Gravity Falls: Bill as a villain

How well do you think bill did as a villain, Sup Forums?

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He was great as a character, but as the main villain he just didn't fit the bill.

He was pretty played up as a villain inside the show but didn't seem to quite come across as frightening as he was supposed.

He was OK. Clearly many of the people who followed Gravity Falls from the beginning saw something in him that was never there and were disappointed in the ending, but I think he played the old "charismatic god of chaos" role well.

Mabel was a more effective villain than him

Terrible.

He started amusing, but not very interesting character with ambigious motives. He was completely unfit for the ending.

He felt like a Great Gazoo-styled insufferable magical side character shoehorned into the main villain role and it really didn't work very well in the end.

Very iconic and memetic character, felt like they were going for something more with him that didn't quite play out and was pretty by the numbers in a lot of the finale arc compared to before, but also the build-up and hype for him could probably never have been matched by anything. I was disappointed that he didn't have much of a plan but if I binge-watched it and didn't get hyped by all the codes I probably wouldn't have thought much of it. His first two appearances were still much funnier and more entertaining than his later appearances though.

Slightly annoying but pretty menacing until the finale.

What changed in the finale?

>first apparence: defeated by question marks and kitten heads

>second apparence: defeated singlehandedly by a little girl

And it just went downhill from there

It felt like he was trying to be an even sillier version of Aku without the constant imposing threat or the reason as to why he does roundabout shit rather than snapping his fingers and murdering everyone he wanted out of his way. He could have put Ford in a fake world with a fake Dipper like he did with Mabel that would've eventually tricked him into spilling secrets. Bill could've say there for years of Ford's life passing by, let fake Dipper grow up, and wait for the perfect moment to strike before making the world disappear and laughing in his face. He could have killed the rest of the Ford family and just gotten them out of the way. But he didn't. Why?

He didn't view them as playthings. He was willing to just stop anyone in their tracks who was a threat. He didn't have a boner for having a rival. He didn't have a flawed personality trait that provided a reason for his own ironic downfall. He was just de-powered and made dumber.

Him possessing Dipper was great. I wish we got more shit like that where Bill would keep cramming his way into the Pines families lives other than, what was it, like three times he showed up?

He was a disappointment.

How could you get appointed to begin with?

If he wanted Mabel out of the way and didn't want to kill her for whatever reason, why not just turn her to stone and make her part of the people throne?

This

I like Bill, but he wasn't really main villain tier....should have been a bit more similar to say Discord from horses show, not saying he had to have a reformation story but more along the lines of being a chaotic neutral character who only acts on his own interest rather than FINAL BOSS PURE EVIL MASTERMIND kinda guy

Absolute garbage with no redeeming qualities.
Annoying and utterly boring.

He was actually conceived of with that role in mind, don't know what changed. 2B felt rushed to compensate from a sudden decision not to do a third season in a lot of ways.

There was a creepiness to not knowing and some of the crazier shit he did like in the Bill reddit AMA (linking fans to pictures of real rabbit corpses rotting and being eaten by maggots) seemed kind of off-kilter and fucked up, like he might rip off his amiable face and reveal screaming Lovecraftian horror underneath. In his second appearance he possesses a child and forces him to hurt himself not because he has to, but just for kicks. That's fucked up and he's sort of an unpredictable psycho of unknown power level, also he was fucking everywhere in the early codes and episodes in the background, so people thought he might be controlling townwide or worldwide conspiracies.

In the first episode he pulls an Arthas and lets to protagonists win, that and the "Cipher Wheel" made people think his "losses" were on purpose and he was playing some much bigger game.

Then in the end, it turns out he doesn't have creepy sadistic goals really, he just wants to throw a stupid party and everything else is incidental. Worse he's been planning things through for a billion years but he didn't think anything through and has to beg for help, he's easily tricked and beaten and dismissive of threats. Maybe the problem was making him too powerful but it was a let down.

Also Bill's real strength as a villain was in emotionally torturing the characters, but that sort of goes poof in the finale. Mabel's guilt and horror at what he makes her do just disappears like it never happened. Remember how in Sock Opera he forces Mabel and Dipper to confront Mabel's selfishness, and even though it's not on purpose his first appearance tests the relationship between Stan and Dipper, and his third tests the relationship between Ford and Dipper. But in his final appearance, all the very personal turmoil, drama, and sadism that made those earlier appearances dramatic is gone, instead he's a just big dumb monster that lumbers around after the protagonists which is just boring.

He jobbed hard. Also he came off as more nefarious before you find out just how trivial and petty his goals are.

Sexual tension.

>pretty menacing
Nah.

>He was actually conceived of with that role in mind
The first idea for him was a running joke character who would show up every episode in Dipper's dreams that also made fun of conspiracy theorists (which is kind of out there for a kids' show and so that's sort of appealing) and maybe turned out to be helping the characters out so I guess that's sort of true. I think by the time they started making the show he was the Big Bad but his arc got abbreviated. If he's had a few more appearances including, and this is important, a few wins before the finale and a clever master plan he could have worked as a bad guy I think but it would have taken more time. Obviously people found the character concept very appealing but he was shoved into a very generic role in the last few episodes and lost the aspects of his character that made me interested in him mostly, there were a few funny bits and great visuals (I really liked his death scene) but mostly he was just a prop that could be replaced by any other random MotW.

Still overall I would say he was a good and very memorable character the end just left a bitter taste in my mouth that's all wishing the interesting stuff with him went somewhere.

Bill always came off as a herald to me. A trickster type who came just before the main bad guy or someone who had plans to avoid the main bad guy and they just happen to cross with the protagonists' plans. I was disappointed that they made him the final villain and that he didn't really do that much. I didn't try to decipher any clues or codes. It wasn't them building him up to be something more than he was. I just expected him in a completely different role I guess.

Peaked in Sock Puppet Opera. Dat everything.

People call it a "decline of character" but that's just because there was no other way for him to go but down.

Killing S3 probably forced them to shoehorn him into the final boss role instead of just being a pest whose mere jovial trickery was enough to bring chaos and destruction into out unprepared existence.

>He could have put Ford in a fake world with a fake Dipper like he did with Mabel that would've eventually tricked him into spilling secrets. Bill could've say there for years of Ford's life passing by, let fake Dipper grow up, and wait for the perfect moment to strike before making the world disappear and laughing in his face.

This is a great example of the kind of shit he should have done. Considering the extent of his powers everything he did in the finale was incredibly stupid and a lot of his actions made no sense it was just "because we want to make lol 90s jokes so he puts Mabel in 1990s Land because ????" or "we want to have an anime mecha fight parody now so here are some random minions we never mentioned before to get curbstomped like pussies."

It's not that he went down, it's that his role drifted apart from what he was good for.

It was said in this very thread - he's a trickster. And also a symbol of knowledge. He was to tempt people and rape their minds, not unleash apocalypse and contrivedly lose.

But that's the thing. He couldn't be a trickster anymore because he already played his trump card by seducing Dipper into making a deal with him and then wiping his ass with it. Dipper isn't going to accept any more deals from him, and since he and Ford are the only people who matter Bill is rendered useless outside of taking direct action.

He could fade into obscurity, move on to act by proxy (He doesn't have to seduce Dipper, he can seduce some other townfolks and harass Dipper with their bodies), or Hirsch can come up with better plots for him to prey on characters' vices. This would require good writing though.

More like another season.

He could've posessed Mabel at some point

No amount of time could save Hirsch from his shortcomings.

There is nothing Bill could do with Mabel's body to hurt everyone else more than Mabel herself didn't do.

He could've threatened to destroy her body unless Dipper does what he wants. After all, Dipper would probably trade the world for his sister

Oooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh

What could Bill possibly want out of Dipper?

The rift

For a mystery show, a decent monster
For a trickster, an utterly insufficient character.

It wouldn't be hard to make Bill a good villain though, I can't find it now but remember that comic that has Mabel waking up for her birthday party with Dipper telling her that their parents just told them they could BOTH stay in Gravity Falls, and she's so happy? Then at the end it fades out and she's still asleep in the middle of the woods while Dipper is crying and screaming and clawing at her bubble in vein. Better than the episode. There were a lot of comics like that.

I still think Bill should have needed something from all of the wheel characters, maybe to break into the real world or to break the barrier. Maybe in exchange for one of their wishes they consent in some way to let him through. He could play dirty by making illusions and making it unclear what they're agreeing to. It makes as much sense as those characters all being his weakness and it would give him something to do.

He needed to be way more active.

I actually do like Bill a lot and I know a lot of people here don't like Azula but I can't help but compare everything they did with Bill unfavorably to what they did with Azula as a villain.

Azula sometimes won, sometimes she won big, so when she showed up, there was a real threat. She did surprising things like shooting Aang in the middle of his transformation sequence, avoiding a typical dumb cartoon villain move. When her sanity unraveled at the end allowing her to be beaten it was a logical consequence of everything that had come before with the character. Plus, she was still threatening even then.

I like Azula

Me too but inb4 Scrapper.

those faggots that keep saying that have outlived his stay here.

Bill was a dick

Did doublepines delete all there artwork?

They brought it back

For trickster spirit he was awesome.

>tfw Bill only canonically posessed male characters.

None of the female characters had anything of value for him. What could mabel or wendy possibly offer him that cannot be offered through manipulation which is more fun.

He was all-around bad. Not funny, not charismatic, not creepy or menacing, not even enjoyable in any way.
>inb4 muh deer teeth, muh "torture" that was slapstick at best

didn't you mean the opposite?

I wish they didn't ruin him in the last episodes, it's a damn shame.

>He didn't view them as playthings.
he didn't view them as serious threat either tho

He was great until the finale. Pretty funny and mysterious at the same time, and he seemed much more evil and powerful than what he was letting on. The triangle body seemed like a facade for a monstruous and uncomprehensible thing. The Q and A on reddit and the clues and cameos scattered through the series also made him more interesting and threatening. But in the end his motivations were vague and petty, his weirdness from the Q and A was barely in the show, he never spreaded beyond gravity falls or did anything truly horrific, the wheel reveal was underwhelming and he had to be turned into a retard because he was too OP to be defeated.

The sphere where Mabel was trapped was supposed to imprison everyone.

Bill imprisoned Mabel because he knew that "the rest of the pack" would try to free her (thus why he gave Gideon the key instead of keeping it to himself) and be charmed by the mabeland and stay in the illusion forever. Bill said something along the lines of "it takes a will of titanium to break free"

Judging by what Alex said about him, he could be more developed as a character. Not just a chaotic evil guy who messes with everything for shits and giggles, but a tragic charactec, a creature who spent all his life in 2D world and breaking into 3D for the first time influenced his mind irreperably. He was also supposed to accidentally destroy his homeland, if the 3rd Journal is to be believed.
He said a couple of lines about it in WM part 3, but that was never really given much attention.
So he was entertaining, but somewhat of a wasted potential.

Like most long form villains the build up was good but he missed the landing

In the finale they went completely overboard with the lel so randum element of his personality.
It would play a lot nicer if he was more benign to be honest.

His twisted motives made him interesting and he seemed more invested into causing psychical terror rather than physical (he was very unfamiliar with the concept of physical suffering as evidenced in the sockpuppet episode).

[Well, they did want to make the real bad guy a creature of unimaginable horror and had like 50 thousand screaming faces, but we couldn't get it past the censors]

>Not funny, not charismatic, not creepy or menacing
who was tho

doublepines.tumblr.com/

Looks deleted to me.

Weirdmageddon part 2 was a terrible episode.

>the name's @in-your-face-elizabeth now
they just moved urls.

He had Dipper, Mabel, Gideon, and Pacifica all in positions where he could've easily killed them at various parts of the finale, but he didn't, even though they were keys to what he thought was his only weakness.

Holding their bodies hostage to get useful people to do what he wants

No one on that show, for sure.

Bad

Mark Hammill

Let's not forget he basically had the power to do ANYTHING yet still managed to fucking lose.

Have you heard him lately?
I like his old work, but he's a has-been.

This made him come off as stupid frankly since they'd beaten him twice before and the finale did away with fans' theories he'd just let them win and was just toying with him. Oh yeah, and the characters were his one weakness who were prophecized to defeat him and he knew about that prophecy and even clued them into that by referring to the symbols in the wheel in one of the books what the fuck. Actually why didn't any other character notice that either.

You can say "muh overconfidence," that's okay and it's not that it makes no sense it just makes the villain come off shitty. A villain who just shoots anyone who might even be a threat however unlikely is much scarier than one that says "and I'm not even going to bother to kill you Mr. Bond blah blah" especially when they already handed him his ass twice then with what turns out to be zero sacrifices or even lasting effects they pretty easily fucking kill him. If he'd won a few times and had contigency plans his dismissing the characters as threats might be okay (but still already knocks him down a few pegs) but as of Weirdmageddon II he was scrambling. Also consider how he doesn't even think to zap Ford until dumb luck saves him from getting beaten right off the bat by Ford's gun. Him not being proactive seemed lame and less threatening in the finale for the most part.

I thought he was all those things just that his role as villain in the last three eps sucked.

The Flatlandish backstory and the little bit of backstory that comes across in the tie in books about feeling guilty about whatever he did in his home dimension and maybe seeing himself as some kind of revolutionary with freedom loving ideals makes him seem like a much more interesting character than the end of the show did.

A lot of people seemed to be disappointed by his motivations saying things like "Oh, he just wants hell on earth", but why? What exactly were people expecting from an interdimensional trickster?

Was it just poor execution, or maybe our imaginations got the better of us and set our expectations way too high? Like, as a writing exercise sometimes I try to come up with better motivations. Either they'd be too fitting for his character as some weird eldritch being and therefor beyond our understanding and comprehension (in which case, you probably can't even portray them so why bother), or they're more mundane than what we ended up with

That's easy, he could have tricked the other characters who didn't know about him or possessed bodies to trick people like he eventually did with Mabel. He really should have been in a few more episodes where he had victories and they shouldn't have walked back the apocalypse. In the end of DaMvtF he's a great villain then in EfR the stakes come crashing down and he sits around doing literally nothing for days. I get it's a comedy but compare the last few minute of vs. the Future to that. The biggest reason is probably he's so OP that he has to be dumb and passive now.

I think people did set their expectations too high after all the build-up but anything but "taking over the world Pinky" would have seemed less generic. Maybe he's serious about some misguided ideals like he seems in Journal 3 at times and there's some kernel of truth other characters can agree with. Maybe the apocalypse is just weirder and more alien than a few goofy looking monster running around trying to eat people and drinking punch. Weirdmageddon wasn't even the strangest or creepiest thing we've seen on the show. I mean the Mindscape in Stan's head in Dreamscapers was Silent Hill when they first showed it, just make it like that with characters' worst fears and fondest hopes walking around, time dilation and the characters not knowing what's real or not, that's more threatening anyway.

I also wouldn't have minded them trying to do a Lovecraftian kid's show ep and making Bill's real motives inscrutable, which could be handled I guess like every other Lovecraftian story, but that might be a tall order so simply some of the few tweaks mentioned in this thread would be enough really.

It's not as bad as people are making out though Sup Forums is just too down on the show. Doesn't mean it couldn't be improved though.

What? Are you saying he felt a little flat?

>did away with fans' theories
that's always a good thing because more fags crying over their headcanon shit getting shattered is gold

I'm saying that his pyramid scheme would've worked better if he were to try a different angle.

not really because fans didn't have any specific headcanons in this case just "he has a good plan and is smart." if those expectations are replaced with something worse it's eh

>ooh fans expected a good thing and it was shitty instead haha

Bil''s true purpose was to sell merchandise and line obsessive fangirls' bedrooms with merchandise and in that he succeeded so I guess it's like asking whether Hello Kitty did well. Now buy the damn Bill Cipher plush, Funko Pop, and collectible figurines.

This exactly

He had a good thing going for him until the end where it went to shit

>he has a good plan
>Disney cartoon
>villain has a good plan
>Disney
>villain had a good plan
>Disney
>villain has a good plan
>Disney
>good plan
pick one

I don't know, Toffee seems like he has a good plan

>Star
>good

Correct, Star is good

This cut joke was better than any of the Bill jokes in the finale.

people from YT comments like him so all of your complaints are invalid you nerd cucks

He should have been more like Pennywise, but he was more like the Great Gazoo.

Post all the comments by women that talk about fapping to Bill and wanting Bill to fuck them hard.

If fangirl hormones are the judge Bill is the greatest villain ever.

No other character that's just a shape pulls quite that much tail although okay there are some others that get pretty close but Bill is the gold standard.

I've never seen a villain who worked so well in obscurity compared to being in the spotlight. Bill needed that mystery to sustain his character; with that gone he became boring.
Honestly, they should have made him some sort of cosmic agent that is working for the thing that is trying to access Earth, but having him being ambiguous over his interests all through the series till the very end, sometimes helping the humans and some other times working against them.

Because he actually liked Mabel apparently.

Really the problem was that it wasn't his only motivation they just apparently didn't make the rest of it obvious enough for most people.
Really his core goal was true freedom, he saw himself as a liberator and was trying to escape the nightmare realm for his own survival.

>his weirdness from the Q and A was barely in the show
Bill's comments from the AMA and in the books are much more fun than Weirdmageddon, like when he tells his fans to take LSD and run out into the desert tripping balls or rants about how democracy is a sham because it's really an oligarchy of the wealthy in the guide book, I guess you can't do those things on a show for children but the sanitized version is a lot less amusing.

Great villan that was held back by the fact that he really didn't so anything menacing.

He gives somewhat of an Aku vibe in the sense that he's really powerfull yet mischevious and just an asshole, the thing is that Aku actually killed a shitload of people, enslaved species and tortured many, Bill just kida turned people into stone.

Yeah I don't think Disney would be cool with a character telling children that their only purpose in life is to fuck.

I honestly thought he was going to be a the servant to an even larger villain, maybe Gideon. When I realized he really was the main villain I thought it was an overall bad choice, mostly on how it was handled. We never see his influence on the world, he barely actually appeared, when he did appear he lost like any other monster of the week and he wasn't that threatening.

He's a good minion but an awful villain if that makes any sense.

I guess not, or telling them he's seen them naked and swearing while he complains about cinnamon toast crunch, or making jokes about Schrödinger killing their pets and telling people his hobbies include "planting predictive programming of false flag attacks in the media" or even making Ford's eyes bleed from their sockets like he does in Journal 3 or pretty much anything else from all the extra material with Bill.

I think overusing him as the villain of the week made him lose too much credibility to be the final boss.

>I think overusing him as the villain of the week
He only appeared twice.