Bill Cipher is alive (Gravity Falls theory)

Hello, dear humans and fellow aliens!

Today, I am going to present you with a theory about Gravity Falls. I know that, as a new theorist, I shouldn’t begin there but this came to me the other day and I had to post it.

Let’s begin, then!

I am going to prove to you that the main antagonist in the series “Gravity Falls” did not die. He is still alive and well inside one of our most beloved character’s mind.

According to my theory, Bill Cipher resides inside the mind of Stanley Pines or Grunkle Stan. It may seem an odd thing to say, but I will explain my opinion to you.

Before jumping to conclusions, let’s review what we know about Bill.

He is classified as a “dream demon”. That means that he isn’t material, he is an ethereal being that can only contact people when they are unconscious or when he is summoned. He can only enter a person’s mind and control their body once they agree with it and make a deal. When he possesses a host, their eyes turn yellow with an elongated pupil, just like his own eye.

He comes from another dimension, commonly known as the “second dimension”. His goal is to gain a material form on Earth so he can put it under his reign of weirdness.

It is possible to kick him out of our world by using an ancient prophecy, in which a determined group of special people have to stand in a circle in the correct order and hold hands. That circle would release a powerful energy that would send him back to his dimension.

To explain why I believe he now resides in Stan Pines’s mind, I will show you the information I have gathered about him:

1. The Axlotl

In the last episode of the series, “Weirdmageddon part 3”, Stan and his twin brother, Ford, develop a plan to erase Bill from existence after the prophecy fails. They intend to fool him into entering Stan’s mind, thinking it was Ford’s, and then erase it completely. As Stan’s mind burns, Bill makes some strange sounds, which are his last words. They may seem just some Bill-like nonsense, but he is actually speaking in reverse. When we play that clip backwards, we get this:

“A-X-L-O-T-L! MY TIME HAS COME TO BURN! I INVOKE THE ANCIENT POWER THAT I MAY RETURN!”

This already means he intends to return, which is suspicious. Alex Hirsch, the creator of the series, describes it as a loose end he left so fans could theorize and something he could grab if he ever wanted to return to the “Gravity Falls” world.

You may be wondering what an “Axlotl” is. Well, it’s a creature that looks like this:

The Axlotl is an almighty, all-knowing being that lives in the “space and time between space and time”. He appears in a non-canon book named “Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirate’s Treasure”. Even though the book is non-canon, Alex Hirsch said it contained a great canon secret. Fans believe that that secret is the poem the Axlotl says about Bill.

When they meet him, the creature tells Dipper and Mabel each one can ask him a question. Dipper chooses to ask him “What do you know about Bill Cipher?”, to which the Axlotl replies with this strange poem:

“Sixty degrees that come in threes

Watches from within birch trees

Saw his own dimension burn

Misses home and can’t return

Says he’s happy, he’s a liar

Blame the arson for the fire

If he wants to shirk the blame

He’ll have to invoke my name

One way to absolve his crime

A different form, a different time”

I am the only one who feels sorry for Bill, right now?

Anyway, when saying “A-X-L-O-T-L”, Bill could be referring to the Aztec God Xlotl, with whom he has many things in common. Xlotl is the god of weirdness, fire, lightning, sun, death, twins, deformities, monsters and sickness. The god has a twin brother named Quetzalcoatl, who was his enemy.

Just like Xlotl, Bill brings an apocalypse of weirdness (or Weirdmageddon), has fire and lightning powers (since his hand starts burning when he wants to make a deal), has something to do with twins, monsters and freaks and is also a defeated emperor. Apart from that, Xlotl was known for making deals with the mortals.

In one of the pages of Journal 3, the Oracle page, there is a small drawing of the Axlotl and under it, you can read a cryptogram that translates to “the opposite of Bill”, which again emphasizes the opposite-twin relationship between Bill and the Axlotl.

Throughout the series there are also two cryptograms that refer to the Axlotl, both written by Bill:

“I’LL GET THIS PUPPY UP AND RUNNING AND NEITHER THE TIME BABY NOR THE FRILLY KNOW-IT-ALL WILL STOP ME”

And…

“CURSE THE AXLOTL, EVERY CONSPIRACY THEORY IS TRUE”

By the way, when Bill says “frilly know-it-all”, he is referring to the Axlotl. If you looked at the picture, you might have noticed how frilly-looking he is.

As you can see, in his dying moments, Bill invoked the Axlotl’s name to absolve his crimes, to return in “a different form” and “a different time”.

2. The Cipher Hunt

In the last episode of the series, “Weirdmageddon part 3: Take back the Falls”, Alex Hirsch (in the picture) made fans understand that, somewhere in the Northwest American forests, there was a real-life statue of Bill Cipher.

So, he decided to create an ARG (alternate reality game) in which the fans had to look for the statue with clues he had left all over the world.

The last of the four rules was that no matter what if they found the statue, the fans should not shake its outstretched hand.

One of the most curious things about this hunt is that it seemed to be led by Grunkle Stan, since many of the clues were related to him. There was a phone number found in Atlanta and, when fans called it, they were greeted by an answering machine with a message recorded in reverse. When put normally, you could understand it was Stan’s voice saying:

“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 dunno, I’m not good at riddles. It’s at Ochre Court, all right? The next clue, it’s at Ochre Court. It's, uh, it's like, it's a big old building in Rhode Island. And if you go up the stairs, there's gonna be a bunch of pictures of nuns on the wall. You gotta look behind one of the nun pictures. Sister Mary Hilda Miley. Real, real grouch, that nun. Lift up the picture to find a clue behind the nun, all right? That's the whole thing. So, you know, be careful with the picture. Don't break it. I don't want you to get anyone in trouble, all right? You don't want ol' Grunkle Stan going to jail. Anyway, go to the place, look behind the nun, find the thing, and uh, uh, always? Be...mys...look out for mysteries! That it, did, did I do it? All right.”

There was also another phone message recorded by him:

“A man whose first name is his last, a statue honouring his past. Right behind him by the sign of his park, a golden head shows light in the dark. I dunno what that means. Well, I don't have to go out there, 'n figure this out. Wonder what's on TV”

The next clue was a box shaped like Stan’s head, which contained an encrypted message and an invisible pen. Some clues later, a 2000 puzzle of Bill Cipher was found, along with the message “I hope you like puzzles” and a few Stan Bucks.

When they found the statue, there was a box buried in front of it. It contained a special copy of Journal 3, in which there was a drawing of Stan, Soos and McGucket. If you looked at the drawing with the black light provided in the box, you would see an invisible drawing of Bill right behind Stan’s head.

Along with other items, there was a pen drive with an audio file of Stan singing the song “We’ll meet again”. Afterwards, he encourages you to shake the statue’s hand, even though it is against the rules, like I mentioned before.

Well, now that I have finished lecturing you about things some of you might already know, let’s theorize!

Some of you might have noticed the similarities between Stan and Bill:

· They love the weird more than anyone else in the series

· They use a cane and a hat (in Stan’s case, a fez) when they want to add some dramatic effect to what they’re doing

· They both say “Eenie Miney You” (Stan in the episode “Dreamscrapers” and Bill in “Sock Opera”)

· They call Ford “sixer”

· At some point, both of them advise someone to buy gold (for example, when Bill says “Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold”)

Apart from that, whenever Stan is at work, he covers one of his eyes, emphasizing the similarities between him and Bill Cipher.

Do you remember the Prophecy Circle?

Everyone was holding hands except for Stan, he was the reason that thing never worked.

Imagine for a moment that he was actually Bill.

He stalls, saying he won’t hold his brother’s hand. Then, after feeling Bill’s material form close enough, he pretends to give in and makes that grammar mistake by purpose, knowing Ford would correct him. Using that as an excuse, he once again exits the circle, just in time for Bill to catch them and turn them into tapestries.

And do you know what Stan calls Ford after he corrects him?

He calls him a “know-it-all”. Remember when I said that Bill called the Axlotl a “frilly know-it-all”?

That parallel here works perfectly: Bill is a trickster and a liar with a taste for weirdness, the Axlotl is an all-knowing, almighty being. Stan would represent Bill, since he succeeds in life by tricking people, and Ford would represent the Axlotl, since he is more intelligent than his brother and has explored the mysteries of Gravity Falls and knows their powers, making him “almighty” and “all-knowing”. Ford was also trapped between dimensions, just like the Axlotl, who lives in the “space and time between space and time”.

And remember how the first phone message in the Cipher Hunt was in reverse?

Every time a character in the series has talked in reverse, it was because of Bill. When Gideon summons him in “Dreamscrapers”, his eyes turn blue and he speaks in reverse. When Fiddleford catches a glimpse of Bill’s true plan, he speaks in reverse. Apart from that, in the Hunt, all the clues related to characters seemed to be linked either to Stan or to Bill.

The Axlotl said that to absolve his crime, Bill would have to take a “different form”. Why not the form he had already taken twice (“Dreamscrapers” and “Weirdmageddon part 3”)?

I know what you’re going to say “Then why aren’t his eyes yellow, like when a person is possessed by Bill?”.

Well, that is a very good question. Congratulations on asking it! You see… His eyes aren’t weird because Bill can only control him during the night. It may seem a bit of a stretch, but continue reading.

When Ford makes his deal with Bill, as shown in “The Last Mabelcorn”, he agrees that Bill can only enter his mind when he is unconscious, which means he can only do that when he is sleeping. While he sleeps, Bill takes over his body and works to keep Ford “on schedule”. Then, Bill abuses his power by using Ford to gain his own material form and bring the Weirdmageddon. After that, Ford tries to stay awake as much as he can so he won’t be influenced by him.

I said earlier that Stan could only be possessed by Bill when sleeping. Well, all those recordings could have been done during the night. Those of you who made some deeper research might ask “Then how does one of the recordings have the voice of Soos and a nun?”. Again, congratulations on asking that question!

Even though he doesn’t do that in “Sock Opera”, Bill can mimic people’s voices, like he did with Blendin in “Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future”. One thing I noticed in the last recording of Stan’s voice is that he stutters, like “Blendin” did when Bill was mimicking his voice.

Also, in that same recording, he sings the song “We’ll meet again”. It may seem some kind of clue, that the mystery will never be over and that we will meet again, some day. Except that that is the exact same song Bill sang to Ford in “Weirdmageddon part 3”.

Now that I’ve told you this, I’m going to say something more dubious. It’s not really part of the main theory, I just want to leave this question in the air:

What if Bill and Stan were connected before the series started?

Just think of it.

Stan was already a trickster and a liar before the events of the series. He already had a taste for the weird and covered his eye before he met Bill. In “A Tale of Two Stans”, he even calls his brother “sixer”, before any of them ever heard of Gravity Falls.

There is also one thing that has always bothered me: why is Stan's mind in black and white? I thought that all minds were like that but, in "Weirdmageddon part 2", we saw what Mabel's mind would look like and it was colourful and shiny. you will probably say that it is because she's a child but no. Ford's mind is also colourful, as we see in "The Last Mabelcorn", even after it has been influenced by Bill.

And I think I might have the answer for that question.

When Bill appears without his material form, everything around him turns black and white. The fact that Stan's mind is in those same tones could mean that Bill has already been there for a long time.

Imagine if it was true. Imagine what would happen after the evens of the series if he really was Bill.

In the last episode, we see Stan and Ford together, fighting some kind of giant squid. If Stan gets possessed when he sleeps, Bill could use that as a chance to find a way to break Gravity Fall’s “shield of weirdness” without anyone suspecting him. He would already be outside the town, which would give him much more freedom.

And I will leave you with that question...