Fridge / Three Can Keep a Secret

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Brilliance

• Dipper mentions that he doesn't know any of the names of the 113 victims of Weirdmaggedon buried in the mass grave, and mentions that in the immediate aftermath they'd just been so happy to be alive that they didn't focus on the victims. He seems to feel quite guilty about this, which initially makes it strange that he hasn't tried to learn their names since. But considering Dipper had only begun living in Gravity Falls at the age of 12 the summer before the victims died and everyone in town is so unwilling to acknowledge what they went through, he likely didn't know enough of the town to actually notice who'd died, and by the time Dipper matured enough to realize how important knowing the victims' names were, he probably couldn't get anyone to talk about their deaths. And while there may be a tentative list of missing persons made in the aftermath of Weirdmaggedon, there's no definitive proof if and which of those names match the bodies interred in the mass grave. Gravity Falls is a camping destination that attracts a decent amount of vacationers; it's likely there are names on the list who weren't in the grave and people in the grave who aren't on the list, meaning none of the victims in the mass grave could be identified for sure unless the townsfolk were willing to talk about the victims or willing to allow someone to exhume and identify them—which, considering their suppression of the subject and suspicion that Bill had done something to the bodies, was probably not an idea most liked to even contemplate.
  • 113 people is a large amount of people for any community to lose, but Gravity Falls is tiny. Every arial shot of the town in the series only shows a couple dozen buildings. True, many could be under the canopy of trees and not visible, but the canon road maps of the town show just about the same. Gravity Falls is a tiny mountain community that makes its money off of tourism and camping; despite the fact that it's also implied to be the only significant town in the area, given the fact that it has its own school despite its small size (which probably means rural kids are bused in), and apparently its own small mall (somewhere), comparing it to other small American mountain towns, Gravity Falls probably had a population of 1500 at most, meaning Bill killed at least one out of every fifteen citizens... Unless, of course, he killed a disproportionately large amount of tourists. Basically everyone but Dipper (a recent transplant) would've personally known multiple people who died.
    • Further, given the trauma and infrastructural hardship and spike in crime and illegal drug usage, there's no way all of this didn't scare off tourists and residents alike. Not only would a significant portion of their populace have been killed by Weirdmageddon's initial impact, but they probably saw a drop in population and finances from people moving or just deciding not to visit, too. And the richest person in the community had had to liquidate all of his assets; that can't have been good for Gravity Falls' economy either.
• Mabel's line, "So you're helping Dippen-Dots out with all his research huh? What's he got you doing, running on a hamster wheel to power the laboratory, or are you testing new cosmetics out before they move to animal testing?" is a simple couple of insults on the surface, but so viciously insulting when you break it down that it's practically Refuge in Audacity, especially when said in front of two people who are deeply involved in scientific development. The first implies Pacifica's as useful to Dipper's and Ford's research as an animal, but the second, far more clever insult implies she has less worth than one, because in traditional (and increasingly controversial) cosmetic production, animal testing is done before products are tested on humans in order to screen for possible harmful side effects and reduce the chances of accidentally harming humans. By suggesting Pacifica would be a test subject before production moved onto animals, Mabel's basically calling Pacifica not only sub-human, but sub-animal. All while deliberately using her Innocently Insensitive tendencies to disguise these incredibly insulting statements as attempts at jokes to Pacifica look like an over-reacting "bad guy" in the conversation if she takes offense. It seems on the surface that Pacifica's largely unaffected by these stunningly nasty insults that appear to come from nowhere, but on a second read-through Pacifica almost certainly saw through Mabel's intentions and Mabel's insults probably helped set the tone for the tongue lashing Pacifica gives her later, since while Pacifica had heard stories of Mabel as a child, these insults demonstrated that Mabel hadn't grown during her three year absence.
  • This is also yet another inversion of Mabel's, Dipper's, and Pacifica's original dynamic: when they first met, Pacifica was the one quipping Mean Girls-style lines at Mabel's expense while Dipper took offense on Mabel's behalf, Mabel shrugged them off with ease. Now at their reunion, Mabel's the one firing insults and upsetting Dipper, while Pacifica's the one to brush them off.
• Pacifica's dislike of Mabel and the specific angle of her "The Reason You Suck" Speech regarding Mabel's parasitic relationship with Dipper already hits hard upon the first read, but makes so much more sense the more we learn about the specific conditions under which Pacifica was raised and the ideologies that have shaped her life. It isn't just an "I don't like you because of how you treat the boy I'm in love with"; Mabel's flaws strike deeply at Pacifica's personal challenges and worldview and the two probably would have ended up disliking each other again even without Pacifica becoming Dipper's confidant.
  • Pacifica explains to Star in Three More that she was taught that self-interest should be her guiding priority in relationships and that love is a weakness that should be exploited for personal gain, and further, that once someone is no longer useful, concern for them should be discarded. It's easy to conclude that the combination of a desire to be a better person and being forced to witness the destruction her parents' self-interested priorities had on their family once most of the fortune was gone, culminating in physical abuse and the dissolution of their actual familial structure, has left her pretty severely traumatized over this—because when self-interest is your only priority, there's nothing left worth saving from a relationship once the personal benefits are gone, and so without money to pass on or influence to uphold as a family unit, both of her parents ceased caring about her or each other. Pacifica makes clear to Star that she's been in love with Dipper for a while but didn't want to confess or start dating because she couldn't shake the ingrained belief that she'd somehow be manipulating and exploiting him, and she loves him too much to want to chance possibly putting him through that.
  • It likely doesn't help her conscience that she plans on investing her remaining inheritence into the Pines' research and so potentially has a lot to gain if she marries Dipper in the future. Unlike her father, Pacifica is financially savvy and well aware that the Pines family's patents on their inventions will be worth untold fortunes if and when the results are put into production—patents that Ford specifically states he intends to file as Dipper's property once he turns 18, meaning all of the royalties off their inventions will legally be Dipper's. And if Pacifica's plan to fund mass-production works out, Pacifica would be the only middleman to divide the profits; marrying Dipper would consolidate the rights and ownership of the entire development and production process into one family. Starting a romantic relationship with Dipper overlaps uncomfortably with her parents' toxic teachings because Dipper may not be rich now, but if the cards are played right, he as the potential to join the ranks of the superrich—and since the Northwests are no longer rich and seem to have become social pariahs among their former peers in wealth, Dipper's probably Pacifica's best and only chance to become rich again. Pacifica knows that Dipper is the best opportunity Pacifica has according to her parents' own teachings and her parents are just too Money Dumb to see it—all of which probably only adds fuel to the flames of her fear of using and manipulating him.
  • Pacifica says in her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Mabel that she "sees things" in Mabel that Pacifica herself was raised to be, things Pacifica continues to fight to excise from her personality (and sometimes falters in, to her deep concern and regret). It's only with the above context, provided later in the story, that we can identify exactly what those things are: Mabel's relationship with Dipper mirrors the kind of relationships Pacifica's parents want her to have. Mabel's not only manipulative of the person she claims to love most, but exploitative to a degree that it has been naturalized as the rightful state of their relationship in her mind, as the idealized "before" to which Mabel wants to return her life—and worse, Mabel's so loved by Dipper that, at the point in the story at which Pacifica gives Mabel this "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Dipper had yet to even fully admit just how parasitic their sibling relationship often is and has let Mabel hurt him for years without realizing it was wrong and that he has a right to put his foot down. Pacifca explicitly tells Star that she's afraid of manipulating Dipper especially because he's been hurt before in that way. It's practically indisputable that she's speaking of Mabel. Manipulating Dipper specifically and using his affections for her own self-interest is Pacifica's worst fear, and yet, at this point in the story, Pacifica's worst fear is Mabel's literal relationship goal. Of course she detests Mabel.
    • Another bit of brilliance: we see one of the moments Pacifica falters very early in the story during the DD&MD game leading up to Pacifica's and Mabel's argument and the subsequent "The Reason You Suck" Speech, although we don't learn how much Pacifica detests the particular behavior she herself displays in that moment until the sequel. Over the three years Dipper as been living in Gravity Falls, he and Pacifica have become each other's closest confidants, and Pacifica has quietly built up so much resentment towards Mabel for how she has manipulated and sabotaged Dipper that, when the two girls get in a petty argument over a gamepiece, Pacifica briefly forgets her own dislike of using love to manipulate people and openly flirts with Dipper to try to get Dipper to agree with her over Mabel.
• Ford's above mentioned interest in having the patents for his technology filed by Dipper has a pragmatic angle to it along with his stated reasons involving physical age and emotional sentiment: The two older Pines twins have a lot of legal murkiness associated with their identities, with Stanley Pines being legally dead and Stanford Pines having a long list of felonies and other offenses both national and international attached to it (including placement on a no fly list) as a result of the portal incident and ensuing impersonation. Having Dipper as the original patent founder would avoid a lot of legal complications and investigations. However, being cleaved with the remnants of Mewni probably scuppered that plan, considering every government on Earth will probably try to subpoena the Pines family to figure out what the heck is going on.
• Mabel having been raised by her parents to believe that Dipper would be happy as long as Mabel herself is happy is more than likely the source of pretty much all of Mabel's toxic sibling habits and explains why it's so easy for her to delude herself into thinking that achieving her desires will be good for Dipper even if they come at his expense. Mabel's nature is someone who wants others to be happy. Mabel's nurture was that the happiness of those around her (particularly her brother's) would be guaranteed if Mabel put her own idea of happiness before theirs. Mabel's total internalizing of her parents' influence has redirected her instinct to make others happy back towards herself and turned what had been her most positive trait it into something that fuels her worst behaviors.
  • In chapter 12, Mabel tries to rationalize Dipper's accusations on her selfish, controlling, and occasionally hurtful behavior with this: "Dipper, I, you... I realize I haven't been kind about it, but it's not that I don't love you for who you are, I just want my brother to be happy! You could lay alone in bed, completely away from anything or anyone that could possibly trouble you, and think yourself into a fit over nothing! I just wanted my brother to be happy, and the number one person who always made you unhappy was you!" This is probably how Mabel rationalized her parents' favoritism towards herself and emotional abuse towards Dipper. Mabel saw how they treated Dipper and attempted to figure out why her loving parents would be dismissive of Dipper's thoughts and emotions but not hers. In the manner that children who are shown love by their parents tend to trust their parents, Mabel heard her parents' teaching that "as long as you are happy, Dipper will be happy" and concluded that the problem was Dipper, that they decided to treat Dipper this way because Dipper couldn't be trusted to make himself happy, and therefore couldn't be trusted to make decision that would make himself happy—and thus, his judgement was questionable, period. After all, why else would her parents ignore his feelings and opinions and criticize him for harmless personal choices so much? Mabel loves her brother, but she naturally rationalized her parents' favoritism towards her and emotional abuse towards Dipper by trusting her parents' judgement of the situation and therefore dismissing Dipper's upset and resulting insecurities and anxiety as signs that he was the problem, not them.
    • This further adds to the reasons behind her struggle to accept that Dipper is genuinely happier in Gravity Falls with all the greater independence and autonomy that that entails, because Dipper's away from the family members who, in Mabel's mind, knew more about what was best for Dipper than Dipper himself did. In Mabel's mind, it's not that Dipper was raised in a hypercritical environment that made him feel ashamed of being himself, no, Dipper was the sole cause of his own unhappiness and Mabel's and their parents' actions were all just genuine attempts to help him, so how could he possibly be happy without them? This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that Mabel eventually realizes that she's never actually bothered to learn Dipper's reasons for any of his personal choices and the only explanations she can think of for why he has different opinions than her is that his judgement is stupid and inferior. Mabel wasn't really taught to think of her brother as an equally human being, with equally complex and valid emotions and reasons behind his decisions, and therefore never saw discarding Dipper's opinions as morally wrong. All of this adds up to Mabel having internalized and replicated the idea implied by her parents' treatment of Dipper: the idea that Dipper is less than Mabel—less lovable, less capable, less complicated, less understandable, less pleasant to be around, less sound of judgement, less capable of managing his own life without freaking out. And if Mabel's so much better than him at judging what's best, and Dipper can't even be trusted to make himself happy, why would it be wrong if Mabel stepped in and decided things for him? Really puts a different context on Dipper's insistence that the problem in their relationship is Mabel's inability to trust him.
  • This adds a lot to Mabel's actions in her introductory episode, Tourist Trapped. Mabel isn't just dismissive of Dipper's suspicions, she's extremely and aggressively hostile to them, and openly calls Dipper's suspicions of Norman "one of [his] crazy conspiracy theories" while getting in his face and physically pushing him around. This scene isn't treated as casual sibling roughhousing; Mabel's hostility is treated by the score, angles, and lighting with sincere intimidation. Mabel's language implies that Dipper has had other theories, that it's accepted to call him crazy to his face for them, and that she thinks physically intimidating her younger brother is an acceptable response. If Dipper's and Mabel's parents openly dismiss his opinions, call his interests "creepy," and noticably discipline Dipper more than Mabel, it's easy to see a through-line between the behavior they demonstrate and are implied to demonstrate in this story and hers in canon.
• Given the places the project was planned to go before it was canceled, the "existencial threat to organic life" La Résistance was fighting is almost certainly the Diamond Authority (the specification of "organic life" is a bit telling and exactly mirrors Yellow Diamond's pointing out and trivializing of organic life in her first appearance). We later find out Bill was making deals with the Authority's underlings. It's honestly unsurprising that Bill was Playing Both Sides.
  • If this was the case, then the strange dialog patterns of the alien Ford, Dipper and Pacifica encounter during their first trip into the multiverse both excellently foreshadows and obscures this idea, if its use of three phrases in certain spots is meant for all three to describe the same thing instead of being clumsily translated lists of three separate things: The alien soldier initially considers the humans non-hostile because they are organics/non-cyborgs/solid bodies, says that the nanomachine virus will be deployed to target breeding grounds/training camps/factories in order to destroy enemy weapons/constructs/civilians. For the Diamond Authority, those are all the same thing.
• Mabel's eagerness to see Pacifica as the sole roadblock in convincing Dipper to return to Piedmont has a lot of brilliantly complicated reasons and layers behind it. One of those reasons that is never openly addressed but almost certainly an unspoken contributor to her actions is the fact that Mabel has made herself feel better about her own failed relationships by telling herself that she's still better at romance than Dipper—that Dipper is the social and romantic failure between the two of them. The fact that he turns out to be in a very healthy, respectful, and committed relationship with Pacifica—even though neither are comfortable with calling that relationship romantic until later—probably made Mabel feel insecure and jealous for more reasons than just "my brother is replacing me as his mystery buddy." Likewise, her attempts to ruin his relationship with Pacifica probably had another reason outside of wanting to redirect Dipper's attention and priorities back to herself. While it's unlikely to be a conscious incentive for Mabel, if Dipper's seemingly stable, committed relationship flopped because he couldn't see how horrible his partner was and Mabel had to swoop in and save him, then not only would Dipper likely be more uncertain about his own decisions again and more open to Mabel's guidance (and more suseptible to suggestions that he return to Piedmont), but Mabel could still frame herself as the twin with the superior romantic track record.
• One of the more understated bits of irony about the fic's played with Sibling Triangle dynamic, where Dipper is being pulled between Mabel and Pacifica and Mabel is losing, is that those two only hit it off in the first place because of Mabel's own Aesop Amnesia causing her to get Dipper involved with a dangerous ghost during the party at Northwest Manor for her own benefit. It took years for that karma to come back around but it was ultimately a comparatively minor act of selfishness that set Mabel up for the emotional hardships she experiences in this AU.
• During Mabel's flashbacks in the first chapter, Mabel explains that, instead of asking Dipper about it, her parents had basically allowed Mabel to choose whether Dipper got to stay in Gravity Falls. Mabel really doesn't want him to, but looks into Dipper's face and tells them that she'd already said she'd be fine with it. In the present three years later, Mabel can't articulate why she chose to allow it, but once you read to the end of the story, the reason is obvious: if she'd said no to their parents, after promising Dipper she would allow it, Mr. and Mrs. Pines would have taken Mabel's side and Dipper's hopes would have been dashed by Mabel breaking her word, and it's hard to imagine he'd forgive her for this clear betrayal. Mabel allows it despite not wanting Dipper to go for the same reason Mabel, three years later, eventually faces down the flaws in herself that she's been running from even though it causes her a lot of emotional pain: under all the selfishness and manipulation and toxic learned behaviors and unwillingness to understand her brother, Mabel still desperately treasures having a relationship with him, and at the end of the day she really does care about that relationship more than she cares about her own happiness. This choice, despite Mabel not understanding it, is early foreshadowing that there really is a loving sister inside Mabel—it's just that that part of her has been deeply neglected in terms of personal development because she grew up in a family dynamic that thoroughly spoiled her, so she'd never had to sacrifice anything for that relationship before and, at the time, she neither recognizes this choice for what it is nor understands it.
  • This moment with their parents also implies that even back then, on some level buried deep, deep down under layers upon layers of denial, Mabel was already aware her parents cared more about her than Dipper and that they would value what she wanted far more than what Dipper wanted, even regarding Dipper's own future—and that, in spite of her difficulties with confronting it, she already knew this was wrong.
• Of course the Butterflies and MHC escape to Earth when Bill invades. Not only is it their Earth allies' base of operations, but Earth's general lack of magic naturally limited the scope of Bill Cipher's invasion during his previous attempt. Even if things get bad and he launches another attack on Gravity Falls, there's still a whole world to retreat to in which Bill's forces will, while still threatening, be greatly reduced in power, with their most powerful unable to leave Gravity Falls. When facing such a powerful threat, the most unmagical of the Mewni-known dimensions is the safest place to be. Now if any of them actually took the time to understand how it works...
• The way the story depicts the Love God's potions isn't just Unfortunate Implications, but a spectacular deconstruction of Gravity Falls: Journal 3s Author's Saving Throw regarding them. Before the publishing of the book, it could be argued that the Love God is the Love God, the source of love, and that in the show's universe, the Love God's judgements are meant to be perfect matches and being matched by the Love God is implied to be just how long-term relationships form. Yeah, it does have some uncomfortable resemblences to real-life red flags owing to the potions, but so far those unfortunate resemblences aren't confirmed to actually be the situation with the Love God and that's the only problem with his character (well, besides the fact that his validation of LGBTQ+ relationships got censored, thanks Disney). This does have the effect, however, of making what Mabel did a permanent violation on Robbie and Tambry. So in Journal 3 it was retconned (most likely in an attempt to reduce the unintentional blowback on Mabel's character): now the Love God's potions only have temporary effects that wear off within a few days, thereby sidestepping the whole "Mabel permanently violated two people" thing. However, this adds worse implications to the Love God. Whereas before he was a bumbling if seemingly experienced matchmaker creating assumedly perfect true love matches to make people happy, now his potions are just temporary infatuation status effects that wear off, after which the people involved are no longer in love. Instead of removing the violating implications, this just makes the Love God seem equally violating, because now the potions have less in common with the distant magical concept of "true love potions wielded by an actual Cupid-style God of Love" and hit much closer to home with their now-unambiguous resemblance to date rape drugs. Three More very bluntly portrays them as such, since the persons under their effects cannot consent to their own actions under the influence and they didn't even consent to being put under that influence, and further, is only able to use them in this way in the story because the writing team retconned them in an attempt to undo the original Unfortunate Implications. While it's not given direct attention in the story nor its concluding outline, this retroactively makes anything Robbie and Tambry did under the effects of the potion also unambiguously nonconsentual for either party. Instead of making the context less morally ambiguous, the implications of the Author's Saving Throw accidentally retconned the Love Potion to 100% indeed be what it unfortunately resembled, no possible refuge in ambiguity about it. Three More's deconstruction turns the writers' attempted Author's Saving Throw into a spectacular Own Goal, because it gave the Love God's potions more resemblance to date rape drugs, not less.
  • Which further explains why the potion incident traumatized Robbie and Tambry so badly. Nonconsentual kissing can certainly be traumatizing, but for teens as jaded as them? Given how much they both seem to revel in breaking rules and disregarding authority? It's very possible something more happened between them while drugged.
• A little thing, but back when the twins were twelve, Mabel was the friendly and confident twin and Dipper the insecure one assuming negative intentions of his sibling's prospective dates. As we get into the story though, it becomes clear that the two twins have, in many ways, Swapped Roles. While chapter 1 definitely sets them on a collision course, they're fairly amicable for their first few scenes together. What's the earliest indication of this Swapped Roles disposition conflict being the direction of their dynamic? When Dipper re-introduces Mabel to Pacifica in her capacity as his and Ford's occasional research assistant, Mabel makes a comment clearly intended to cut: "What's [Dipper] got you doing, running on a hamster wheel to power the laboratory, or are you testing new cosmetics out before they move to animal testing?" This doesn't sound anything like the former Mabel, who previously seemed almost oblivious to the crueler implications of others' words and always responded to Pacifica's snottiness with a smile and a friendly challenge. You know who it does sound like? Twelve year old Dipper, during the episode "Northwest Mansion Mystery," when he and Pacifica exchanged catty barbs with each other.
  • But this time, when Mabel says the catty Dipper-like barb, Dipper winces and Pacifica does her best not to snap back. All three of them are the same age, but Mabel's acting like they did when they were twelve.
• Gravity Falls is the kind of small town that bands together in the face of hardship. We see them volunteer their labor to help the Pines put things right at the Shack in the aftermath of Bill's zombie attack, and the whole town appears to pitch in to help the Mewni refugees when they flee Bill's invasion of their world. Why, then, was the Northwest family, previously so connected and respected, left to live in a building of such derelict condition with seemingly no one willing to lend a hand and help fix any of its problems? For the same reason Gideon and his father were run out of town: Preston Northwest tried to sell out the town to Bill Cipher, so no one was willing to do much to help him without being paid, which Preston was too greedy to do. It also serves as a side of delayed karma, if you considers the causes behind the debacle with the Lumberjack Ghost.
• The Shared Universe created by this AU fanfic primarily centers on people and places from Disney produced, original series animation from the 2010's for the first two-thirds of its content, but in only outlined last third of the story the cast would have been swept into a space opera-esque scenario split between two warring "alien" empires, the Irkens vs Gemkind.
• Of course the Ford vs. King conflict ended in King receiving a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. It's not just because King has a similar voice to Bill and this agitated Ford's PTSD; Ford probably assumed King was possessed by Bill and thus that King was an imminent threat to him - any denials of such would be discarded as more of Bill's lies, and would probably just provoke Ford further. There was likely nothing King could've done to convince Ford he wasn't Bill, so poor King was subject to the level of force Ford would typically use against Bill. No wonder King ended that "episode" in a full-body cast...

• The sheer irony of Luz joining the side of Bill Cipher and the Lucitors. Luz opposes Belos, but her repulsion from Belos drove her to fall for the same recruitment tactics on the opposing side, a side that actually exists solely to spark bloodshed and is so much worse than Belos it drove Belos to cooperate with the Coalition because Bill is the Enemyof My Enemy. In other words, Luz and The Owl House, a family of proud weirdoes who don't fit in with society and whose whole conflict with Belos is over his authoritarianism, Villain with Good Publicity status, and demand for conformity, is now part of the puppet arm of an authoritarian, villainous establishment fighting against a group of rebels trying to preserve their freedom and lives and keep the villains Luz has sided with from invading and conquering other worlds.

Fridge Horror

• In chapter 1, Mabel briefly reviews the last three years of her increased "boycrazy" behavior. She implies she did something to a girl who "had it coming" for getting in the way of Mabel's chances with a Temporary Love Interest who looked like Mermando, then mentions how her temper would have gotten her into trouble numerous times if it weren't for the law-evading tricks Grunkle Stan taught her when she was twelve, and that these same tricks have also helped significantly in the dating game. She then, seemingly offhandedly, adds that "the combined might of a locked window, conservative parents, and the apparent safeguards of God were no match for the Ol' Jersey Window Cleaning! That was a fun night, I hope his parents never found out." A locked window means this boy probably wasn't letting Mabel in willingly. What did Mabel do!? Given the weight with which the fic treats other instances of Questionable Consent, this was probably a situation in which the boy's parents did not approve of him seeing Mabel and forbade it only for her to visit him under their noses, given that this never comes up again during her ensuing character development. However, it's still Fridge Horror in the sense that Mabel considers this and other instances of delinquency so casually, as well as for the implications that she'd be willing to indulge in such risky behavior for a relationship that was ultimately short term and forgettable.
  • If the problem was the parents, why wouldn't the guy unlock his own window for Mabel himself? Were his parents watching to make sure he didn't unlock it? If they were, Mabel couldn't have snuck in in the first place. If there was a window in his rooom not being watched by the parents for her to sneak in through, and the boy actually wanted her to come in, why would Mabel have to break in? Window locks are controllable on the inside of the window in order to maintain the convenience of its use; he should have been able to open it for her. Maybe the window was alarmed? But it's strange Mabel wouldn't have mentioned that if it was; seems to me that if this boy actually wanted her inside, an alarm would be a way bigger obstacle to mention than the window lock. The matter remains that the ambiguity of the line and the lack of any return to the subject of Mabel's "romances" in Mabel's unfortunately prematurely ended storyline still leaves the other interpretation uncomfortably present, especially when it just... doesn't seem likely to this troper that this Temporary Love Interest intended for Mabel to get inside. It seems more likely that she broke in to spend the night with him without warning him ahead of time that she would do this, probably thinking she was being romantic and charming while doing so, and we unfortunately don't get enough information to tell how the boy felt about that. And admittedly, breaking into a love interest's house in the middle of the night without considering the need to ask for permission or give any heads-up is exactly the kind of thing Mabel would do.
• Speaking of which, if Dipper hadn't gone to live with Stan and Ford, Mabel probably would have pressured him into being her accomplice on her delinquent adventures just like she did for many of her more self-interested schemes in Gravity Falls. If they were ever caught, Dipper, as the Cloud Cuckoo Landers Minder, would have likely borne the brunt of the blame from their parents and any criminal incidents akin to the little we know Mabel got up to (drugs, b&e, possibly Questionable Consent, and whatever the heck Mabel's temper did to that rival girl that made her greatful for her ability to avoid the cops) would have likely hurt his chances at finding a similar-quality education to the apprenticeship he'd passed up after high school, even if Mabel somehow became more accepting of them seperating by then.
• Unless something miraculous were to happen to spare them, most of the characters we meet in Mewni, good, bad, Mewman, "monster," and other alike, are fated to become victims of their own Weirdmageddon and absorbed by and destroyed along with the Nightmare Realm. We know at least some of the main Butterflies survive because the family is mentioned as being part of the Distant Finale, but we also know that they were able to flee to Earth at the beginning when the Dimension was first overrun, Hekapoo seals the dimension afterwards to contain Bill's forces, and the Portal isn't very usable afterwards due to Bill's spying, so we have no knowledge of if being left behind and trapped on Mewni for the rest of the story is survivable and a large-scale rescue mission to bring refugees to Earth before their dimension is erased along with the Nightmare Realm is not likely. While it's feasible that some populations may have survived in the few salveagble scraps of Mewni that were bolted onto the Earth dimension in the aftermath, the vast majority of everyone else in the entire dimension of Mewni are most likely doomed to be erased from existence very soon and very horribly.
  • Consequently: If the Crystal Gems ever get off their Earth again (as they eventually did in their own show's canon) they will not have made friends. They may well face retaliation from less forgiving parties for not getting involved with defeating the enemy they declared themselves in violent opposition to when said enemy decimated a huge portion of not only their universe, but the Multiverse itself—and that's if the hostile parties are even willing to recognize them as being seperate from the rest of Gemkind, the enemy race that tried to wipe all other living things out of existence. At the very least, there are a significant number of war-scarred races in the Gems' own universe with security systems seemingly designed specifically to target Gems as well as a Gem targeting biological weapon being released on Homeworld. And without the Diamond Authority to push back these opposing forces and maintain the safety of their Gem citizens, all while the various surviving planets and galaxies they oppressed have regained their autonomy amidst a giant power vacuum? The lack of authority, even a temporary one, to take over and try to ease a transition between the old power structure and whatever new ones come into being means certain figurative bloodshed and almost certainly a target on the backs of Gems everywhere. Not to mention a number of Gems are shown to be canonically indoctrinated enough to continue being actively hostile with these other races, which will no doubt propagate further violence until someone is powerful enough to either incentivized or coerce some form of peace. The Crystal Gems' decision not to join in the fight means these combatants never see a Gem faction that is not an existential threat to organic life. Thus, they have no reason to create ways to spare certain populations from their weapons, escalating conflict and violence further.
• Not so much horror, but drama: the planned ending for this series doesn't end with all the awful implications of the Star Vs. finale, but it does add an additional one: the Magical High Commission is the center of magical regulation in the entire Multiverse. They were based in Mewni, and answered to the Mewman Queen. Any that survived are now based on Earth. Earth just became involuntary host to the regulatory center of the Multiverse. While it's nowhere near the large-scale disruption in the Star Vs. finale (of the entire dimension of Mewni and all its populace being joined with Earth sans magic), the political fallout from the surviving MHC trying to coexist with the couple hundred or so governments of the world will undoubtedly be... interesting.
• The destruction of the Diamonds means the corrupted and forcibly fused Gems will likely never be healed.
  • They definitely won't be healed because of the Cluster. Since the Diamonds stay away from Earth knowing the Cluster will eventually emerge and are too distracted by the war with the Irkens to send resources to check up on it as they did in canon, the Crystal Gems' decision to stay out of the fighting and not return to space when Mabel informs them of the conflict with the Diamonds and Bill means they have little to no chance of encountering a Homeworld soldier that knows about the plans for the Earth colony, so they won't know about the planet-destroying superweapon planted under its surface until it's too late. Unless Steven can somehow discover and contact the Cluster without Peridot's assistance, all life on Steven's Earth is doomed to die.
• It's never explicitly made clear, but given that Mewni's time seems to be fairly one-to-one with Earth, it's almost certain that the slaughter of the friendly monsters by the Mewman knights that Ford witnessed years ago occured during Moon's reign. Given that Moon's mother, Queen Comet, had been on a peace mission, this implies that Moon either permitted or encouraged the return to a culture of escalating violence against monsters among the ranks of Mewni's knights.
• The mine collapse. Historically, it's relatively common for not all of the mine shaft and branching tunnels to collapse, meaning some miners can and have historically survived initial mine collapses but wound up trapped underground. Since the girls decided to keep the mine collapse a secret to avoid responsibility, no rescue attempt was dispatched from town. Unless the decidedly unscrupulous mining company noticed the disaster in a timely manner and was willing to send a rescue, the girls' decision to keep quiet will have doomed any survivors. Dying from being trapped in a dark, small, airless place with no one to rescue you is, to put it mildly, the stuff nightmares are made of. And the manotaurs had warmly greeted the girls as their friends.