Cipher Hunt
The Cipher Hunt was an alternate reality game and international scavenger hunt created by storyboard artist and voice actor Alex Hirsch based on his animated series Gravity Falls. The goal was to find the real-life statue of the series' antagonist Bill Cipher, which was briefly glimpsed at the end of the series finale. The hunt involved retrieving and decoding clues hidden in various locations worldwide.
The Cipher Hunt began on July 20, 2016, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and concluded on August 2, 2016, in a forest in Reedsport, Oregon, where the statue was found. The statue was later taken by local authorities because of a property dispute and was temporarily displayed at Bicentennial Park in Reedsport before it was relocated permanently to Confusion Hill, a roadside attraction in Piercy, California.
Creation
In the Gravity Falls behind-the-scenes documentary One Crazy Summer, included in the collector's edition DVD box set for the show, series creator Alex Hirsch discussed the origins of the Cipher Hunt. Hirsch expresses in the documentary that he wanted to give the fans one final mystery none were expecting, in tune with the show's theme. He came up with the idea of a global treasure hunt for a real-life Bill Cipher statue, and recruited the show's art director Ian Worrel to help with planning the hunt and its locations.Fon Davis, a movie prop master and friend of Hirsch, was enlisted to design and build Bill Cipher's statue out of plexiglass, which is durable against the elements. They rubbed glue with seeds inside it so the statue would grow moss and look more aged. Hirsch then took a trip to Reedsport, Oregon and found a woman willing to let him install a statue on her property for people to hunt down. They then drove the statue up to Reedsport, installed the statue there, and recorded a few seconds of footage of it for the end of Gravity Falls
The hunt
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.
First clue: Saint Petersburg, Russia
After the hunt's announcement, the location of the hunt's first clue was hinted to be in Russia, after the series of red letters printed in the tweeted image 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
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...", with the first phrase describing the avenue's namesake, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León. The address found led to a Shriners' temple. The text on the second clue also mentioned finding something "LOST". This led community streamers to find a lost poster for Waddles, Mabel Pines's pet pig, in the area, which was water damaged and difficult to read. The poster contained a picture of and information about Waddles, a cryptogram, and a phone number to call if Waddles was found. 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. The clue was supposed to be located behind a portrait of Mary Hilda Miley, the university's second president. However, the university accidentally disposed of the clue before the hunt began. 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. Fans were joined by Gravity Falls cast member Jason Ritter and Alex Hirsch's twin sister, Ariel Hirsch, in the hunt. A black pouch was found containing a USB stick with a drawing of Bill Cipher on it. The USB stick contained an audio file that was later uploaded to SoundCloud. The recording featured Grunkle Stan being taunted by the ghost of Sister Mary Hilda Miley about not finding the treasure, with music and sound effects from the 1990 video game Super Mario World in the background.
Sixth clue: Santa Clarita, California
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. It also said that the clue can only be accessed by students of the campus. The sixth clue was accidentally discovered by a student in the campus' sublevel in the form of a graffiti on a wall a week before the Cipher Hunt began. The graffiti shows a crudely drawn Bill Cipher and a series of hexadecimal to decimal codes.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, the cryptex from the seventh clue was opened, revealing another key and the next clue, which showed that the eighth clue was located at a USPS post office at 1825 N Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, California and the provided key was to be used to open a PO box that contained the eighth clue.After an eight-hour drive, the person with the key made it to the PO box and used the key to open it. The eighth clue was a plastic bag containing two thousand jigsaw puzzle pieces, a note with Bill Cipher drawn on it, that when decoded translates to "I HOPE YOU LIKE PUZZLES!", and 37 fake dollars 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.