Cartoons we grew up with have had many creepy, and some downright terrifying moments. Some were a few
moments from an otherwise tame kids show, others were a common occurrence. Gravity Falls, with all
its strange creatures and the crazy adventures the characters get into, established itself as
one of those cartoons that was not afraid to push the barriers with such scary moments.
Hey all, what’s up! I’m Kyle with Wicked Binge,
and I’m here to rank scary moments from Gravity Falls, from creepy to terrifying.
With this list, we’re looking at the most iconic scary moments,
starting from creepy and working up to the terrifying ones.
Let’s begin with Dreamscaper’s Deer Teeth. In Bill Cipher’s debut, Gideon’s summoning of him leads to
a creepy display of his power. The forest Gideon was in slows down and becomes an eerily grayish
color, becoming the mindscape. Bill immediately surprises Gideon by knowing who he is, among
almost everything else in existence. To show just how crazy and random this three-sided being is,
he makes a nearby deer’s teeth just fly out of its mouth, and puts them all in Gideon’s
hands! Quite a creepy moment, but not too scary. Just quite a weird way to introduce yourself.
Secondly, we have the season 2 moment of Grunkle Stan’s balloon. In the episode “The Love God,”
the “Woodstick” music festival comes into town and festive hot air balloons are all about. In
an attempt to advertise to the hipster youth attendees about the Mystery Shack,
Stan makes a balloon of his head with the message, “I HEART KIDS.”
The balloon’s cheery message and appearance soon goes South due to Stan’s lack of attention to
safety hazards, and catches on fire. It now resembles a demonic-looking Stan with the
message “I EAT KIDS.” This creepy moment for the most part stays creepy, due to the funny nature
of the moment. (Show “I guess this is what we get for our terrible taste in everything” clip)
Third, the Screaming Head. Another creepy summoning of Bill Cipher’s. Season 2’s
“Sock Opera,” while Mabel spends the week putting together a sock puppet
musical to impress her crush-of-the-week, Dipper tries unlocking the laptop found
in the Author’s bunker. After dozing off, trying to find the correct password to it,
Bill Cipher pays him a visit. In Dipper’s mindscape, Bill greets him in the similar
manner toward Gideon. Instead of a gift of deer teeth, Bill conjures a screaming head. A
literal severed head of a man, just screaming non-stop. What’s really disturbing about this
moment is when Bill makes it disappear by having its layers unraveled, from muscle to bone!
Fourth creepy moment is the Floating Head Island. After season 1, a whole summer’s worth of shorts
were released to keep fans satisfied while waiting for the next season. The first wave of these were
titled, “Dipper’s Guide to the Unexplained.” In the “Tooth” short, Dipper and Mabel set out
to investigate a giant tooth left on the lake’s beach. While rowing toward an island in the lake,
Mabel brings out her creepy stuffed animal “Bear-O”, but that’s the least of our concerns
here. As they notice bubbles in the water, the island floats up and toward the two, revealing
it to be a giant floating head. This creepy monstrosity has giant eyes, teeth, and a mouth
it tries to eat their boat with. What really makes this creature disturbing is the strange rambling
it makes, which when played backwards says, “You have awakened my slumber! Enter my mouth,
children! Enter your destiny! RAAAAHH!” Sheesh! That added info just sends shivers down my spine!
Number 5 we have the Cooler Monster. Now this isn’t like the ones in Futurama, hellbent on
stealing the knowledge of the universe. No, this one’s quite terrifying! In season 1’s
“The Inconveniencing”, Dipper and Mabel join Wendy and her teenage friends to break into an abandoned
convenience store. It's like the discount “stay overnight at a haunted house.” But after breaking
in, they find this store to be just as scary. Dipper is the one who notices all the paranormal,
spooky happenings before everyone else. But the one moment that really shocks us viewers is
when he goes to grab more ice. At the cooler, a floating brain with a mouth, eye stalks, and
tendrils all over scares him. Of all the haunted things in that episode, this one had the most
detail put into it, and this one was before the climax! They really saved the creepiest for first!
At sixth, we have Bill Taking Over Dipper. Later on in “Sock Opera”, Dipper becomes
desparate to figure out that password and makes a deal with Bill. Unfortunately,
he didn’t read the fine line and falls for Bill’s trick of using Dipper as a “puppet.”
For this moment, we’re referring to the initial first interactions Bill has while
possessing Dipper. The creepiness begins with how Dipper’s eyes are replaced with the yellow
glow of Bill’s and has long slits for irises. Within a minute, Bill is torturing himself,
experimenting with pain by falling down the attic stairs, slamming his arm with a kitchen drawer,
and puncturing it with forks. This at first comes off as a laughable moment, but after rewatching,
Bill’s masochism just comes off quite terrifying. Not to mention, he leaves
the shack with a creepy maniacal laughter, with another distorted look in Dipper’s body.
At seventh we start crossing into terrifying territory with Pyramid Chase. Throughout his
reign of terror in Weirdmaggedon, Bill gets very unhinged in several moments. The earliest
we see this more diabolical side of him is when he wipes out Time Baby. As the remaining townsfolks’
resistance falters and the two pairs of Pines twins are all that’s left, a new plan to stop
Bill forms. Dipper and Mabel run off to distract our now-three dimensional villain, and he shows
off his arguably most terrifying form yet. Dead set on killing the Pines twins, he transforms into
a giant red pyramid and grows several spider-like limbs, with 3 tongues protruding out of the layers
of his body. This unsettling look of his while chasing Dipper and Mabel is complemented by him
yelling “I’ve got some children I need to make into corpses!”. Horrifying, a children’s cartoon
villain outload expressing the desire of children being killed. This show got away with so much!
Next on terrifying we have Darlene. In season 2’s “Roadside Attraction,” Grunkle Stan takes Dipper,
Mabel, and Mabel’s friends Candy and Grenda along with him and Soos to vandalize other
roadside attractions across Oregon. After ruining attractions such as an old lady’s
giant yarn ball and an upside down house and Dipper taking his Grunkle’s dating advice,
they wind up at Mystery Mountain. This location, 5 times the size of the Mystery
Shack and contains paranormal attractions of mummies and spider-people. Darlene,
seemingly a normal middle-aged woman running the place, appears normal at first. But later,
as Stan takes a tour with her inside the mountain, becomes her latest prey. Darlene
reveals her true form, walking in at first with her lower half spider, then terrifyingly turns
her face inside out to a full arachnoid-being. What makes it even more scary, is the lifeless
skeletons hanging around Stan as he’s in her web, the so-called “mummies.” Talk about a bad date.
At ninth we have the Hoo-Ha Owl’s Animatronics. In “Soos and the Real Girl,” Soos finally
gets on a date with a woman and they meet at a Chuck E Cheese-esque place called “Hoo-Ha
Owl’s Pizzamatronic Jambouree.” Here the Doki-Doki-like computer girl he “practiced”
dating comes to take back Soos, by possessing the animatronics of the establishment. And yes,
I know what you’re thinking, this was a spot-on Five Nights at Freddy’s reference,
which made it all the more horrifying with the beginning of it starting off with,
(Play clip of “sorry friends, Hoo-Ha the Owl is dead.”). The animatronics proceed to
go rampant and kidnap Mabel, Dipper, and Soos’s girlfriend. Their reign of terror ends as scary
as it began with a terrifying face melt on the lead robot. Yikes! I find it worth mentioning
how this episode came out literally a month after Five Nights was released. Quite uncanny.
Number ten we have the Scary-Oke Zombies. From the titular season 2 episode,
Dipper meets a pair of government agents. Thinking these two men can help him solve
the mystery of the Author’s identity, his hopes are quickly shot down as the agents
assure Dipper there’s nothing paranormal about this place. In an effort to prove them wrong,
Dipper uses the Journal to summon a horde of the undead. Their first act is dragging the
two agents away into the woods, never to be seen until the episode’s end. The grotesque
zombies then lay waste to the Mystery Shack’s party being held, and battle the Pines family.
Zombie guts spill as they combat the undead, a terrifying start to the second season.
At eleven, the Summerween Trickster. In the series’ only “Halloween” special, “Summerween,”
Soos tells a story of a being known as the Summerween Trickster, made of all the unwanted
candy. Shortly after his story, the Trickster himself appears at the door. His unsettling voice,
unusual stature, raggedy brown outfit, and demeanor is what scares us about this guy,
but then it gets worse! A kid, Gordy, comes to the Shack for candy,
and the Trickster straight up eats the kid! Originally, he had a lighter color scheme in
the promo for the episode, but the final dark coloration made him all the more terrifying!
Coming in at number twelve we have Preston Northwest’s face.
At the beginning of Bill Cipher’s reign over Gravity Falls in “Weirdmageddon,
Part 1,” we see him and his strange friends cement their terror over the townsfolk. Bill shows us his
unsightly new transformations, but what really was horrifying in this episode was his display
of power over one individual. As Grunkle Ford and others challenge Bill, wealthy resident
Preston Northwest expresses his willingness to pledge loyalty to Bill. Bill doesn’t care,
so he has a bit of fun by rearranging the orifices in Preston’s face. This messed up scene shows his
ears sticking out where his eyes were, a giant eye out of his mouth, and a nose where his ear was!
Number thirteen in terrifying we have the Shapeshifter. Season 2’s “Into the Bunker”
brought us a lot of intense moments. Deep inside the Author’s bunker, Dipper and Wendy
are rescued from a monster by a strange man they conclude is the Author. Giving him Journal #2,
Dipper and Wendy soon realize the man is a shape-shifter from a can of beans with his
current form printed on it. He catches onto them, and changes into a hideous monster,
with an elongated neck and spider-like legs sticking out. But this form of the Shapeshifter’s
isn’t the scariest, in my opinion. That goes to his form when he chases the Pines twins,
creating a messed up combination of the two with ghostly eyes, sharp teeth, and 6 arachnoid legs.
This character has one messed-up imagination! He did also likely scar
Dipper for life when they froze him (show clip of Shapeshifter freezing as Dipper).
At fourteen we have the terrifying scene from Mabel’s Dream World. In “Weirdmageddon 2: Escape
from Reality,” Dipper, Wendy, and Soos travel into a bubble where Bill Cipher kept Mabel inside. What
they find is a whole world full of 80’s vibes and cutesy pre-teen girl drawings. This world is
Mabel’s escape from the uncertainty of growing up and preferring imagination over reality. Everyone
but Dipper is taken in awe by their imaginations coming real. He continues trying to get Mabel out
of this prison. But in one moment that began heartfelt, soon turned very messed up! Wendy
appears to Dipper, trying to convince him this dream world isn’t so bad. After suggesting his
summer crush on her could become a reality by making himself older, he soon sees it's too good
to be true. The figure masquerading as Wendy turns into a hive of cockroach-like creatures and falls
apart. The sky around him turns blood-red, and a tree with stuffed animals now has glowing yellow
eyes, as do the animals. Bill’s eye-shape appears in each of the stuffed animals, warning Dipper
that he’s watching. Shortly after, everything is back to Mabel’s happy imaginary landscape.
In my opinion, the episode’s light-tone throughout
and then having a moment like this is what really makes this terrifying!
And now, the most terrifying Gravity Falls moment we have is the Northwest Mansion
Curse. In “Northwest Mansion Mystery,” Dipper is called to help expel a ghost haunting the
Northwest Mansion during their annual fancy party. Pacifica brings him to the room with
the most paranormal activity. Dipper is convinced this ghost is nothing serious,
but soon is proven very wrong when lightning strikes and the picture of
a lumberjack in the room disappears. The mounted taxidermy animal heads
begin dripping blood from their mouth and eyes, chanting “ancient sins” in scary, deep voices.
To end it all, a fiery skeleton of a man with an axe lodged in his forehead emerges from the
fireplace, grows flesh and drags his axe across the room. Yeah, you probably all knew this was
gonna be number one. The bleeding animals along make this the most terrifying of all
Gravity Falls, probably of any Disney shows if I do say so myself. This scene terrified so many,
it had fans wondering how creator Alex Hirsch managed to get it past Disney censors! People
were surprised when back in season 1’s “Gideon Rises,” they showed Dipper get a nosebleed!
What do you think? Did we miss any creepy or terrifying moments? Let us know in the comments!
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