Alexander Robert Hirsch (born June 18, 1985) is an American animator, writer, storyboard artist, and voice actor. He is most notable for being the creator of the Disney Channel animated series Gravity Falls, where he also provides the voices of many characters, including Stan Pines, Jesus "Soos" Alzamirano Ramirez, Fiddleford McGucket, and Bill Cipher. He based a lot of the series on his own childhood experiences.
Prior to Gravity Falls, he got his start at Cartoon Network storyboarding on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack (Pendleton Ward of Adventure Time fame was his board partner). He went on to co-develop Fish Hooks for Disney before moving onto his masterpiece.
After Gravity Falls ended its run in 2016 (with the stated intention of avoiding Seasonal Rot), Hirsch became involved with the film-making industry, providing some contributions to the stories and dialogue of Pokémon Detective Pikachu and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but left the former during pre-production and was uncredited on the latter. Hirsch was a voice actor and creative consultant on The Owl House, and co-produced the Netflix series Inside Job.note
He wrote two Interquel works for Gravity Falls: a Defictionalization of the iconic Journal 3, and a graphic novel titled Gravity Falls: Lost Legends.
He's currently working on a new original series for Netflix.
Roles played by Alex Hirsch
- Fish Hooks: Clamantha, Fumble
- Gravity Falls: Stan Pines, Soos Ramirez, Old Man McGucket, Bill Cipher, Jeff, Shmebulock, Carson, Steve, Jason, Nate, Constable, Ducktective, Grampton St. Rumpterfrabble, Paper Jam Dipper, Quentin Trembley, Sev'ral Timez, Chadley, Mayor Befufftlefumpter, Shmebulock Senior, Ducktective's twin brother, Fairy dust dealer, Dippy Fresh, and the Horrifying, Sweaty, One-Armed Monstrosity after Louis C.K.'s sexual misconduct came to light.
- Phineas and Ferb: Officer Concord the Juice Time Juice Box Flavor Cop
- Rick and Morty: Toby Matthews
- Wander over Yonder: Old Man, Soosy Du
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Ben Fotino
- We Bare Bears: The Internet Troll
- Big City Greens: Wyatt
- The Owl House: King, Hooty
- Amphibia: The Curator, Frog Soos
- Inside Job: Grassy Noel Atkinson
- Strong Bad Email 209: As Himself (Easter Egg)
- The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe: Introductory narrator for the New Content
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: Scumbug
- Boxtown: Detective Tim Standing
- BIGTOP BURGER: Munkustrap
Tropes associated with Alex Hirsch's works:
- Creator Couple: With Dana Terrace, or at least was. A Tumblr comic by Dana hinted that they may have broke up.
- Deadpan Snarker: This video Alex posted on his Twitter celebrating Gravity Falls' 10th Anniversary is a compilation of Disney's Standards & Practices getting offended by the simplest things and Alex's very exasperated and equally snarky comebacks.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Each of the characters that he voices sounds vastly different.
- Shrug of God: During a Reddit AMA, Alex had occasionally responded ambiguously to questions with pictures of an Axolotl. The more noteworthy queries was answered years later through Gravity Falls: Journal 3.
- Take That!: Like his ex-girlfriend, he isn't afraid to scathingly call out far-right politicians, especially Donald Trump during his presidency, as well as calling out Disney on their less-than-moral actions, the most famous in recent memory being during Pride Month 2021 when Disney made a social media post dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community, to which Alex noted that outside of Pride Month, Disney has been cutting representation for the sake of profit.
- Trolling Creator: There's a very good reason he's the trope picture, as he did this quite a bit during Gravity Falls' run. Highlights include:
- Alex replied to a tweet regarding season two that "at least one character will not survive the season. Buckle up". Mayor Befufftlefumpter, a 100+ year-old minor character, passed on.
- The most famous and the reason he's the picture: creating a fake spoiler image of McGucket writing in one of the journals to throw fans off, "leaked" said image onto 4chan, posted a tweet feigning anger and later deleting said tweet, then gloating in a later tweet about the whole thing after "Society of the Blind Eye" aired (where it was revealed that McGucket was merely an assistant to the Author, not the Author himself).
- Fans had theorized about the purpose of the ten symbols depicted around Bill at the end of the theme song, "Dreamscaperers" and "The Stanchurian Candidate": In "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back The Falls", the Zodiac turns out to relate to a prophecy to defeat Bill—and ends up never being used.
- Write What You Know:
- Gravity Falls was based on trips Hirsch and his sister took with their grand-aunt.
- The episode "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons" was based on attending a Dungeons & Dragons game with Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward and Over the Garden Wall creator Patrick McHale during the trio's time on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.
- Write Who You Know: Gravity Falls was mostly based on Alex Hirsch's childhood, with Dipper based on his younger self, Mabel on his own twin sister Ariel, Stan on their grandfather, Soos on a college roommate of Alex's, Wendy on a girl Alex had a crush on, and a number of Wendy's ex-boyfriends were named after many of Ariel's.