Little Gift Shop of Horrors

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

Little Gift Shop of Horrors
Production information
Production code	618G-209
Written by	Shion Takeuchi Matt Chapman Alex Hirsch Additional Written Material by Zach Paez
Storyboards by	Sabrina Cotugno Sunil Hall Vaughn Tada
Directed by	Stephen Sandoval
Broadcast information
Original air date	October 4, 2014 (Disney Channel) October 6, 2014 (Disney XD)
Ratings	2.3
International dates	October 24, 2014 (Canada) Click "expand" for full list January 18, 2015 (Romania, Bulgaria) January 30, 2015 (Spain) February 8, 2015 (Mexico, Brazil) February 15, 2015 (Poland) February 16, 2015 (Latin America) March 6, 2015 (Germany) March 14, 2015 (Turkey) March 21, 2015 (Czech Republic, Hungary) June 15, 2015 (Italy) October 2, 2015 (Philippines) October 22, 2015 (UK and Ireland)
Episode Guide
Previous	Soos and the Real Girl
Next	Society of the Blind Eye
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Read transcript

"Little Gift Shop of Horrors" 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. This episode is also the second and final Halloween special of 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.

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

Stan, egged.

Stan steals a fake gold watch from a 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

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 aa 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

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.

Mabel, having run off, 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

• Written by:
  • Shion Takeuchi
  • Matt Chapman
  • Alex Hirsch

• Directed by:
  • Stephen Sandoval

• Storyboards by:
  • Sabrina Cotugno
  • Sunil Hall
  • Vaughn Tada

• Additional Written Material by:
  • Zach Paez

• With the Voice Talents of:
  • Jason Ritter as Dipper Pines
  • Kristen Schaal as Mabel Pines
  • Alex Hirsch as Stan Pines and Soos
  • John DiMaggio as Harry Claymore
  • Will Forte as Tyler Cutebiker
  • Neil deGrasse Tyson as Waddles' Talking Machine
• Additional Voices:
  • Dee Bradley Baker as Waddles
  • Matt Chapman as Hand Witch, Unnamed hiker and Clay cyclops
  • Carl Faruolo as Grenda
  • Alex Hirsch
  • Gregg Turkington as Toby Determined
  • Kari Wahlgren as Cinnamon
  • Niki Yang as Candy Chiu

• Casting by:
  • Sara Jane Sherman

Production notes

See also: List of allusions and List of goofs.

Series continuity

• Tyler Cutebiker is shown running a stand titled "Sev'ral Chimes," a reference to the boy band Sev'ral Timez from "Boyz Crazy."
• The agents return from "Scary-oke," Powers appearing at the Gravity Falls Swap Meet and Trigger in the bowling alley.
• Dipper is shown reading Journal 3 under black light to reveal its invisible ink, which was first revealed in "Scary-oke."
• Waddles carries a Jack-o'-melon trick or treat bucket from "Summerween."
• There is a musical montage of Waddles "remembering" his time spent with Mabel, which includes a scene from "The Time Traveler's Pig."
• Several of Mabel's sweaters make a reappearance.
  • The wavy sweater she wore in the "The Time Traveler's Pig" during Waddles' flashback.
  • The shooting star sweater seen in the opening and "Tourist Trapped."
  • Sprinkles sweater, first seen in "Soos and the Real Girl."
  • Music note sweater, first seen in "The Inconveniencing."
  • Blue stars sweater first seen in "Boyz Crazy."
  • A sweater resembling the lightning bolt one she wore in "Double Dipper," although this one is red, while the other was black.
  • Another sweater resembling the golf course one she wore in "The Golf War," although this one is red, while the other was green.
• Soos' wolf chicken attraction from "Boss Mabel" is seen behind Stan in one of the framing scenes.

Songs featured

• Remember Those Times

Trivia

• The title of the episode is a blatant reference to the classical 1960's horror movie and the Off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors
• 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 hand-drawn 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 TV series Robot Chicken.
• 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.
• 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.

Cryptograms

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"."
  • Keyword: "NONCANON," found on the upper level rail planks in Harry Claymore's home.

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.

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