I've managed to compile a partial timeline of the lives of the Pines family. Remember that this is largely speculation. I made this timeline after season 2 episodes 1-8 came out. I decided to leave the old one up since it is connected to Vailskibum94's video. You can read it below the new one. Note: I know that the latest trailer has proven the name swap theory. However, I have decided to keep this timeline as is, at least until the new episode is out.
New timeline!
1931-32. Great-grandfather and great-grandmother Pines, living on the American east coast, give birth to twin sons, naming them Stanford and Stanley. I originally got Stanford’s age from the wiki, but I found out later that it came from an unreliable source. However, the age of 80 fit so well with my timeline that I’ve decided to keep it.
1930s-40s. Stanford is weak, and a constant target for bullies. So, great-grandfather Pines signs him up for boxing lessons.
1950. Stanford and Stanley leave the house. I originally had them going to college, but this was only because I didn’t consider the other possibilities at that point. There is no real evidence for or against this.
1954. Stanley and his wife have a son (Mr. Pines). Originally, I had Stanley moving to Gravity Falls in this year, but I later was forced to rethink this conclusion. That evidence will come later on. Now, I also realize that this puts Mr. Pines at 45 years old when his children are born. That’s about the end of a parent’s child-bearing years. But because of events that occur later in the timeline, I couldn’t really delay his birth.
1950s-70s. Stanford goes to see Grandpa the Kid in theaters. As he is waiting in line, he spots a thief trying to steal Carla McCorkle’s purse. Stanford stops the thief with a well-timed left hook, jump-starting his relationship with Carla. I was forced to place it in this time frame not only because that’s where it fits in the story, but also because the theater looks perfectly normal for that period.
Meanwhile, Stanley’s wife leaves him at some point, forcing him to take care of his son. Stanley discovers later on that he can build a portal, which would benefit all mankind by opening a gateway to infinite new worlds, thus heralding a new era in our understanding of the universe. He wants to collect parts for the portal but has other responsibilities at home. This would also explain Stanford’s anti-marriage jokes, specifically in the episodes The Legend of the Gobblewonker and Little Gift Shop of Horrors. Stanley wanted to build the portal, but was tied down with a kid.
1972. One day, Stanford and Carla go out to the Juke Joint. But Thistle Downe crashes the party with his transcendentalist hippie music. He steals Carla away from Stanford. At about the same time, Mr. Pines leaves the house. Stanford calls up his brother and both explain their dilemma. Stanley thinks up a way to make them both happy: they would meet up and pull heists around the world, in order to collect parts for the portal. In one heist, the team acquires a grappling hook which now belongs to Mabel. As per Stan’s own admission, the first event happened in the 1970s. As for the grappling hook, Stan’s interview with the Gossiper podcast reveals that that grappling hook was acquired in a heist 40 years ago. Also, I originally had Mr. Pines going to college, but again, it’s because I didn’t consider the possibilities. There’s just no real evidence on this because, except for one picture, we haven’t seen him at all so far.
1972-75. Stanford and Stanley continue their heists. In another instance in Columbia, something goes wrong. Somehow, Stanford is caught in the act of pulling off the heist, but Stanley escapes. Stanford spends some time in a Columbian prison, creating a one-sided friendship with his inmates Jorge and Rico. Eventually, Stan escapes (legally or illegally, we may never know) and heads back to rejoin his brother.
1974-75. Stanford and Stanley have all the parts they need. The only thing they need now is a place to build the portal, preferably off the grid so that the cops can’t find them. So after searching around, they find the perfect site. The brothers pack up and move to 618 Gopher Road, Gravity Falls, Oregon. They quickly discover that Gravity Falls is a town plagued by the supernatural. Stanley takes a job as a researcher. He finds anomalies in Gravity Falls and catalogs them in a journal. At this point he still works alone. Now, I fought with this point on the timeline quite a bit to make it work. Journal #3 had to be started on June 18th, 6 years after Journal #1. Each of the first two journals then had to have taken roughly 3 years to write. Journal #3 had to have a substantial number of pages, but also had to be cut off about halfway through. For reasons I will discuss later, I decided that the author stopped writing in 1982. I deduced the date of 1974 or 75 by working backwards.
1977-ish. Stanley runs out of room in Journal #1, so he begins writing Journal #2.
1977-1980. Stanley encounters the good Cipher twin. By this I mean that I believe Douglas MacKrell’s theory that Bill Cipher has a twin. This would explain the page in Journal #2.
June 18, 1980. Stanley fills up Journal #2, so he begins Journal #3. Now, during these years, Stanley dedicates one page from each journal to his latest calculations on the portal.
Summer 1981. Stanley meets and befriends Fiddleford Hadron McGucket. McGucket is hired as Stanley’s assistant in figuring out the secrets of Gravity Falls. This comes straight from the episode Society of the Blind Eye. Now, Stanley knew that the portal would attract unwanted attention, so he had been planning to open the portal and then leave town. This would explain why McGucket said he was working with a "visiting researcher."
1981-82. Stanley and McGucket encounter the evil Cipher twin. Bill (or his brother, depending which is which) tricks them into thinking he is his brother and backstabs them. Stanley becomes so terrified that he starts writing in invisible ink.
Early 1982. McGucket notices that the people of Gravity Falls don’t like the supernatural occurrences in their town. So he begins working on a device that can erase a person’s memory. He realizes that he cannot let Stanley find out about this, so he decides to dress in a robe whenever he is using the device. This is when he invents the Blindeye. This is another point that I had to work with quite a bit. I originally wanted McGucket to begin work on the society after Stanley’s mysterious disappearance (later in 1982), but YouTuber Steve Spud pointed out that this would make it impossible for Stanley to write about it. I took a close look at the Blindeye journal pages as well as McGucket’s memories and came up with this.
Later in 1982. Stanley and McGucket finish the portal. They begin to open it, using their previous calculations. They decide that the journals must be hidden, in case someone else wanted to use the portal for their own nefarious purposes...or Bill decided to possess one of their bodies. So they split the journals up: Stanford gets #1, McGucket gets #2, and Stanley gets #3. They each go out and hide their journal. None of them tell the others where their journal is hidden. The reasoning behind who gets which journal is as follows: Stanford had journal #1 since at least the beginning of the summer, journal #3 was found near the Mystery Shack, and McGucket got journal #2 by the process of elimination.
July 4, 1982. While everyone else is celebrating Independence Day, Stanford, Stanley and McGucket decide it’s the perfect opportunity to go through the portal, without attracting too much unwanted attention. They decide that Stanley will be the first one to test it out. While Stanford and McGucket hold a rope, Stanley carefully steps through the portal. Unfortunately, McGucket had made a miscalculation. This causes the portal to close unexpectedly, trapping Stanley in a distant universe. I deduced that from McGucket’s memories, when he says “I lie awake at night, haunted by the thought of what I’ve done.”
Later in July 1982. McGucket and Stanford attempt to re-open the portal, but it’s no use without Stanley or the journals. McGucket eventually gives up and secretly uses his memory-erasing device on himself. By the time Stan finds out, McGucket is already too far gone to be of any help. Stan digs up Journal #1. He makes it his lifelong mission to find the other two journals, reopen the portal, and save his brother. Now, I believe when McGucket used the memory-erasing device to forget about the Stanley incident, he also accidentally caused himself to forget about the blindeye. Three weeks later, however, he dug up his old notes and founded the society.
Late 1982. Stan realizes that he will have to make money somehow. He tries several different professions, including vacuum salesman and magician, but to no avail. The former of those two careers comes from Dreamscaperers, and the latter comes from Alex Hirsch’s AMA, in which he stated that Stan has been trying the same coin trick since 1982 but still can’t master it.
January 1983. A depressed and nearly broke Stan is sitting at the local bookstore when one particular book catches his eye: that year’s edition of Succeeding in Management. Suddenly, Stan gets an idea. He buys the book, goes home, and starts the Mystery Shack. This would explain why Mabel found the book propping up the kitchen table in the episode Boss Mabel.
August 20-21, 1999. Mr. and Mrs. Pines, who by now are living in Piedmont, California, give birth to twins. The first is a girl, who they name Mabel. The second comes out five minutes later and is given an unknown name. I originally had his birth name being Dipper, but thanks to the unused clip from Dreamscaperers shown at the LA film fest 2014, I joined the “Dipper is a nickname” camp. And as per Alex’s own admission, Mabel is 5 minutes the older sibling. Now, to find the exact date, I had to do a little digging.
First, it is known that Dipper and Mabel are 12 years old. And we can reasonably infer that the show takes place in 2012. If you do the math, that means that their birthday is somewhere between summer 1999 and spring 2000. And Alex has said the last episode, which will take place on the last day of the summer, will be Dipper and Mabel’s birthday. I took a look at Piedmont’s schools and found out that in 2012 they began on August 22nd. This places Dipper and Mabel’s birthday at roughly the 20th or 21st.
June-July 2002. Stan puts an ad in the local newspaper saying he’s looking for a kid who “don’t ask a lot of questions and don’t need a lot of money” to be his new handyman. This information is from Stan’s interview with the Gravity Falls Gossiper.
July 13, 2002. Edwin Durland applies for the job of handyman at the Mystery Shack. When he turns out to be horrible, Jesus Ramirez takes the job.
2002-2012. Stan hires several other employees, including a guy with a lot of snake tattoos, but ends up firing each of them. The latest one is Wendy. This also comes from Stan’s interview with the Gossiper. (It's possible that the guy with the snake tattoos was dating Wendy, as she lists off "that guy with the tattoos" as an ex-boyfriend in The Hand That Rocks the Mabel. He could be the missing link between Wendy and the Mystery Shack.)
June 2012. Dipper and Mabel come to Gravity Falls for the summer.
Original timeline!
Want to listen to this timeline read out loud by Vailskibum94? Click here.
I made this timeline between seasons 1 and 2. That means it does not take into account any episodes from the second season, and thus is inaccurate.
1931-2. Great-Grandmother Pines, living on the American east coast, gives birth to two sons on the same day, naming them Stanford and Stanley.
1930s-40s. Stanford is a constant target for bullies.
1940s. Great-Grandfather Pines signs Stanford up for boxing lessons.
1950. Stanford and Stanley go to college.
1954. Stanford and Stanley graduate from college. Stanley moves to 618 Gopher Road, Gravity Falls, OR. In the same year, he gets married and has a son (Mr. Pines).
1950s-60s. Stanford goes to see "Grandpa the Kid" in theaters. He sees a thief trying to steal Carla McCorkle's purse. He stops the thief with a well-timed left hook, jump-starting his relationship with Carla.
1950s-70s. Stanley and his wife raise Mr. Pines. During this time, Stanley befriends a then-sane Fiddleford H. McGucket, and together, they discover the secrets of Gravity Falls. They also start a series of journals to keep track of all the secrets. Somewhere in this period, they discover that they can build a portal, and start collecting parts for it all around the world. Meanwhile, Stanford continues his relationship with Carla McCorkle.
early 1970s. Stanford and Carla begin hanging out at the Juke Joint.
1972. Stanford Pines loses Carla McCorkle to Thistle Downe. In the same year, Mr. Pines goes to college. The two brothers reunite at what is now the Mystery Shack. Stanley and McGucket explain the secrets of Gravity Falls to Stanford, and he joins in on their quest. In one heist, the team acquires a grappling hook which now belongs to Mabel.
1976. Mr. Pines graduates from college and moves to Piedmont, CA.
1970s-80s. Stanford, Stanley, and McGucket continue their quest to build the portal. In one instance in Columbia, something goes wrong. Knowing that he was the weak link out of the three, Stanford allows himself to get caught so his partners could escape. He spends some time in a Columbian prison, creating a one-sided friendship with his inmates Jorge and Rico. Eventually, Stan escapes (legally or illegally, we may never know) and heads back to Gravity Falls.
early 1980s. Stanford, Stanley and McGucket finally open the portal. They meet Bill Cipher, and something makes them realize that opening the portal again may not be such a good idea. So they split up and each hide one journal where they think nobody will ever find it. Stanford gets Journal #1 (because he now has it), Stanley gets #3 (because it was hidden near the Shack), and McGucket gets #2 (by the process of elimination).
July 4, 1982. Bill Cipher, seeking revenge for his previous encounter with the gang, invades Old Man McGucket's mind and messes it up somehow. The Stan twins, upon finding this out, summon Bill so they can destroy him. Instead, he chops off one finger on McGucket's 6-fingered right hand, and kidnaps Stanley. Stanford, however, escapes unscathed. He digs up his journal and vows to find the other two, so he can free his brother and restore McGucket to his former brilliance.
late 1982. Stanford realizes he has to make money somehow. He tries several different professions, including vacuum salesman and magician, but to no avail.
January 1983. A dejected and nearly broke Stan is sitting at a bookstore when a book catches his eye: that year's edition of "Succeeding in Management." Suddenly, a lightbulb turns on inside his head. He buys the book, goes home, and starts the Mystery Shack.
1983. Soos answers an ad that says Stan is looking for "a kid who don't ask a lot of questions and don't need a lot of money." He then becomes the Mystery Shack's first employee.
1983-2012. Stan hires several short-term employees, but ends up firing each of them. The latest one is Wendy.
1999-2000. Mr. and Mrs. Pines have twins. The first is a girl, who they name Mabel. The second, a boy, comes out 5 minutes later and is named Dipper, after a birthmark on his forehead.
2012. Stan's great-niece and nephew come to Gravity Falls for the summer.
