Gravity Falls: How To Solve The Show's Puzzling Codes

Alex Hirch's beloved animated series "Gravity Falls" is a show that is obsessed with all things mysterious and unexplained. The show revolves around the summer vacation of Dipper and Mabel Pines (voiced by Jason Ritter and Kristen Schaal respectively), as they investigate the mysterious supernatural phenomenon that plagues the town Gravity Falls, Oregon.

Considering just how much of the show is focused on solving mysteries, it should come as no surprise that "Gravity Falls" contains a wide variety of hidden messages, secret codes, and cryptograms for the more avid viewers to crack. Every single episode of "Gravity Falls" contains a brief cryptogram during the end credits, and many more contain codes or messages scattered throughout the episode. For the most part, these codes use three different substitution ciphers to encode their messages. The most straightforward cipher in "Gravity Falls" is the A1Z26 cipher, in which you substitute a letter of the alphabet for its number in said alphabet (for example "A" would be "1" and "Z" would be "26").

The next level up is the Caesar cipher, in which you encrypt the whole alphabet with A1Z26, then shift up by three or  subtract 23 and use the corresponding letter in your code (so "A" in this example would equal "X"). Finally, "Gravity Falls" uses the Atbash cipher or "mirror code," in which you simply mirror the alphabet and assign those values to the original text ("A,B,C," becomes "Z,Y,X," and so on).

Using these ciphers, most viewers should be able to decrypt the vast majority of codes hidden in the end credits of "Gravity Falls" Season 1 – albeit with some trial and error to figure out which cipher is being used in each episode. Things get much trickier in Season 1, Episode 20, which uses a combined cipher that utilizes the A1Z26, Casar, and Atbash Ciphers simultaneously.

A good portion of Season 2 uses the Vigenère cipher for its hidden messages. The Vigenère cipher uses a separate Caesar cipher for each letter in its message, with the number shift for each Caesar cipher being determined by a corresponding letter from a keyword. You decode a Vigenère by using the keyword to reverse this process, though this is very tedious and it's much easier using a substitution graph that marks every single numerical shift with 26 unique rows of Caesar ciphers.

This graph is actually available on the "Gravity Falls" wiki, alongside solutions and explanations for every single cipher and cryptogram presented throughout the series. It's worth noting that the show also encrypts some messages with "The Author's code" from the canon tie-in book "Journal 3," as well as other codes from tie-in media like "Dipper and Mabel's Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun!" 

There's no question that solving every code in "Gravity Falls" is a massive undertaking, one that requires an extensive knowledge of ciphers, cryptograms, and even the series' tie-in merchandise.