If you have ever been to the web corners where people enjoy animated creations, one mysterious symbol might be familiar to you: Bill Cipher. This menacing yellow cartoon character who sports a top hat from Disney’s Gravity Falls arrived in meme culture with similar vigor. Let’s uncover all there is to know about Bill Cipher, including how he became a meme and why the internet loves this character so much.
Who is Bill Cipher?
Bill Cipher is the villain from Gravity Falls – an animated television series that premiered in 2012 and ended in 2016, created by Alex Hirsch. The show is based around two main characters, Dipper and Mabel Pines, who move to the strange town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, to spend the summer with their Great-Uncle Stan.
Bill is introduced as a dream demon who is excellent at manipulation — something that lets him alter the world to his whims. His appearance – a bright yellow triangle with one eye, stick limbs, and a cute top hat – is as famous as the character himself.
Bill Cipher in Gravity Falls: Origins explored
Bill first came into the picture in an episode of season one, which aired July 12, 2013, titled Dreamscapers. Called by Gideon Gleeful, an antagonist and a perpetuer of fraud in Gravity Falls, Bill attempts to get a hold of the deed of the Mystery Shack by entering Stan Pines’ mind. Spoiler alert: The plan goes wrong, but Bill doesn’t stop. He reoccurs throughout the series, and he starts initiating his plot to bring chaos from the physical world.
Therefore, this mix of comedy, threat, and mysterious one-liners like “Reality is an illusion; the universe is a hologram, buy gold!” sets him in a class of his own. Audiences couldn’t resist his crazy persona, and before they knew it, the internet made Bill Cipher a meme machine.
The emergence of the Bill Cipher meme
Bill, now a meme, became popular when he first appeared. Here’s how it happened:
Since the beginning, the series Gravity Falls gathered a fandom who enjoyed the show for its peculiar jokes and rich lore. Bill Cipher’s surreal personality and cryptic dialogue made him an object of fan art, theories, and memes.
Bill is the easiest to twist into several settings given that he is a simple geometric designer created in yellow triangle form, wearing a top hat and having a single eye. He has featured stamped-on dollar bills, painted in the abstract, and impersonated in preposterous situations.
Bill’s catchphrases “It’s time to get weird” and “I’m a shapeshifter” are all laughable and suitable for making meme captions. This appeals to his fans, who love to see some form of disorder in their comedy.
The show Gravity Falls and Bill’s abilities to manipulate reality make the memes based on the show goofy and existential, which are characteristics of most memes.
The cultural impact of Bill Cipher memes
Bill Cipher is one of the best Gravity Falls memes revered by the show’s fans. The character is about childlike innocence and perhaps existential themes that will remain relevant to any age group.
Trending
Depending on the artists’ imagination, Bill has appeared in various guises, from cute to menacing. The audience has reached as far as parody videos and mashups, some depicting Bill in some other realities.
Bill has even appeared alongside Rick and Morty, SpongeBob, and video games.
Reply
