Unaired pilot

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

Pilot
Production information
Written by	Alex Hirsch
Storyboards by	Alex Hirsch
Broadcast information
Original air date	2010 (possibly)
International dates	August 3, 2016 (uploaded as a prize for Cipher Hunt)
Episode Guide
Previous	N/A
Next	Tourist Trapped
[Source]

Read transcript

The unaired pilot is the unofficial pilot of Gravity Falls. It is a low-budget, pre-production test version of the show with a premise similar to that of episode "Tourist Trapped."

While pitching Gravity Falls to Disney, Alex Hirsch was eventually asked to create a pilot of the series to show to the network. He accepted, and the series was later greenlit for production as a full series. Unsatisfied with the look and style of this pilot, Alex Hirsch personally hired his own team when the show was greenlit. The pilot has never aired on television, but the full episode was uploaded on August 3, 2016 after Cipher Hunt, as a prize for the completion of Bill's puzzle.

The episode is on a private site, which can be accessed here. To access it, a username and a password are required. The username is "RETURNBACKWARDS" and the password is "TOTHEPASTAGAINTHREE."

Overview

Twins Dipper and Mabel visit their eccentric great-uncle Stan for a summer in Gravity Falls, Oregon, where he operates the world's most bizarre museum. In the opener, the twins arrive in Gravity Falls and soon discover something amiss in the remote town.

Synopsis

The "tidal wave of horror."

The episode opens with a flash forward of the young twins Dipper and Mabel Pines falling from a cliff in the golf cart, while being chased by a "tidal wave of horror." Then it cuts back to Dipper narrating how their parents sent them to spend their summer break with their Great Uncle Stan in the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, where they soon came face-to-face with the town's strange and uncanny secrets.

Freezie Pops from the Freezie Pop London Bridge that Stan made.

One day, Stan calls the kids downstairs. When they get there, he calls them "my favorite twins, Dylan and Rowena." Then he shows them his newest attraction: a scale model of the Tower Bridge in London built entirely from freezy pops. When he taps it, the model breaks apart and they start eating the 200 freezy pops at Grunkle Stan's request. Dipper reads one of the riddles on the sticks: "What is a ghost's favorite ice cream flavor?" Mabel says it's "booberry" and Grunkle Stan says "corpse melon," while Dipper thinks it's "cookies and screams," but the stick is blank in the other side, so the riddle has no answer.

The "Undead creatures" page in "Dr. Crackpot's Book of the Damned."

Dipper soon finds his sister's new boyfriend — Norman — is suspiciously odd. Later, while reading a mysterious book called "Dr. Crackpot's Book of the Damned," with facts and notes about magical creatures, he starts believing Mabel's boyfriend is a zombie, because of his strange behavior, and starts to secretly record him to confirm his suspicion. Then, he confronts Mabel and tells her what he thinks Norman is, but she doesn't believe him. Right when he's about to give up and admit he's being paranoid, Dipper watches a video he took where Norman drops one of his hands and then picks it up. Convinced that Norman is a zombie, he borrows the golf cart from Stan and rushes to save Mabel.

Meanwhile, Mabel is with Norman, who reveals that he is actually a gnome named Jeff standing on top of 4 other gnomes, and that they want to marry her and make her their queen. When she rejects their proposal, they kidnap her. Dipper finds the gnomes running into the forest carrying a tied up Mabel over their heads and starts to chase them with the cart. Dipper asks what is going on, and Mabel explains that Norman turned out to be a bunch of gnomes.

Dipper smashes Shmebulock's face.

In the forest, Dipper demands the gnomes to hand out Mabel, but the other gnomes jump off the trees and start tearing the golf cart. Then other gnomes are fired like arrows from a bow towards the golf cart. Dipper dodges them, though, and soon catches up with the kidnappers. Once he does, he tells Mabel she has to jump. She uses her braces to cut the rope and jumps into the cart. Dipper drives away from the gnomes, but a gnome jumps and grabs his face. Mabel punches the gnome off his brother's face, but when he's able to see again, he accidentally drives the cart off a cliff and through a Gravity Falls billboard, crashing it in a forest.

The twins crawl out from the cart, only to find themselves surrounded by the gnomes. Then, the Gnome King appears. He's an old gnome with a very long white beard which he uses to move around, instead of his legs. He announces that the time has come to fulfill Mabel's destiny, as it's written in the prophecy of "Shmiseldorf." Mabel tells him to go away as Dipper threatens him and throws a shoe at him. Seeing this, the King says he will release Mabel if Dipper answers a riddle: "What is a ghost's favorite ice cream flavor?" Mabel thinks that it's "booberry," while Dipper believes it's "cookies and screams." She asks him to trust her, so Dipper answers "booberry." This turns out to be the right answer and all the gnomes become stone statues.

Pilot vs final comparison.

The twins return to the Shack. Mabel says that she is sorry she didn't trust Dipper before and that she feels sad that her first boyfriend was a bunch of gnomes. Dipper tries to cheer her up by saying that her next boyfriend may be a vampire. Then they hug.

When they ring the Shack's door bell, Stan opens it, covered in melted stains of red freezy pops that he had been eating. He tries to say, "Brain freeze!" but can only say, "Brain" before the twins think he is a zombie and start pelting him with rocks.

The episode closes with Dipper's narration, who says that "It was the least weird day of summer."

Credits

The episode has no credits at the end, but the following are some of the confirmed participations in its production:

• Written by
  • ​Alex Hirsch
• Storyboards by
  • Alex Hirsch
• With the voice talents of
  • Alex Hirsch as Stan Pines
• Additional voices
  • Alex Hirsch as the gnomes (including "Norman")
  • Justin Roiland as the King of the Gnomes

Dipper was voiced by Jason Ritter and Mabel by Kristen Schaal, just like in the rest of the series.

Production notes

The Pilot was created in 2010 by recent CalArts graduate Alex Hirsch. Hirsch wrote and drew the storyboard entirely on post-it notes and a rushed pilot was commissioned by Disney to a small low budget flash animation studio, House of Cool studios, located in Toronto, Canada.

Dipper looking at a map.

Other unreleased scenes

Mabel and the pink "cat-corns."

• There is an unreleased short "next time" preview at the end of the episode, narrated most probably by Stan, showing the kids befriending the locals of Gravity Falls.
  • Mabel plays the fortune tellers game with Bats Biker just like she does in "Headhunters."
  • Dipper looks at a map of Gravity Falls.
  • Mabel plays with some pink "kitten-corns."
  • Dipper and Wendy play Ouija.

    

    Dipper and the UFO at the town.

• A clip shows Dipper running from a crashing UFO. The series only references aliens in cryptograms and the episode "Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future."

Differences

Promotional image for the pilot.

• It is 12 minutes long, approximately half the length of a normal Gravity Falls episode.
• As narrated by Dipper in the beginning, this isn't their first adventure. He mentions "that fishing trip," which could be a reference to the events of "The Legend of the Gobblewonker," and a "telekinesis incident," where Mabel is shown apparently lifting Stan and his couch with her mind.
• Unlike "Tourist Trapped," Dipper has his blue pine tree hat throughout the entire episode, instead of him getting it at the end.
• Stan is in his eighties in the pilot, while he is in his sixties in the series.
  • He wears adult diapers of a brand called "Grampers”, a parody of Pampers.
• Soos and Wendy do not appear in the pilot episode unlike in the actual pilot.
• There is no Journal 3 in the pilot. Instead, Dipper reads a book called "Dr. Crackpot's Book of the Damned," which he already has at the Shack. The book appears to be written in German, which Dipper is able to read.
• While most of the plot is identical to that of "Tourist Trapped," the climax is completely different. Instead of forming into a giant gnome, the gnomes chase the twins to the lair of a gnome who appears to hold a high position among the gnomes. This gnome asks the twins to solve a riddle to free Mabel. When the twins solve the "riddle" (actually a joke found on a popsicle stick), the gnomes turn to stone.
• Dipper states that this episode was "the least weird day of summer," but in "Tourist Trapped," he expresses boredom for his life in Gravity Falls.

  

  Mabel playing the fortune teller's game with Bats/Stab Biker.

• In the scenes from the next episode, Bats Biker's tatoo says "stab" instead of "bats," which is the same word backwards.
• There are, of course, noticeable differences in style and character designs. The following are key differences.
  • Details are not as heavily outlined as they appear in the show's current design.
  • Dipper has no vest and has differently styled shoes with white tips. He also has white stripes at the ends of his sleeves and at the bottom of his shirt and his Pine Tree hat is worn at the beginning instead of being obtained later in the series like the aired pilot.
  • Mabel has a different outfit and also has white shoes.

    

    Dipper and Wendy using a Ouija board.

  • Stan has four fingers in the pilot while in the series he has five. Also, Stan has grey eyebrows and his hair cannot be seen with his fez on, but thick white hair can be seen around his head in the pilot. His fez has a star between the claw-like points and Stan's nose is a different shape. In this design, Stan has a walking stick with an 8 ball at the base of it.
  • Wendy, seen in different clips, has black hair and her hat and outfit are completely different from in the series.

Trivia

• Alex Hirsch originally stated that he hoped this pilot would never be fully shown to the public, because it's "a mess" and it "would be like showing awkward photos from [his] high school prom." Another reason was that pilots made for internal usage usually have a lot of unlicensed material, like songs, so releasing them to the general audience can cause legal trouble. This is probably the case with the musical pieces used in the pilot.
  • However, Hirsch later stated if people completed the real-life puzzle of Bill Cipher during Cipher Hunt, he would release the unaired pilot to the public. The puzzle was finished on August 1, 2016.
    • On August 3, 2016 the pilot was released on The Mystery of Gravity Falls, although to access it one needs a username and password, which turned out to be on the USB drive that was among the treasures found with the Bill Cipher statue. They are "RETURNBACKWARDS" and "TOTHEPASTAGAINTHREE," respectively.
• Four notable pieces of music are used in the pilot. The first is an instrumental version of "To Binge" by Gorillaz, which is used during Dipper's recap of events, at the start, as well as during the narration at the end. The second is an instrumental version of "In The Summertime" by Mungo Jerry, which can be heard in the date montage between Mabel and Norman. The third is a brief excerpt of the theme song to the 1999 sci-fi comedy "Galaxy Quest," heard when Dipper first takes off in the golf cart. The fourth and final piece is an excerpt from the score to the 1984 horror film, "Nightmare on Elm Street," used when Stan is being pelted with rocks.
• "Retardant Racoon" was later seen (as "Fire Retardant Racoon") at Mystery Mountain, in "Roadside Attraction."
• There is an animation error in Dr. Crackpot's Book of the Damned. When Dipper is first reading the entry for zombies, the image of the zombie is on the right page, but when he's showing it to Mabel, it's on the left page.
• When Stan shows his newest attraction to Dipper and Mabel, a scale model of a bridge built entirely from freezy pops he calls it the 'London Bridge'. In reality he made a model of the 'Tower Bridge' in London. London does have a bridge named 'London Bridge' but that's not the one Stan has made.
• Dipper guesses "Boo Berry" as an answer the question "What is a ghost's favorite ice cream flavor?" Boo Berry is a kids' breakfast cereal, though whether this is an intentional reference is unknown.

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