Gravity Falls is no slouch when it comes to characters, some of the most beloved characters
in recent memory come from this little Disney Channel show. But it may be no surprise to you
that some of those beloved characters have some very selfish moments. Now, we’ve already looked
at these characters on the moral spectrum but today we’re talking about their selfishness.
I’m Brad with WickedBinge and this is Gravity Falls: Selfless to Most Selfish
Because this is a new topic, we need to lay out a few ground rules first about
how this list works. We’ll be ranking the characters based on
a mix of selfish actions in episode and episodes focusing on their selfishness.
Also, for this list, selfish and greedy are not interchangeable, so this will be based wholly
on actions that are taken to further one’s own self interest instead of other people’s.
We’ll be starting with the Least Selfish character
and move our way down until we reach the most selfish character in the series.
No surprise that the gold medal of Selflessness goes to none other than Tyler Cutebiker. Tyler
is the current mayor of Gravity Falls and the local “enthusiasm enthusiast”. Tyler may be a
bit scatterbrained but he is by far the nicest and least selfish character in the series.
This is exemplified when Weirdmageddon starts and he tries to protect Gravity Falls by shooing Bill
Cipher away. Now, this obviously doesn’t work, but that doesn’t change the meaning of the action.
Tyler doesn’t appear often, but he is never shown to be selfish in his few appearances.
Waddles comes in at a very close second. Waddles is a pig and as such, kinda focuses
on survival and pleasing his owner Mabel more than anything. Logically,
a pig can’t be very selfish, but that changes when the pig is voiced by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
In the episode “Little Gift Shop of Horrors”, an anthology of shorts, there’s a section
called “Abaconings” where Waddles eats some goo that makes him smart. In this story he
starts to abandon Mabel so that he can use his smarts alongside Dipper. He stays this selfish
throughout most of the section until he realizes how sad Mabel is and uses his Dumb Dumb switch,
turning him back into the lovable pig we all know. This one section is the only real selfish moment
he has in the series, but that places him below Tyler who has never been shown to be selfish.
Taking our bronze medal of Selflessness goes to Soos Ramirez. Soos is the resident
handyman of the Mystery Shack and is one of the friendliest characters in the series.
He’s been helping Stan and the Mystery Shack since he was twelve years old and seems to
really love his job at the Shack. Soos is a very selfless individual, never getting mad at Stan
no matter what he does to deserve it. There are very few selfish moments from Soos, and even his
worst moments are due to him not reading the room or being idiotic, such as being manipulated by
.GIFfany in “Soos and The Real Girl” or cheating in pinball and leading to the events of the
pinball story in “Bottomless Pit!”. However, these moments are overshadowed by the events
of “Blendin’s Game” where he uses the all powerful Time Wish to clean up Dipper and Mabel since they
did so much just for him. I mean, he also wished for an infinite pizza, but who wouldn’t do that?
Everyone’s favorite iganua mom Grenda Grendinator ranks in the next spot. Grenda
ranks above her friends mostly because she doesn’t appear very often, and when she does,
it’s very often just to flank Mabel and Candy on whatever thing they’re
doing for the episode. However, when she appears, she’s very often shown in a selfless light,
episodes like “The Last Mabelcorn” show her willing to do whatever is necessary to help Mabel,
such as illegally trafficking butterflies for the gnome who gave her the fairy dust
needed to knock out the unicorn. However, “Boyz Crazy” is her most selfless episode,
her, alongside Candy and Mabel, save the boy band Sev’ral Timez from the evil Ergman Bratsman who
was holding them captive. She, alongside Candy, wants to free the band and let them go to live
their lives while Mabel doesn’t want to do this, even though they do end up being set free.
Grenda’s friend and BMO impersonator Candy barely ranks below her friend Grenda for one main reason,
and that reason is the episode “Northwest Mansion Mystery”,
while it is considered one of the best episodes, it’s B-plot focuses on Mabel,
Candy and Grenda at the boisterous Northwest Mansion Party, where they find out about a boy
named Marius von Fundshauser who is also going to the party. Well, the three of them make a
vow to not chase after the boy, and then Mabel and Candy decide to go behind Grenda’s back and still
try to chase the rich boy. This is the act that sets her lower than her life-long friend Grenda,
because by all accounts, she and Grenda were equally selfless up until this point.
Wendy Corduroy comes into our next spot in the list. Wendy is a bit of a weird one to
place because she’s a teenager and teenagers are naturally selfish in most cases. However,
Wendy isn’t selfish in the usual sense, more often than not she’s the catalyst for selfish actions
that both Dipper and Robbie commit. Episodes like “The Inconveniencing” show that she’s quite fine
with the twins joining her and her friend group, or “Into The Bunker” where she helps
Dipper find out more about the author of the book. She does have a few selfish moments
however, episodes like “Weirdmageddon 2” show that she still has selfish ambitions, such
as leaving Dipper to go vandalize the high school with fireworks or “The Love God” where
she can’t stand that Tambry got together with Robbie and calls off the group’s travel to the
Woodstick festival. There’s also the “Society of The Blind Eye” where she wants to use the
memory manipulator to erase an annoying song from her head, but that’s understandable
Next on the list is Fiddleford McGucket, commonly known as Old Man McGucket was an
engineer who worked alongside Stanford Pines on the universal portal. After witnessing terrible
things thanks to Ford, McGucket created a memory erasure device.to forget everything he saw.
After overuse of his memory erasure device and a quick trip through the universal portal,
McGucket started to go insane and senile, but he was still an amazing engineer,
creating a homicidal pterodactyl robot and an 80 foot tall “shame bot”, not to mention
the amazing mechanical gobblewonker. McGucket, having gone insane, has a solid mix of selfless
and selfish moments, such as joining in the search for Waddles in “Land Before Swine”, well,
technically he was searching for his musical spoons, but he still helped them.
His most selfless moment is during “Society of The Blind Eye” where we find out about his
memory erasure technology, and McGucket even takes multiple memory erasure beams to the face so that
Dipper and Mabel wouldn’t forget their summers. After he got his memory back he helped Dipper and
Mabel in all sorts of schemes in their plots to defeat Bill Cipher, which is why he landed here.
Blendin Blandin travels onto our next spot on the list. Blendin is a time traveler who works under
the Time Police and was sent to stop the anomalies in time at the mystery shack in the episode “The
Time Traveler’s Pig”, however, it is found out that him trying to stop the time anomalies
is actually what sets them off in the first place thanks to Dipper and Mabel stealing
the tape measure time machine from him. After Dipper and Mabel’s time travelling adventures
they end up getting Blendin in major trouble, so much so that he was incarcerated in Time Prison.
However, he invokes the deadly arena fight known as Globnar,
forcing Dipper and Mabel to fight him, however, this is mostly understandable,
thanks to the fact that the two of them forced him to be put in prison. His selfishness
also ends up starting Weirdmageddon thanks to falling for the oldest trick in the book, don’t
make a deal with Bill Cipher, who had promised him to stop Time Baby from bothering him. Blendin
is a bit stupid, and doesn’t know what’s best for the timeline, which leads to his selfish actions.
The llama Pacifica Northwest climbs into the next spot on our list. Pacifica is the spoiled daughter
of Preston and Priscilla Northwest and the latest in a long line of the horrible Northwest family.
Pacifica started off the series as an antagonist and a rival to Mabel in some shape or form.
Episodes like “Double Dipper” and “Irrational Treasure” show her as extremely egotistical and
having no problem with insulting people or having people throw tomatoes at Stan when he was locked
in the stockade. However, starting in “The Golf War”, she was starting to be humbled thanks to
Mabel and Dipper, since at the end of the episode we learn that her parents aren’t great and she
doesn’t even know what sharing is. However, “Northwest Mansion Mystery” is definitely her
best and most selfless episode, even if she starts off the episode by manipulating Dipper thanks to
her parents. By the end of the episode she decides to betray her parents and their control by letting
the common folk of Gravity Falls into the very expensive Northwest Mansion Party,
which kind of makes up for all of her selfish acts in the earlier episodes in our eyes.
Robbie Valentino the stitched heart teenager ranks next on our list. Robbie is the ex-boyfriend of
Wendy and Dipper’s main rival, much in the way Pacifica is to Mabel. Robbie, like Wendy, is a
teenager and as such is naturally selfish in most of his appearances. Episodes like “Double Dipper”
and “Fight Fighters” show off the rivalry between Robbie and Dipper and how Robbie acts naturally
selfish in moments involving Wendy, even though at the end of “Fight Fighters” he does agree not
to fight with Dipper in front of Wendy. One of his worst episodes (and actually,
a lot of the character's worst episodes) is “Boyz Crazy”. In this episode, Robbie plays a song for
Wendy under the pretense that he wrote it for her, but by the end of the episode it’s revealed that
he just stole the song to play for Wendy, which ends up with the two breaking up. His only other
major appearance after the break up is “The Love God” where he gets together with Tambry because
of Mabel, however, while his getting together with Tambry does break up the friend group and
can be seen as a selfish action, it was under the effects of a love potion Mabel used, so he’s off
the hook for that one. The main reason why Robbie ranks below Pacifica is because he doesn’t really
have a moment that erases most of his selfishness like she does, save for trying to use the Zodiac
with everyone else, but that was because the world was in danger, so that’s not saying much.
Everyone’s favorite con-man Stanley Pines comes next. Stan is the proprietor of the Mystery Shack
in Gravity Falls, a place dedicated to tricking the people of Gravity Falls into believing
fake monsters and exhibits and taking their minds off the real creatures in the woods. Stan may be
greedy and money-hungry, doing anything for a dollar, no matter what it is or how embarrassing
it might be. But throughout the series, Stan’s whole goal is to open the interdimensional portal
to save his twin brother Ford. Stan has moments of selflessness to break up the monotony of his
selfishness, a prime example of this is “The Stanchurian Candidate” where while he wanted
to be mayor mainly for the power, he does end up risking his life to save the twins
when they are in danger. However, Stan is known for his selfish moments and it would be unfair
to not mention them. Stan’s worst episode is hands down “Land Before Swine”, he was specifically
asked by Mabel not to let Waddles out because he might be hurt or hunted down by a predator. Stan
does end up letting Waddles out and he is taken by the giant Pterodactyl, but not only does he end up
letting Waddles get taken, but he then lies about it to Mabel. Stan eventually does change his tune
and saves Waddles from the Pterodactyl like the story he told earlier in the episode. Stan has
also committed multiple crimes, and the episode “Little Gift Shop of Horrors” has a section called
“Hands Off!” that exemplifies his greedy and selfish nature to a tee, where he steals from
a witch and gets his hands taken away. Stan is a selfish person at heart, but he doesn’t take
the very bottom thanks to his mission to save Ford after he accidentally pushed him into the portal.
Speaking of, Ford Pines comes into our next spot on the list. Ford is the author of the journals
which the whole series revolved around and the twin brother of Stan Pines. Ford doesn’t appear
for very long, only being a major character in the second half of the second season,
but he is consistently shown to be more selfish than his twin brother. Ford was denied his dream
school by an accident caused by Stan, but he doesn’t believe when Stan tries to apologize
and tell him that it was an accident. Ford eventually does end up calling Stan to his
home base in Gravity Falls and asking Stan to take hold of his journal and go as far away
as possible. Ford also shacked up with the main villain Bill Cipher to gain forbidden knowledge
and learn how to build the interdimensional portal. Ford was a genius and tried to make
up for his actions with Bill by doing everything he possibly can to prevent Bill from coming back.
After coming back to Gravity Falls Ford threatens to kick Stan out of his house
after the twins leave for California. But, by the end of the series, he changes his
mind and decides to finally go on the sea-faring adventure with Stan they planned in their youth.
Ford ranks this low because of all of his actions leading to him being trapped in the multiverse.
This next ranking may surprise many of you, but Dipper Pines ranks next. Dipper is the
paranoid book-toting main character of the show alongside his sister Mabel. Dipper and
Mabel are both very selfish characters, due to the fact they have the most screen time,
but Dipper is slightly less selfish than his sister. Dipper does have his fair share of selfish
episodes, Episodes like “Double Dipper” show him selfishly using the copier machine to make clones
of himself so that he can impress Wendy, ending up with some of his clones stealing Robbie’s
bike. “Little Dipper” shows Dipper leading into the main conflict of the episode by trying to
make himself as tall as Mabel using the size-changing flashlight he
made. “Summerween” shows him try to abandon his sister and friends to go hang out with Wendy
at the halloween party. The episode “Scary-oke” shows his selfishness in trying to get the F.B.I.
to believe in the monsters of Gravity Falls and even summoning a mass of zombies from the
grave and leading to the main conflict again. However, episodes like “Irrational Treasure”
show him in a much less selfish light, helping Mabel with finding out her silliness was the
correct action and finding out the true founder of Gravity Falls. “The Deep End” has him give up
his assistant lifeguard job for Mabel and “Weirdmageddon Part 2”’s flashbacks show
that Dipper would do whatever is needed for his sister, even shaving part of his head for her.
However, Mabel Pines is slightly worse than her brother. Mabel is the fun-loving twin
sister of Dipper and is often considered one of the most selfish characters in the show.
Mabel has more selfish moments in the show than her brother does, even having selfish
B-plots. “Fight Fighters” has her selfishly try to cure Stan’s fear of heights by blindfolding him
and taking him to the top of a water tower. The sub-story “Trooth Ache” shows her use of golden
dentures that force the user to speak the truth always, which leads to many bad moments,
even after these moments she refuses to take out the dentures from Grunkle
Stan. “Boss Mabel” shows her thinking she would be a better boss than Stan, leading to a Gremoblin to
escape and Wendy mostly to stop working. “The Time Traveler’s Pig” has her mostly force Dipper to
give up on not hurting Wendy so that she can keep her pig Waddles, even though there were multiple
ways to have both of these contingencies happen. But, “The Love God” is a pretty egregious example
of her selfishness, she takes other people’s love lives into her hands by forcing Robbie and Tambry
to get together through a love potion.she stole from someone calling themselves The Love God.
This action forces a whole friend group apart and stops them from going to a music festival.
She does rank outside of the top 3 because unlike the others, she does have some
redeemable moments. “Blendin’s Game” shows her allow Blendin Blandin to live even after they
were forced to go into a deadly war game and “The Last Mabelcorn” show her help hundreds of
people and creatures to try and prove she had a pure heart to a frankly evil and rude unicorn.
Speaking of the top three, the bronze medal of selfishness goes to Gideon Gleeful. Gideon
was the main antagonist of Season 1, and a secondary antagonist in the second season.
Gideon is obsessive, antagonistic, egomaniacal and greedy and doesn’t know anything about denial,
such as when Mabel breaks up with the clingy child psychic. Gideon is also a major liar and doesn’t
mind spying on the townsfolk of Gravity Falls in his search for the other journals. Gideon
lied to the entire town about his child psychic status, making them all believe he was harmless.
Trying to get his revenge, he then made multiple attempts to try and steal the shack from Stan
to no avail. It eventually culminates in summoning the alternate dimensional being
Bill Cipher to try and get his revenge on Stan by stealing the code from his memory.
He is eventually sent to jail because of all his selfish (and illegal) actions where he resides
for most of Season 2. His stay in jail did seem to make him slightly better, allowing Dipper
and Wendy to pass by to save Mabel, which does get him in major trouble with Bill afterwards.
However, the silver medal of selfish characters goes to Preston and Priscilla Northwest.
These two don’t are the resident rich folk in Gravity Falls and descendants of the
supposed town founder, as well as the parents to Pacifica Northwest. They don’t appear often,
but when they do, they are always shown in a negative light, they’re first major
appearance is in “The Golf War” where they abandon Pacifica at the golf course for a party they want
to attend. They don’t seem to really care for their daughter, even having her trained like a dog
to obey them at the ring of a bell Preston carries with him. “Northwest Mansion Mystery”
shows them at their worst, showing the cover-up of what happened to Archibald Corduroy and how
they were aware of the curse he set upon the Northwest family and their mansion parties.
They obviously don’t care about the town or it’s people, even trying to work for Bill
Cipher during “Weirdmageddon”, before Preston gets his comeuppance and has all his facial orifices
shifted around. They only have one saving grace and that was telling Pacifica to
hold hands with Old Man McGucket to power the zodiac, but like we said with Robbie,
this was to prevent world-wide destruction and the only good thing we ever see the Northwests do.
To no one’s surprise, Bill Cipher takes the selfish gold on this one. Bill Cipher is the
main antagonist of Season 2 and by proxy, the whole show. Bill is a dream demon who
can possess people and enter their minds or dreams. Bill’s whole goal is to escape from
the second dimension and gain a physical form to start an extinction level armageddon event.
Bill is maniacal and sadistic, loving to have fun while torturing victims,
such as the aforementioned orifice switching. Bill takes over bodies and pushes them to near
breakage with no care about the original owner, he will pull out all of a deer’s teeth for a present
and will take on the form that people fear most. He is by far the most selfish character,
his whole world domination plot is just a plea for having as much fun as he can manage before
destroying the planet, and his cut song “It’s Gonna Get Weird” is even more proof of that.
But what about you guys? Did you like this concept?
Did we give someone too much credit? Someone not enough? Let us know in the comments!
Don’t forget to hit that notification bell and binge our Good-to-Evil playlist, where we
break down the morality of the characters in your favorite shows. But most importantly, stay wicked.