"Little Gift Shop of Horrors" is the sixth episode in the second season of Gravity Falls, and the 26th episode overall. It premiered on October 4, 2014.
Synopsis[]
The episode begins with Stan welcoming a person (shown from first-person view in an attempt to make the viewer a character in the show) whose car broke down at night into the Mystery Shack, warning the person that he may be subject to "Tales Designed to Sell My Merchandise!"
Stan explains that after hours, the Mystery Shack has its spookiest attractions for sale. He offers the person a disembodied hand, which is ridiculously expensive. To support this, he tells a story called "Hands Off".
Hands Off[]
Stan steals a gold watch from a witch when he, Dipper and Mabel visit the local swap meet. The witch curses Stan, and he wakes up without hands the next morning.
At breakfast, the twins discover that Stan's hands are missing. Dipper recommend that Stan simply returns the watch, but he refuses. He asks Mabel to make him new hands, but when those work poorly, Dipper, Mabel and Stan visit the witch's secret hideout in a mountain cave, which they locate using a pamphlet from the swap meet. They find the cave to be filled with hundreds of disembodied hands, which attack them. The hand witch reveals herself. Stan returns the watch, but she claims the curse can only be broken by a kiss.
At this point, Dipper proclaims that the witch is just making stuff up, and they discover that the whole thing was a ruse for the witch to get a date. Mabel suggests a home makeover, which the witch loves. She returns Stan's hands to him. After Stan and the twins leave, a mountain climber meets the witch and she flirts with him using a book Mabel gave her.
After the story, the person says they don't want the hand, so Stan tosses it and the hand crawls away. So Stan offers to sell Waddles, calling him a magic pig.
Abaconings[]
Dipper receives a new puzzle toy, the "what-the-heck-ahedron". He finds it incredibly difficult, and Mabel suggest he might just not be smart enough to solve it. To prove her wrong, he locates the "percepshrooms" which journal 3 says that it will increase brainpower when ground up and smeared on the forehead overnight. Dipper does so, but soon after falling asleep, Waddles wakes up and eats the ground mushroom powder off of Dipper's forehead.
The next morning, the twins wake up to see that Waddles has made a device that allows him to talk, and has solved Dipper's puzzle toy. While Dipper is amazed, Mabel soon learns that this is not the Waddles she used to have fun with, and becomes lonely. Dipper and Waddles work together to create inventions, eventually building the "Smarticle Accelerator," which will let Waddles solve all the mysteries of the universe.
Mabel asks Waddles to remember all the fun they used to have. Waddles realizes that there is no point in helping the world if he can't help his favorite person in the world. He then activates the Smarticle Accelerator's reverse switch, reverting him to an ordinary pig, and causing the device to collapse. Dipper is devastated, but Mabel says a hug from Waddles will cheer him up. Dipper hugs Waddles, and the pig regurgitates the What-the-Heck-A-Hedron, which Dipper cheers him up more, but finds it a bit gross.
Back in the Shack, the person refuses Waddles as well. Stan replies by offering some spooky VHS movies.
Clay Day[]
Dipper, Mabel, Stan, and Soos are watching a movie called "Believe in Yourself," which only Mabel likes. Stan puts in "The Voyages of Loinclothiclese." To Mabel's dismay, the film has claymation, which Mabel has a childhood fear of. She goes and hides in a laundry basket until Stan decides to take everyone to the house of the film's director, Harry Claymore, to prove claymation is harmless.
Claymore's house is somewhat old, and Stan, Dipper, Mabel and Soos soon discover that it is inhabited by a giant clay cyclops and clay skeletons. They find Claymore tied up, and he explains that he used black magic to make the clay figures animate themselves. However, when computer animation was invented, the figures were out of a job, so they went crazy and turned on him. Claymore says that the clay monsters will turn them into clay monsters too by covering them in clay.
Mabel, having run off, wonders what to do. While fiddling with loose clay, she has an idea. She remolds the cyclops into Shimmery Twinkleheart, a character from Believe in Yourself, which crushes the other clay figures while Mabel frees her friends. They initially assume that Mabel conquered her fear, but Mabel explains that she's twice as scared now, but now she knows it's a perfectly rational fear.
Back at the Shack, the gang watches another Loinclothiclese movie, and Stan and the twins are glad no one got turned got turned into clay. However, they discover that Soos has mysteriously turned into clay, and Stan throws the VCR at his head to get rid of him.
After that story, when the person still refuses to buy anything, Stan offers them a free sample of a potion. When they drink it, they pass out. They later wake up trapped in a glass box, now a Mystery Shack attraction dubbed "The Cheapskate". During the end credits they play tic-tac-toe with Mabel, who keeps bending the rules to her advantage.
Voice Cast[]
- Jason Ritter - Dipper
- Kristen Schaal - Mabel
- Alex Hirsch - Stan Pines, Soos
- John DiMaggio - Harry Claymore
- Will Forte - Tyler Cutebiker
- Neil DeGrasse Tyson - Talking Machine
- Dee Bradley Baker - Waddles
- Matt Chapman - Hand Witch, Hiker, Cyclops
- Carl Faruolo - Grenda
- Gregg Turkington - Toby Determined
- Kari Wahlgren - Cinnamon
- Niki Yang - Candy
Trivia[]
- Morals:
- If a person is mad at you, it may not have to do with you. If you did wrong to them, rectify it, but sometimes they have personal issues.
- Seeking knowledge has a price; so does staying friends with the one you love. If you're going to seek knowledge, do it to help others, not to become the smartest pig in the room.
- You don't have to conquer your fears to face them, or "re-mold them."
- This episode's title is a spoof of the horror film Little Shop of Horrors.
- The episode is split up into multiple segments, similar to The Simpsons' annual "Treehouse of Horror" series of Halloween specials.
- Its format is also similar to the Phineas and Ferb episode "Terrifying Tri-State Trilogy of Terror".
- Clay Day is a parody of the work of legendary stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen, with the cyclops originating from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and the Skeletons coming from Jason and the Argonauts.
- Despite the stories being made up, the hand crawls away after Stan tosses it and moves on to the second story.
- The claymation segments during Clay Day were animated by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, best known for providing the animation to the TV series Robot Chicken. Stoopid Buddy Stoodios would later collaborate with Disney on the TV specials Mickey Saves Christmas and Mickey and Friends: Trick or Treats, and the short-form series Mickey's Christmas Tales and Doc McStuffins: The Doc & Bella Are In!.
- The cartoon Mabel is watching is marked as "episode 618".
- According to the VHS case, Clash of the Genres is rated "O" for Old People.
- The appearance of the Hand Witch's throne is most likely a reference to the Iron Throne from HBO's Game of Thrones.
- The Hand Witch's appearance is inspired by the villainous, "Master" from the B-movie Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966).
Crpytograms[]
- During the ending credits, there is a cryptogram that reads "PVREK BIG QF. JCDQZRF’ ZNVEFH OBCX: "C BEWRS VVUTBFL BT BKNX CVAY BKNX CVAY BKNX"" Using the vigenère cipher, it translates to "CHECK OUT DR. WADDLES’ LATEST BOOK: "A BRIEF HISTORY OF OINK OINK OINK OINK OINK"".
- Keyword: "NONCANON", found on the upper level rail planks in Harry Claymore's home.
- The page section at the end of the episode says, "23-12-12 23-10-15-11-23-4-15-9-10 " on the top left, and "15-5 22-12-23-21-13 11-23-17-15-21" on the bottom right, which translates to "ALL ANIMATION" and "IS BLACK MAGIC" after being put through the combined cipher.
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