Setup Following the airing of the series finale, fans began speculating about the existence of a statue of Bill Cipher in the real world based on the footage. An encoded riddle in the episode also hinted at the presence of buried treasure "deep within the woods" and a statue "beyond the rusty gates". There was no official mention of the statue until the show's creator Hirsch tweeted a teaser announcement followed by an image containing cryptograms and clues. One decoded cryptogram revealed the hashtag "#CipherHunt", while other imagery in the tweet indicated a Bill Cipher statue surrounded by trees with branches and knots, as well as architectural plans to the location of the first clue. Part of the image was ripped away. Hirsch immediately clarified on
Twitter, that the hunt was being done out of his own volition and funding and without any affiliation to
The Walt Disney Company, which owns the rights to
Gravity Falls. He asked fans to be careful and to avoid trespassing or vandalizing the public areas the clues were in. Fans used social media outlets such as Twitter,
Tumblr,
Periscope, and
Reddit to communicate and share their findings. was decoded using a −3
Caesar cipher and an
Atbash cipher creating the country's name, which Hirsch visited for a convention in April 2016. Russian fans of the show recognized the diagram at the middle left of the image as an architectural plan of the
Kazan Cathedral in
Saint Petersburg. Using a diagram at the middle right of the image which showed the first clue's exact location inside the cathedral, it was successfully found.
Second clue: Tokyo, Japan in
Chiyoda, Tokyo, the location of the second clue. After the text on the first clue was decoded, it pointed to the second clue being located in
Japan as the text mentioned a "
shrine" and "
yen", the latter of which is the country's official currency. The text also mentioned a "sword" and "crescent" marking the clue. The second clue was located at the
Kanda Shrine in
Chiyoda, Tokyo, which Hirsch and his partner
Dana Terrace visited during their trip to the country in February 2016. The clue was written on the back of one of the
emas in the shrine with a drawing of a scimitar and crescent, along with an encrypted message.
Third clue: Atlanta, Georgia The decoded text on the second clue pointed to the next clue being in the
United States at 400
Ponce de Leon Avenue NE in
Atlanta,
Georgia as the second clue contained the words "...the hunter of the
fountain of youth. 400 before his name is written...", When called, the phone number plays a backwards message, which, when reversed, played a message from one of the show's main characters,
Grunkle Stan, with the theme song for the
science fiction television series
The X-Files playing in the background.
Fourth and fifth clue: Los Angeles, California The recorded phone message revealed that the fourth clue's location was in the
Ochre Court building of
Salve Regina University in
Newport, Rhode Island. Hirsch then promised to give a replacement clue and asked fans to stay out of the university in the meantime. On July 21, 2016, at 12:30pm
PST, Hirsch tweeted a phone number, the same one on Waddles' missing poster in Atlanta. When called, the phone number played a new message from Grunkle Stan, which revealed that the next clue was located near the statue of
Griffith J. Griffith at
Griffith Park in the
Los Feliz neighborhood of
Los Angeles,
California. A golden head of Grunkle Stan was found with an encoded message written in invisible ink on three sheets of paper, as well as an invisible ink pen to read the message. The decoded text from the fourth clue showed that the fifth clue was located in
Century City, another neighborhood in Los Angeles, at a park between the
Century Plaza Towers and the
Creative Artists Agency building, notably trimmed into the shape of the
Eye of Providence.
Sixth clue: Santa Clarita, California in
Santa Clarita, California, where the
California State Summer School for the Arts, the location of the sixth clue, is based. The fifth clue explicitly revealed the sixth clue's location, which was at the campus of the
California State Summer School for the Arts, located inside Hirsch's alma mater, the
California Institute of the Arts in
Santa Clarita, California.
Seventh clue: Piedmont, California The decoded hex codes from the sixth clue form co-ordinates that led to
Piedmont, California, the hometown of both the Pines and Hirsch twins. The cryptogram on the Waddles missing poster found in Atlanta, as well as some guidance from Hirsch, led fans to a pink key tied to a tree stump in Piedmont Park, in addition to a small chest with a
cryptex locked behind a five-letter keyword. The keyword used to open the cryptex was "PINES", which can be found on the banner above the Bill Cipher statue on the initial Cipher Hunt image tweeted by Hirsch.
Eighth clue: Los Angeles, California Using the keyword from the original image, a note with Bill Cipher drawn on it, that when decoded translates to "I HOPE YOU LIKE PUZZLES!", and 37 fake dollars (known as Stan Bucks) which included the word "FILBRICK" written on the back of each one in invisible ink. The fans almost immediately got stuck on the puzzle. At first, fans took the puzzle to the nearby House of Pies to work on. After the restaurant closed for the night, a small group of fans took it to someone's house to continue working on it over night. In the following days, the puzzle was brought to public places like local comic book shops so that anyone could come work on it. Jason Ritter and Scott Jones also showed up to help work on the puzzle. After two days, during which some took sleep shifts while some didn't sleep at all, they managed to complete scattered portions of it that show what the puzzle contained. It was of Bill Cipher, with a gnome under him and letters in Bill's cryptogram below and to the sides of him. After another day, Hirsch tweeted an image which showed a rough idea of what the completed puzzle should look like, but with a different code that translated to "THIS IS WHERE THE CLUE WILL APPEAR". After two more days, Hirsch tweeted two images of different coded sections of the puzzle. Fans used
Adobe Photoshop to piece these two images together and then decoded what they could make out. Additionally, a virtual version of the puzzle was created and uploaded to the internet by fans working on the physical puzzle to get some help. Within a few hours, the coded message on the puzzle was then digitally solved by a group effort of fans working together online.
Ninth clue: Portland, Oregon While progress on the puzzle was still ongoing, a fan discovered the next clue by complete accident. He was walking on the corner of Rodney Avenue and Tillamook Street in
Portland, Oregon where he spotted a lawn gnome. Having been keeping up with the hunt on Twitter and knowing that the puzzle contained a small image of a lawn gnome, he decided to pick up the gnome on a whim only to find a
View-Master and the ninth clue written on a crumpled up piece of paper underneath it. Though the clue was found without completing the puzzle, Hirsch provided an incentive to those who are in the process of completing both the physical and virtual puzzles by saying that if the physical puzzle got finished, he would release the unaired pilot episode of
Gravity Falls made in 2010 and if the virtual puzzle got finished, he would upload unreleased cut scenes from the show. The physical puzzle was completed on August 1. Hirsch showed up upon its completion, signed it and promised the release of the original pilot.
Tenth clue: Piercy, California The View-Master from the ninth clue contained slides depicting the area around
Confusion Hill in
Piercy, California, a tourist trap similar to the Mystery Shack, Grunkle Stan's business in the series. One of the slides also contains an image of
Snoqualmie Falls in
Washington, a waterfall known for appearing in the television series
Twin Peaks, an inspiration to
Gravity Falls. This pointed to the tenth clue being located at Confusion Hill. Additionally, Hirsch stated that fans will receive a prize if they take a selfie with the framed photo of the
Gravity Falls crew at Confusion Hill. The framed photo is from a different
Gravity Falls event called "Mystery Tour 2013".
Eleventh clue: Amity, Oregon The tenth clue pointed to the eleventh clue's location, which was at Stanley Street in
Amity, Oregon, near a pair of telephone poles. The tenth clue also mentioned the word "bolt" which was underlined. A group of fans went to the street as instructed and found a geocache bolt, which they somehow lost before finding it again. They unscrewed it to find the eleventh clue inside, written double-sided on a very narrow strip of paper.
Twelfth and final clue: Turner, Oregon in
Turner, Oregon, the location of the twelfth and final clue. The twelfth clue was found at the
Enchanted Forest amusement park in
Turner, Oregon, as the eleventh clue mentioned Roger Tofte, the creator of the amusement park. The riddle told fans to "return to where it all began" and "the answers written in the trees". The twelfth clue was revealed to be the final clue, with the next stop in the hunt being the location of Bill Cipher's statue. On the back of the final clue, there was a dotted red line leading to an X, as if it was a treasure map. This dotted line can be combined with the dotted red line found on the initial Cipher Hunt image posted by Hirsch on Twitter, revealing that the final clue is the ripped off top left corner of the image. Hirsch tweeted a hint for the final clue, which revealed that a
Polybius square was needed to solve the clue. Fans also needed to find a pattern in the branches and knots of the trees in the image that could be converted to pairs of numbers, as well as finding out which specific version of the Polybius square was used to encode the message. Through clever cryptoanalysis of the branches and knots, and by manipulating the possible results with the assumption that the decoded message was a location that had to end with the letters "OR" (the abbreviation for
Oregon), a "reverse" code cracking method was used. The most likely resulting message was "REEDSPORTOR," so the fans were able to narrow down the location of the statue to
Reedsport, Oregon. Hirsch retweeted messages of fans that were heading there, reinforcing the assumption. The treasure map found on the back of the twelfth clue was assumed to be a map through the city's parks or surrounding forests to find the statue, so the fans searched in
Google Maps for a path where the map fitted, locating one at the end of S 22nd Street, south of
Reedsport Community Charter School. The complete code was cracked later that evening confirming the message to be "REEDSPORTOR". Fans quickly raced to the city to be the first to find the statue of Bill Cipher. The statue was found on August 2, 2016, at 7:53pm
PDT by Twitter user @shadow_wolfwind (who changed her Twitter handle to @OfficialGFMayor following the hunt), who tweeted a photo of it. Later, a treasure chest buried in front of the statue was found and dug up by other fans, with several of them shaking the statue's hand, including a baby. The treasure chest contained a wide array of loot, such as plastic coins and gems,
Russian and
Japanese currency, a copy of the book
Gravity Falls: Journal 3 which was signed and contained a special drawing by Hirsch himself, a black light flashlight, a plastic crown, a sash that says "Mayor of Gravity Falls," a music box with Bill Cipher's eye drawn on it that plays the show's theme song, a slip of paper with a message written by Hirsch in invisible ink, a miniature Bill Cipher statue, a framed sketch of the main characters standing with the statue, and a USB drive. Some currency in the chest was marked by a person named Bradley who had found the treasure a month before the hunt began. The USB drive contained a text document that contains a link to Bradley's Twitter account, an audio file of Grunkle Stan singing the song "
We'll Meet Again" and congratulating the finders, and another text document entitled "MyExWifeStillMissesMe.ButHerAimIsGettinBetter," which, when opened in
Microsoft Notepad, a text reading "RETURNBACKWARDSTOTHEPASTAGAINTHREE" appears. When "RETURNBACKWARDS" and "TOTHEPASTAGAINTHREE" are entered as a username and password respectively on the website themysteryofgravityfalls.com/pilot, it would allow users to watch the unaired pilot episode of
Gravity Falls, which is a prototype of "
Tourist Trapped", the series' first episode, made with an entirely different art style and some altered dialogue and scenes. ==Aftermath==