Gravity Falls

About

Gravity Falls is an American animated Disney television series created by Alex Hirsch about two pre-teen twins, Dipper and Mabel Pines, and their adventures on a summer vacation at their Great Uncle Stan’s house in Gravity Falls, Oregon.

Premise

The show follows 12-year-old twin siblings Dipper (voiced by Jason Ritter) and Mabel Pines (voiced by Kristen Schaal) on summer vacation in the small town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. During this time, they live with their great “Grunkle” Stan (voiced by series creator Alex Hirsch), owner of The Mystery Shack, a museum and tourist trap. The twins quickly discover the town’s mysterious history, and along with the Mystery Shack’s employees Soos (also voiced by Hirsch) and Wendy (voiced Linda Cardellini), they set to uncover the town’s secrets.

Mysteries and Cryptography

One of the most well known elements of the show is the large amount of secret or hidden content seen in the show which adds to the “mystery” theme of the show. Fans are quick to decipher and uncover these elements, with many videos and posts on blogs, forums and Youtube about their findings. Secret coded messages are seen during the credits of each episode, with the message either referring to the episode itself or a future/upcoming episode.

Near the end of the opening credits, a whispering message can be heard. When played backwards, this voice can be heard to say “three letters back”, a guide to decoding the decrypted messages found at the end of each episode. Starting with episode 7, a new voice appeared in the opening credits, this one saying “Switch A and Z”, the new method used to decode the secret messages.

History

After a preview on June 15, 2012, the show made its on-air debut on June 29th. The show was created by Alex Hirsch who also voices several characters on the show.

Reception

Gravity Falls’ first season earned a rating of 8.5 on IMDB^[1]. The season premiere had viewers 3.4 million viewers, while the season finale had 3.2 million viewers.^[2]^[3] The show was renewed for a second season on July 29th, 2013.^[4]

Accolades

The show was nominated for a 2013 Teen Choice Award for Choice Animated show, a 2013 Kid’s Choice Award for Favorite Animated Animal Sidekick (Waddles), and won a 2013 Annie Award for Voice Acting in an Animated Television or Other Broadcast Venue Production (Kristen Schaal).

Online Presence

Though Gravity Falls has no official social media presence, as of March 2014, its Facebook show page^[10] has over 45,000 likes. From August 21st, 2012 to May 30, 2013, Gravity Falls ran a series of sponsered posts on Buzzfeed^[12] that included content directly related to the show (“17 Gravity Falls GIFs To Brighten Up Your Day”) and content that matched the spirit of the show (“12 Characters Who Had The Best Creature Friends”). Show extras and clips can be found on Disney Channel’s official YouTube channel.^[11]

Fandom

There are numerous fan sites offering news about the show including the Gravity Falls channel on Fan Pop^[13] and the Gravity Falls Wikia^[14]. There are several Tumblr blogs dedicated to the show, such as fuckyeahgravityfalls^[5], gravityfalls^[6], and heckyeahgravityfalls.^[7] As of March 2014, the Fanfiction.net^[8] page for the show has more than 1,700 submissions and DeviantArt^[9] has over 32,000 submissions tagged Gravity Falls.

Parapines

Parapines is the name used to describe fanfiction and fan art which feature crossovers between Gravity Falls and the stop-motion animated film Paranorman. Their frequent crossovers have been attributed to their close premiere dates (Paranoman was released on August 17th, 2012, about two months after the show premiered). They also both deal with children dealing with supernatural forces. Fan artists often cross the show with other fantasy series such as Doctor Who and Supernatural.

Related Memes

Paper Jam Dipper

In the 7th episode of the series titled “Double Dipper,” which aired on August 10, 2012, Dipper creates a number of clones of himself with the use of a magical photocopier. During the printing of one of these clones, the machine suffers a paper-jam, causing the creation of the deformed Paper Jam Dipper.

Despite his limited screen time (the character dies before the end of the episode), the character became very popular with fans, with a number of pieces of fan-arts and other fan-works based on the character.

Dipper Goes To Taco Bell

Dipper Goes To Taco Bell is a fanfic which takes place in the universe of the 2012 animated cartoon series Gravity Falls. The story and its contents became notorious within the fanbase for its highly gore-filled narrative. It is often compared to other notorious shockfics from the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom such as Cupcakes and Sweet Apple Massacre.