Now, if you excuse me I've got some children I need to MAKE INTO CORPSES!
„
“
Remember! Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold, BYEEEEEEEE!
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~ Bill's most famous quote.
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It's time we do a little redecorating! I could really use a castle of some kind! And how about some bubbles of pure madness?! This party never stops! Time is dead and meaning has no meaning! Existence is upside down and I reign supreme! Welcome, one and all, to WEIRDMAGEDDON!
„
~ Bill bringing forth Weirdmageddon.
Bill Cipher is the main antagonist of the Disney Channel/Disney XD animated series Gravity Falls and the titular main protagonist of the upcoming Book of Bill.
He is a extremely powerful being dream demon from Second Dimension who is trillions of years old and desires to open gateway between Nightmare Realm and Fourth Dimension, to cause an event known as Weirdmaggedon and spread his madness everywhere. He is also the archenemy of the Pines family, especially Dipper and Stanford, being the latter's former best friend and "muse".
He destroyed his own dimension by plunging it into fiery chaos, killing all those he had ever known, including his own family, and effectively wiping out his entire species, just because he hated living there with them.
While it was said that he had a bad relationship with his family, it doesn't justify his actions in any way.
He tormented several historical people with nightmares for failing to create portals for him, including the ancient Egyptians, U.S. president George Washington and film director Stanley Kubrick.
He once tormented a Native American shaman from the lands that would later become Gravity Falls named "Modoc the Wise", and after foreseeing a catastrophic event involving Bill that could potentially destroy the entire world, he set himself on fire in an effort to prevent it.
He manipulated Stanford Pines into making the portal for him in order to cause Weirdmageddon through charm and flattery, making Stanford think that Bill was his friend.
It is also possible that he intentionally hurt Ford's eyes while possessing him, as the blood on pages in Journal 3 about Bill is from Ford's eyes.
Even though Bill Cipher is certifiable, he still retains moral agency and is fully aware of his actions and their impact on others. The fact that he is proud of being a madman and even tells Li'l Gideon and Ford Pines his psychosis should be obvious to everyone by now makes him even less sympathetic.
While he has many comedic moments throughout the series, none of them detract from his heinousness, with most of them just showing just how cruel, sadistic, and vile he truly is.
Despite claiming that the Henchmaniacs are his "friends" and sometimes treats them affably, he does not actually care for them, as he is only kind to them so he can be praised and admired by them, he angrily yelled at Paci-Fire to walk off their injury, he threw a temper tantrum that almost destroyed his castle with them in it when he could not escape the borders of the town, and only got annoyed when they were beaten during their fight with the Shacktron.
Season 1[]
Under Li'l Gideon's orders, he tried to steal the code to the Mystery Shack's safe, hoping that Gideon would help him with Weirdmageddon.
He yanked out a deer's teeth, and while he did return them where they belonged, this was just another scare tactic to confuse and torment Gideon, not an instance of pity for innocent animals.
After failing to bring Gideon the code to the Mystery Shack's safe, he tried to kill Dipper, Mabel and Soos, planning on destroying Stan's mind when he was done.
While he did let Dipper, Mabel, and Soos off the hook and admitted that they were smarter than he thought, it’s possible that this was more so because they overwhelmed him rather than respect. Even if it was respect, he subverts it by season 2, where he becomes insulted them and psychologically tormented them out of spite.
Season 2[]
He tricked Dipper into allowing him to possess his body, and during his time in Dipper's body he destroyed the laptop that Dipper was using to find the author, abused Dipper's body in multiple ways, and tried to destroy the journal.
It's also revealed in Gravity Falls: Journal 3 that after destroying the journal, he planned on jumping off of a water tower in Dipper's body to leave the latter stuck as a ghost forever and make it look like Dipper committed suicide, with it also being implied that he would have either possessed Mabel to leave her stuck as a ghost as well or gaslit her into committing suicide out of guilt.
He possessed Blendin Blandin so he could trick Mabel into giving him the inter-dimensional rift under the pretext that he would make summer endless so Dipper would not take an apprenticeship with Ford and leave her behind, before using it to bring about Weirdmageddon, in which he caused havoc and destruction throughout Gravity Falls.
He imprisoned Mabel in the Prison Bubble so she would remain there forever, and while Mabel was much happier there than in the real world, the place was a lie and its inhabitants were disguised monsters who tempted Dipper, Wendy, and Soos into remaining there forever.
He horrifically deformed Preston Northwest by shuffling the functions the function of every hole in his face after he tried to ally with him.
He had the Eye Bats turn most of the citizens of Gravity Falls into statues, and stacked them into a "frozen throne of human agony".
He unleashed bubbles of pure madness, causing multiple citizens to go completely feral and insane.
He tried to convince Ford to join him along with his henchmaniacs, and turned him into a gold statue to use as a back-scratcher when he refused.
He destroyed all three of Ford's journals before ordering 8-Ball and Teeth to eat Dipper alive.
He tortured Gideon by forcing him to do a cute dance in a cage for the rest of eternity after he betrayed him.
He killed Time Baby and most of the Time Police, while also not caring about Time Baby telling him that Weirdmageddon could end the very fabric of existence itself.
He planned to expand Weirdmageddon to the entire world and then the universe, only to be stopped by Gravity Falls' law of weirdness magnetism.
He once again offered Ford a chance to join him in exchange for learning how to bring down the barrier keeping him trapped in Gravity Falls, and when he refused, Bill tortured him with hundreds of volts of electricity for the information.
When the resistance of Gravity Falls came to fight Bill in the Shacktron, Bill had his Henchmaniacs fight it to kill everyone inside.
After failing to get the information to escape Gravity Falls from Ford by torturing him, he then decided to threaten his family to get him to comply.
He turned Wendy Corduroy, Li'l Gideon, Fiddleford McGucket, Robbie Valentino, Soos Ramirez and Pacifica Northwest into posters for his castle right in front of the Pines family, with them being conscious since they are shown screaming.
After Dipper and Mabel escaped to buy Stan and Ford time, Bill turned into a more demonic form so he could kill Dipper and Mabel and "make them into corpses" and "disassemble their molecules".
He threatened to kill Dipper and Mabel if Ford didn't tell him how to take Weirdmageddon global, and then tried to kill one of them while having Stanley and Stanford watch "just for the heck of it", with it being seen through his eye that he would've killed Mabel first.
In his final moments, he tried to bribe Stan with anything he wants before unsuccessfully trying to kill him for tricking him into going into his mind instead of Ford's.
While he did agree to leave Dipper, Mabel and Stan alone when Ford agreed to let him into his mind (who was actually Stanley in disguise), this is pragmatic so he could spread his Weirdmageddon to the universe.
It is also implied he was going to go back on his promise to spare Ford's family, since Stan expressed doubts about him telling the truth.
Trivia[]
In the non-canon gamebook Gravity Falls: Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure!, it's stated by the Axolotl that Bill Cipher wasn't as happy as he wanted people to believe he was and he thoroughly missed his homeworld, implying remorse over his actions. While the book isn't canon as a whole, it was stated that the book had “one canon secret”, and considering Bill's final words in the show called out the Axolotl's name, it's possible that the Axolotl was the canon secret.
Additionally, Bill's final words were a backward message ("A.X.O.L.O.T.L.! My time has come to burn! I invoke the ancient power that I may return!") which tells us that before being killed by Stanley, Bill Cipher invoked the Axolotl to return from the dead. The Axolotl's message in said gamebook also claims that if Bill wants redemption, he must invoke the Axolotl's name so he could return in a different form "a different time".
This however cannot disqualify him from his PE status considering that he tried to kill Stanley in his last moments, meaning he more than likely only called upon the Axolotl to save himself rather than out of remorse for his actions.
Ironically, Bill's voice actor Alex Hirsch would later on voice the Pure Good King Clawthorne in The Owl House, with even their voices being almost identical. Even more ironically, Dana Terrace, the creator of The Owl House, previously worked as storyboard artist in Gravity Falls and took several inspirations from Hirsch’s work.
To further the irony, during Season 1 of The Owl House there was a popular fan-theory that King was a reincarnated Bill following his death in the series finale.
The second part of Weirdmageddon originally had a different plot: Mabel was meant to find out what the Prison Bubble actually was, and Bill would have imprisoned her and Dipper in their photo album, where they would have relived their worst memories. Had this been published, it would've made Bill even worse, as he puts Dipper and Mabel into a fate worse than death.
✓
