. Stanley was doing good-natured, if misguided, research. Something goes wrong with the portal- probably an outcome of Bill's doings, the triangular bastard- or whatever comes out of it and the poor 6-fingered bastard got sucked into the damn thing, leaving old man Mc Guckit (sp?) to brain erase himself into insanity and lead his Jerkass With A Heat of Gold brother to look for him, or even continue his research for the "good of the world" or/and to find him.That's why Stan had/ knew of the books, uses the six fingered glove and knows about the crazy shit going on. Maybe his brother told him about it as he researched? I bet if Dipper got a hold of the other journals there might be mention of the Author's brother/ back story. Bill doesn't want Dipper to know because knowing how he fucked over his grand-uncles would really bust shit open. And all that jazz. Insanity/ genius seems to run in the family.

• Confirmed, the author is Stan's brother

The author of the book was someone who associated with Stan.

Stan was accompanied by someone; possibly a friend, a lover or a relative; who wrote down all the creatures they encountered and all the rituals. There was only one book at the time, possibly heavily encrypted in a code only Stan and his associate were able to read.Later, the author 'translated' the book into standard English, dividing the content into different books and hid them away in separated places. Originally the Author intended that the books might only be used by people who knew what they were doing and who were aware of the risks they took.

• Confirmed! It's his brother

The author of the books was trying to keep them away from Stan.

Take this trip with me here. Going with the above two theories:

Stanford (Stan's twin) and McGucket were friends and worked more or less together. At some point, for some reason, McGucket summoned Bill, and Bill betrayed him by cutting off his sixth finger and killing Stanford, or sending him into another dimension. However, Stanley (Gruncle Stan) was all set to simply step into his brother's empty space in Gravity Falls and no one would be the wiser, except for McGucket. The trauma of these events, coupled with the paranoia that would naturally come with seeing a friend replaced with a clone who serves his worst enemy, drove McGucket insane, made it impossible for him to trust anyone, and spurred him to desperately hide the other journals in order to keep the real Stanford's doppelganger from finding them.

• Jossed! He gave #1 to Stan.

The Love God's throwaway line about a being higher in the heavens can stop him is actually Foreshadowing about Stan.

The Love God episode is actually an Innocuously Important Episode, which appears to be a lighthearted romp, but actually foreshadows Stan's importance, or at least his aspirations to be higher than mere mortals.

• Jossed.

Stan is color blind.

He claims he's never seen a rainbow, doesn't have a favorite colour. When the rainbow was blasted into his office he was blinded due to it just being intense light.

• Plus, his dreamscape was a Madoka Magica-esque, black-and-white space.

Stan isn't represented on Bill's wheel

Maybe this was just an oversight on a scriptwriter's part, but so far Soos is question mark, Mabel is shooting star, and Dipper is pine tree. These are ways Bill has actually addressed them, and they're also symbols on the wheel. But Stan? Stan's only ever been called 'Stan'. I know his hat icon is on the wheel, but it seems weird that he'd be an exception to the Icon-name thing.

• Jossed. His icon is what represents him on the wheel. It’s likely just it’s hard to figure out what it could even be described as, unlike with the rest of the wheel.

'Stan is not what he seems'/twin theory

Put simply, Stan isn't what he seems because he isn't the right Stan. In Carpet Diem, they make a point of showing him hide the glasses that were similar to his own. then they introduce the carpet switching people's minds. I propose that the Stan the kids are with is the twin that everyone assumes is lost, except in Stanford's body. Stanley's body was lost, possibly through the portal, with Stanford's mind in it.I know this has some loose ends, like why wouldn't they just switch back? Why would he throw out the carpet if he knew it was the only way to get his brother back? I don't have answers to these, but I really think there was something with the glasses they made a point of hiding.

• Jossed! Stan faked his death and took Ford's identity.

Season 2 End Cards

So we all know for season 2, each episode has had a different end card. It's been hinted that there is a greater image when the cards are put together. As of Northwest Mansion Mystery, we can now confirm that the greater image has to do with Stan in some fashion. The question is, what is the image? The first theory is that it's Stan, facial expression yet unknown, atop a massive pyramid.

Stan Will Lose His Memory

At the end of "Society of the Blind Eye", we can see that Dipper still has the memory-wiping machine. After discovering that Stan has built a portal that will cause some sort of catastrophic event (and if we are going with the theory that Stan has built the portal to get his twin back), Dipper will have to make a choice between letting Stan get his brother back, as well as confronting his worst fear (losing Mabel), or wiping Stan's memory of the portal and everything involved with it.

• Confirmed! However, he lost his memory at the reluctant hand of his secret twin in order to kill Bill Cipher.

About the Stan Pines that died in the car crash

It was really his brother who faked his own death, and he's the Real!Stan. Or it really was the Crash!Stan who died and it's because the Stans are triplets and not twins.

• Possibly confirmed on the triplet part in the Bill Cipher AMA on Reddit
  • Jossed, the Stan Pines who died was our!Stan the whole time who took the identity of his brother.

Grunkle Stan will become seriously ill before the series end

At one point in "Not What He Seems", as Stan is handling the radioactive gunk, he takes his hazmat helmet off and wipes his brow, leaving a green radiation smear on his forehead. If the show plays things as realistically as before, this doesn't bode well for Stan...

• Jossed! Stan faked his death and took Ford's identity.

Stan faked his death after his brother's disappearance so he could work on getting him back without much hassle.

The final countdown on the Portal under the Mystery Shack was only started after what we can presume to be weeks of effort, and he probably spent much longer than that hunting down all the necessary parts to get it running and getting the journals together. He probably knew from the get go that this was going to get him into trouble with the law, so he faked his own death to cover his tracks and started using aliases to gather all the materials and do all his work. This also explains why Agent Powers only charged him with stealing the waste and conspiracy to create a doomsday device; all the other illegal things he had to do to get to that point were done under fake names and in places far removed from Gravity Falls.

• Confirmed!

Stan is who he says he is and the car crash is a Red Herring.

He faked his own death as part of an insurance scam, named his twin brother as the beneficiary, got caught really quickly because he forgot to take into account his brother's six fingers, and got a light sentence because he rolled on a bunch of his criminal associates from his youth.

• Confirmed and Jossed! He really is Stan, but he faked his own death to take the Author's identity.

The next few episodes will be about Stan rebuilding his trust with Dipper and Mabel.

He will especially work towards rebuilding his trust with Dipper.

• Likely Jossed!.

Stan's Fake I.D's are a red-herring

They are simply memento's of his conning days that he refuses to part with cause A) he's proud of them, and B) never know when those will come in handy again.

• Jossed! He had the fake IDs to disguise his identity to not get sued for false advertising.

Stan's inability to say "please" in "Boss Mabel" is because he connected it with his brother's disappearance

.As in "Please, Don't Leave Me".

• "In fact, just saying the word is giving me a burning sensation."

Grunkle Stan learned stage magic at some point

Not even really plot relevant (Or is it?), just for fun really. Some of the tricks Stan pulls during the tour's are obviously pretty common magic tricks. The real question is did he learn it because he was a sweet nerdy kid with an honest intrest, or did he learn for the benefits of slight of hand in conning people? Maybe a bit of both even

Stan isn't the kids' Grunkle, he's their Grandfather.

• This is assuming he impersonated his "dead" twin brother, the real Stanford Pines, the Author. The Author is the kids' actual Grunkle, while Stan is their grandfather.
  • Seemingly Jossed, as a clip shows Mabel saying "Now we have two grunkles for the price of one!" Though Stan HAS been impersonating his twin for thirty years.

Stan's relationship with his father was seriously strained.

And he's unintentionally set up the same kind of relationship between him and Dipper as a result.

• There's a couple points of evidence about this. For starters, let's recap Dreamscaperers:
  • Dipper is being put through a "Hilariously" Abusive Childhood by "Grunkle" Stan; notably, Mabel is not given the same grueling treatment.
  • Tensions form between Dipper and Stan which erupt when Dipper overhears Stan's apparently dismal opinion of him, citing a list of flaws that mirror a lot of Dipper's insecurities.
  • Stan is revealed to have gone through a similar treatment at the hands of his father, who wanted to toughen him up.
  • This would seem to imply that Stan had come to understand and admire his father for his harsh wisdom, but he doesn't. In the episode Not What He Seems, Stan's bookshelf has a self-help book called "Daddy Issues" on it, which implies his father's treatment screwed him up more than he'd admit. For some reason, though, he's giving Dipper the same treatment his father gave him. It's clear Mabel isn't given the same level of harsh treatment, so perhaps he sees himself and his brother in the twins—brains and brawn—and he no longer sees brains as enough of a skill set, because it wasn't enough to save his brother?
  • Addendum: Perhaps this is also why, if he's the twins' grandfather, he wasn't exactly the most responsible dad in the world and has such a poor opinion of getting married and having a kid.
  • Confirmed!

Stan was an unwanted/unexpected twin

The Pines seemed to have been pretty hardscrabble, paycheck-to-paycheck family back in the day. The Pines family were only expecting one child—Stanford, whose name they'd already chosen—and ended up with surprise twins, which created a financial burden on the family. Grunkle Stan also states that he was a wimp growing up, which might imply he was always the smaller, more sickly twin, and thus a bigger drain on the family's meagre budget. Both these things together could have combine to make him The Unfavorite, which explains his attention-seeking, his unstable relationships, and his need to "toughen up" as an adult. It would also make Ford's accusations of "you ruined my entire future!" even Harsher in Hindsight, as what he would really be saying is that Stan ruined his life by being born (due to the financial strain of providing for two children, there was never quite enough money to afford the sort of educational opportunities Ford would need to reach his potential. That Ford later made up for the lost opportunities wouldn't matter, since at the time, he was a teenager, and to teens, everything seems like forever). Please be aware that this is the world's most tenuous speculation based solely on the theory (from Fridge Brilliance) that the Pine Twins, Mark One were so poor they had to share a single nickname.

Stan will kill Bill Cipher at the series end.

Stan will vanquish Bill Cipher using one of the ten firearms he claims to possess, loaded with palladium ammunition.

• Two problems with this. First, Bill is an incorporeal spirit, bullets can't even hit him. Second, this is a kid's cartoon, so they can't outright show somebody getting shot to death by a gun (at least not a realistic gun).
  • Bill has a physical body now, but he's probably immortal enough that ordinary firearms can't even harm him (in fact, Ford failed to kill Bill with a huge laser rifle.
• Confirmed! Stan ends up tricking Bill into entering his mind, has Ford use the memory gun on him in order to erase his mind with Bill inside it, and finally obliterates Bill with a Megaton Punch.

Stanley has had a run in with Bill before, and we just haven't heard about it yet

Back in Dreamscapers Stan catches on pretty damn quick when he see's Dipper in his dream, and gives him a key bit of advice that helped defeat Bill that time. How much do you want to bet that reading through Ford's journals Stan came across just enough stuff about Cipher to go looking for him in hopes of help getting his brother back? How much do you want to bet that unlike his trusting brother who falls for flattery over how smart he is, Stan can smell a con coming from a mile away, and turned down any deal Bill tried to make Probably the only reason we haven't heard about it yet is because A) he was being secretive up until this point, and B) it just hasn't come up yet.

In "Weirdmageddon Part 2", Stanley will try to rescue Stanford

.It's strange how in the previous episode, Stanley only appeared in a brief joke scene. But as Stanford is probably still stuck as Bill's golden backscratcher, while Dipper and the others are trying to save Mabel, there could be an important subplot about the Stan brothers.

• Jossed. Ford remains petrified throughout Part 2 and is still in possession of Bill Cipher. Stan, however, is protecting the survivors of Weirdmageddon in the Mystery Shack at the end of Part 2.

Stan actually married Carla McCorkle

But didn't divorce her; instead, their marriage technically ended when Stan legally died by faking his death and driving his car off a cliff. The story about her being hypnotized away by music was either a lie or a partial-truth about their relationship troubles. He hasn't mentioned this because he's still ashamed that he decided to leave Carla for good (even if they were having relationship troubles) just to live comfortably under his brother's identity while trying to rescue him. If we assume the G4G theory is true, this may be worse, as it could mean he abandoned his responsibilities to both her and his kid by pretending to be dead. This would explain why Stan is said to have only had one divorce (with a woman named Marilyn, whom he was married to for only six hours) while still possibly having a kid that legally carried his surname (considering G4G has so much evidence). As an added (but sad) bonus, "Carla McCorkle returned all his flowers" could as much refer to flowers placed on a tombstone as they could to flowers given on a date.

Grunkle Stan will die in the Series Finale.

Alex Hirsch tweeted that at least one character will not survive Season 2. Grunkle Stan seems to be a reasonable candidate, since there is a lot of symbolism of death and fire when taking into account how many variations of Stan get destroyed at one stage. For example, in The Deep End, Wax Stan melts due to the intense heat wave. In Sock Opera, puppet Stan gets blown to bits from fireworks. Plus, in The Love God, balloon Stan goes down in flames. This implies that Grunkle Stan will meet a fiery demise during the final battle against Bill Cipher and his gang. Stan might also sacrifice himself to Bill to ensure the absolute safety of the only family he has left.

• This, coupled with his actions in weird-mageddon pt. 2, might end with him being hailed as a hero if he explicitly sacrifices himself for his family. Perhaps in the rebuilding of the town, Pacifica or one of the twins would insist that a statue of Stan (in his Mr. Mystery persona, complete with the 8-ball cane and eye-patch) be erected in place of the Northwest statue that Bill destroyed. There would also be an inscription at the statues base, calling Stan 'The Greatest Uncle', among other things, and good ol' Stan will finally get recognition for his great deeds. Also, to back this theory up, the show itself has been hinting at Stan's mortality quite a bit recently...
  • Jossed. Although, the burning foreshadowing we've been hinted at numerous times beforehand leads up to Stan reluctantly sacrificing his memories (which he later retrieves through Mabel's Scrapbook) in order to beat Bill.

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Other Relatives

Any theories about Dipper's and Mabel's parents, or any alleged/hypothetical relatives on Stan's side (brother, wife, etc). This is to cut down on an enormous amount of theories flooding the Stan Pines section.

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Dipper and Mabel are orphans.

Have you ever heard them talk about their (biological) parents? No, because maybe they don't know them. There's a strange custody agreement going on, Dipper and Mabel are either wards of the state or are living with some foster families, but for some reason they can stay with their grand-uncle every summer.

• Though I admit this theory will probably not be true. The most likely reason we don't see their parents is because the writers have deemed them unimportant.
• Jossed. We see their arms in Episode 1.
  • Both parts are jossed; The kids (Mabel especially) make frequent mention of them and Mabel explicit says in Tourist Trapped that this is their first summer away from home.

If Grandma Pines shows up, she'll be voiced by Ariel Hirsch.

Theory on Grunkle Stan's ex-wife

If the Grunkle Stan has a twin theory is true, then I propose this other theory to go along with it. After Grunkle Stan's twin disappeared, Grunkle Stan's ex-wife had a hunch that her husband knew what really happened to his brother. She pushed him for answers, but he flat out refused to tell her anything either out of guilt and/or fear. Believing that her husband didn't trust her, she called for a divorce which Grunkle Stan was more to happy to oblige by. After that, she moved out of Gravity Falls and refused to ever return. But, considering the rumor that Grunkle Stan's ex-wife is said to appear on the show...

Stan doesn't like talking about his ex-wife, because she was a real witch

.

• How adorable would it be for these two kooky, misunderstood elders to be meet.

The Book was written by Stan's wife, who ended up getting killed in a supernatural manner.

Combined with a Never Got to Say Goodbye with Stan. His terrible joke in Episode 2 could've had more behind it.

• Also, she may or may not appear to Dipper as a ghost later in-series. Or she could be hiding under Stan's fez.
• Word of God says that Stan's ex will appear, but no mention if she is dead or alive.
• Jossed: As of "Into the Bunker", we now know for a fact that the author is a man.
• Double Jossed. It's Stan's brother.

Stan actually has a sister.

I mean, it's probably unlikely (probably very unlikely), but we do know he has a sibling, and I do like the angle that the "Mystery Twins Classic" theory brings with the possible Stanley Pines. But I think it'd be cool to see a Generation Xerox with Dipper, Stan, Mabel, and Grandma Pines.

• It's more likely that he has a brother because of how his last name is the same as the twins. Grunkle Stan's sibling would be the father or mother of Dipper and Mabel's father.
  • Of course this assumes that Grunckle Stan only has one sibling. He could have both. Well, we know he has a brother, at least.
• Maybe confirmed! Stan's mom was holding a baby when Stan's dad kicked him out.
  • Yeah, most likely Confirmed! Stanley outright tells Ford that Dipper and Mabel are his niece and nephew as well. The baby in the flashback is actually their younger sibling, Shermy.

The Stan look-alike in "Time Traveler's Pig" isn't Stan.

The shape of his nose and his face is slightly different than the younger Stan seen in "Boyz Crazy". He may be Stan's brother (Dipper and Mabel's grandfather) or even Dipper in the future.

• Yeah, but those were at different ages. The young Stan in Boyz Crazy was implied to be 17 or 18, while the young Stan in Time Traveler's Pig was probably in his mid 30's, considering he already owned the soon-to-be Mystery Shack. It makes sense that he'd look different; that's what age does.
  • Au contraire, my friend — the chins are different, for one thing. Also, post-puberty Stanford is always shown with a five o'clock shadow, regardless of his age.
• Also, in "Dreamscaperers," Stan says that he took boxing as a kid. Assuming that he continued it can explain the changed shape of his nose. Getting your nose broken (especially multiple times) causes its shape to change.
  • But it can't put a cleft in your chin, or take it out. The Stan in the shack has a cleft chin, while Stanford does not. There's also a conspicuous lack of body hair (something Stanford has in abundance), and the glasses are different — in fact, they're the same glasses Stanford picks up in the hidden room with the body-switching rug. And now consider that seeing those glasses put Stanford into a pretty heavy funk — as though they reminded him of someone close to him, like, say, a missing sibling.
• Confirmed! It's Stan's brother who was the author of the journals.

Grunkle Stan is actually Stanley, not Stanford, and he's Mabel and Dipper's grandfather, not their great-uncle.

That's why he hides as much evidence that he's a twin as possible. The audience only knows because of clues that either aren't available to the characters or are just too subtle for anyone in the show to notice. Stanley took Stanford's place in order to cover up his disappearance, and he has been living as his twin brother ever since. Considering that Gideon didn't have to have the deed to the Mystery Shack put into his own name and was still the legal owner just be having the deed in his possession, it's much more likely that the deed, with Stanford's signature on it, is the original document; it would be much easier for Stan to explain away the sudden appearance of a car (which is his own, hence the "Stanley Mobile" license plate) than explain why he signed a deed with the wrong name. It also makes the phrase "Stan Is Not What He Seems" make more sense because Stan is a charlatan and a liar, so he's exactly what he seems to be. He's much more convincing as Dipper and Mabel's great-uncle, which suggests it's much more likely that he isn't.

• Also, when Gideon summons Bill to get him to steal the safe combination, there's an arrow pointing at the glasses, suggesting that he knows they represent the person he knows as Stanford, but we the audience know that those glasses aren't Gruncle Stan's.
• Confirmed and Jossed. He is really named Stanley, but he's not the twin's grandfather.

Regarding the message about Stan not being what he seems...

What if they're not talking about Grunkle Stan but they're talking about his twin brother? Think about it, since the twin's name is known as Stanley, that's the Stan they're warning about not to trust.

Grunkle Stan betrayed his brother Stanley.

Going off the theory that Grunkle Stan(ford) has a twin brother named Stanley who wrote the books, I propose that Stanford seriously betrayed Stanley at some point, hence the writing in the book that you can't trust anybody. Stanford is trying to build and activate the machine to in some ways make amends.

• Confirmed! He sent his own twin brother into the portal but deeply regretted it.

Grunkle Stan's twin brother went through the portal.

Either by force or he went in on his own. Grunkle Stan wants to open the portal to get his brother back.

• Confirmed.

Assuming the WMGs that Grunkle Stan has a twin brother, and that he went through the portal, Year Outside, Hour Inside will be in effect

Stan's brother will still be the same age he was when he first got trapped, I wanna guess late teens early twenties, and he will be a Big Brother Mentor, Cool Big Brother type to Dipper and Mabel. For added humor it could turn out that he was the older twin, for irony.

• Seems to be confirmed. From what we see of him in the end of Not What He Seems and teasers from A Tale of Two Stans, he looks much younger that Stanford.

In the Mental Realm, things only exist as long as they are remembered by someone.

Just like it said. Bill was trapped there, but was in kind of a nebulous "sleep" mode when inside the portal. That's why he can appear at will now when he could only be summoned before; people remember him now, so he continues to be able to act. That's also why Grunkle Stan is so confident in his using the portal; he remembers his twin, so he's certain that his twin can still be saved.

• That might explain how Bill knows lots of things.

Stan's twin was wiped from existence in exchange for Stan.

People used to remember both of the twins living at the shack. Stanley was researching supernatural phenomena and Stanford was hiding from police. Both ran the shack with Stanley trying to open people's eyes to natural phenomena and Stanford conning people.

Stanley met the author and worked with him. Stanford was skeptical, but after realizing the power of the phenomena, borrowed the journal and summoned Bill. He started making deals with the idea of scamming him, believing the author's old notes about his benevolence. But it falls through and Bill decides to take Stanford's existence as payment. But Stanley finds and tells Bill to take him, feeling responsible for introducing Stanford to the supernatural. He leaves only his glasses behind. The author falls apart and hides the journals, believing that his research is too dangerous and blaming himself for Stanley's fate.

After a while, everyone except Stanford either forgets Stanley, or remembers Stanford in his place, which is why the twins' parents trusted him with their kids over the summer. Now Stanford is using the portal to stop that from ever happening.

Alternately, Stanley was killed and McGuckett founded the Blind Eye and achieved the same effect.

• Jossed!

Stan has 2 brothers.

There's the fanon twins Stanford and Stanley Pines, and a third male sibling who is Dipper and Mabel's real grandfather. this is based on several other theories that fit together, but clumsily. adding in a third brother would make the 'stanley vanished into the portal and stanford took his place' make more sense instead of stanford pretending to be their gruncle in place of their grandfather.

• Likely confirmed, as Stan's mom had a baby in her arms as Stan's dad kicked him out.

The Pines family is currently undergoing some sort of tragedy.

Maybe someone died, maybe someone's getting a divorce, maybe someone's sick. But Dipper and Mabel's parents don't want to spoil their summer by having them around all that stress and negativity, so they sent them to live with Stan for the summer, to keep them out of it. It's honestly the only reason I would ever trust Stan with my kids, even if he was a relative.

Grunkle Stan's glasses aren't necessary.

This lends credence to the "Stan is Stanley and switched places with a missing Stanford" theory, but check the flashbacks where Gruncle Stan talks about himself: when he's dancing with Carla, he's not wearing glasses at all. At some point in his youth, he either switched to contact lenses, got surgery to correct his eyesight, or (if indeed he had a twin) he made a point of wearing fake glasses for the sake of pulling pranks on people with his brother.

Dipper and Mabel's parents are alive and love them, but aren't really "around."

Hence why the twins spend summer in Gravity Falls, with Stan, who is the last person most people would want caring for children. (Though, of course, once you get to know him and his Character Development kicks in, he's a very capable guardian.) Also explains why Mabel imagined Stan giving her away at her wedding instead of her father or mother.

Stan does in fact have a brother, but he may not be his twin

We know that he has a brother because he is the twin's "great uncle"(the brother of the grandfather), although he could easily be within 10 or more years between Stan and his brother's age.

• I feel like this is a fact that has been overlooked
• Well, when we meet Stan's brother, he does appear to be much younger than him.
• The credits to "Not What He Seems" disporves this actually. Not only are Stanford and Stanley shown to be the same height in the credits flashback but the code for the episode reads "THE ORIGINAL MYSTERY TWINS". He's likely younger than Stanford due to the impact of the portal.

Stan's twin is named Frank.

• Or Frederick, or Flynn, or Faragon, or... You get the idea.
• Jossed! He's name Stanford, or Ford for short.

Stan married Carla and had a kid with her.

I think Carla's role is more significant than we realize. She has appeared in two separate flashbacks in "Boyz Crazy" and "Dreamscapers", which leads me to believe that she isn't just a throwaway character.

Stan mentioned that Carla left him for another guy in "Boyz Crazy" (and promptly drove the said fella's car into a ravine). But perhaps sometime after that incident, they both gave their actions some real thought and eventually made up with each other. They continued dating, but after one night of being careless, Stan got Carla pregnant. Now, I imagine this bit would never be explicitly mentioned in-show, but I do believe that this was implied in "Little Gift Shop of Horrors" with this line from Stan regarding some old VHS tapes he was looking to sell: "You watch the movie, you scare the girl, the girl snuggles up next to you... next thing you know, you gotta raise a kid... your life falls apart..."

Stan's expression and posture slumps towards the end... almost like he had personal experience with it.

After learning of Carla's pregnancy, Stan made the decision to marry her so he could provide for both her and their would-be child. Following their child's birth, the couple faced some severe financial troubles with hospital bills. Having no other options at the time, Stan had to resort to criminal activities, which contributed to his greediness with money. Stan's twin brother eventually became aware of the misfortune that they were experiencing and offered his brother's family a place to stay at his home in Gravity Falls. The family accepted and moved in with his brother, hoping to make a fresh start in the new community. It was during this time that Stan started the Mystery Shack.

Things started to look up for Stan and his family, but after taking notice of the strange happenings in Gravity Falls and stumbling across Journal 1, Stan took a strong interest in the mysteries surrounding the town. While Stan and his brother tried to decipher the journal, he became increasingly distant from his wife and child. Carla tried to urge her husband to stop obsessing over the journal and spend more time raising their child. Fights escalated between them and it became too much for Carla to deal with. They divorced and Carla won the custody battle for their child, then moved out of Gravity Falls.

The brothers continued digging themselves deep, ultimately leading to Stanley's disappearance/death. Despite this, Stan didn't stop, choosing to find the two remaining journals one way or another to activate the portal for whatever reason. Fast forward several years, Dipper's and Mabel's parents asked Stan to care for the kids over the summer at Gravity Falls. At first, he was reluctant, but after giving it some thought, he allowed them to send Dipper and Mabel to him. This decision was mostly fueled by the fact that he was never there for his own child; he figured that by spending quality time with the twins, he could make up for his terrible parenting to a degree.

• Alternatively, Carla and Stan's kid is Soos. She had her mother babysit and was killed by the supernatural (or just left Gravity Falls and sent Soos back later) and Stan doesn't know.

Stanley, Grunkle Stan's twin, wrote the books.

A rough guess at a timeline:

30+ Years Ago:

• Stanley Pines lives in a remote shack somewhere in Gravity Falls and investigates the supernatural phenomena in the area, conducts scientific experiments, and eventually develops plans to build the machine in the basement.
• He realizes he needs help, and hires Fiddleford McGucket to assist him. They work extensively together for some time.
• McGucket becomes uncomfortable with their work, and quits.
• Without help, Stanley is forced to seek assistance elsewhere, and summons Bill Cipher.
• Bill Cipher betrays Stanley; Stanley hides the journals to keep Bill from finding them, and either confronts or is confronted by Bill. He is drawn into the portal or killed (or both).
• McGucket discovers Stanley is missing and blames himself; notifies Stanley's next of kin, his brother, Stanford.

30 Years Ago:

• Consumed by guilt, McGucket erases his memory of Stanford and everything connected to him, and founds the society of the Blindeye, starting him on a path to insanity.
• Stanford comes to Gravity Falls and investigates the disappearance of his twin brother, discovering the journal left in the basement and the inert portal. He knows that other journals exist, but can't find them.
• Stanford elects to simply take Stanley's place to discourage anyone from asking about what happened to him and getting involved in the dangers or exposing them to the authorities (who would surely confiscate all his work). He covers up Stanley's disappearance by moving into the empty hermitage and assuming his identity.
  • Supported by the calendar in the sealed identity-switching carpet room. July 4th is circled because that's when Stan's twin was expecting his brother for a visit, but he disappeared before he got there. Gruncle Stan sealed it up afterward.

30- Years Ago to Present:

• Stan opens the Mystery Shack as a tourist trap to camouflage the real supernatural events in the area, possibly to keep the Society of the Blindeye from inadvertently keeping traceable records on his home.
• He keeps investigating and discovers the apocalypse Bill hints at, and begins using the Shack as an aggressive money-making scheme to fund his preparations (and to buy old man gold chains).
• McGucket goes fully insane without explaining anything to Stanford, and has no memory of Stanley to contradict, so it goes off without a hitch.

Confirmed as of Not What He Seems.

Stanley is somewhere on the other side of the portal, and Mabel will end up there too.

This is mostly due to the Twin Pines reference: "Twin Pines" refers to a scene in Back to the Future where Marty goes to the Twin Pines Mall, goes back to 1955 before the mall was built, and accidentally runs over one of the twin pines the area was named after (the farmer who owned the land had a weird obsession with breeding pine trees). When he goes back to 1985, the mall is now named Lone Pine Mall to reflect the change Marty made in the past. Dipper's symbol is a pine tree: a solitary one. If Mabel disappears, then Grunkle Stan and Dipper are both Lone Pines.

• Confirmed with the Stanley part.

Going off of the twin theory, Stan is using the machine to bring his twin back to life.

That is why he keeps going on about how no one will stop him.

• Jossed! Stan's twin was clearly alive when he stepped out of the portal.

If Stan does indeed have a twin brother named Stanley, they used to go by "Lee" and "Ford."

On that note, the laptop could belong to Stan, since it says "Property of F." It could mean "Property of (Stan)Ford."

• The laptop belonging to Stan, at least, is Jossed. It belonged to Fiddleford McGucket.
  • Technically, it did belong to a "Ford" after all.
• Confirmed with the Ford part!

Stan took the place of his twin brother when he went missing, and no one in Gravity Falls is aware.

Stan's license plate isn't a clue that the car belonged to someone other than Stan, it's a clue that Stan is pretending to be someone else. Hence the "STAN IS NOT WHAT HE SEEMS" message. Stan went to Gravity Falls, either to visit his brother when he happened to disappear, or to investigate his disappearance, and took on his brother's identity so he could figure out what happened without anyone else getting involved (which would be problematic due to the paranormal nature of the town.) Since he and his brother are twins, people assumed he was Stanford and thus everyone in Gravity Falls knows him as Stanford, even though he's really Stanley.

• So, which of the two is actually the twins' grandfather? The Stan that we know, or the brother we don't?
  • Stanford is the twin's great-uncle. If the Stan Switch happened, that means the Stan we know is their grandfather masquerading as their great-uncle.
    • Confirmed!

Stan's Twin disappeared in a Heroic Sacrifice to banish Bill Cipher from this plane and into the Mental realm.

When Gideon summons Bill, Bill says it's great to be back, and when reminded of Stan Pines, recalls a distinct memory of Stan's Twin rushing at him. It may be that Bill used to be just one of the many bizarre creatures of Gravity Falls, albeit an extremely powerful one who may have had dealings with the government and major conspiracies, but he and Stanley (or the original Stanford, see the "Stan Took His Twin's Place" theories) came into some kind of altercation that ended with Bill tricking, deceiving, or betraying Stan's Twin. Stan's Twin confronted him, and then used the portal to send Bill permanently into the Mental Realm to prevent him from ever harming anyone again, and got pulled in with him.

And it might have even worked, if not for Li'l Gideon. The Society of the Blind Eye has kept anyone from remembering that Bill even exists, preventing anyone from making a contract with him. Only Gideon knew because he had the book that showed how to summon him, and Dipper, Mabel and Soos only know about him because they saw Bill being summoned. Way to go, Gideon. Now Bill is still forced to live in the Mental Realm, but he's capable of appearing to humans in their dreams if he chooses. That being said...

• Oh boy was it Jossed.

Stan Pines is an only child.

Because nobody else has suggested that he lacks a twin brother.

• What with the show's love for red herrings, it all makes sense.
  • I'd be surprised if the writers aren't aware that fans have been spreading the Stan's Twin Theory around the Internet. It would be amusing if all this speculation about Stan trying to rescue a twin brother turned out to be false, as a way of messing with hardcore fans.
  • In order for Stan to have the same last name as the twins and still be their great uncle, he has to have at least one brother. Not that this shuts down your theory, just adjust it a little so it's basically "Yeah, he has a brother, but we never see him and he's not really important".
  • Jossed. His brother is the Author.

Stan Pines is not an only child, but he doesn't have a twin either.

Just a regular brother or sister that's not a twin.

• I believe that. Speaking as someone with a fraternal twin, there was probably someone on Dipper and Mabel's mom's side of the family who had fraternal twins, as it's more common for a woman to have them if there was someone on her mother's side of the family who had fraternal twins—possibly their mom's maternal grandmother, as having fraternal twins tends to skip a generation.
  • Also, since Stan has the same last name as the twins, Stan presumably has at least one brother who's Dipper and Mabel's paternal grandfather (their dad's dad).
• Possibly. When Stan's brother comes out of the portal, he does appear to be much younger than Stan.

More on the Stan has a twin hypothesis.

Check the scene where Stan's father makes him take boxing. Although his face is obscured by the book he's reading, the kid in the top right corner looks identical to Stan.

• "Stan has a twin" seems to have crossed over from "wild theory" to "they just haven't mentioned it yet". The amount of evidence is staggering.
• To add more evidence... Grunkle Stan's vanity plate says "STNLYMBL", even though his name is Stanford, not Stanley. Why would the car say Stanley? And then the glasses symbol. A lot of people have gotten confused over what the symbols represent. The symbol on Stanford's fez appears on the circle, so we can assume that's his symbol, but then you have the glasses, which seem to be significant. Who else could they belong to? Maybe if he had a twin... Also note there are some differences between Stan as usually seen in flashbacks, and the man we see in the Mystery Shack when Mabel and Dipper are fighting in "The Time Traveler's Pig".
• Corollary to this: that Stan and his twin paralleled Dipper and Mabel in personality, with Stan's twin resembling Dipper (methodical, stubborn, whose endless curiosity about the supernatural that led him into a sticky situation) and Stan more closely resembling Mabel (a silly, goofy, imaginative boy whose father decided that boxing lessons were exactly the thing to "man" him up).
• Way back in "Double Dipper" Stan sends the twins to use the old copier he "Just fixed" only for it to be supernatural. If Stan is trying to keep the twins away from supernatural stuff why would he let them use that copy machine.....unless he didn't know that it was supernatural. In a pod cast interview Stan claimed that he came to Gravity Falls because it was the last place the cops would look for him. Maybe that's true, it is Stan after all, but maybe the reason he came to Gravity Falls to hide out was also because his brother had a place there. Then Stanly goes missing, Standford stays to keep an eye on the place and find his brother. In the mean time he turns it into the Mystery Shack with the stuff he finds lying around left by Standford, but he still doesn't know what all the stuff does, like the copier, and the room with the body swap rug.

Mr. and Mrs. Pines are getting a divorce.

They sent the twins to Stan so they could settle all the messier parts (who has to move out, custody agreements, who gets what, etc.) without the kids having to see them fight. Luckily for them, the sheer weirdness of Gravity Falls helps keep their minds off of it.

Wirt is Dipper and Mabel Pines' father.

Over the Garden Wall takes place in the late 70's or 80's, judging from the fashions and use of cassette tapes, and Gravity Falls is shown explicitly to take place in the modern day (2010's). Wirt and Dipper bear more than a passing resemblance, and Wirt's stories of the Unknown to Dipper as he grew up might go some way to explaining Dipper's own fascination with the weird and wonderful.

• Alternately Greg is their dad but due to Wirt and Dipper having similar personalities, the pair bonded early in Dipper's life and he emulated his beloved uncle. Incidentally there's a crossover with this theory with the addition of Bonnie as Greg's wife and the twins' mother and Velma Dinkly as the mother of Wirt and Greg on Tumblr; Wirt's father being Shaggy and Greg's father being Stan's twin.

Stan and his brother are not twins- they're part of a set of triplets.

Just want to call this now, but with Stan's long predicted brother revealed as the author, it seems he's represented by the hand symbol in Bill's wheel and not the glasses like everyone thought. Besides, the glasses symbol doesn't really seem the same as either brother's specs since the lenses in the symbol pair are separated, not touching. The symbol does however match the glasses Stan pockets in 'Carpet Diem' which makes this Troper deeply suspicious. The twins plot twist was pretty predictable- a little too predictable perhaps. Triplets on the other hand...

• Likely confirmed as Stan's mom had a baby with her when Stan's dad kicked him out of the house forever.

When Stan's brother went through the portal, he stopped aging.

Perhaps Stan and his brother are twins, but the portal is some sort of reverse time warp. Time passes more slowly on the other side, so while Stan aged 30 years, his brother is the same age when he came out as when he went in.

• Otherwise known as Year Outside, Hour Inside
• Seems to be confirmed as of Not What He Seems.

Stanford took over the Mystery Shack after Stanley went through the portal

Taking from the above observation about the copy machine in "Double Dipper", "In a pod cast interview Stan claimed that he came to Gravity Falls because it was the last place the cops would look for him. Maybe that's true, it is Stan after all, but maybe the reason he came to Gravity Falls to hide out was also because his brother had a place there. Then Stanly goes missing, Standford stays to keep an eye on the place and find his brother. In the mean time he turns it into the Mystery Shack with the stuff he finds lying around left by Stanley, but he still doesn't know what all the stuff does, like the copier, and the room with the body swap rug".Going further with this, Stanford came to Gravity Falls cause he heard his twin was in trouble, or maybe Stanley invited him over to see his awesome portal when he tried it out. Either way Stanford was there under his real name when he came to Gravity Falls. Then Stanley got thrown into the portal, Stanford stages the car crash to cover for Stanley's disappearance and "inherits" Stanley's stuff, He then refashions it into the Mystery Shack so that he has a cover to work under while he stays and try to rescue his brother. The reason his picture was in the article like it was is because it was a picture of "The deceased relative saying no comment" and due to weird editing was posted right above the part about the "Nameless Stranger" which is the part Stanford actually wanted to save, because he's suspicious as F*** about that guy.

• More or less Confirmed, although since Stanley is the one we knew... He assumed Ford's identity and faked his own death so he could live as Stanford.

The fake IDs are for The Author ("Stanley"), not Stanford.

Just want to throw this one out before the next episode: "Stanley" is presumed dead and has been for thirty years. Thus, the need for fake IDs makes a lot more sense.

• You do have to wonder where he would have gotten a lot of that equipment. Even considering laxer security laws in the past, probably more than a bit of that equipment was acquired through some pretty shady dealings. Shady dealings that would be aided by fake ID's
  • Jossed! They were for Grunkle Stan! You were right about them being for Stanley, though.

Dipper and Mabel's parents know all about "Stan's" secret life.

Do you really think that they would have sent their children to gravity falls without knowing that something about Stan's voice was off or that he was supposed to be dead for years?

• That actually makes a lot of sense.
• It's also possible they didn't know Stanford well enough to see through Stanley's deception. Did they even know Stanford has a twin?

Dipper and Mabel's parents really do love them and spend time with them at home, they just merely wouldn't spend much time with them this summer

Here's my theory: Mr. and Mrs. Pines are Good Parents who spend time with their children and discipline them when they need and generally know what's best for them, but for the summer the twins are staying with Stan, Mr. and Mrs. Pines would've just simply been too busy to spend very much time with them (not that they wouldn't at least try to make time for the twins).

So, not wanting their kids to feel bored and lonely without them around, as well wanting to give them some independence, they decide to have the twins stay with Grunkle Stan for the summer, so they not only get some fresh air and spend time with a close family member, but also to give the twins more independence since they're getting older and don't need (or possibly want) their parents constantly around them.

At least part of the Pines family was originally from New Jersey

Namely the part Grunkle Stan and his twin hails from. Really just putting down a theory that's already been floating around on tumblr, and explained rather nicely here

• Confirmed

Neither of the Stans are the twins' Grandpa

Covering the bases here, but the theory that one of them HAS to be the twins grandpa rest on the assumption that the Stan's are each others only sibling, when its quite possible that they come from a large family of multiple siblings, any one of which could be the twins grandpa.

• Confirmed by "A Tale of Two Stans", Grunkle Stan refers to Dipper and Mabel as "Shermy's grandkids", and one scene in the flashback shows Stan's mother holding a baby who, given the time-frame, presumably grows up to be Dipper and Mabel's dad.
  • Confirmation conflicted. How could that baby be Dipper and Mabel's dad? Stanford's totally surprised to hear he's an uncle. If the baby was the twins' dad, he would have been an uncle since he was a teenager. Plus, the Pines family had lived in Glass Shard Beach at least since the Stans were around 10-12 years old, perhaps longer, meaning that their children all probably went to the same high school—so why would the Principal have specifically said only "two sons"? Not knowing about a newborn younger sibling that you've likely never seen is one thing, not knowing about a hypothetical older child that (if he existed) likely went to your school is another.

The twins parents didn't send them to Grunkle Stan's for their sake, they sent them for his

Depending on how aware Dipper and Mable's parent's are about what going down, they might have sent them because they simply thought Ol' Grunkle Stan was getting lonely and the kids might cheer him up, or they might have sent them because they knew the twins have some part to play in some pre-destined event. Thoughts?

Stanely will become The Apathetic in the Pines family Four-Philosophy Ensemble

The Pines family do have Jewish ancestry

They're simply non-practicing Jews, despite what Word of God said. He might meant that they don't practice their religion as seen when Stan ate bacon.

Stan lied when he said Mabel and Dipper were Shermy's grandkids.

Bare with me. I know it's sad to think that Stan's still lying, but the numbers don't add up.

Stanford disappeared in 1982 after reuniting with his brother, whom he hadn't seen in ten years. That places Stanley getting thrown out of the house in the year 1972, and at that time their younger sibling (supposedly Shermy) was a baby so young he was still wrapped in a blanket.

Mabel and Dipper Pines are turning 13 on the last day of the summer in 2012, the year in which the show takes place. So they were born in 1999. If that baby is Shermy, and Shermy is, as Grunkle Stan said, Mabel and Dipper's grandfather, that makes Shermy, their supposed grandfather, only 28 years older than them! Which is either impossible or highly scandalous, and either way very unlikely to be true.

Therefore, it's highly unlikely that the baby, if the baby is Shermy, would be Mabel and Dipper's grandfather. Either 1). both Shermy and his son had children in their early teens, 2). Shermy's a forth, likely older sibling that's so far gone unseen, or 3). Stanley's lying again.

The problem with the "older sibling Shermy" theory is that the principal specifically states that Great-Grandpa Pines had "two sons." While it makes sense for him to not know about an infant sibling, he would probably at least have known about an older one, given that the Pines family had lived in the same town for at least a decade and so likely all their children would have gone to the same school. The problem with the young parents theory is that both Grandpa and Dad Pines would have had to be really, REALLY young when they had kids—age 14 or less kind of young—and I'm not sure that'd fly with Disney, especially since I have a feeling this "Shermy" is actually going to be discussed further in the show.

So, in conclusion, Stanley may have lied yet again to both Stanford and the twins, and Shermy is either the baby we saw OR Mabel and Dipper's grandfather, but I'm 95% sure he can't be both.

(Now the next question is, if it's a lie, why would Stanley lie? Guess that Grunkle 4 Grandpa thing is still a possibility. If Stanley was in late high school (age 17-18) in 1972, he was probably born in 1954 or '55, with an age difference between him and Dipper and Mabel of 44 or 45 years. Plenty of time for another generation).

• The problem with the "older sibling Shermy" can be explained though. While browsing the Gravity Falls wikia forum, I came across this fan-made family tree. This suggests that Sherman "Shermy" Pines is actually Stan and Ford's older half-brother, from a previous marriage of Filbrick. If that theory is true, that would explain why the principal was not aware of him, as it is quite possible Shermy was born in another part of New Jersey and thus went to a different school than Stan and Ford. Plus, the principal most likely meant Filbrick had two sons with his current wife, not his previous one.
• That's a lot of "maybe"s though, and besides a hypothetical fan-made family tree and the word of someone who's been proven to often resort to lying to his family if he's on the hot seat, there's really no evidence to it. It's kind of odd that a show like Gravity Falls would so heavily foreshadow everything and then just pop Shermy out of nowhere, especially since one of the rules of storytelling is to never introduce a character you're not going to use (unless they're a Red Herring). There's also been a TON of foreshadowing in favor of Grunkle Stan having at least been married once, and while there's been implications and hints towards Grunkle Stan actually being their grandfather, there's nothing in canon that hints that the Stans even had another, older sibling, and it takes a lot of assumption to explain why an older brother wouldn't be seen or mentioned. According to the above theory, he has to be an older brother (which has no canon supporting evidence), from a previous marriage (no supporting evidence) from a different high school (no supporting evidence) already with a kid (no supporting evidence). This also means that we have to assume that Stan's frequent marriage comments mean absolutely nothing, that the women's wedding ring he keeps with his most private possessions also means nothing, and that Ford misspoke when he was surprised he was an uncle. That's not to say it's impossible for Mabel and Dipper to be Shermy's grandkids, but it hasn't been hinted at at all, while Stan's been surrounded with grandfather hints typical of Gravity Falls' style of foreshadowing. (Heck, during his flashback in Dreamscaperers, he literally stood under a sign that said "Grandpa the Kid" for an entire scene. That's the kind of visual hindsight joke Gravity Falls loves.)
• However, there is something off with saying that Stan was just lying. When Ford called Stan Stanley, the kids, caught it immediately. However, when Stan said Shermy was their grandpa, neither called him out on it and Ford immediately assumed he was their uncle (or, I presume, great-uncle). That means that 1)The twins think that someone named Shermy is their grandfather 2)Ford knows this person from before he went into the portal thirty years ago 3) Ford is related to this person. That would mean that a relative of Ford's, named Shermy, appears to the twins to be their grandfather. Since I don't see anyone else without extrapolating, I'm going to assume the baby is Shermy. That would mean that either Stan was somehow able to get his baby brother (who would have been ten when the portal incident happened) to raise his kids or Carla married his baby brother after breaking up with Stan, which is possible, but a little weird.
• Or maybe the twins just don't know their grandfather's name? It's easy to catch the Stanley bit, because his name supposedly being Stanford was pointed out several times during the series. The kids had the information to know that there was a discrepancy. But it's not unusual for children not to know their grandparents' first name (in my family, even my parents refer to my grandmother simply as Grandma when around us, so I didn't know her first name until I did a family history project in High School), and it'd be even more believable if Grandpa Pines was a Disappeared Dad (as the whole grandpa Stan theory suggests). I mean, these are kids who didn't know their Great Uncle had a twin brother, or that that Great Uncle was supposed to be a nationally famous certified genius (which was all the older generation cared about)—clearly Dipper and Mabel don't know much about that side of the family. Heck, some deleted scenes in the storyboards make a joke about how Dipper and Mabel don't really know how Stan is related to them, just that their parents call him their great uncle, which shows the twins have a massive lack of knowledge about their own family. And while there's no doubt Shermy's a real person, Ford was gone for thirty years, so his silence only implies agreement in the parts of the story he could have feasibly known about. Since Dad Pines had to have been born either in the years Ford was in Gravity Falls and away from contact with his family or during his time in the portal (since Ford didn't know he was an uncle), he has no information to contrast with Stanley's word. His non-conflict with the statement that Dipper and Mabel are Shermy's grandkids only confirms that Shermy exists and is/was their sibling, not that he's the kids' grandfather.

The baby in the flashback is Mabel and Dipper's father

As explained above, it's impossible for the baby to be Mabel and Dipper's grandfather considering the flashback happened 27-28 years before the twins were born.

So, going with the theory that Shermy is actually an older, yet unseen brother of Stan and Ford, it's possible the baby is his son, and that Filbert and Ma Pines were babysitting him that night because his parents were out of town for some reason (explaining why they weren't there when Stan was kicked out of the house)

• This gets slightly difficult circumstantially, considering the facts that the Stans' principal says specifically that Filbrick and his wife had two sons and Stanford during the episode is totally surprised to hear he's an uncle. If Shermy was an older brother, the principal was much more likely to have taught him and therefore known him than if the Shermy was a new sibling, and if the baby in the flashback was the twins' dad, Stanford would have known about being an uncle since he was a teenager. However, considering no theory really fits what we've seen of the Stans' past so far perfectly (implied to be because both are Unreliable Narrators), who knows.
  • The older Sherman-theory can be explained, see above. As for Stanford not knowing being an uncle; Dipper and Mabel are his Great-niece and nephew, not niece and nephew. Probably, he meant to say he was surprised to be a great-uncle now, but said 'uncle' instead.
  • Or, and I can't believe no one's suggested this yet, Shermy isn't the baby because he's in late elementary or middle school. The high school principle is only referring to the two sons who are in high school. The baby is another younger brother or even a younger sister.

Ford is on just as bad (if not worse) terms with his parents as he is with Stan.

A theory on Ford's personality: The twins' father was someone not so easily impressed, so Ford was looking forward to changing that with the science fair. The other reason he let Stan get kicked out of the house aside the broken science project, but because he wanted to continue making his parents proud. However, after getting his PhD, he kept the grant to himself not just because he earned it fair and square, but because he realized his parents were still trying to leech off him and called them out on their selfish and greedy ways, including kicking out Stan. Whatever happened next, all we know is that Ford went on to build his own home and continue with his own life.

• Maybe this is true, but it forgets something: Ford legally had to keep the grant to himself. Grants are given by rich individuals, universities, or corporations to fund scientific research, and spending them on anything besides that research is fraud, making Ford unable to share the money even if he wanted to. Most researchers in Ford's position are usually on a tight budget in terms of money for food and necessities, with an expansive budget that can only be used for scientific equipment under penalty of law. So Ford having a grant doesn't guarantee he actually made enough money to share with anyone, despite being successful in the scientific field.

The baby in A Tale of Two Stans is a Red Herring

Whether the baby is or is not Shermy, he/she isn't Mabel and Dipper's grandparent. The baby was written into A Tale of Two Stans just to confuse us more about the Pines' family tree, and actually has little to do with our protagonists.

Dipper and Mabel don't have the best parents

Specifically, there may be issues with their father, since no mother in Gravity Falls has yet been focused on enough to be given a name. This is more just a thematic guess, since only two dads out of the, what, nine? fathers we see on the show actually turn out to be good people. The only good examples of fathers are Robbie's and Wendy's, and even the latter is YMMV because we really don't know much about Manly Dan as a dad other than the fact that he causes Wendy a huge amount of stress. Soos' dad? Abandoned him as a child. The Stans' dad? Kicked one of his sons out, probably emotionally abused the other with unrealistic expectations. Pacifica's dad? Trained his daughter like a dog. Heck, even the Gremoblin's greatest fear is turning into his father.

This show seems to—intentionally or unintentionally—really have a reoccurring theme of terrible dads, so it makes sense that Dipper and Mabel have something in their own family dynamic that touches on this.

If I had to throw a guess out there (and this is where it really turns into a Wild Mass Guess), I'd say they've got a Favorite/Unfavorite dynamic back home, which would be another parallel between them and the Stans (though not nearly as bad, probably). But unlike with the Stan twins where the studious twin was the favorite, my guess is that the Unfavorite is Dipper, just because he seems convinced that nobody sees him as good enough to amount to anything and he's so desperate to prove himself capable. He's also heavily dependent on the approval of others for validation of who he is and startlingly accepting of the burden of blame, even in situations that aren't his fault, both commonalities in people who've suffered from emotional neglect or abuse of some sort (whether it be from family or peers). Dipper being the Unfavorite would also be another parallel between him and Stan, of which there are already many. While there's no evidence (as this is a guess) Mabel's interactions in the show definitely fit with this guess, because while she's sweet and always good-intentioned, she seems used to people criticizing Dipper but surprisingly unused to considering that her actions also may have negative consequences, a mentality that is typical for favored children in unhealthy family dynamics who are used to the Unfavorite child taking and accepting the blame (thankfully, time away from home seems to giving her the chance to grow out of this before it gets too bad).

Shermy is the nickname for the Stans unseen older sister

It is mentioned that Filbrick had 'two sons', the baby aside. But what about an older sister? Considering the Twins have the same last name as their Grunkles, we can assume that Shermy was probably an unmarried mother, or later went through a nasty divorce which led to her changing even her kid(s) last name.Because there has to be some sense to this entire Shermy mess.

• Plus, it plays into the fraternal twin gene and it running in the family perfectly. With fraternal twins, it depends if it runs on the women's side of the family. Men can be carriers, but it hinges on the women whether it's carried out or not.
• Jossed. Shermie is confirmed to be a son. The confusion over the impossibility of this timeline is actually lampshaded in Gravity Falls: Lost Legends, which simultaneously further implies that the baby in "A Tale of Two Stans" was indeed Shermie.

Ford will meet up with McGucket again and restore their friendship

After all McGucket and Mabel and Dipper have clearly on the path to becoming friends, and they know him and McGucket used to work together, so at some point their reintroduce the two of them. And this will be an important part of Ford's character development. He's going to be left horrified at seeing what his actions have done to his friend. And this event is going to help him finally see the consequences of his actions and choices on a much more personal level, he's clearly learning to see it on a more board level what with dismantling the portal, but this will be the first time he will start to reconsider what his choices have done to the people he's known and cared about. It will also be crucial to his eventual reconciliation with Stan.

The Stans will eventually become Fire-Reforged Friends in the midst of the end-of-season madness.

Stan and Ford's relationship is pretty rocky right now. But with the big things about to go down, both are going to end up going to great lengths looking out for each other, because they still care about each other. Bonus points if the series ends with the two brothers sailing off together like they'd originally planned to all those years ago.

Stan is not Dipper and Mabel's 'Grunkle', he's their father.

Stan did confirm he's been married at least once. Perhaps he married again after that mess, and this one actually worked out. For the sake of clarity, let's call the wife Carla, who may or may not be the same one that dumped Stan when they were younger. Assuming Carla and Stan (currently sixty or seventy something) are the same age, that would put them in their late forties at least at the time of the twin's conception and birth. Being that old, it was likely a case of But I Can't Be Pregnant!, and it was due to their age that Carla couldn't take the labor for birthing a baby, let alone a set of twins. She died in childbirth. Stan, in the thralls of depression over the loss of his wife, called up his nephew (who's wife was unable to conceive), who'd been looking to adopt a kid anyway. So Dipper and Mable were raised by their cousins, and are none-the-wiser about their true parentage.

The Pines family has some Inhuman ancestry.

Because why not? Disney owns Marvel, so it's (legally) possible. ...Could also explain things like how Dipper could take a thrashing from Rumble McSkirmish or fall three stories through the Earth into Ford's lab without any apparent injuries. Of course, without the Terrigen Mists, this doesn't change much. But it's a fun idea to consider.

Stanley wasn't as irresponsible as Stanford claims when he reopened the Portal

Because throughout the 30 years he's spent working on and repairing the Portal, all he's had available is Journal #1 - the first journal to get filled up. Stanford didn't learn about Bill's perfidy until later, and all the warnings of potential bad things are in Journals 2 and 3, which Stan didn't have. Now, Stan *did* have them later, but what we're shown on screen is Stan flipping directly to the wiring diagrams and working on the repairs. He didn't obsessively scan every single page of the other Journals like Dipper did, and never saw any of the warnings. Yes, opening the Portal was an incredibly risky move, but Stanley was completely ignorant of the risks.

The Pines family has genetic predisposition to having twins, one of which is born with a defect.

Ford with his six fingers, Dipper with his birthmark.

Dipper and Mabel have a third, younger sibling

Just like how Stanley and Stanford have a third sibling named Shermie (presumably the baby seen in A Tale of Two Stans).Dipper and Mabel's third sibling wasn't sent to Gravity Falls along with the twins because s/he was too young to leave his/her parents.

The baby in A Tale of Two Stans is Mabel and Dipper's father, and Shermie is their older brother

If Stan and Ford are both supposed to be sixty-somethings in 2012, it would make more sense for Shermie to be their older brother, because if Shermie was a baby when Stan and Ford were teenagers, he would have had to become Mabel and Dipper's grandfather at an extremely young age. Whereas if he was already in his 20s and married with a child when Stan and Ford were teenagers, it would make more sense timeline-wise.

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