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S2e6 clay soos
All animation is black magic.
This article contains information on a subject that is not considered canon in the Gravity Falls universe.

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"Little Gift Shop of Horrors"[1] is the sixth episode of the second season of Gravity Falls and the 26th episode overall. It premiered on October 4, 2014 on Disney Channel.[1] This episode is also the second and final Halloween special of the series. It is also the only episode of Gravity Falls to be considered not canon to the series.

Official overview[]

In three separate mysterious tales, Stan is cursed by a Witch, Waddles accidentally consumes a bowl of brain-enhancing goop and builds a machine that allows him to speak for the first time, and Mabel faces her fear of Claymation.[1]

Synopsis[]

The episode begins with Stan welcoming a person (shown from first-person view) whose car broke down at night into the Mystery Shack, warning the traveler that he may be subject to "Tales Designed to Sell My Merchandise!"

Stan explains that after hours, the Mystery Shack has its spookiest attractions for sale. He offers the person a disembodied hand, which is ridiculously expensive. To support this, he tells a story called "Hands Off."

Hands Off[]

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Stan, egged.

Stan steals a fake gold watch from an old witch when he, Dipper and Mabel visit the local swap meet. The witch curses Stan, and he wakes up without hands the next morning.

At breakfast, the twins discover that Stan's hands are missing. A message from the witch plays on the watch, but Stan angrily interrupts it, also refusing to listen to Dipper's suggestion to simply return the watch. When his stumps make breakfast difficult, he asks Mabel to make him new hands, but those work poorly too. Dipper, Mabel, and Stan visit the witch's secret hideout in mountain cave, which they locate using a pamphlet from the swap meet. The cave is populated by disembodied hands that promptly attack them. The hand witch reveals herself. Stan returns the watch, but she claims the curse can only be broken by a kiss. Stan relents and kisses the witch's hand, but loses his nerve when the witch claims it was supposed to be a kiss on the lips.

The witch confesses that the hand stealing is a ruse meant to get her a date, but that the plan always ends in failure. Mabel suggests a home makeover to attract potential dates instead, and the Pines, with help from the disembodied hands, remake the cave. The grateful witch returns Stan's hands to him. After Stan and the twins leave, a mountain climber turns up. The witch proceeds to flirt with him using a book Mabel gave her, and is apparently successful. After the story, the person says they don't want the hand, so Stan tosses it and the hand crawls away. Stan spots Waddles on the ground and offers to sell him, calling him a "magic pig", and tells a story called "Abaconings".

Abaconings[]

S2e6 mabel window

Dipper and Waddles bond, leaving Mabel lonesome.

Dipper orders a new puzzle toy, the "what-the-heck-ahedron", which promises to feature the person who solves it on its box. He finds it incredibly difficult, and Mabel suggests he might just not be smart enough to solve it. Affronted, Dipper locates the "percepshrooms" which Journal 3 says will increase brainpower when ground up and smeared on the forehead overnight. Dipper does so, but soon after falling asleep, Waddles wakes up and eats the ground mushroom powder off of Dipper's forehead.

The next morning, the twins wake up to see that Waddles has become a genius: he has built a vehicle, with a device that allows him to talk, and has also solved Dipper's puzzle toy. Dipper eagerly welcomes the new Waddles, but Mabel is heartbroken, as Waddles no longer wants to play with her, preferring to spend his time inventing. Dipper and Waddles work together to create inventions, eventually building the "Smarticle Accelerator," which will let Waddles solve all the mysteries of the universe. Mabel is left on her own.

Mabel asks Waddles to remember all the fun they used to have. Waddles realizes that there is no point in helping the world if he can't help his favorite person in the world. He then activates the Smarticle Accelerator's reverse switch, reverting him to an ordinary pig, and causing the device to collapse. Dipper is devastated, but Mabel says a hug from Waddles will cheer him up. Dipper hugs Waddles, and the pig regurgitates the What-the-Heck-A-Hedron, which Dipper cheers him up more, but finds it a bit gross.

Back in the Shack, the person refuses Waddles as well. Stan replies by offering some spooky VHS movies, and tells a story called "Clay Day".

Clay Day[]

S2e6 dive on in

Mabel jumps into the Cyclopes' belly button.

Dipper, Mabel, Stan, and Soos are watching a movie called "Believe in Yourself," which only Mabel likes. Stan puts in "The Voyages of Loinclothiclese." To Mabel's dismay, the film has claymation, which Mabel has a childhood fear of. She goes and hides in a laundry basket until Stan decides to take everyone to the house of the film's director, Harry Claymore, to prove claymation is harmless.

Claymore's house is somewhat old, and Stan, Dipper, Mabel, and Soos soon discover that it is inhabited by a giant clay cyclops and clay skeletons. They find Claymore tied up, and he explains that he used black magic to make the clay figures animate themselves. However, when computer animation was invented, the figures were out of a job, so they went crazy and turned on him. Claymore says that the clay monsters will turn them into clay monsters too by covering them in clay.

Having run off, Mabel wonders what to do. While fiddling with loose clay, she has an idea. She dives into the Cyclops through its belly button and remolds it into Shimmery Twinkleheart, a character from Believe in Yourself, which crushes the other clay figures while Mabel frees her friends. They initially assume that Mabel conquered her fear, but Mabel explains that she's twice as scared now, but now she knows it's a perfectly rational fear.

Back at the Shack, the gang watches another Loinclothiclese movie, and Stan and the twins are glad no one got turned got turned into clay. However, they discover that Soos has mysteriously turned into clay, and Stan throws the VCR at his head to get rid of him.

After that story, when the person still refuses to buy anything, Stan offers him a free sample of a "delicious potion". When they drink it, he passes out. He later wakes up trapped in a glass box, now a Mystery Shack attraction dubbed "The Cheapskate." During the end credits, he plays tic-tac-toe with Mabel, who keeps bending the rules to her advantage.

Credits[]

Production notes[]

See also: List of allusions and List of goofs.

Series continuity[]

Songs featured[]

Trivia[]

  • This is the only fully non canon episode of Gravity Falls.
  • Although Bottomless Pit! contains non canon stories too and is the only other episode to do so, the overall episode is canon as the events did occur in the series.
  • This is the second Halloween episode in the series, the first being "Summerween."
  • This is the only episode to premiere on Disney Channel after the series was moved to Disney XD.
  • This is also the only time that CGI animations are used in the series.
  • The fiery orb which Stan takes from the unnamed traveler before the first story is a Palantir from The Lord of The Rings.
  • Despite the stories supposedly being made up, the hand crawls away after Stan tosses it after finishing the first story suggesting that "Hands Off" really did happen.
    • Based on the canonical real-life Journal 3, there is no page describing Percepshrooms, which suggests that Stan was telling the truth when he said he made up "Abaconings."
    • The real-life Journal also features an entry detailing the Author meeting the Hand Witch at a fair.
  • The claymation segments during Clay Day were animated by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, Inc., best known for providing the animation to the adult TV series Robot Chicken.
  • In "Clay Day," it is revealed that Mabel has lutumtohphobia, a fear of claymation and stop-motion animation.
  • The cartoon Mabel is watching is marked as "episode 618."
  • According to the VHS case, Clash of the Genres is rated "O" for Old People.
  • The Hand Witch wears a red robe with two large hands depicted in black. This is a color-inverted version of the robe worn by the villainous sorcerer "The Master" in the low-budget horror film "Manos: The Hands of Fate".
  • In the original twist ending, the visiting tourist was supposed to be revealed to be director M. Night Shyamalan.[3]
  • The title "Abaconings" is a portmanteau of "bacon" and "awakenings."
  • Smart Waddles was originally voiced by Jad Abumrad. Alex Hirsch felt that Abumrad's voice wasn't right, and repeatedly asked Neil Degrasse Tyson, who turned him down several times. Tyson eventually changed his mind and lent his voice after the animation had been finished.[4]
  • The episode's title is a reference to the musical "Little Shop of Horrors" from 1986.
  • According to Alex Hirsch, Abaconings was a reworked version of a planned episode in season 1 that would have involved Mabel being overprotective of Waddles and Waddles being guest voiced by Jon Hamm.[5]

Cryptograms[]

S2e6 help me
S2e6 vin key

Key: NONCANON

  • During the ending credits, there is a cryptogram that reads "PVREK BIG QF. JCDQZRF’ ZNVEFH OBCX: "C BEWRS VVUTBFL BT BKNX CVAY BKNX CVAY BKNX"" Using the vigenère cipher, it translates to "CHECK OUT DR. WADDLES’ LATEST BOOK: "A BRIEF HISTORY OF OINK OINK OINK OINK OINK"."
S2e6 cryptogram

End page.

  • The page section at the end of the episode says, "23-12-12 23-10-15-11-23-4-15-9-10" on the top left, and "15-5 22-12-23-21-13 11-23-17-15-21" on the bottom right, which translates to "ALL ANIMATION and "IS BLACK MAGIC" after being put through the combined cipher.

Gallery

Click here to view the image gallery for Little Gift Shop of Horrors.
Click here to view this page's gallery.

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Episode 206 "Little Gift Shop of Horrors". Disney–ABC Television Group. Retrieved on April 5, 2015.
  2. Pucci, Douglas (October 7, 2014). Saturday Final Ratings (broken link). Cross-MediaWorks. Retrieved on November 14, 2020.
  3. Swain Hunt. Podcast Episode 303 :: ALEX HIRSCH SiDEBAR - COMICS, ART + POP CULTURE. (January 7, 2015). Podcast accessed on 2016-August 18, 2016
  4. Episode commentary
  5. https://youtu.be/Q2hNyZQ2orw

Site navigation

V - E - H - D Gravity Falls episodes
Season one 1. Tourist Trapped | 2. The Legend of the Gobblewonker | 3. Headhunters | 4. The Hand That Rocks the Mabel | 5. The Inconveniencing | 6. Dipper vs. Manliness | 7. Double Dipper | 8. Irrational Treasure | 9. The Time Traveler's Pig | 10. Fight Fighters | 11. Little Dipper | 12. Summerween | 13. Boss Mabel | 14. Bottomless Pit! | 15. The Deep End | 16. Carpet Diem | 17. Boyz Crazy | 18. Land Before Swine | 19. Dreamscaperers | 20. Gideon Rises
Season two 21. Scary-oke | 22. Into the Bunker | 23. The Golf War | 24. Sock Opera | 25. Soos and the Real Girl | 26. Little Gift Shop of Horrors | 27. Society of the Blind Eye | 28. Blendin's Game | 29. The Love God | 30. Northwest Mansion Mystery | 31. Not What He Seems | 32. A Tale of Two Stans | 33. Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons | 34. The Stanchurian Candidate | 35. The Last Mabelcorn | 36. Roadside Attraction | 37. Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future | 38. Weirdmageddon Part 1 | 39. Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality | 40-41. Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back The Falls
Animated shorts Candy Monster | Stan's Tattoo | Mailbox | Lefty | Tooth | The Hide-Behind | Mabel's Guide to Dating | Mabel's Guide to Stickers | Mabel's Guide to Fashion | Mabel's Guide to Color | Mabel's Guide to Art | Fixin' It with Soos: Golf Cart | Fixin' It with Soos: Cuckoo Clock | TV Shorts 1 | TV Shorts 2 | Mabel's Scrapbook: Heist Movie | Mabel's Scrapbook: Petting Zoo
Lists Allusions | Cryptograms | Goofs | International versions
Related Media Unaired pilot | Next Time On Trailer | Creature in the Closet | Creepy Letters from Lil' Gideon | Gravity Falls Journal 3 Infomercial | Gravity Falls: Six Strange Tales | Gravity Falls: Even Stranger | The Mystery in Gravity Falls | "Old Man" McGucket's Conspiracy Corner Marathon | Between the Pines | Soos' Stan Fiction | Soos Cast | Gravity Falls – Tug-n’-Talk Shmebulock | One Crazy Summer: A Look Back at Gravity Falls | Call Me Mabel
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