HELLO INTERNET, AND WELCOME TO FILM THEORY! Today we're investigating one of the best Villains, Bill Cipher, let's get right into it.
Sixty Degrees that come in threes
Watches from within birch trees
Saw his whole dimension burn
Misses home
Can't return
Says he's happy
He's a liar
Blame the Arson
For the Fire
If he wants to shirk the blame
He'll have to invoke my name
One way to absolve his crime
A different form
A different time.
This is the Axolotls poem. During Dipper and Mabel: Curse of the Time Pirates Treasure, a Select your own Choose-venture Dipper and Mabel take a wrong turn and meet the Axolotl, a being that was so powerful that he can bring people back from nothing. More powerful than Bill himself. This is the being that Bill himself invokes.
A-X-O-L-O-T-L, MY TIME HAS COME TO BURN,
I INVOKE THE ANCIENT POWERS,
THAT I MAY RETURN
(Gravity Falls Season 2, Episode 20, Weirdmaggedon Part 3: Take Back the Falls) Obviously, the Axolotl is quite powerful. When Dipper and Mabel meet him, he tells them both that he can ask him. Mabel asks what he is, to which he answers that he is an Axolotl. Dipper asks what he knows about Bill Cipher, and he tells him the poem at the top.
Now after reading this a few times, I noticed some problems. The first problem, the line "Misses home, can't return" Bill says in Weirdmaggedon Part 3 Take Back the Falls (Gravity Falls Season 2, Episode 3), "Flat minds in a flat world with flat dreams. I liberated my dimension" and shows a flat planet on fire. But, I'll talk about the fire part later. If Bill truly did destroy his dimension, why would he miss it? The whole point of him (so we think) is to find a new dimension!
The next problem is the line "Blame the arson for the fire." The word here is blame. If Bill was the one who burned his dimension, why would he have to be blamed? Another problem I have is the use of the third line "Saw his whole dimension burn" Not "made his whole dimension burn," which could have worked. He said saw, implying that Bill was but a bystander.
Finally, my last problem with the poem is the last few lines. "If he wants to shirk the blame, he'll have to invoke my name. One way to absolve his crime, a different form, a different time." Some of those words are... interesting to say the least. Shirk the blame. Shirk the blame. Why would Bill need to shirk the blame, if it was him who burned his dimension? Again, in Weirdmaggedon 3: Take Back the Falls Bill says "I liberated my dimension" (Gravity Falls Season 2, Episode 20.) He's admitting to it. Why does he need to shirk the blame?
But, we're forgetting one thing, Bill is insane. "Sure I am. What's your point?" (Bill Cipher responding to Gideon Gleeful calling him insane. Gravity Falls Season 1, Episode 19) The dictionary definition for insane is "in a state of mind which prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill." (Oxford Languages on Google) In a state of mind that prevents normal perception. This could mean that Bill thinks that he did something that he didn't, especially if he has been blamed for it by countless people.
Nobody actually knows why Bill went insane, but I think I've figured it out. Bill became insane after watching a member of his family destroy his home, along with the rest of his dimension. And that member is his brother, William Cipher. Wait, you may be saying. Bill doesn't have a brother! And what do you mean his family was destroyed? Does he even HAVE a family? Actually, yes.
In a Reddit AMA Bill was asked if he has a family. Not anymore. This was his response. And yes, I am 99% sure that this is Canon. Nobody has said it's not, and I think that Alex Hirch (The creator of Gravity Falls, and the voice of several characters including "Grunkle" Stanley Pines, eccentric inventor Fiddleford McGucket, and the insane demonic villain, Bill Cipher) has acknowledged it before. So, I'm going to consider it canon. Anyway, his response "not anymore" shows that yes, he did have a family, and yes, they did probably die in the burning of his dimension.
So, if he was not the one who burned his dimension (as I am suggesting) seeing his family (or just knowing that it is happening) being destroyed in a fire, that will definitely have an impact on your sanity. ESPECIALLY if it was his brother! By now you are probably saying, alright I guess Bill could be innocent, but where is the evidence, and where did you pull this brother from? I'm going to answer that second question first.
Who is William, and where did you get him from? Ok, so first thing, I AM NOT GETTING WILLIAM FROM WHEN BILL SUPPOSEDLY REFERENCES XOLOTL THE AZTEC GOD OF DEATH, FIRE, LIGHTNING, AND TWINS! HE NEVER DOES! PEOPLE LIKE TO SAY THAT IN HIS FINAL WORDS HE WAS TALKING ABOUT THIS GUY, THE XOLOTL, SO HE HAS A TWIN! HE WAS TALKING ABOUT THE AXOLOTL! AND NO! JUST BECAUSE XOLOTL TURNED INTO AN AXOLOTL IN THE MYTHS, IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT IS XOLOTL! WE LITERALLY MEET THE AXOLOTL IN DIPPER AND MABEL CURSE OF THE TIME PIRATES TREASURE SELECT YOUR OWN CHOOSE-VENTURE! HE IS NOT A AZTEC GOD! HE'S AN AXOLOTL PLAIN AND SIMPLE!!
Ok, now that I have that out of the way, I can get on with the theory. So the Gravity Falls fans have created an AU called Reverse Falls. Now, I'm not going to mainly use this as evidence, this is just where I just heard about Will. In this AU he is a slave to the Gleeful twins, Dipper and Mabel. (Yes, it is reverse, The Pines family become the Gleefuls, but a lot more sinister, and the Gleefuls are the Pines, just a bit less good.) They summon him, and now he is their servant. I'm not really going to elaborate on him, if you want to learn more, check out the Reverse Falls wiki HERE(https://reverse-falls.fandom.com/wiki/Reverse_Falls_Wikia!)! Ok, on to more evidence.
I believe that William Cipher exists because of a few things. Number 1, Bame the arson for the fire. I would like to propose that in Bill's society, having fire powers was not a good thing. It was a sign of destruction, of death. This is why Bill, and any brother he did have, would have tried to hide their fire powers. I believe that Bill failed in this aspect, and ended up an outcast.
His brother, on the other hand, succeeded. He hid his powers. So when he burned his dimension, leaving nothing left but Bill, because he either felt sorry for his brother, or Bill's powers protected him, Will disappeared, not wanting to face the consequences of his actions. Bill was the only one left.
Since he was a known fire user and the only known fire user, he was the arson who was blamed for the fire. Therefore, all throughout his life, he has been attempting to shirk the blame, and absolve his crime by hunting down his brother, tearing through universe after universe in his insanity.
He found the nightmare realm and decided to stay there temporarily since it was the only place that he could find he could stay without the inhabitant kicking him out. It was also during this period that he got in trouble with the Time Baby. Bill tried to reverse time to get his family back, along with his world, his friends, and his brother.
Because of this the Time Baby took notice and punished him by stopping his unlimited access to worlds and minds, and by trapping him in the Nightmare Realm and restricting his access to the Mindscape to needing to make a deal. That is why Bill requires the shake of a hand. That is also why he hates the Time Baby. Eventually, he got bored of the Nightmare Realm and started to take interest in our universe. (Let's call it Earth-Prime)
The people there were brilliant enough to create a portal that could take him straight to his brother and arrogant enough that they could be persuaded to do so. He started trying. He looked all over but found our Earth and that version of Gravity Falls. A place that was so messed up by the Alien spacecraft that had landed there, tearing a rip in the multiverse that allowed weirdness to spill in that he didn't need the shake of a hand there.
He could appear to anyone in the mindscape, but needed the shake of a hand to access their true mind, and not just the outskirts of their reality. Over time he tried so many times to create a portal. The natives, George Washington, so many people but finally he found Stanford Pines. A genius so easily flattered, and so nearsighted, that creating the portal would be a breeze. When Ford eventually figured out the letting Bill into his dimension would create an apocalypse, he destroyed the portal, but not before his brother Stanley, influenced by Bill worked so hard to open the portal a final time, all that he needed to get in.
Either straight through the portal or through a crack that he knew it would create, allowing Bill to get the rift, and finally create his Weirdmaggedon and find his brother. But he failed on one part. He got trapped in Stanley's mind, and was erased by the memory gun, but not before he was able to invoke the Axolotls name and finally, after all of the millennia he spent waiting, find his brother that would absolve his crime.
The Axolotl took pity on Bill and reincarnated him in the Dimension his brother would escape to. Unfortunately, he was never able to capture his brother, because of the shields and deterrents he put up, but he was able to make his life misery, by using his new form to make his brother suffer at the hands of the Gleeful twins.
My final piece of evidence comes from Take Back the Falls again. When Bill shows Ford the world burning, it burns not with Bill's signature blue flame, but with orange flame. The flame of the true Arson of Gravity Falls.
Final note. You may be wondering, "is the poem even canon?" And well, yes, the majority of the fandom believe it is. Alex Hirsch the creator of Gravity Fall said that while the book as a whole is not canon, because of the choose your own adventure aspect, which allows for multiple outcomes, it does contain one enormous canon secret.
Most people take this to mean the Axolotl's poem, and after reading it, I can't see why it would be anything else. But here's the problem. The poem is too easy to uncover that there is no way that it can be a "secret." Sure it's locked behind a code, but anyone who has watched Gravity Falls a few times will know how to crack the code. So I think that Mr. Hirsch is not referring to the poem, but to the giant secret of Bill's (somewhat) innocence.
P.S. This whole universe of Gravity Falls was created by Alex Hirsch and streamed by Disney.
Well, I hope this slightly different style of content. This is actually one of my favorite theories. If you enjoyed it, leave a comment or vote. Art credit is in the description.