Tourist Trapped

"Tourist Trapped" is the pilot episode of the Disney XD show Gravity Falls. It aired as the series preview of the show, after the premiere of the Disney Channel Original Movie, Let It Shine, on June 15, 2012. Gravity Falls officially premiered on June 29, 2012 on Disney Channel.

Official overview
When Dipper and Mabel Pines arrive to spend their summer break in the remote town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, Mabel’s suspiciously weird new boyfriend causes the twins to come face to face with the town’s strange and uncanny secrets.

Synopsis
Twelve year-old twins Dipper and Mabel Pines and the Northwest Boarding School student arrive to spend their summer break with their Great Uncle Stan Pines, known to the twins as Grunkle Stan, in the remote town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. Dipper describes Gravity Falls as a "sleepy" town. Once there, they have to work at Stan's tourist trap called the Mystery Shack. While hanging signs advertising the shack in the "spooky part" of the woods, Dipper finds a metal, hollow tree. Inside, he finds an electronic device that looks very old and has one of its two wires severed. After Dipper fiddles with some switches, a trapdoor opens up in the ground, startling Gompers, who was standing close to the hidden opening. Inside, Dipper finds a mysterious journal with facts and notes about Gravity Falls' creatures that hint to an even greater cover-up hidden within the town's wondrous past and the present.

Dipper then believes that Mabel's new boyfriend, Norman, is a zombie when he starts acting strangely and resolves to gain some evidence after having a conversation with Soos. When Mabel is with Norman, Norman eventually reveals to her that he was actually a gnome named Jeff standing on top of a few other gnomes. Dipper asks Wendy if he can use the Mystery Cart to save Mabel, convinced that she will be eaten by Norman (still presumed to be a zombie). Wendy gives him the keys and tells him to try not to hit any pedestrians. As Dipper drives the Mystery Cart to save Mabel, Soos gives Dipper a shovel for the zombie and a baseball bat in case he sees any piñatas. Dipper drives the Mystery Cart into the forest to rescue Mabel from the gnomes.

Dipper takes the Mystery Cart and finds them in the forest. After a gnome vomits rainbows, Dipper questions what the heck is going on. He gets hissed at by a gnome, and Mabel explains that Norman turned out to be a bunch of gnome jerks. Dipper realizes that he was way off and checks the journal, only to see that there is no known weakness for the gnomes. The gnomes tie Mabel to the ground. Jeff begins to explain that this is a big misunderstanding, telling him that "She's not in danger, she's just going to marry all one thousand of us and become our gnome queen for all eternity." Dipper commands them to release Mabel. Jeff begins to explain that Dipper won't be able to stop them because they are a powerful race, but Dipper interrupts him in mid-sentence, chucking him to the side with his shovel. He then uses the shovel to free Mabel from the ground and they begin to drive back to the Mystery Shack.

Once Jeff and the gnomes realize that Dipper and Mabel are getting away, they assemble together, becoming one big monster gnome. Mabel worries that they will catch up to them, but Dipper isn't because gnomes have tiny legs. They then realize that the gnomes formed a big monster (controlled by Jeff). The monster begins to chase after Dipper and Mabel. The army of gnomes begins launching gnomes at the Mystery Cart. Dipper and Mabel fight them off one by one and Dipper bashes a gnome named Shmebulock on the Mystery Cart's horn three times. One of the gnomes lands on Dipper's face, shredding him, and Mabel punches it several times to get it to let go, and the gnome soared backwards, taking Dipper's old hat with it. After Dipper thanks Mabel for saving him, the monster then picks up a tree and throws it in the middle of the road. Dipper and Mabel closely slide under it and crash the Mystery Cart on its side in front of the Mystery Shack. Dipper and Mabel crawl from the Mystery Cart. Dipper warns the gnomes to stay back throws a shovel at them, but they smash it to the ground. Dipper and Mabel both scream and Dipper wonders where Grunkle Stan is (Stan is inside showing tourists "The world's most distracting object," distracting himself in the process).

Mabel then tells Dipper that she has to do it. Dipper doesn't trust her plan, but she tells him to trust her, just this once and then agrees to marry Jeff. Jeff gets excited, climbs down from the giant gnome monster and goes to put the ring on Mabel's finger. Once Jeff successfully places the ring on Mabel's finger, he wants to hurry and get Mabel back into the forest, but Mabel says that he must kiss her first. Jeff puckers up, but to his surprise, Mabel uses a leaf blower against him. Mabel sucks and shoots Jeff out of the leaf blower for revenge because he lied to her, broke her heart, and messed with Dipper. As he flies through the air, he crashes into the gnome monster and says that he will have his revenge. Without their leader, the rest of the gnomes are confused as to what they should do next. Mabel then begins blowing them with the leaf blower, forcing them back into the forest. One of the gnomes gets caught in the plastic from a 6-pack soda and is carried away by Gompers. Mabel feels sad that her first boyfriend turned out to be a bunch of gnomes, so Dipper tries to cheer her up by saying that her next boyfriend might be a vampire. They then proceed to do an "awkward sibling hug."

Dipper and Mabel walk into the Mystery Shack, and Grunkle Stan tells them they can each take anything they want from the Mystery Shack because he "overstocked some inventory." Dipper chooses his now-signature blue pine tree hat, and, despite Grunkle Stan telling her to take a doll, Mabel takes a grappling hook. Mabel is later seen jumping on the bed, playing with her grappling hook while Dipper writes about the events that happened that day in the mysterious journal he found. At the end, Dipper tells Mabel to turn off the light, but instead, she shoots it out of the window with the grappling hook, and they laugh about it. Meanwhile, Grunkle Stan opens a secret door downstairs by punching in a secret code on the vending machine, which leads to a secret room in the basement. He mysteriously closes the door, making sure no one is following him, which hints that he may have something to hide. During the end credits, the clip of a gnome barfing a rainbow loops.

Credits

 * Written by
 * Alex Hirsch


 * Directed by
 * John Aoshima


 * Storyboards by
 * Matt Braly
 * Erik Fountain
 * Mark Garcia
 * Alonso Ramirez Ramos
 * Niki Yang


 * With the Voice Talents of
 * Kristen Schaal as Mabel Pines
 * Jason Ritter as Dipper Pines
 * Alex Hirsch as Grunkle Stan and Soos Ramirez
 * Linda Cardellini as Wendy


 * Additional voices
 * Keith Ferguson as Teen that works at Mattress Prince's mattress store
 * Alex Hirsch as Gnomes (including "Norman")
 * Kimberly Mooney as Hank's wife
 * Fred Tatasciore as Hank


 * Casting by
 * Sara Goldberg

Series continuity

 * Blendin Blandin, introduced in "The Time Traveler's Pig," appears in the bushes when the giant gnome creature crushes the shovel Dipper throws at it.

Trivia

 * Viewership: This episode was watched by 3.4 million viewers on its premiere night.
 * "Tourist Trapped" is a play on words, because the Mystery Shack is a "Tourist Trap" and Dipper and Mabel are trapped there for the summer.
 * This episode was available as a free download on iTunes for a limited time.
 * "Tourist Trapped" received two nominations for the 40th Annie Awards, including Ian Worrel for Best Production Design in a Television/Broadcast Production, and Kristen Schaal for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production.
 * The unaired pilot is an earlier version of this episode. "Tourist Trapped" uses some dialogue readings from the pilot
 * For unspecified reasons, in the Philippines, this episode is played at a slightly faster speed. The time (not counting commercial breaks) is reduced from 22 minutes to only 20 minutes.
 * Aside from flashbacks, this is the first of only two episodes in the series to feature narration, the other being "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back The Falls."
 * The mosquitoes who spell "BEWARB" on Dipper's arm are revealed in Journal 3 to be "Soothsquitos," whose bites spell out warnings, which are frequently misspelled.
 * While this is canonically the first episode, six other episodes were produced before it.
 * In the original script, Mabel referred to the mark left on her cheek by the leaf blower as a hickey. Disney's Standards and Practices deemed the term inappropriate, and in the final episode she instead calls it a "smooch mark."
 * When Mabel grabs the Grappling Hook from the box that contains some of the stuffs in the shack. She makes a spin that is followed by raising her grappling hook upward as she says, "Grappling Hook!". This is a nod to Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda franchise when Link grabs an item in the treasure chest, and raises an item and a dialog box appears at the bottom of the screen that will tell what it is. Unironically, the Grappling hook is a recurring item in the Legend of Zelda series.
 * In the behind the scenes special Between the Pines, Alex Hirsch revealed that the red substance on Jeff's face when he was pretending to be human was jam, as the previous Gnome Queen had died and the Gnomes ate bereavement jam as part of her funeral ceremony.

Cryptogram

 * During the end credits of this episode, there is a cryptogram that reads "ZHOFRPH WR JUDYLWB IDOOV." Once decoded, it reads "WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS."