Monster hunt! Monster hunt!
Grunkle Stan wants to bond with the twins by taking them out fishing. Dipper and Mabel are bored already by the mere prospect of sitting in a boat for hours...and they jump when they hear rumors of a dreadful monster living at the bottom of the lake. Dipper's thirst to investigate and categorize the paranormal (possibly winning fame and lucre along the way) takes hold, and armed with over a dozen cameras, a boat to Scuttlebutt Island, and Soos, he and Mabel set out to track down... the mystical Gobblewonker!Meanwhile, Stan denies his disappointment and tries to have fun by himself—by telling awful jokes at inappropriate times.
Tropes in this episode:
- Art Shift: The animation of the boys in Mabel's Imagine Spot is decidedly different from how the show is animated.
- Attention Whore: Old Man McGucket made the monster to get attention.
- Attentive Shade Lowering: Mabel's Imagine Spot of what she'll do with the photo contest prize money involves her buying a human-sized hamster ball and running past a pair of hot guys, who do this trope to her. Her response: "Hey boys. You can look, but you can't touch.
- Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity: Grunkle Stan takes Dipper and Mabel fishing. Needless to say the twins are happy to ditch him to go monster hunting with Soos.
- Brick Joke: Early in the episode, Dipper hides a camera under his hat as a backup. Later on, when he's frantically looking for a camera, Mabel simply takes his hat off.
- Cave Behind the Falls: Becomes relevant when Dipper frantically flips through the Journal mid-chase and thinks there might be a cave behind a waterfall. Mabel calls back, "Might be?!" before, wanting for other options, they shoot through it and true enough, there's a cave that brings them beyond the monster's reach.
- Consolation Backfire: After Dipper loses a camera with a picture of the Gobblewonker, Soos tries to cheer him up by saying he got a ton of pictures of the beavers they saw.Dipper: Why would that make me feel any better?!
- Continuity Nod: Dipper asks Mabel if they got any pictures of the gnomes they saw in the previous episode.
- Cool Boat: Averted with Grunkle Stan's dinghy, the Stan O War, but played straight with Soos' boat, the SS Cool Dude. Too bad it got wrecked when the Gobblewonker chased after Dipper, Mabel, and Soos.
- Counterfeit Cash: During their last family bonding day, Stan used the kids to make counterfeit money.
- Crazy-Prepared: Dipper brings 17 disposable cameras for a monster hunt. This is because he's smart enough to realize that cameras keep getting destroyed or lost during monster hunts.
- Defensive "What?": Grunkle Stan lets out one of these after one of his jokes falls flat.
- Don't Explain the Joke: Grunkle Stan tells a joke to a couple.Stan: My ex-wife still misses me... but her aim is gettin' better! ... Her aim is gettin' better! ... Y'see, it's funny because marriage is terrible.
- Early-Bird Cameo:
- Li'l Gideon Gleeful from "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel" appears in an ad on the back cover of the tabloid Dipper is reading at breakfast.
- Xyler and Craz appear in Mabel's Imagine Spot, before turning up again in "Dreamscaperers".
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Stan mentions that he would go fishing with "the guys at the lodge", but they don’t trust him. By the end of the season, it was established that Stan has a Friendless Background.
- Old Man McGucket's stories about his pal Ernie and the "Shamebot" aren’t mentioned during his Character Development in Season 2.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: It's very hard to catch, but when the Gobblewonker chases Soos and the twins between Stan's boat and the loving pop-pop and his grandkids, you can see mechanical joint rings at the base of the creature's neck, giving an early hint about its mechanical nature. These are visible again once it chases them into the cave, but that's just before the reveal.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Old Man McGucket. He's the one who made the mechanical Gobblewonker and it turns out it's not the first time he's built something like this to get attention from family members and friends.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: While Dipper has good reason to be suspicious of Grunkle Stan in general, Stan had no ulterior motive in this episode. He just wanted someone to go fishing with him for once (the guys at the fishing lodge don't like or trust him).
- Karma Houdini: Old Man McGucket is never punished for the numerous homicidal rampages he casually admits to having gone on.
- Moment Killer: Grunkle Stan unwittingly interrupts a man who is about to propose to his girlfriend, and proceeds to tell a joke about how awful marriage is.
- Not the Nessie: Turns out the Gobblewonker is just a machine built and controlled by Old Man McGucket.
- Prehensile Hair: Old Man McGucket can operate a stick-shift with his beard.
- Real After All: At the end of the episode, we get a shot of the real Gobblewonker swimming beneath the lake as it eats one of Dipper's lost cameras.
- Running Gag: This episode's end-of-credits cryptogram read "QHAW ZHHN: UHWXUQ WR EXWW LVODQG." Once decoded, it reads "NEXT WEEK: RETURN TO BUTT ISLAND." which refers to a joke earlier in the episode in which Soos covers the ‘scuttle’ in the Scuttlebutt Island sign with his hand, making it read Butt Island instead.
- Schmuck Bait: Quite literally. Soos decides he wants to eat some of the fish bait they've brought along to lure out the Gobblewonker. When he tastes it, he starts gagging and coughing, then immediately lampshades what he's done.Soos: Dude, I don't know what I expected that to taste like.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The Gobblewonker turns out to be a mechanical monster that Old Man McGucket built to get attention from his son... at least until the ending.
- Sickeningly Sweet: Stan's reaction to the little kid telling his grandpa "I just weawized I wuv you".Stan: Oh, come on! Boo! Boo!
- Signs of Disrepair: Parodied. Soos spots the Scuttlebutt Island sign and covers the "scuttle" part, so that it reads "Butt Island".
- Sheet of Glass: Parodied when Soos, Dipper and Mabel crash through said glass in the middle of a lake, not unlike the trope's image.
- Shout-Out: When Dipper is telling Mabel and Soos about the backup cameras, he tells Soos to pretend he's Bigfoot. Soos strikes a pose which exactly resembles the most famous still image from the Patterson-Gimlin film
.- In Dipper's Imagine Spot interview, he's sporting a jacket, fedora, and stubble that gives him a strong resemblance to Indiana Jones.
- So Unfunny, It's Funny: Stan, Soos and Mabel all have their moments of this. Which of course means that Dipper is the odd one out, being The Comically Serious.
- Stock Ness Monster: The Gravity Falls Gobblewonker.
- Stock Sound Effects: The Gobblewonker roars like the Jurassic Park T-Rex.
- Super-Persistent Predator: The Gobblewonker appeared to be this at first, at least until it was revealed that it was a robot.
- Vocal Dissonance: The voice that Mabel gives the pelican is rather gruff sounding. This is because Hirsch did Mabel's pelican voice rather than Kristen Schaal.
