"Soos and the Real Girl"[1] is the fifth episode of the second season of Gravity Falls, and the 25th episode overall. It premiered on September 22nd, 2014 on Disney XD.[1]
While frolickingly prancing through the gift shop in the Mystery Shack, Mabel runs face-first in the screen door and accidentally gets her braces caught. As she screams in terror for her will to be dictated (specifically for Waddles to inherit all of her worldly possessions), Soos comes to the rescue and pries the braces out with a screwdriver before bidding goodbye upon finishing his shift. Shortly after he leaves, Mabel ponders over what Soos does in his spare time, which nobody else finds much interest in the way she does. Later that night, it is now revealed that Soos usually spends the remainder of the day playing video games at his grandmother's house. While playing Leopard Punch, she informs him his cousin Reggie is having an engagement party, and Soos is surprised that his cousin had become so successful, to which his abuelita replies that Soos is now a grownup and needs to start acting like one before his grandmother passes away. His grandmother then asks Soos to bring a date along to Reggie's engagement party. Soos says he could get a girl by the end of the week, but then immediately has concerns.
The next day in the Mystery Shack, Stan confronts a kid and asks him if he wants to see Old Goldie, an attraction of the Mystery Shack. The kid is doubtful, so Stan demonstrates the attraction by inserting his nickel into it. The worn-out Goldie barely manages to tip his hat before he begins screaming as his eyes pop out and oil begins spewing from his mouth, which causes the kid to run away in fear, sobbing. Wendy suggests that Stan should get rid of Goldie stating that its face is a total momento mori. Stan declines, but accidentally slips and gets his arms caught in Goldie's mouth, causing Stan to panic and yell "Kill it!".
Soos "flirting."
Meanwhile, Soos' attempts at getting a date by asking customers in the Mystery Shack fail spectacularly. Dipper and Mabel notice and they decide to repay Soos for all he does for them by getting him a date for his cousin's engagement party. Mabel then decides to take Soos to the mall along with Dipper to try and find a date as Stan follows them to find a replacement for Goldie. Mabel then advises Soos on how to get a date: eye contact, conversation and confidence, all in which Soos fails when he tries to flirt.
Goldie creepily sheds an oily tear.
Meanwhile, Stan is seen throwing Goldie away into the dumpster and, after an awkward parting, follows some children into Hoo-Ha Owl's Pizzamatronic Jamboree. Stan believes the arcade is some kind of nightmare. Before long, an animatronic badger and animatronic band appears, putting on a show for the children before requesting money from the kids, in which the kids fanatically oblige. Seeing the badger as just what he needs, Stan asks the manager to sell the badger to him, but he declines. The manager, Gary, says that Stan is too old and couldn't handle it. Stan vows to get the badger after the insult.
Back at BeeblyBoop's Videogames store, Soos, Dipper, and Mabel are sitting on a bench. Soos laments that he will never get a date. Seeing Reggie and his fiancée, he hides in a video game store, not wanting to be seen without a date. He then finds a Japanese dating simulator video game named Romance Academy 7, which claims to "virtually improve your dating skills". Although the game has received high ratings, the cashier warns that three people had returned it. Moreover, a note warns that the game must be destroyed at all costs, with a table flip emoticon "(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)." Meanwhile, Soos tries to flirt with a cardboard cutout of a woman, and so Mabel decides to risk it and rent the game.
The computer simulator reassures Soos.
Back at home, Soos starts up the game and is introduced to .GIFfany, a pink haired girl that studies at the game's setting, a magic romance academy. .GIFfany asks Soos to carry her books, and Soos chooses the wrong answer, but .GIFfany forgives Soos and allows him to choose the right answer. .GIFfany attempts to continue but Soos decides to repeatedly click on her face. .GIFfany finds him amusing and laughs, leading Soos to wonder why anyone would abandon the game, to which she eerily comments: “And I’m sure you’ll never abandon me, new boyfriend.”, leading Soos to believe it was so realistic, it was almost as if .GIFfany was alive. .GIFfany replies: "Yes... almost." before laughing. However, it is shown that the computer was never plugged in, yet was still able to run the game.
The next day, Stan describes to Wendy how effectively the badger animatronic conned others out of money, even though she does not care. Dipper and Mabel appear asking where Soos is, to which Stan replies that he had not come to work today for the first time ever. Dipper and Mabel head to Soos' house and find him still slouched in front of the computer, having interacted with .GIFfany for 13 hours straight without seeing sunlight. They force Soos to head back to the Mall to re-attempt getting a date. .GIFfany begins stalking them, traveling through the cords and electrical wires of various appliances. His abuelita then sneaks into Soos's room and reads his diary.
.GIFfany shows Soos what she did to her creators. Scary.
At the mall, Mabel scares all of the women out of the women's washroom by screaming at them with a megaphone and Dipper is forced to leave to deal with the security that arrived to investigate, leaving Soos to find a date by himself. Soos cannot decide how to interact with any of the women due to them having "too many dimensions" and the lack of "explanatory menus." He fails to attract any women once again and wishes he was back home talking to .GIFfany. .GIFfany then appears on the television behind him. Soos is relieved but confused as to how she managed to find him. .GIFfany now reveals that she was a sentient game and demonstrates her powers on a robotic toy dog to prove a point. .GIFfany then reveals that she attacked her programmers when they tried to delete her. Soos asks what she did to the developers, but she politely refuses to answer, due to a supposed lack of importance. She tells Soos that he won't have to talk to real girls ever again and that they can now be together forever, to which Soos responds positively. .GIFfany says they can do anything Soos wants, which apparently is riding a toy train.
Soos and Melody connect surprisingly well.
Soos and .GIFfany seem to be having a great time until his time runs out and he must insert another fifty cents. Melody, a nearby worker at Meat Cute, finds this very amusing and introduces herself to Soos. She says that she admires his uniqueness in riding toy trains even though he is a grown man. After some small talk, they discover that they have a lot in common. Soos then tells Melody about "Hoo-Ha Owl's Pizzamatronic Jamboree," a restaurant that he finds out both he and Melody like. They agree to have their first date there later that evening at eight o'clock. After giving Soos fifty cents, Melody leaves but before Soos can continue to ride the train, he is tackled by Mabel and Dipper. Dipper reveals that they had seen the whole thing and that he had performed perfectly. They say that the game really worked and that he can toss it out now. Soos is reluctant to throw it out as he insists he likes .GIFfany and that she's predictable, but when Dipper asks if he can take .GIFfany to his cousin's party though, Soos realizes that he has to "break-up" with .GIFfany.
.GIFfany becomes enraged.
Later that night after telling .GIFfany about it however, she becomes enraged, reminding him what he did with her and saying that he's her boyfriend, before demanding that Soos remain seated in his chair. Startled, Soos feebly attempts to diffuse the situation, to which .GIFfany childishly declares that she will not allow anyone else to take Soos away from her. Scared by her behavior, Soos pauses her and takes her disc out with the intent of returning her after his date. What he does not know however, is that a furious .GIFfany managed to stay on the computer. Feeling betrayed, she stalks him to the pizzeria.
Meanwhile, Stan begins to prepare to break into the same pizzeria, putting on gloves which he calls his old friends but not without declaring to be careful this time to avoid any more "Colombian nights." Wendy attempts to persuade him to change his mind, to no avail. Stan says, as he is leaving through a window, that "sometimes a man has to steal an animatronic badger," and then proceeds to fall out of the window.
Terrifying stalker.
Back at the mall, Mabel and Dipper help Soos prepare for his date, with Mabel shouting questions at him on what his "love crew" has taught him. Shortly afterward, Soos meets up with Melody and they enter the pizzeria just as Stan prepares to steal the animatronic badger. While conversing with Melody, Soos is frightened when .GIFfany appears on the screen of an arcade machine behind Melody, with the caption "You paused me?" .GIFfany, through the monitors in the arcade, expresses her distaste for Melody and that she wants to get rid of her. After making an awkward excuse, Soos flees to Dipper and Mabel, who had been watching them from the next table, and tells them that .GIFfany has somehow returned and is stalking him. Dipper tries to assure Soos that .GIFfany isn't real, but is soon interrupted by .GIFfany who glares at them from the television screens. She soon travels through the arcade games onto the main stage.
Childhood nightmares come true.
Soos tries to get Melody away from .GIFfany, but is interrupted by the ongoing show. .GIFfany then possesses all the animatronics and attempts to stop Soos from escaping. This also causes the animatronic badger that Stan is about to steal to attack him. .GIFfany then blocks Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Melody from the exit before she uses the skeeball machines to fire the balls at them like cannons, causing them to take cover behind an arcade machine. Soos tells Melody to stay with Dipper and Mabel and attempts to lure .GIFfany away from the group as the rest of the group tries to escape from the remaining animatronics.
.GIFfany tries to manipulate Soos into making up with her.
Meanwhile, Stan attempts to fight back against the animatronic badger, but is unable to. He dodges one of the blows, causing Goldie, who was sitting in a pile of trash, to start biting the animatronic's arm, with Stan cheering him on. Back in the pizzeria, Dipper, Mabel and Melody try to escape the animatronics but are captured. With Soos surrounded, .GIFfany attempts to persuade Soos that real girls like Melody would only end up hurting him. She asks Soos to allow her to download his brain into the game so that they could be together forever, even going as far as to threaten to "delete" Soos, when the latter protests. .GIFfany prepares to download Soos into the game, but Soos defiantly rejects her offer and tosses the game's disc into the pizzeria's oven. With the game destroyed, .GIFfany is seemingly gone, as all the animatronics deactivate, the one .GIFfany had possessed severely overheats, melting it down to its endoskeleton. The animatronic that Stan was fighting also deactivates, with Stan believing it to be Goldie's doing. He states that he and Goldie are going to Las Vegas.
Standing in the ruins of the pizzeria, Soos invites Melody to the engagement party. She accepts the offer but reveals that she won't be in town much longer after the party as she has to return to Portland in a few weeks. She proposes that they video chat when she leaves and although this arrangement was not much different from .GIFfany's, he agrees, happy to finally converse with a real girl. Mabel and Dipper are glad that Soos managed to get a date in the end. His abuelita, who surfaces from the ball pit, is too. When asked if she had been following them all day, she confesses that "Soos' life is [her] soap opera."
Stan and Goldie's Las Vegas Adventure.
As the credits roll, images of Stan and Goldie are shown having a ball in Las Vegas. First in a limousine with beautiful show girls, then staying at a hotel and enjoying "rich people water" in a hot tub. They enjoy raking in the chips gambling, but are so successful, they're kicked out by security. They escape on a helicopter at some point (Goldie at the wheel), and then get married at a Las Vegas chapel by an Elvis Presley impersonator. Eventually, they look to hitch a ride out of Vegas.
One of the animatronics strongly resembles Bear-O, Mabel's creepy puppet from the "Tooth" short.
Trivia[]
Viewership: The episode received 0.8 million viewers on its premiere.[2]
The episode title is a clear reference or a clear parody to the film Lars and the Real Girl, in which the character Lars also finds a substitute for an actual girlfriend.
The equation on the chalkboard in the classroom in the background when .GIFfany talks to Soos is a Schrödinger Hamiltonian which in quantum mechanics is the operator corresponding to the total energy of a single particle.
Alex Hirsch revealed at BigFest 2016 that .GIFfany is not dead, and still around somewhere. It was later confirmed in Gravity Falls: Journal 3 that right before her disc was destroyed .GIFfany jumped into the nearby Fight Fighters arcade cabinet and can be seen during the game's cutscenes trying to make Rumble McSkirmish her boyfriend.
Alex Hirsch appears as one of the men in one of the end credit's scenes, next to Goldie and Stan.
The short animation .GIFfany shows to Soos about her developers briefly shows that she is an "accidental artificial intelligence."
When she first appears, Melody is shown working at "meat cute" a play on the phrase "meet cute," an event when two love interests first meet in a sweet and somewhat awkward way, echoing the initial interaction she has later has with Soos.
The American horror visual novel game Doki Doki Literature Club! was released on the same Disney XD air date of this episode three years later in 2017. The game resembles a sentient student character, named Monika, eliminating anybody who gets in her way of trying to be with the player. The game starts lighthearted but gradually becomes darker and scarier. Unlike .GIFfany however, Monika has no directions in the game to be with the player.
When .GIFany is explaining her backstory through visuals, a text bubble appears above one of her creators that reads, "わかりません," (pronounced, "wakarimasen") which means, roughly, "I don't understand."
In a deleted/extended scene set at Hoo-Ha's, Stan sits at a table and comes up with the idea to steal the animatronic from two talking animatronic heads on the wall.
When this episode aired in the Philippines they cut the scene where .GIFfany's animatronic body melted leaving only the metal.
When Goldie scares away the kid, Wendy tells Stan that he needs to get rid of it, stating "Its face reminds everybody of the inevitability of death." This would describe Goldie as a momento mori, an art term that literally means "reminder of death."
When Soos tells Dipper and Mabel that he is getting stalked by .GIFany while on his date with Melody, he questions if you pronounce her name with a hard or soft "G", which is a reference to the famous debate about the pronunciation of the .GIF file type.
The arcade machine that Soos uses as a fort to protect himself, Melody, and the twins from .GIFfany is aptly titled "Fortress Fort".
Under the Quit text on the title screen of Romance Academy 7, there's an option that reads SHIZENHAKKA, which translates to "Spontaneous Combustion".
Cryptograms[]
The binary on the computer screen during .GIFfany's backstory (which is repeated in the "WEAKNESSES" box on her target-analysis screen) says, "0101001101010000010000010100001101000101010010100100000101001101010101000101011101001111" which means "SPACEJAMTWO".
During the credits, there is a cryptogram that reads "BRTYMEMNX QBR HRRQPEE" Using the vigenère cipher, it translates to "ANTHYDING CAN HADPLEN" - the second subtitle in the opening scene for Romance Academy 7.
Key: BEARO
Found on a pizza box in the kitchens of Hoo-Ha Owl's Pizzamatronic Jamboree: "BEARO".
End page.
The page section at the end of the episode says, "1-15-10-10-15-10-17 16-19-23-6-4-5 22-25 20-23-25-12-15-17-16-4!" on the top left, "8-9-5-5-19-5-5-15-10-17 6-9-22-9-4-5 22-25 11-9-9-10-12-15-17-16-4!" on the top right, "16-19-6 19-11-9-4-15-9-10-23-12 22-23-17-17-23-17-19 15-5 23 6-19-23-12 18-6-15-17-16-4!" on the bottom left, and "5-16-19 16-23-5 4-16-19 9-10-19 10-23-11-19 17-15-18-18-23-10-25!" on the bottom right, which translates to "WINNING HEARTS BY DAYLIGHT!", "POSSESSING ROBOTS BY MOONLIGHT!", "HER EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE IS A REAL FRIGHT!", and "SHE HAS THE ONE NAME GIFFANY!", after being put through the combined cipher. This is a reference to the old DiC/CWi dub's theme song to Sailor Moon.
↑Moran, Kate (2013). Instagram photo. “#gravityfalls had an awesome visitor today from #makeawishfoundation Here's a sampling of some of our gifts for him.”
↑Moran, Kate (2013). Instagram photo. “Alex & Nicolas give the day two thumbs up! #gravityfalls #makeawishfoundation”
