Gravity Falls Website - thisisnotawebsitedotcom

Gravity Falls is an American animated mystery-comedy series created by Alex Hirsch for Disney Channel. It ran for two seasons, from June 15, 2012 to February 15, 2016, and consists of 40 episodes of roughly 20 to 24 minutes each. Disney Television Animation produced it, Brad Breeck composed the score, and it premiered on Disney Channel before moving to Disney XD for its second season. It is not a Disney+ original and it is not a film; it is a 40-episode children's television series with a sequel line of books and two real-world puzzle campaigns attached to it.

The premise is small enough to state in one line and deliberately open-ended enough to carry 40 episodes. Twelve-year-old twins Dipper and Mabel Pines are dropped off in the fictional town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, to spend the summer with their great-uncle Stanford "Grunkle" Stan, who runs a tourist trap called the Mystery Shack. Almost immediately, Dipper finds a battered three-ring journal in the woods that catalogues the local supernatural creatures. The structural question of the series is not "will they solve the mystery" but "how much of the mystery can they get through before summer ends." That framing is what lets the show open a new cryptogram, a new creature, or a new half-buried secret almost every episode without breaking continuity.

Who made it, and who runs it

Hirsch created the series and served as executive producer and showrunner. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts, where he first built the concept as an 11-minute low-budget student film, and Disney Channel bought the idea on the strength of that pitch. Production was handled at Disney Television Animation's Glendale, California offices, with episodes animated by Rough Draft Korea, Digital eMation, and Yearim Productions. Mike Rianda was creative director for season one; Tobias Conan Trost produced season one, and Brian Doell and Suzanna Olson produced season two. The main voice cast is Jason Ritter as Dipper, Kristen Schaal as Mabel, Alex Hirsch voicing both Grunkle Stan, Soos, and Bill Cipher, Linda Cardellini as Wendy, and J. K. Simmons joining in season two as Stanford Pines, Stan's six-fingered twin brother and the author of the journals.

How it ended, and why that matters

On November 20, 2015, Hirsch announced the show would end with season two, saying it was his choice and that the show was "being finished" rather than cancelled. Season two premiered August 1, 2014, and the finale, "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls," aired February 15, 2016. The reason to care about the ending is that the show was designed as a bounded narrative from the start. Hirsch had planned a beginning, middle, and end before pitching it, and his contract stated that season two was his last. That is why the finale resolves rather than resets, and it is why the post-series material is supplements rather than continuations.

Hirsch has repeatedly said he remains open to more episodes or specials, but as of the most recent reporting no new series episodes have been produced. Treat "there will be more" as a stated intention, not an announced project.

The three-part book line

Gravity Falls expanded into print through Disney Press and Disney's Hyperion Avenue imprint, and the publication order matters because the later books assume you have read the earlier ones.

• Gravity Falls: Journal 3 (July 26, 2016) by Alex Hirsch and Rob Renzetti, Disney Press, ISBN 978-1484746691. A physical in-universe journal, with black-light ink and removable photographs in the 2017 special edition limited to 10,000 copies. It became a number-one New York Times bestseller.
• Gravity Falls: Lost Legends (July 24, 2018), a graphic novel. This is the follow-on to Journal 3.
• The Book of Bill (July 23, 2024) by Alex Hirsch, Hyperion Avenue Books, 208 pages, ISBN 978-1368092203, listed by Disney Books with an "Adult" age range. It is the first Gravity Falls book not to carry the franchise name in the title, and it is told from Bill Cipher's point of view. A Limited Collector's Edition with a glow-in-the-dark slipcase followed on September 23, 2025.

Each of these has its own guide on this site: Journal 3, Lost Legends, and The Book of Bill.

The real-world puzzle campaigns

Two pieces of the franchise exist outside the screen and outside the books, and both are more than fan speculation.

The Cipher Hunt was an international alternate reality game and scavenger hunt created and organised by Hirsch between July 20 and August 2, 2016. It began in Saint Petersburg, Russia, moved through Tokyo, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Santa Clarita, Piedmont, Portland, Amity, Turner, and Piercy, and ended with the discovery of a physical Bill Cipher statue in a forest near Reedsport, Oregon, on August 2, 2016 at 7:53pm PDT. Hirsch stated on Twitter that the hunt was run at his own volition and funding and without affiliation to The Walt Disney Company. The statue and the completed 2,000-piece puzzle are now permanently housed at Confusion Hill in Piercy, California, at approximately 39.919002N 123.764908W. The full Cipher Hunt walkthrough covers the clue chain, the ciphers used, and the Bradley Pic detail that only surfaced in 2022.

The Book of Bill terminal is a separate, later thing: an interactive website created by Hirsch that presents a fake laboratory computer terminal and responds to typed commands. It is a distinct artefact from the Cipher Hunt, and it is the subject of our companion site, which covers how the site began and what the terminal actually contains.

The codes are real, and they are solvable

Gravity Falls is unusually honest about its cryptography, and a large part of why the fandom persists is that the show's ciphers were designed to be decoded by viewers. The series and its supplementary material use Caesar shifts, Atbash, A1Z26, Vigenere, Polybius squares, hexadecimal, and simple substitution. The finale also contains an encoded riddle about treasure "deep within the woods" and a statue "beyond the rusty gates" that turned out to be a literal description of the real hunt.

We have put the working methods in one place in the ciphers and codes guide, which explains what each method is, where the show uses it, and how to test a decode yourself rather than trusting a list of answers.

Where to watch it, and what is legally available

All 40 episodes stream legitimately on Disney+. Shout! Factory released a complete-series DVD and Blu-ray box set on July 24, 2018, which is the only home-video release of the full run and which is now out of print; it remains the way to get the unaired 2010 pilot and deleted scenes released during the Cipher Hunt. We keep the current, legal options in the where to watch guide and do not host, mirror, or link to unauthorised copies.

What is verified and what is not

Dates, episode and season counts, network, production companies, voice cast, book publishers, release dates, page counts, ISBNs, and the Cipher Hunt location history on this site are taken from Disney's own book pages, from the series' Wikipedia entry and its citations, and from contemporaneous reporting of the hunt. Where a figure is disputed or where something is a stated intention rather than a shipped fact, we say so in the text rather than smoothing it over. Our sources page lists every primary and secondary reference used, and our about page explains the research method.

Gravity Falls and all related names, marks, and characters are the property of The Walt Disney Company. This site is an independent reference, not affiliated with or endorsed by Disney, and it is not the place to buy or watch the show.