What Could Have Been / Gravity Falls

Concept Art that shows vastly different designs of both Stan and Dipper.

Thanks to the openness of the Gravity Falls creative team both during and after the show's two-season run, we know a surprising amount about all the things changed during production:

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Examples:

General

• The earliest idea for the show was made as a competition between Alex and his classmate at CalArts, instead focused on Greg Cobalt, a young twenty something who decides to venture to a town called “Gravity Falls” after a bad break-up, and would notice odd people and things, including; a secret society of sturgeon worshipping old men, a wacky girl with telekinetic powers, a magic typewriter that writes cursed poems, a magical talking owl, and a policeman who knows the town’s secrets. When he eventually pitched it to Disney Channel, he scrapped all these ideas and instead created Dipper and Mabel to be the main characters, although the idea of a secret society would eventually become “The Blind Eye Society”.
• The early concept art shows several possible designs for the characters:
  • Several designs were done for Dipper’s hat, and one popular one was a sea captain’s hat.
  • Mabel’s sweaters were more of a 90’s sweater dress style at one point, and she had many hairstyle changes.
    • Another idea was for her to wear cowgirl boots. While she doesn’t wear them in the final product, some shots of her and Dipper’s room include a pair of pink cowgirl boots. However, Mabel does get to wear them in "Scary-oke".
  • Stan was far older and more of a Gonk.
  • Wendy originally had black hair and more of an indie/alternative fashion sense.
• Neil Cicierega composed two unused themes for the show, and an unused Villain Song for Bill cut from "Weirdmageddon Part 1".
• Composer Brad Breeck made at least eight other potential versions of the main theme. One of these themes ("Disto") was later used for the Season 2 SDCC trailer, while another ("Fleet") got recycled into the score of the episode "Tourist Trapped".
• In the pilot, Journal 3 is instead a book titled "Dr. Crackpot's Index of the Damned". It also had a creepier design, making it look more like a Harry Potter textbook than a regular journal.
• The original Big Bad was planned to be some sort of cryptid (like The Beast from Over the Garden Wall), but nobody could come up with a good one, so this role was given to Bill Cipher.
• Cast members that never happened:
  • Hirsch wanted Bob Odenkirk to play Stan but he turned the offer down. Matt Chapman auditioned, but Hirsch ultimately opted against this because Chapman's voice for Stan sounded too much like his Strong Bad voice. Chapman would voice Soos' Abuelita instead (among many other minor roles).
  • Hirsch wanted David Lynch to play Bill Cipher, but he declined. Alex later said that it turned out to be a blessing, because not having to work around his schedule allowed them to turn Bill into the Big Bad. A remnant of the original plan still remained in Hirsch's portrayal of Bill, which he described as a "bad impression" of Lynch's character in Twin Peaks, Gordon Cole.
  • Danny DeVito turned down a role.
  • Hirsch really wanted David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson (Mulder and Scully) to have a role on the show but they were too busy.
• Originally, Gideon was meant to become the mayor of Gravity Falls as part of his plot.
  • He eventually does attempt this in "The Stanchurian Candidate", with help from his father.
  • On the topic of "The Stanchurian Candidate", Preston Northwest was going to be Stan's opponent, before being switched to Bud Gleeful because the crew realized they needed a Gideon episode in season 2.
• Gideon's hair was originally going to be revealed to be a wig concealing his parasitic, half-formed conjoined twin brother.
• Hirsch briefly considered doing the show for three seasons very early in production, but Hirsch was so exhausted that by mid-season 1, he knew it wouldn't go any longer than two.
  • The first season was actually so exhausting that Hirsch seriously considered ending the show there, cliffhanger and all. He credits both Jon Stewart (who loved watching the show with his kids) and Pat McHale (a respected friend from his time at Cartoon Network) with convincing him to give the story a proper ending. But even then, he only wanted to commit to doing ten episodes until Disney told him that he would have to do twenty.
• There was going to be a scene that showed just how Gideon found Journal 2. He found it while playing in the woods by himself.
• A Gravity Falls film was, at one point, being considered, but Hirsch ultimately decided against it when he was told it would only be a TV movie, instead of a theatrical release.
• Hirsch asked if "Weirdmageddon" could be done as a two-hour TV movie, and got a "yes", but it would've obligated the crew to make two more episodes.
  • Ironically, if it’s watched on Disney+, it does become this. ("Take Back The Falls" was split into two half hour parts.)
• Bill Cipher was originally going to be green, but Hirsch changed him to yellow because he thought he looked too much like a leaf. (And now, he looks like a Dorito, much to Hirsch's ire.)
• Old Man McGucket's name was going to be "Crazy Larry", but it was changed because the word "Crazy" was deemed offensive. He also was going to be called "Old Man MacGuffin" for a while.
• The Henchmaniacs:
  • They have a number of discarded designs:
    • Zanthar was supposed to have a castle in his back.
    • 8 Ball swapped between being a goblin, human, troll, demon and ogre until getting his final design.
    • Pyronica was supposed to be a gorgon and had blue flames.
    • Keyhole was planned to have green skin.
    • Teeth was planned to be mechanical, not organic, and had bolts in his mouth.
    • Paci-Fire went through many designs and different horn styles, had planned ears, and had the Zodiac rather than a cross.
    • Hectorgon was an octagon.
    • Lava Lamp Guy was planned to have a fez and swapped from being a large lava monster to being a lava lamp monster.
    • Kryptos had a different style.
    • Amorphous Shape was grey with red eyes and a mouth.
  • Originally, Paci-Fire was planned to have a more major role and was supposed to tell Bill about the rift.
  • The unnamed lava lamp shaped creature's name would had been revelated (Lava Lamp Guy).
  • Bill would have killed 8-Ball.
  • Kryptos' beta name is Andrew.
  • Hectorgon's beta name is Hexagon.
  • Paci-Fire's beta name is Demonichus.
• Early concept art for the Multibear.
• Alex Hirsch had planned to partner with Dark Horse Comics to release an artbook in 2019 detailing both seen and never before seen concept art, character designs, and other things from the show, only for Disney Channel executives to veto it at the last moment for no stated reason.
• In the pilot, Gideon and Bud Gleeful were originally going to be government agents. This explains why Gideon wears a suit with an American flag pin on it. Gideon had blonde hair instead of white, and Bud appears to have a more serious personality.
• Alex, who's otherwise adamant that the show is finished for good, implied in a tweet that he proposed making a spinoff starring the Stan Brothers, only for Disney to reject it because the lack of Dipper and Mabel made it inaccessible to kids.
• In this interview (around timecode 12:23), Hirsch mentions that at one point, Jeff Bridges was considered to play Ford Pines when he was being thought of as a more zen-like character.

Scrapped Episode Ideas

• There was going to be an episode based on the David Bowie film Labyrinth. Mabel would love the film, but Dipper would hate it due to a fear of puppets. Dipper wouldn't admit to being afraid of the puppet; he would just call it dumb. Mabel would summon the Goblins to take Dipper away so she could watch the film. The Goblins would come out of the film take Dipper to the Labyrinth. The Goblin King would try to get Mabel to go through the labyrinth to find Dipper, but Mabel would instead want to spend time with the Goblin King. The episode would end with Dipper admitting his fear of puppets. The episode wasn't made because the studio execs didn't think the target audience would get the reference, but they still managed to sneak a Labyrinth reference into one of the "Mabel's Guide to Life" shorts (where Mabel, Grenda and Candy dress Soos up as the Goblin King for one of their "flash makeovers").
• "Sweater Off Dead" would've been about Mabel finding a sweater at a swap meet that was haunted by the ghost of the old lady who'd died wearing it who possesses her. This would lead to the gang getting trapped inside the Mystery Shack where they'd have to perform a sweater exorcism on her using knitting needles. While the episode never came to be, Hirsch liked the image of Mabel being possessed Exorcist-style which lead to the idea being used in "The Inconveniencing".
• "Jimmy Snakes" would've been a Season 2 episode about an old biker friend of Stan's coming to town, who has a Ghost Rider-esque curse. You can see Stan's old biker helmet in his room in "Scary-oke", which was meant to be a hint towards this episode.
• There was a planned episode called "Party Monster", which involves Dipper summoning a monster to wreck Grunkle Stan's party mainly for not liking crowds and partying. The episode was scrapped due to its plot making Dipper too unlikeable. The overall idea of Grunkle Stan throwing a party at the Mystery Shack was later utilized in "Double Dipper", with that plot having Dipper being interested in going to a party.
• Another rejected second season episode, "Silence of the Hams", was to have Waddles catch a severe illness, with Mabel being forced to visit Gideon in jail, as he was the one with the antidote.
• While Wendy never got to headline her own episode, there were several pitched, outlined, and even written before ultimately getting thrown out; the crew repeatedly found themselves being unable to figure out a magical plot element that would properly reflect the character's personality. A few of the ones we know about are:
  • An episode focused on her home life where she would somehow gain weather-controlling powers. This episode was actually very close to being produced before Hirsch scrapped it to write the episode that ultimately became "The Last Mabelcorn" instead, penning that script solo in just two days to make up for the wasted time.
  • A scrapped B-plot with the character would have had Wendy bonding and learning how to be a grifter with Stan, culminating in them attempting a museum heist. It was abandoned when it became clear they didn't have an A-plot that made sense to attach it to.
  • A season two episode entitled "Wendy's On The Road" was considered, which would have been heavily inspired by both On the Road and David Lynch. It involved Wendy having a difficult relationship with her dad Manly Dan, and going on a road trip with the twins, Soos and her friends to avoid thinking about it, only to end up trapped in a creepy diner.
• One unused episode, turned into an unused page of Journal 3, was about Dipper and Mabel selling Stan merchandise door-to-door after Grunkle Stan ordered too many bobbleheads. One of the people interested in buying the bobbleheads is a mysterious doll collector who wants to make Dipper and Mabel part of her collection, having already done so with Gideon.
• There were plans at one point for an episode where Stan founded a religion called "Stanentology," but it was ultimately canceled for fear of backlash.
• Gideon's prison lackey Ghost-Eyes was originally going to appear in a "Mabel's Guide to Life" short that never materialized, "Mabel's Guide to Smiles", which would have had a segment where Mabel tried to cheer up the inmates at the local prison.
• One idea for the second season would have had it open with Dipper and Mabel playing in the woods outside the Mystery Shack, when they're suddenly interrupted by a bloodied-up Dipper from the future, who reveals that Mabel is going to die soon. He'd give Dipper a code that would explain what happened in greater detail, telling him not to show Mabel, and get sent back to the future before he's able to give more information. However, it never became more than that rough idea; Hirsch and Rianda couldn't figure out how to make such a plotline work for the show, and it ended up as one of the countless writing room ideas scrapped before it could be fleshed out and shared with the rest of the crew, much less any Disney executives.
• There was a planned Superhero Episode where Soos writes a comic book starring Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Wendy and Soos himself as super heroes.
• There were several ideas thrown around for a Halloween Episode, including a Trapped in TV Land plot involving a haunted VHS tape, and Stan having a horror show on public television.
• Behold, a Creepypasta inspired episode! It’s an Unexpectedly Dark Episode, featuring a Wraith creature called "The Watcher", a third act inspired by various horror films, and (of greatest note) Toby Determined being Killed Off for Real, dying onscreen from a heart attack. While much of this probably would have been neutered had it gone into production, the notes Rianda wrote on the rough outline imply it was most likely abandoned wholesale due to failing to give any of the main characters substantial development.
• An early test reel showed some concepts that went unused in the show itself. One clip shows Dipper getting sucked into a dimensional vortex from an outhouse. Another clip has Dipper and Mabel meeting a pair of strange looking twins that resemble the Grady sisters from The Shining. The outhouse is featured in Journal 3, however.
• One episode concept was Dipper and Mabel going to a twin convention full of Creepy Twins and both battling the kids and feeling insecure about their twin bond.
• Before writing "Bottomless Pit!", the crew came up with a Camping Episode where Stan took Dipper and Mabel camping in the forest and the twins not enjoying "roughing it." Then a Headless Horseman shows up who hunts heads and keeps them as trophies. It was rejected for both being too frightening and being a Recycled Script of "The Legend of the Gobblewonker".
• Before "Roadside Attraction", an idea for a road trip episode was the Pines traveling through Oregon and ending up in a "Groundhog Day" Loop stretch of road and later a diner full of time displaced travelers.
• During the writing of "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back The Falls", there was an epilogue episode written out where the twins are packing up to leave and feeling sad about it, but then Blendin arrives to warn them about “weirdness bubbles” still floating around. Dipper and Mabel fall into one and end up back in time to their first day in Gravity Falls before the events of "Tourist Trapped". Seeing their past selves’s negative reactions to Stan and the Mystery Shack makes them realize that they’re having the same reactions to leaving Gravity Falls.

Altered and Scrapped Scenes

You see it here, ladies and gentlemen: Dipper was going to MURDER Dippy Fresh out of irritance. Guess the reason why it's changed?

• In the storyboards for "The Love God", the Love God originally hooked the old lady up with another old lady. His necklace also originally included the symbol for transgender/genderqueer as well as the traditional male and female symbols.
• In an interview, Hirsch revealed that Bill Cipher was originally meant to play a much smaller role in the series, playing a comic relief role by merely invading Dipper's dreams and yelling conspiracy theories at him just to annoy him. The conspiracy theory aspect of his character was briefly shown in Dreamscaperers, but never again.
  Remember! Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold, BYE!
• The Stinger for "Little Gift Shop of Horrors" was originally going to involve a Twist Ending where the viewer was actually M. Night Shyamalan, but they were unable to get the director to agree to the joke.
• According to the commentary for "Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future", Mabel was going to find out from calling her parents that she couldn't bring Waddles back home with her, further fueling Mabel's heartbreak about the future.
• In a Freeze-Frame Bonus in one of the special features on the Complete Series Box Set, one episode idea was centered around Pacifica hiring the twins to hunt a ghost at her mansion. Throughout the episode, she flirts Dipper to get a rise out of him, but after Dipper calls her out on it, she ends up developing an actual crush on him. She also didn’t learn any real lesson by the end of the episode. This plot would be reworked into “Northwest Mansion Mystery”, where Pacifica asks Dipper specifically to take care of her mansion's ghost problem, the attraction between Dipper and Pacifica is now mutual, and she learns a lesson at the end in addition to getting some much needed Character Development.
• This early image from a brainstorming session for "Not What He Seems" implies that Wendy would have been more involved, instead of relegated to a quick joke, and that Bill might’ve played a role.
• Storyboards from "A Tale Of Two Stans" show that Ford was initially going to have a long beard due to his travels.
• The writers came up with a number of unused tourist trap ideas for "Roadside Attraction", such as the Boyd Heinike Museum (where the joke was nobody knows who Boyd Heinike was or what he did) and "Neon Leon's World of Neon".
  • "Roadside Attraction" at one point had a subplot about Soos meeting a tribe of "Corn People" after getting left behind at the Corn Maze.
  • A scrapped credits sequence had Soos rolling in the Corn Maze leaving a message saying "HELP! I'M BORED!" Two people in a helicopter would notice the message, fly down, hand him a book of mazes, and fly off. Soos then looks at the book and says that he loves mazes. This was scrapped because it was considered too out-there even by the standards of Gravity Falls.
• "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape from Reality" originally had the subtitle "Mabeland", but the writers realized it was too much of a giveaway.
  • An alternate fantasy for Dipper had an illusion of Ford escaping from Weirdmageddon and taking Dipper on an adventure to hunt mummies. Dipper is taken in, until he sees a vision of Mabel in high-school where her classmates start making fun of Dipper. The writers thought it would be better for Dipper to break out of his fantasy on his own, and that it would be unlikely for Mabeland to show any sort of downsides to his fantasy.
  • In the original script, Dipper kills Dippy Fresh by snapping his neck onscreen in a rather graphic manner. Take one guess as to why that didn't make it into the episode.
• In "Weirdmageddon Part 3: Take Back The Falls", there were plans for there to be a Time-Compression Montage of the family working to restore Stan’s memory, but it was deemed too sad, so it was simply skipped over and implied. Some of it appeared in Journal 3, such as Ford using home videos of their childhood together.
• An early draft of "Summerween" has some differences from the aired episode:
  • The original title was "Trick Or Treat...Or Die!"
  • The Cold Open was initially Stan scaring Dipper and Mabel by pretending to be decapitated.
  • Robbie had a bigger role in convincing Dipper to try to skip trick-or-treating.
  • Instead of Dipper accidentally dumping the candy down a hill, either Gideon or Robbie was going to steal it.
  • An idea for the B plot with Stan was him and Gideon getting into a haunted house competition with The Mystery Shack and The Tent of Telepathy, respectively.
• "The Inconveniencing" was originally titled "Wendy".
• An alternative ending for "Blendin’s Game" would have had Dipper and Mabel win an orb that would show Soos visions of his future self being a great dad to his own son.
• One story concept for "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality" was Dipper, Wendy and Soos chasing Mabel through her scrapbook, also making it a Clip Show. The scrapbook and clip show concept made it to the final product, but more downplayed.
• Storyboards for "The Last Mabelcorn" show that Ford was initially going to wear a cloak over his coat.
• Storyboards for "A Tale Of Two Stans" show different flashbacks for Stan and Ford’s childhood:
  • The "high six" scene was shown as taking place in their room instead of the beach.
  • One scene would have been the kids watching a monster movie together and Stan making Ford laugh by pretending to be the monster.
  • Another was them as teenagers pulling a Twin Switch to prank the teacher.
  • There was an expanded version of the science fair scene where Ford observes Footbot and gives Stan a backhanded compliment on it.

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