The Book of Bill

The first page, titled “My Story,” depicts Bill’s shape under floral wallpaper, looming in the eerie dark. Bill provides his baby picture, wherein he is wearing large Velcro shoes and has a gigantic watery eye, and explains he was beloved by all on his 2D home universe, so much so that the mayor announced his birthday as a holiday. However, he was uniquely able to see the third dimension. Talking about it was illegal, and nobody believed him. He decided to put on a show to prove himself right; his description of the show is mostly glitched out, as he blacks out when he tries to recount it, but snippets imply he brutally murdered everyone on his home world before leaving to become a “galactic overlord.”

Bill forms a group of “henchmaniacs,” which include: Pyronica, the beauty queen arsonist; 8-Ball, the bounty-hunter eater and “muscle” of the group; Teeth, the pet; Keyhole, the locksmith and spy; Amorphous Shape, the “distraction”; Dan Crableman, the “lawyer” (who seems to be a literal crab); and several others Bill names but does not describe. One of the people on the list is scratched out in red and labeled as not important; most of these characters appear in the final episodes of Gravity Falls. Bill and his crew set out to destroy reality.

During Bill’s glory years, he established the nightmare realm and ruled in chaos, robbing extraterrestrial banks and destroying planets. He lists his accomplishments alongside an illustration of him and his crew fleeing the police in a shootout. Eventually, however, entropy struck the Nightmare Realm, with the edge of reality edging closer to erasing them. Bill and his henchmen decided to find a new universe to spread chaos in.

Earth’s dimension was guarded by Time Baby, whose name is listed in the book as “Chronelius Infinitum Titanicus the Infinitieth.” Time Baby and his army patrol for a billion years, intending to stop anomalies and dangers from reaching Earth. Bill explains some details about Time Baby, including that he is the last survivor of the extinct Chrono-Giants. Feeling a kinship with Time Baby, Bill asked him to meet him outside the timeline to make a deal for Earth, but Time Baby instantly sent out an alert to his time agents rather than complying. Page 99 details this alert, including mugshots of Bill, with Time Baby demanding that his agents bring Bill to justice. Subsequently, the time agents and Time Baby headed to the Nightmare Realm to fight Bill, falling into his trap; Xanthar punched Time Baby so hard he crashed into Earth and drove the dinosaurs extinct. Time Baby froze in a glacier, forcing the agents to wait until he thawed and could return to his own timeline to aid in their time travel again.

Bill, freed from Time Baby’s threats, headed to Earth but refuses to tell the reader why he wants to conquer it, insisting it exists on a “weak spot between dimensions” and is therefore convenient for him (101). He begins to enter human beings’ dreams to gain power.

A private note from Stanford is underneath a picture of the hollow in the cliffs a UFO left in Gravity Falls. It mentions the “Law of Gravity Falls,” which is that objects of peculiarity are drawn to each other. Bill takes advantage of this, using the thin membrane between his realm and Gravity Falls to explore Earth. He includes a picture of the “Land Orca,” a bloody-mouthed orca with legs, as something he loves about Gravity Falls, and shows a redwood cross-section with lines shaped like his hat as proof of his visits. However, Bill needs a portal to physically enter the world and finds extraordinary resources to build it in Gravity Falls. Bill searches for a person who can understand him enough to build the portal.

Bill finds an Indigenous shaman and befriends him and his tribe, exchanging knowledge, but the shaman has a vision of Weirdmageddon and chooses to burn the portal and banish Bill with magic rather than condemn Earth. The shaman provides instructions in the form of “The Prophecy,” detailing 10 symbols that will witness his defeat—the Zodiac from the show. Bill mocks the Zodiac and the shaman, but he scans the future and sees glimpses of Dipper, Mabel, and Soos regardless. Bill sends a message to the world that he wants a new powerful best friend.

The subsequent pages detail Bill’s journey through human history, starting with Ancient Egypt, the Aztecs, and Easter Island. Bill claims that the pharaohs of Egypt were obsessed with him, but a quote from a pharaoh reveals they wanted him to leave them alone because Bill sent plagues to “flirt” with them. Bill also tried to convince the Aztecs to build him a portal out of hearts (it failed). The Easter Island heads, depicted with bodies, were no better at construction.

Bill then went to the Dark Ages, which he found hilarious for their lack of medicine and inaccurate paintings of babies. He located a warlock, Xgqrthx the Unpronounceable. After guiding the warlock through his messy divorce and failing social life, Bill asked for a portal in exchange for “orbs and owls,” but X’y asked for Bill to deal with the knights at the king’s treasury so he could use the king’s cursed amulet to power the portal.

The following two pages illustrate the quest to retrieve the amulet in the style of an illuminated manuscript. The narrator, one of the guards, describes seeing Bill dressed as a jester; Bill offers to make the guard king if he helps Bill get what he wants. The guard agrees, and Bill sends him into the forest to get his DVD copy of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” which he dropped. The guard assembles the “Knights of Cipher” and leaves on the quest, but when they return and find they have been tricked, they swear to themselves anew to defeat Bill at any cost.

The wizard, however, tricks Bill and uses unicorn hair to trap him in an orb to impress his ex-wife, a bog hag. They “ponder” over Bill in the orb together, which infuriates Bill, and eventually bring him to the king, who forces Bill to dance in the orb as a jester. Furious, Bill melts the glass and escapes. He curses everyone in the time period to have nightmares and burns down the castle, but he creates multiple superstitions about himself that begin to spread across the world in the process. He claims the guillotine and the practice of beheading people—including Henry VIII’s wives—came from an attempt to remove him from human minds. Tired of Europe, Bill attempts to take over Atlantis, but they start a war with a lobster lord before he can, forcing him to return to America.

Bill arrives in Salem and finds it and the Puritans to be extremely boring due to their stuffy morality and lack of imagination. Due to their mistreatment of women, he offers the women accused of witchcraft actual spells, taking the form of a goat (the only creature whose pupils do not change when he possesses them) to convince them. The following page depicts the letter of a woman named Mary Dower-Thatch, who lived in misery under her husband, Jeremiah. She explains how a goat, Vinegar Pete, offered her powers to “escape [her] husband, live a life of sin and pleasure, and crawl on the ceiling on all fours like a wicked spider” if she renounces all gods (113). Mary laughs for the first time and agrees. Bill then gives her boxed wine, which she shares with her new female friends while they attack their enemies as witches and burn the village leaders.

When America comes into being, Bill tries to deal with the Founding Fathers, but his flirtations with Martha Washington and drafts of the Constitution eventually get them to put his image on the dollar bill to get him to leave them alone. (In a side note, Bill claims the way to defeat the British is to destroy their tea.) Bill provides multiple “secrets” of America, such as that the Capitol dome is filled with lead to keep him out of presidential minds. Bill also mentions his favorite president, Quentin Trembley of Gravity Falls lore, who didn’t think Bill was real due to his constant hallucinations.

One of the longest sections in the book details the creation, exploits, and downfall of the Anti-Cipher Society, founded in 1901 to destroy Bill. (Bill views them as his fandom.) Bill provides a profile of their leader, Thurburt Mudget Waxstaff III, a “pleasant” man who works as a copywriter and provides multiple points of evidence for his own sanity. Thurburt explains that Bill, or “William Lucipher,” comes to people in their dreams and has visited him three times. He proceeds to tell the tale.

Thurburt was visited by Bill one night when he was struggling to produce a new slogan for his boss’s mustache wax and horse-calming tonic. Bill introduced himself as a “Spirit of Inspiration,” and Thurburt rapidly made a deal with him. When Thurburt gave his boss the subsequent slogan, his boss was so impressed he made Thurburt rich and gave him his wife, which is described as the American Dream. Bill demands that Thurburt build the portal; when Thurburt claims it is impossible, Bill retaliates. Thurburt quickly puts an ad out begging for help in exchange for opium and then puts an ad out to see if anyone has seen Bill in the first place. A copy of the newspaper with the ad is included; it contains many jokes and references to Gravity Falls lore, including a reference to Time Agent Blendin Blandin and the original Pitt Bros soda.

Four people respond to Thurburt’s second ad: excommunicated priest Tinsley O’Pimm, strongman Horace Broadshoulder, sharpshooter Jessamine Delilah Gulch, and tinkerer and inventor Abigale Blackwing. All are victims of Bill and want to defeat him. They debate methods of doing so and settle on exorcism. They summon Bill with a spirit board, but he spells out “Eeny Meeny Miney YOU” and possesses O’Pimm. Bill, through O’Pimm, explains that each person around the table has the resources to build his portal if they work together. He offers them their own countries if they cooperate, but they draw guns on him. Bill angrily leaves O’Pimm’s body, and the group forms the Anti-Cipher society to defeat him.

The following page includes the society’s rite of initiation, which includes signing your name and drinking a glass of mercury. They all start working to defeat Bill, with Thurburt in charge of advertising their work. Thurburt advertises several of their inventions, including the “Bill-Hunting Suit.” They also produce and advertise the “Anti-Cipher Tonic,” which makes the consumer violently throw up, and Father O’Pimm’s “Brain Wash,” which is just alcohol.

The work of the Anti-Cipherites eventually earns them a place at the 1901 Inventioneer’s Fair; they prepare a speech, which is simplistic and untrustworthy. An included front page from the “Century Dawn Herald” reveals that they were mocked for their superstitious beliefs and booed off the stage. Thurburt is subsequently sent to a psychiatric ward, while his friends disperse. Bill, disappointed, decides to pursue other methods of entering human minds.

In 1930, Bill takes advantage of cartoons, entering the dreams of Elias Inkwell of Inkwell Studios, a failing animation company. Inkwell’s cartoon character, Ducky the Rat-Hog (a mockery of Mickey Mouse, based on the style of illustration and font), bores audiences. However, with Bill’s influence, he creates the Cipher Symphonies, which are as “cheeky as the Hays Code will allow” (129). Pictures of Bill in an old-timey cartoon are included. The poster for Cipher Symphonies includes eye-bats instead of the letter “O,” a reference to Bill’s cronies from Weirdmageddon. Cipher Symphonies fails, however, as Inkwell releases live bees into the theater and critics rip it apart. Inkwell realizes his mistake and Bill’s true nature and pays his composers $15 to invent a song so catchy and annoying that it drives Bill out of any brain that thinks about it. Inkwell locks up all evidence of Bill’s existence, and Bill moves on to a new target.

Bill pursues radiation in the 1940s to enter the realm, but the effects are limited. A mock government Top Secret memo reveals that Bill crashed into Area 51 as a UFO. The officer attempting to investigate him is unsure what he is, believing him to be a Communist and listing his race and gender as “triangle.” Bill asks for a handshake with the president, but they decide to deny it to him when he idly mentions setting off all the nukes at once. When they attempt to perform an autopsy on him, he phases in and out of existence before disappearing with a bang.

Bill spends the ‘50s attempting to enter human minds through music, but his bands fail constantly until he produces “Baby You Know I Will (Shake Hands With Bill)” in 1954. He is successful until the lyrics demanding the listener build a portal create a moral panic, and he is banned from the radio except in country songs intended to condemn him. Bill then goes to the ‘80s, where he tries to help tech people make a computer capable of “mass hypnosis,” but the “Maniactosh” computers delete people’s memories and eat people’s fingers, resulting in their recall.

In the ‘90s, Bill tries to brainwash grandmas through the “Tri-Angels Collection,” small babyish figurines of Bill in various cute outfits and poses. The founder of PudgyLilDarlins, Martha Frubbins, is possessed by Bill after inhaling toxic cabinet varnish fumes, and the advertisement clearly details her possession before asking the reader to collect all the Tri-Angels before the apocalypse. The statues are advertised as “the perfect weight to kill a man” with a mail-in order asking for the reader’s “deepest, darkest fear” (137).

After this failed exploit, Bill comes close to giving up, but he begins to laugh uncontrollably as he senses that someone has summoned him back to Gravity Falls—an idiot genius perfect for manipulation.