Tear Jerker / Gravity Falls: Journal 3

• According to one of the cryptograms, at one point as a child Ford held hands with a girl he liked named Cathy, who screamed (due to his polydactyly). As he makes an off-hand (and crossed-out) reference to the girl later, this incident clearly troubles him well into adulthood.
• Bill reveals in one note that had he won the events of "Sock Opera," he would have disposed of Dipper's body by leaping off the water tower and staging his suicide, trapping the real Dipper in the mindscape forever. The worst part is that the end of this message implies that Mabel would have either killed herself shortly afterward in response or Bill would have sought to use her as his next "puppet."
• In the limited edition of Journal 3, using a blacklight on one of the pages shows a drawing of Stanford's science fair project, under it are the words: WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN.
• The right page of the Island Head Beast is entirely of Ford reflecting on how spending time at Lake Gravity Falls reminds him of his childhood at Glass Shard Beach. A little under the text is a cryptogram from Ford, and a sketch of a seemingly random boat that was scribbled out. The decoded cryptogram is of Ford reminiscing of when he and Stan hunted for the Jersey Devil as kids...
• Ford actually treated the shapeshifter relatively well, like a pet even, only for it to grow obsessed with Journal 3 to the point of capturing and impersonating Fiddleford in an attempt to get it, with Ford feeling regretful about having to freeze the creature.
• The fact that Ford never mentions anything about what happened to Stan after he left with Journal 1 in the "Better World" dimension, only caring that he did what he asked him to do.
• In Blendin's secret message, even though Dipper and Mabel managed to get his job back, Time Baby and the entire Time Police kept on teasing him for losing Globnar to two kids. It got so bad, that Blendin made a deal with Bill Cipher to take care of Time Baby. This deal led to Bill possessing Blendin, and jumpstarting Weirdmageddon. After Time Baby was vaporized by Bill, the Time Police deemed Blendin a criminal. Because of this, Blendin had to travel to different time periods to hide from the Time Police. After he got stuck in the 1800s, Blendin used this opportunity to write a cryptogram based message for Dipper and Mabel. After all that, it's hard not to feel sorry for what Blendin went through. Though while the standard edition of the journal implied that the twins never decoded the message, the Special Edition journal shows that someone (likely Dipper) managed to crack the code and wrote down the translation behind the original document.
• Ford ruined Fiddleford's life by inviting him to help with the portal. As we saw in the show, Fiddleford was married and had a young son, thus he was more practical about what Ford should do with his Gravity Falls research. Ford gets a Jerkass Realization when he sees a long-bearded Fiddleford who has been through the wringer — more so when the twins give him the details off-screen — and convinces Fiddleford to patent his inventions.
  • Worse still, it's implied that Fiddleford suffered from anxiety problems even before the portal, especially when he was attacked by the Shapeshifter and the Gremloblin. Adding to everything in the main show, the poor man has had a serious Trauma Conga Line. At least things got better in the end.
• Along with the aforementioned entry about Lake Gravity Falls, there's multiple references to Stan, most of which are crossed out. Ford really did miss his brother, but he couldn't bring himself to admit it...
• Seeing how Ford trusted and bonded with Bill is saddening enough, knowing what happens. But it's a bigger punch in the gut when the ciphers are translated: Bill is essentially bragging about his plans and how he's using Ford to build his Portal, and Ford doesn't even know it.
• Ford's description of the Obsessively Normal society he grew up in is pretty sad, especially an incident where he was bullied for bringing a shrunken head to show-and-tell.

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