Film Theory: Bill Cipher is Still ALIVE… and I Found Him! (Gravity Falls)

He broke childhoods just a little, by solving each and every riddle, but as his tenure reaches

end, brains will break and minds will bend, as we answer one last query, with a final

CRAZY THEORY.

*Maniacal laughter*

Hello Internet, welcome to Film Theory, the show that knows that when there's no cops

around, anything's legal.

Today, after six long years, we're finally jumping back into the wild world of Gravity

Falls.

In case you don't know, Gravity Falls was a Disney series all about the twins Dipper

and Mabel Pines, who are set to spend the summer with their great uncle Stan at the

town of Gravity Falls, Oregon.

However, things are strange in this neighborhood.

There are cryptids in the woods, codes to crack, mysteries to unravel.

By the end of the series, Dipper, Mabel, and all of their friends are facing off against

the malevolent Bill Cipher, a universe-hopping demon from the second dimension who possesses

god-like powers and wants to take over the three-dimensional world.

Every element of this show was awesome, it is without question my single favorite animated

series of all time, and honestly, it was the pioneer in getting a fanbase to start theorizing

about your show.

I mean, there are many kids' cartoons out there that have every episode start with whispered

backwards text or end with a coded message buried in the credits.

The show's creator, Alex Hirsch, was just way ahead of his time on that one.

And not only is he a talented creator, he's also just a really awesome guy.

He actually came out to our final charity livestream a few years ago to help us raise

money for childhood cancer research at St. Jude.

Little did he suspect that I was going to be putting him through his paces.

Is Bill Cipher still alive?

I mean, fictional characters exist in a liminal space between alive and dead, conjured up

by our attention and our imagination.

Well played, Alex.

Well played.

By the way, Alex, if you do wind up watching this at some point, just know that I really

appreciated you being there.

I was locked into the show that day so I didn't get a chance to actually thank you in person

after the segment.

I am so sorry for that.

And honestly, it's one of my biggest regrets from the past decade of content creation.

Thank you for being so generous with your time and for all you were willing to do that

day.

Also, my friend Ryder was there.

He has a channel, FootofaFerret.

He covers your work a lot.

He's another huge fan that didn't get to say hi because he was busy helping me behind

the scenes with all the music stuff for the show.

Ryder, this is your chance.

Say hi to Alex.

Uh, hello, Alex Hirsch.

Uh, goodbye.

He was also the voice of our Bill Cipher in the cold open, by the way.

Anyway, enough making amends for the sins of the past.

Back to Gravity Falls.

Why am I talking about it now, eight years after the show ended?

Well, outside of it being just important to the history of the channel, fear rising in

general, and just being a personal fave of mine, the real reason, if I'm being honest,

is that it's Ollie's current favorite show right now.

He adores it, which is awesome because it means I get to watch it all over again.

Each night, he gets a half hour of TV time, and I kid you not, we have watched this scene

like a hundred times.

Ollie's life goal is to now build mech suits out of garbage.

Over on Style Theory, I briefly mentioned that Ollie wanted to go as a haunted convenience

store for this past Halloween.

It was from Gravity Falls, season one, episode five, The Inconveniencing.

And let me tell you, rewatching Gravity Falls with Ollie has really reignited my love for

the series.

I always wanted to be able to come back to it in some way, but never could find the right angle

to attack it with.

I mean, this is a show that was built by theorists, for theorists.

All the scraps and clues have been picked clean.

It didn't really feel like there was a lot of new ground that I could cover.

At least, that's what I thought, until I discovered the blacklight edition of Journal

Three.

In case you don't know, within the story of Gravity Falls, Journal Three is a collection

of all the weird, paranormal, supernatural things that are living in and around the town

of Gravity Falls.

It is a massive part of the show's main plot.

However, as we learn midway through the show, a great deal of the content inside the journal

is written in invisible ink, which can only be read via blacklight.

Now, after Gravity Falls ended, Disney released a real-world version of Journal Three, with

a ton of extra information about the show and its lore.

But fans were disappointed that none of the blacklight details were actually included

in that final release.

Enough so that a year later, Disney released another version of it with those secrets printed

inside.

Only 10,000 copies of this book were ever made, so this was a super exclusive piece

of merchandise that only the most passionate Gravity Falls fans were able to get their

six-fingered hands on.

Sadly, I was not one of them.

But thankfully, this fandom is full of generous individuals that just want to share their

knowledge.

And thanks to Tumblr user ForDarkIsTheSuede, we can all take a look at what exactly is

inside of this thing.

And boy, let me tell you, did this thing add a lot to the lore of Gravity Falls.

Not only that, but I believe that it also cracks open a brand new mystery that's just

aching to be solved.

You see, my friends, the blacklight edition of Journal Three sent me down a rabbit hole

that led me to only one conclusion.

Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls, he is Bill Cipher.

Or rather, he's possessed by Bill Cipher in the real world, just like what we saw happen

with characters like Dipper, Ford, and Stan in the series.

And not only is he possessed, Alex is aware of that possession, and is actively fighting

against Bill's influence in a way that you would never expect.

Theorists, shake my hand, it's time to make a deal.

So let's just get on the same page about what's actually in the blacklight edition of Journal

Three.

There's a ton of lore about a lot of different corners of this universe.

For instance, we learn a lot more about Gnome Society, including a code that reveals Shmebulok's

true deep thoughts.

There are secret messages hidden in cow spots, there's a whole page comparing the Gravity

Falls characters to tarot cards, seems like a short that Lee should look into at some

point.

I mean, I could go on and on about this thing.

There are literally hundreds of pages of new information.

But for a bit of a deep, relevant example here, on the page titled A Bit of History,

the blacklight reveals that Bill Cipher has had a hand in shaping human civilization throughout

all of time.

He tricked the ancient Egyptians into building a portal to a nightmare realm that led a jackal-headed

man onto Earth, thus giving us Anubis.

Afterwards, he had the Egyptians build the pyramids as a tribute to him.

Much later on, Bill helped George Washington defeat the British during the American Revolution,

but also gave him such bad nightmares in the process that he ground his teeth to dust in

his sleep.

That's why Washington had to get him replaced with wooden teeth.

You know the Eye of Providence on the dollar, Bill?

That pyramid with the eyeball?

Washington apparently put it on the dollar in an attempt to appease Bill.

Dollar Bill. Get it?

We even learn that Bill helped Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing, in the hopes that NASA

would help Bill build a portal, implying that humans have never actually been to the moon

in the Gravity Falls universe.

Pretty crazy, right?

But one of the biggest additions from the blacklight sections, and the thing that started

me down this rabbit hole in the first place, is actually in the book's blank pages.

See, though the majority of the secret invisible notes in the book are written by Ford, there

are a handful of contributions from other characters.

Soos, Mabel, Dipper.

But most disturbingly of all, there's also notes written by old isosceles himself, Bill

Cipher.

And they're all over these blank pages.

On them, he gives a sort of pitch to the reader to help Bill out, telling them to say the

words Bill Cipher three times so that he can enter your mind.

Basically, it's Bill making a Beetlejuice reference.

However, more interestingly, Bill subtly explains exactly how he's writing in this book.

He says, quote, six fingers just conked out, and that means Captain Bill is steering the

ship.

And later again, Sixer's about to wake up, which means that Bill is able to puppeteer

Ford's body while he's asleep.

So what if he were actually able to do that with Alex Hirsch out here in the real world?

Now, obviously, that would be a weird logical leap for me to make.

Like, why would I assume that Bill's possessing the creator of the series?

Well, despite the whole book being in-universe with Gravity Falls, there is one place where

Alex Hirsch winds up writing as himself, the book's foreword, where he explains what exactly

the book is.

That there are only 10,000 copies, that it's the most show-accurate version of Journal

3, and explicitly telling readers about the Black Light Secrets.

But the thing that really stuck out to me, if you lift up this picture of Hirsch on the

page and shine a black light onto it, you get a little message from Bill himself.

In fact, if you compare this to handwriting from Bill elsewhere in the book, it is exactly

the same.

Bill definitely wrote this, and he lets us know that Bill was here.

And while you could assume that this is just him telling us that he's here in the journal

writing notes, notice the placement of Bill's message.

Bill's note isn't on the journal pages, like it will be throughout the rest of the

journal.

It is on the paper of Alex's note, the one he wrote the foreword on.

What this proves is that Bill is alive and kicking and messing with Alex's stuff after

Alex has written it.

And the placement behind Alex's picture certainly seems like it's implying that he's here,

as in here inside of Alex Hirsch's head.

And the more I looked into it, the more I could tell that all of this was intentional.

The finale of the show is broken up into a huge multi-part story arc called Weirdmageddon,

where Bill takes over the town.

For all of these episodes, the show's usual intro sequence is replaced with a new one,

starring Bill and all his monster friends. And wouldn't you know it,

but in all of these intros, the title card that's supposed to read Created by Alex Hirsch

is actually replaced with Created by Bill Cipher.

We can also take a look at another Gravity Falls novel, the upcoming Book of Bill.

Now I am really excited about this release.

I was actually pretty sad that it wasn't coming out in time for me to cover on the

channel, but hey, that gives Lee some to talk about when he takes over.

Regardless, what's the deal with this book?

Well, officially, Alex Hirsch is credited as the author.

And that makes sense, right?

He's the one who wrote it.

But the whole gimmick of the book is that it's written in the voice, and from the point

of view of Bill Cipher himself.

Now you might think that this is just a simple case of writing and character.

But if you go to the Book of Bill's official page on its publisher, Penguin Random House's

website, you'll find some clues suggesting that there might be something more here.

The official author blurb describing Alex Hirsch reads as follows, quote,

Despite the rumors, he was not possessed by a demon while writing this book.

We repeat, not demonically possessed.

Seems like something sus that they're really trying to drive home there.

I don't know about you, but to me, the author doth protest too much, methinks.

But perhaps the biggest clue of all of this is the fact that we've actually seen Alex

Hirsch possessed by Bill already.

All the way back in 2015, while Gravity Falls was still on the air, Hirsch was scheduled

to do a Reddit Ask Me Anything.

And yet, when he was asked about it on Twitter, Hirsch denied that he was doing anything.

He made it very clear that he was meant to be asleep at the scheduled time.

So when the time for the AMA rolled around, an AMA did happen, but it was with Bill Cipher.

And at the end of the AMA, Bill outright confirms that he's taking control of Hirsch to do the

AMA in the first place.

He's using Hirsch's body to clickety-clack away at the keyboard while Hirsch slept, just

like he did with Ford writing notes in the Blacklight Journal 3.

Quote from the end of the AMA,

Well, looks like the kid's REM cycle is about to end, so I should make like a pine tree

and burn to the ground.

And if you think that Bill wouldn't want to materialize in our world, well, you'd be wrong.

Bill's entire schtick is that he's tired of being two-dimensional.

He says as much in Weirdmageddon Part 3.

You think those chains are tight?

Imagine living in the second dimension.

Flat minds in a flat world with flat dreams.

And the first thing he does in Weirdmageddon once he escapes his two-dimensional prison

is take a three-dimensional physical form.

Basically, showing off just how many different surfaces he can have.

Oh, it's happening!

It's finally, finally happening!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Physical form?

Don't mind if I do!

What do you think Bill would do if he ever realized that Gravity Falls was, in fact,

a two-dimensional world?

A cartoon created by real people who live in a three-dimensional space.

He'd probably want to get to that world and take that one over.

Which is exactly what we see him doing through Alex.

But before we dive further into the Bill Cipher conspiracy,

I want to take a minute to thank the sponsor of today's video, Rocket Money.

True story, friends.

With this job, we have to get a lot of different streaming services

in order to stay up-to-date with everything.

And with all those different subscriptions floating around,

things tend to get lost in the shuffle.

For instance, last month I discovered that I'd been paying for two subscriptions to Max

on the same email.

One was for an ancient subscription that I've had since the streamer started,

and the other was through Amazon Prime.

And you know how I found out about these double charges?

Rocket Money.

They're a personal finance app that can scan through all your purchases

and then let you know exactly what you're paying for each and every month.

It can easily identify if you're paying for any recurring subscriptions

and compiles them all in one place so you can easily see what you're paying for,

and more importantly, decide if you want to stop paying for them.

Best of all, you can safely and securely cancel any unwanted subscriptions

in the Rocket Money app itself.

No more sitting on the phone in unwanted service calls

feeling like you're trying to get out of a deal with Bill Cipher.

Just a couple of taps, and bam!

Subscription canceled.

Just from cutting that extra Max subscription,

Rocket Money helped me save hundreds of dollars this year.

In fact, they've already helped to cancel over $500 million in subscription services,

with the average customer actually saving $740 a year.

Yeah, I was blown away by that number too.

If you want to get started with Rocket Money for free,

go check it out by heading to rocketmoney.com/filmtheorists.

That's rocketmoney.com slash f-i-l-m-t-h-e-o-r-i-s-t-s,

or, you know, just save yourself the hassle and click the link in the top line of the description

because it is so much easier.

One last thank you to Rocket Money for sponsoring today's episode.

Now let's get back to unraveling the mystery of Bill Cipher.

Lee, take it away.

Back in 2016, when Weirdmageddon first aired,

after the end credits, people noticed a picture of a real-life Bill Cipher statue flash on screen,

followed by some random numbers.

Now, you theorists probably recognize this as a series of codes encrypted with ciphers,

and at the time, Gravity Falls fans recognized it too.

And thus began the Gravity Falls ARG known as the Cipher Hunt.

Basically, this was a giant scavenger hunt set up by Hirsch

to help keep interest in Gravity Falls alive and give fans a big send-off

before Disney decided to continue the series through comics and books.

It was very long and very in-depth, with cryptograms and hidden codes,

encouraging people to go to real-world locations in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Japan, and Russia,

and even featuring real phone calls with Grunkle Stan.

Hello, it's Grunkle Stan, and I have a riddle for you.

What has two legs during the day, four legs during the night,

and, uh, it's red and white, and I, I, I don't know, I'm no good at these riddles.

By the end of it, hunters were led to that real-life statue of Bill Cipher hidden in the woods,

with messages from Grunkle Stan encouraging them to shake Bill's hand.

Shaking hands, of course, is Bill's primary way of making binding agreements

and entering the minds of his marks.

But here's the cool thing.

Buried beside the Bill Cipher statue was a box containing several prizes, so to speak.

Some were just fun, you know, like plastic coins and gems,

a signed sketch, and a sash that read,

Mayor of Gravity Falls, that sort of thing.

But two of the most interesting ones?

There was a copy of Journal 3 and a blacklight.

Doesn't that sound familiar?

Yeah, though this wasn't one of the super-exclusive 10,000 copies made,

this was using the same idea.

Inside this copy of Journal 3 was a sketch by Hirsch himself of Grunkle Stan,

Soos, and Old Man McGucket.

But, when the blacklight was shined on the page,

it revealed another sketch of Bill himself,

telling the reader to stay paranoid.

A secret drawing of Bill, hidden in a special copy of Journal 3,

buried under a statue of Bill himself.

That's very similar to what we see with the special blacklight version of Journal 3

that started us down this rabbit hole to begin with.

But here's why all of this matters.

I want you to go back and watch Weirdmageddon again.

When Stan shakes Bill's hand, Bill turns into a statue

as his astral form exits the Bill Cipher body to enter Stan's body.

And that statue is in the exact same position that we see in the show after he shakes his hand.

Now, the clear implication here is that this is supposed to be the same statue from the very end of the show.

But what if it's another statue?

One made after Bill escaped?

One made after he's made another deal to go into someone else's head?

A deal made with Alex Hirsch.

First of all, we know that Bill probably escaped at the end of Weirdmageddon.

When the gang finally does defeat Bill, this happens.

And you're on! Here we have you on! And you're on!

The gang has broken the oath!

You're on with-

Clearly, this audio is backwards.

If you reverse it, it says this.

A-X-O-L-O-T-L!

My time has come to burn!

I invoke the ancient power that I may return!

He's making a deal with the all-powerful axolotl to be able to come back in some other dimension.

And we know that he's likely popping around other universes now,

since he's visible in other franchises like Rick and Morty,

Big City Greens,

The Owl House,

DuckTales,

even The Simpsons.

Buy crypto, suckers!

And that's canon, by the way.

As confirmed by Alex Hirsch himself, via our livestream.

Is Bill Cipher now officially connected into the Simpsons canon,

because he appeared in one of the Simpsons intros recently, yes?

Yeah, I can confirm that.

Bill Cipher is Simpsons canon.

WHAAAA-

So, what's to stop him from hopping on over to our universe at this point?

And if there's a Bill Cipher statue here now in our world,

then that likely means that someone else must have shaken Bill's hand to have him end up here.

Someone who isn't a fictional character in our universe.

Someone real.

Someone like Alex Hirsch.

So all of this really makes for a fun meta-storyline for the Gravity Falls fandom.

Bill Cipher was always a character who could pop between universes,

and so it's fun to imagine that our universe might be one that he jumps into.

But why should we care about this?

So what if Bill is taking control of dear old Alex Hirsch's head?

Well, for one, it means that you should really be careful the next time you shake Alex's hand at a meet-and-greet.

But more importantly, it shows that the battle against Bill, it ain't done.

In fact, I think the battle's been ongoing without any of us even realizing it.

The reason we haven't all been doomed by a new pyramid-shaped overlord taking over our sad reality,

just like Dipper, Ford, and Stan,

Alex Hirsch ain't letting Bill win without a fight.

In fact, he's doing his best to banish Bill forever.

And not using a memory gun.

No, he's using his own career.

But to understand how, we first have to talk about what was probably the single biggest mystery of this entire show,

the Bill Cipher Zodiac.

Watching the series, this thing was everywhere.

It is teased in literally every episode.

By the end of the series, they've set this thing up as a prophecy explaining the one true way to banish Bill Cipher once and for all.

It is by fulfilling the symbols all around this Zodiac.

Each symbol aligns with a certain character, ten in total.

And they have to team up to defeat Bill once and for all during Weirdmageddon.

And yet in the end, this Zodiac, it doesn't pay off.

After all the build-up and the teases, this Zodiac doesn't actually work because Ford and Stan refuse to hold hands.

Stanley, get over here! You're the only one left!

Between me and him, I'm not always the bad twin.

Between him and me.

Grammar, Stanley.

Oh, Grammar Stanley, you!

So basically, Alex Hirsch creates this huge thing, sets up this massive Chekhov's gun, and it never gets used.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the way that this show ends,

but it always felt odd to me that this Zodiac just wound up being a massive misdirect.

Now though, now I think I finally understand.

While I was putting together this episode, I began to realize more and more that these symbols looked familiar.

Not because they were in Gravity Falls, but because they correspond with other projects that Alex Hirsch has worked on over the years.

The six-fingered handprint, that's obviously referencing Gravity Falls itself.

But the shooting star, for instance?

Well, that lines up perfectly with Kid Cosmic, a show about a kid who gets superpowers from cosmic stones of power crash-landing near his house.

Hirsch worked as a writer on two of the stories for that series.

The question mark?

Well, that could point to a few of Hirsch's projects, but the one that it most perfectly slots in with is the conspiracy comedy show Inside Job,

which Hirsch co-produced, wrote for, and acted in.

Then, of course, you have The Pentagram, which seems fitting for Hirsch's work on The Owl House,

a story all about witches and demons.

He not only worked as a creative consultant for that series, but he also voiced Hootie and King, the self-proclaimed King of Demons.

Speaking of his work as a creative consultant, the glasses?

They look a lot like the signature eyewear worn by the Mitchell family in Netflix's Mitchells vs. the Machines,

a film where Hirsch was a story consultant and voiced the character of Dirk.

What about Dipper's iconic tree symbol?

Well, I believe that this lines up with yet another Disney series, Amphibia, which is set in a marshland covered in trees.

The characters live in a giant tree.

The wood aesthetic is even carried through in almost every episode with the title cards.

Hirsch was given a special thanks in the episode The Hardest Thing,

and also voiced a couple of roles in the episode Wax Museum,

which, go figure, happens to be an episode paying homage to Gravity Falls.

Hands off the merchandise!

The old mistaken for a grotesque lifeless being.

Works every time!

And what about the heart symbol with the crack and stitches in it?

Well, this lines up fairly well with Hirsch's first ever writing and storytelling gig,

working on the show Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

Here, he co-wrote and storyboarded the episode Gone Wishin',

the story of which revolves around Captain Canuckles physically stealing,

and then breaking the heart of a mermaid.

A heart that literally cracks in half.

Ahhhhh!

Almost so specific it lines up perfectly.

So that covers us for seven.

And from this point forward, the comparisons start getting a little bit weird.

It's likely that many of these are symbols that are going to be coming down the pipeline for Alex,

but then again, remember what they said in the show?

The symbols needn't all be literal, Dipper.

So with that in mind, and by expanding our horizons a bit,

we can find matches for at least two more of these final symbols.

For instance, the oyster symbol here.

Prior to working on Gravity Falls,

Hirsch was a key creative in another Disney series called Fish Hooks,

a show set inside of a giant fish tank,

where you'd presumably be able to find similarly shaped shells.

As far as the ice, if we really wanted to stretch things here,

the ice cubes could represent the Super Mario Brothers movie,

on which Hirsch is given a special thanks.

There were rumors that Hirsch was originally attached to write and direct the whole thing,

before departing due to creative differences.

Regardless, the Mario movie, of course, opens in the icy snow kingdom,

where Bowser defeats an army of penguins and steals a superstar.

Like I said, that is a pretty big reach.

It could also be that that one just hasn't happened yet in Hirsch's career.

And finally, there's the llama.

That one is weird and oddly specific,

and again, I haven't found a strong match for it.

But I will say that I expect the llama to be representative of the last project

on this Alex Hirsch Zodiac,

since Pacifica is the last one to join the Zodiac in Gravity Falls.

And once those final projects hit,

Hirsch will have done what he set out to do from the start of his career,

and Bill Cipher will be banished once and for all.

Now, just between you and me, I recognize this is completely fictional.

Is Alex Hirsch actually battling an interdimensional pyramid demon

with cartoons he's making in the Hollywood studio system?

No, obviously not.

But I can confidently say that Alex Hirsch,

he is absolutely the sort of person who would seed this idea into his works,

no matter how absurd or esoteric it might be.

Gravity Falls first premiered in 2012,

right around the time that I started making theorist content here on YouTube in 2011.

And I can tell you, at the time,

Theorizing? It just wasn't really a genre of entertainment.

Sure, there were some fans out there who got really passionate

about the niche interests that they loved,

but as a wide-reaching pop-cultural trend?

No, it wasn't the same.

Shows weren't built with theorizing in mind like they are today,

with every trailer, website, and easter egg

tailor-made for a 15-minute analytical deep dive about its implications.

But shows like Gravity Falls?

They came around and they changed that.

Alex Hirsch is a theorist through and through,

building a show with hidden secrets and lore

and mysteries that he let the viewers decode on their own.

As someone who's thrived off of all of that,

both in my professional and, more importantly, my personal life,

I can't tell you how much I respect that and how much it means to me.

So Alex, thank you.

Not only for coming on to a live stream a couple years ago,

but for helping to inspire a beautiful community of Theorists.

And hey, if you ever need any help defeating Bill,

well, I've never dressed up as a llama,

but there's certainly a first time for everything.

But hey, that's just a theory.

A Film Theory.

And cut.

And hey, if you at home want another Gravity Falls theory right now,

check out our video explaining why this show shouldn't really be over

and exactly where Bill Cipher might be popping up next.

This one's a bit old, admittedly,

but still one of my favorites that we've ever done on the channel.

Or if you want something that's a bit more wild and out there,

check out our video explaining how Gravity Falls is not only in the same multiverse as our world,

but also in the world with Rick and Morty.

And now I say for one final time,

see you all next week.