Stan Pines

Stanford "Stan" Pines, better known as Grunkle Stan, is Mabel and Dipper's sly, cranky great uncle. He runs the Mystery Shack, a tourist trap full of questionable oddities. When he's giving tours or sleeping on the couch, Dipper and Mabel are usually sneaking out to explore the town’s secrets, though Grunkle Stan may have some of his own mysterious secrets.

Early life
Several decades ago, Stan moved into the Mystery Shack and later transformed it into a tourist trap. At a garage sale, he stole many wax figures and set up a wax museum, and, though not to his knowledge, was frequently pranked at night when the cursed statues came to life. After the wax museum stopped bringing in money, he closed it and locked the figures away for ten years, while they plotted revenge on him. At unknown points, he went to jail in Colombia and developed a feud with Gideon Gleeful.

During the series
Sometime during the month of June, Stan's great niece and nephew were sent from Piedmont, California to stay with him for the summer. Stan immediately puts them to work in his house-turned tourist trap, the Mystery Shack. Stan's other employees include Soos and Wendy. At the end of "Tourist Trapped", it's revealed that he has a secret door behind the vending machine in his house.

In "The Legend of the Gobblewonker," Grunkle Stan wants to take Dipper and Mabel to the Lake Gravity Falls to bond with them, and he states that the guys from the lodge won't go with Stan because they don't "like or trust him". Though he reveals in a way that he does love Dipper and Mabel, since he does make them fishing hats, meaning that he does want to spend time with them for once. Dipper and Mabel try to get away from Stan's fishing idea by going with Soos to catch the Gobblewonker so they can get $1,000 in a photo contest. Stan gets upset that Dipper and Mabel would rather go on a monster hunt than go fishing with him, so he tries to find his own fishing buddies around the lake. This doesn't turn out right for Stan, since everyone just thinks of his jokes as annoying or creepy. Later when Dipper, Mabel, and Soos return from their voyage, Dipper and Mabel asks if they can bond with Stan, feeling bad that they left him earlier. Stan accepts their request, and they all end up having quality family time Stan has been waiting for.

After the twins and Soos discovers several wax figures in an abandoned room in "Headhunters," Stan tells them that he used to run the Gravity Falls Wax Museum, until he forgot all about it. Mabel uses some old wax to make a wax figure of Grunkle Stan, which he then shows to the town. When Stan's promised free pizza is revealed to be a lie, the crowd goes on a rampage. Later that night, Wax Stan is murdered and his head is gone. While Dipper and Mabel try to figure out the murderer, Stan prepares a funeral. After failing to find out the culprit, the twins, Soos, the wax figures, and Stan hold the funeral. Stan tearfully leaves, and Soos follows him. It is revealed that the murderers are the wax figures themselves, who wanted revenge on Stan for forgetting about them for 10 years. Mabel and Dipper defeat them, even though they destroyed Stan's parlor.

In "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel," when the twins and Soos see a commercial for the psychic 'Lil Gideon, Stan tells them that he is his arch enemy and has been nothing but trouble for him since he arrived in Gravity Falls. He also says they're not allowed to see Gideon's show, but Dipper and Mabel find a loophole and go anyway. Later, Stan learns that Mabel and Gideon are dating, and disapproves. He goes to talk to Gideon's dad, Bud Gleeful, about it, but he changes his mind when Bud says that they can pool their profits. Stan even tells Mabel she has to marry Gideon. After Mabel breaks Gideon's amulet, Gideon forces his dad to call off the deal. Stan then steals a clown painting and yells, "Try and catch me, suckers!"

In "The Inconveniencing," Stan falls in love with a classic romance film, The Duchess Approves, and becomes glued to the television as he watches it.

When Grunkle Stan takes the twins to Greasy's Diner in "Dipper vs. Manliness," Mabel learns that he has a crush on waitress Lazy Susan and tries to improve his appearance and behavior in order to appeal to his love. After nothing works, Mabel decides that she should present her uncle to Susan as is, and is successful. However, Susan's incessant phone calls make Stan regret ever expressing feeling for her.

He has a party at the Mystery Shack in "Double Dipper" to attract a younger audience for the Mystery Shack.

It is revealed that Grunkle Stan despises Pioneer Day in "Irrational Treasure," and he later gets trapped in a wooden stock for yelling at Steve, a mechanic. While Stan is locked up, Gideon throws tomatoes at his eyes, and he gets taunted by Pacifica Northwest.

In "The Time Traveler's Pig," Grunkle Stan opens up the Mystery Fair to earn more cash, and rigged the Dunk Tank by making the target connected to the seat very stiff, causing Stan to not fall no matter how hard the people threw. When Dipper and Mabel time travel, the twins pass the Mystery Shack from which a younger Stan briefly emerges. Later, one of the members of the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron fires his blaster at the target, which causes Stan to fall off the seat and into the water, satisfying the crowd of people.

In "Fight Fighters," Stan is seen hanging out with Soos and the twins for a while before Robbie challenges Dipper to a fight, which Stan encourages. Later, Mabel learns that Stan is afraid of heights, despite his attempts to cover it up, and tricks him into letting her help him overcome his fear. When he and Mabel are attacked by Rumble McSkirmish, who is pursuing Robbie at the time, at the water tower, he is so relieved to have survived that he no longer fears high altitudes.

In "Little Dipper," a man is at Stan's door when Dipper, Mabel, and him were watching TV, he answers the door and thinks that the tax collector is here for him, so he runs and gets a bag of full of cash behind the painting that he stole from a restaurant (Mystery Shack Mystery) and starts looking for a trap door on the stones on the wall. Soon learning that it wasn't them and that they are the "Winninghhouse Coupon Savers Contest" and that they are there to give him $10,000,000, since his dream was to "possess money" had finally come true, so he signs. but Gideon comes out saying that he just signed the Mystery Shack to him, but on the paper he signs "SUCK A LEMON LITTLE MAN" instead. Throughout the episode Gideon tries taking the Mystery Shack away from Stan but ultimately fails. So, when Gideon has shrunken Mabel and Dipper and has them in his possession he calls Stan saying that he has them and that he has to give up the Mystery Shack in order to get them back but Stan doesn't believe him so Gideon says that he would text Stan a photo of them, but Stan thinks Gideon isn't even speaking English and ends up hanging up the phone. Though Gideon goes to the Shack to shrink Stan and take over the Shack, before Stan and Soos are setting up the mirror maze that is supposedly gonna bring him in cash, and that was Soos's idea that Stan is taking credit for. Once Gideon gets into the Mystery Shack he finds Stan, but since Stan is in the maze Gideon can't find him but soon breaks every single mirror he sees and finds him. He corners Stan and tries to zap him, but meanwhile tiny Mabel and Dipper start tickling him and says that he is a good enemy that maybe their rivalry has gone too far, so he "rolls" Gideon out of the shack.

In "Summerween", Grunkle Stan steals items from the Summerween Superstore by using his Smoke Bomb, and tells the twins that the townspeople love Halloween so much they celebrate it twice a year. Later a group of kids who are trick-or-treating rings the doorbell of the Mystery Shack, and Stan comes to the door with a skeleton mask. This scares the kids, who ran away, but two kids remained. Stan asks them why they weren't scared, and the kids reply they've been watching horror movies since they were two years old. For the rest of the episode, Stan tries to scare the two kids. He first pulls out "guts" from his stomach, but the kids weren't scared because the guts were just sausages. Then Stan had a pig come out of his stomach, but it was just tucked under his shirt the whole time. Stan feels shameful because he used to scare every children in the previous Summerweens, so he took a shower to wash off the shame. The two kids, who wanted candy from Stan, walked inside the Mystery Shack to find him. They finally get scared and runs away after they saw Stan naked, satisfying Stan. When the twins come home from trick-or-treating, they were disappointed they couldn't eat any of the candy they collected (they all fell into a river). Stan shows them two big bags of candy he got, and the family, along with Soos, Wendy, Candy Chiu and Grenda, watch a horror movie at the Mystery Shack for the remainder of the night.

In "Boss Mabel," Stan's relentless attempts at making money and poor treatment of his employees get on Mabel's nerves, and she decides to confront him about it. So, the two bet that whoever makes more money in three days' time--Stan on vacation or Mabel running the Shack--is in charge for the rest of the summer. After heading out, Stan lands a spot competing on the game show Cash Wheel, and, despite doing very well at first, ends up losing all $300 thousand dollars he earns after failing to correctly guess the final puzzle. Consequently, Stan offers Mabel the chance to be the new boss in accordance with their bet, but she declines, although she still makes him perform the apology dance he promised to do if he lost the bet.

In "Bottomless Pit!," Grunkle Stan has his first major encounter with the supernatural side of Gravity Falls as he, Soos, and the twins fall down a bottomless pit and tell stories to pass the time. In Dipper's tale, Stan makes fun of Dipper's frequently cracking voice and develops an obnoxious, female voice after his nephew dumps a voice-altering formula in his coffee. In his own tale, Stan wins a major football game with the help of his robotic sidekick, thereby teaching a group of football players a lesson and winning a gigantic trophy. In Mabel's story, Mabel observes his excessive lying habit and grows more and more annoyed by it to the point of forcing him to be honest, via a set of truth telling teeth. Stan's truthfulness is unfiltered, however, and gets on the twins' nerves, and Mabel finally decides to remove the teeth from her uncle's mouth after he almost gets himself arrested. As the group nears the end of the pit, they simply come out the top, though Stan falls back in shortly afterwards.

On the hottest day of the year, Stan, Dipper, Mabel, and Soos go to the town pool to cool off. When Stan tries to get his ideal lawn chair, he is horrified when he finds that Gideon has taken it from him. As he tries to reclaim his seat, he is put into pool jail for roughhousing, and Gideon foils his other attempts. At night, Stan decides to go to the pool extremely early to get the chair before Gideon shows up, but is enraged upon finding out that his young foe yet again anticipated and ruined his plan ahead of time, at this instance by gluing him to the pool chair.

Personality
Grunkle Stan, is a gruff, selfish, and greedy salesman who has managed to set up his shop in a town with enough unsuspecting customers to sell worthless knickknacks to. His flair for showmanship is oddly hypnotizing, and thus he is able to make money by peddling the bogus trinkets and baubles in his store. His work ethic is mainly driven by his desire to make money, so when he's not generating an income, he's usually at home watching television. Even though he sends the twins on unpredictable and outrageous errands, he always has their best interests at heart and loves them unconditionally. Meanwhile, when he isn't busy trying to make a quick buck from his unsuspecting customers, Grunkle Stan is guarding his own secret that might hold the key to unlocking the mystery of Gravity Falls.

Appearance
Grunkle Stan has brown eyes with cataracts, gray eyebrows, and gray hair, that is almost always covered by Stan's trademark maroon fez, which bears a yellow crescent shape and later a similar figure, albeit with straight edges, with a dot next to it. He bears a somewhat large, droopy, reddish-pinkish nose, large ears, and fair skin. Stan has wrinkly skin as a result of his age, a slouched posture, and a dull indigo tattoo of an unknown design on his back. He usually wears a pair of rectangular glasses with a black rim. Stan has a perpetual five o'clock shadow covering his lower face.

Stan's typical outfit is a black suit, with the jacket buttoned closed, a bow tie similar in color to his fez, and a white dress shirt. He also wears big, light brown shoes and the aforementioned fez and glasses. He frequently carries an eight ball cane with him and often wears an unnecessary eye-patch over one of his eyes while working. He is seen for the first time with an unbuttoned suit in Carpet Diem. He is also seen briefly wearing a white T-shirt with blue lettering that states "Team Gideon" in "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel."

Around the house, he tends to wear a white tank top, a gold necklace, striped blue underwear, slippers, and his glasses and fez. This particular outfit shows Stan's body hair, of which he has an excessive amount, burly arms, skinny legs, and his large gut.

Trivia

 * Grunkle Stan has a tattoo on his back that has yet to be revealed. Only a bit of it has been seen, as a large part of it is covered by the armscye of his tank top.
 * His car has a vanity license plate that reads "STNLYMBL". This is most likely short for Stanley Mobile.
 * He has been sent to jail in Colombia.
 * Grunkle Stan is continuously seen running away with stuff.
 * He claims to own ten loaded guns.
 * Grunkle Stan, Mabel, and Dipper have been to the county jail due to them making counterfeit money.
 * In the working stage, his fez had a crescent moon and star, much like the Islamic symbol which is probably why it was changed.
 * The fez he wears on his head has its origins from the Ottoman Empireculture which occupied most of the Middle East, and Turkeyonly a century ago before losing their land in WW1.
 * The symbol on Stan's hat may be the Luwian hieroglyph for "Luna" or moon.
 * In some countries, the symbol on Stan's fez is removed.
 * He has a cameo on the Disney Channel website, trying to scam the user with the Sack of Mystery.
 * Stan has cataracts and is almost completely blind by them.
 * Grunkle Stan frequently uses smoke bombs to distract people and then runs away.
 * Even though it has not been stated outright, since Stan and the twins share the same last name, one can infer that he has a brother, who would be their grandfather.