Zombies - or the Undead - are among the large variety of creatures to appear in the Disney cartoon series Gravity Falls. These monsters are like most zombies in modern media: human corpses that have been reanimated as shambling, mindless horrors that feed on living flesh. They appear in the Season 2 episode "Scary-oke".
Description
Zombies are emaciated, long-decayed human cadavers that have been reanimated via a magical incantation. Given their rotten state, they are only able to walk at a very slow pace, but they always travel in large numbers. As with other kinds of modern zombies, these creatures hunger for the flesh of the living and the people that they bite become stricken with their curse, turning into zombies as well.
While zombies can be dispatched by striking the head or otherwise bludgeoning them to pulp, there is a more effective way to destroy a zombie horde all together. According to the journals of Stanford Pines, a large group of zombies can be destroyed all at once with a perfect three-part harmony. This was demonstrated when Dipper, Mabel and Stanley Pines sang the rock ballad Girls Taking Over Midnight together, the union of their voices with the music causing the zombies' heads to shatter.
History
In the Gravity Falls episode "Scary-oke", Dipper tries to convince a pair of government agents that he's been investigating the mysterious goings-on in Gravity Falls. To provide proof, Dipper reads a passage from the Number 3 Journal which turns out to be a spell to raise the dead. A fissure opens in the ground, causing numerous reanimated corpses to emerge and attack.
The Undead follow Dipper back to the Mystery Shack and the Pines family soon find themselves fighting for their lives. During this attack, Soos is bitten by a zombie and turns into one, though remarkably he retains his intelligence after turning. However, while Soos' personality remains intact, he no longer regards Dipper and Mabel with the same familiarity he once did and wants to eat their brains. Because he retains his intelligence, Soos is considered a "genius" among the zombie horde and helps the Undead break into the Shack.
Dipper, Mabel and Grunkle Stan (who until this point had previously denied any knowledge of any paranormal activity in Gravity Falls) are able to destroy the Undead with the help of a karaoke machine. Together, they sing Girls Taking Over Midnight and the harmony of their song causes the zombies' heads to explode. The only zombie not destroyed by the harmony is Soos who is later cured of his zombification using an unspecified method, the only known detail being the use of copious amounts of formaldehyde.
Notes
- In the very first Gravity Falls episode "Tourist Trapped", Dipper believed that Norman, a teenager that Mabel had started dating, may have been a zombie. It turned out that Norman was actually several gnomes disguised as a single human.
- In the episode "Little Dipper", Gideon Gleeful contemplates taking revenge on the Pines family by summoning a horde of zombies to attack them. He ultimately decides against it since zombies can't be controlled.
- Many of Gravity Falls' dead, including former mayor Eustace Befufftlefumpter, were raised as zombies during Weirdmageddon. In "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls", the reanimated mayor attempts to rise from his grave and grab Janice Valentino's leg. He also retains some degree of his former intelligence as he is heard saying "Braaains, and so forth."