Hello and welcome to the biggest analysis you'll ever read on a triangle.
This is the published version of my analysis on Bill Cipher's past from Gravity Falls. It is over 90 pages long in Google docs and took two years to complete.
In this post, I...
There is one major difference between A Square and Bill Cipher. Bill Cipher is a triangle, not a square. A Square is above Bill in society with his extra side. Bill is seen as less than a square, a creature only just slightly better than his isosceles triangle relatives. The only reason Bill existed was for him to be able to start a new line of shapes. In prison, he couldn't have children. So because of Bill's shape, his punishment was different. Much different.
Bill Cipher was sentenced to death on the spot.
Obviously, we know something happened since Bill is alive during the show. This is what likely happened... Bill would have learned magic while under Sphere's guidance. It's possible A square did as well, but A Square respects his government. Bill does not. He despised them. Bill wouldn't have gone down easily like A Square. Out of self-defense, Bill attempts to use magic to save himself. But something went terribly wrong.
As we've seen in the show, Bill's level of power seems to come from his emotions in some way. Whenever he gets very angry, he grows in size or changes color from yellow to red. We've even seen him turn into a huge scary demon form when he chases the twins through the fearamid because he was furious with Dipper and Mabel. So who's to say this time wouldn't have been any different?
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When he defends himself with magic, his emotions would have been all over the place. Intense fear for his life, anger for the government trying to kill and silence him, sadness from being unable to complete his goal to share what he knew of the third dimension, it was all a lot. In that one simple act of defense, that small amount of magic would have almost immediately grown from his emotions. Eventually, it became out of Bill's control.
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Bill had set fire, destruction, and unstable magic into his world. He was unable to contain that magic and it spread uncontrollably. He saw all nearby him in the government room become engulfed in his fire and magic, being killed and destroyed in a horrific way. As his magic spread, Bill's emotions would have only worsened as he watched the citizens of Flatland scream and burn, which means his magic would only grow and worsen. He had unleashed an unstoppable force of his own onto Flatland.
Bill only had one chance to save himself from dying. I believe he found a way to enter the mindscape for the first time by himself right then and there because his own magic was much more powerful in that moment. To save himself, he entered the mindscape and he'd be stuck there for a very long time.
