Bill Cipher

Appearance

Bill is a yellow, two-dimensional and triangular creature that bears a strong resemblance to the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States, which in turn consists of the Eye of Providence and an unfinished Egyptian pyramid. The color of his body briefly becomes lighter when he speaks. Often when he appears, the area he appears in takes on a washed-out monochrome appearance. It is unknown whether this effect physically occurs, or if it is simply a visual effect to bring attention to his appearance. He has a single large eye with a slit pupil, rimmed with four short black lashes on the top and bottom, though sometimes there are three on the top and four on the bottom. He moves around mostly by floating about and rarely actually stands on his own legs. He has thin, black limbs, wears a small, black bow tie and a tall, thin, black top hat that floats just above his head. He has no mouth whatsoever, though has been shown using his eye as one to drink something. His arms do not seem to be in any fixed position and can move along the perimeter of his body without any difficulty. He occasionally carries a small black or yellow cane. The lower part of his body has a brick-like pattern of lines. He has no fixed size and he has been shown to be as small as a hand and tower over the Mystery Shack. In the book Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure!: Select Your Own Choose-Venture it is strongly implied by the Axolotl's poem about Bill that he's an equilateral triangle: the first verse says "sixty degrees that come in threes", and equilateral triangles have three internal angles of 60° each. However, when he gets angry, his voice deepens significantly, the color of his body turns red and his eye turns black with a white pupil, (in close-up, his eye shows a red iris.) and everything on his body that was previously black turns white.

Personality

At first, Bill Cipher seemed to be a charming and charismatic figure, willing to help people with their problems while making deals with them, but this easily changes within minutes of his debut, especially when he reveals his true nature: that of a highly intelligent and manipulative individual, who only wants to benefit himself. Because of his harmless appearance and charismatic nature, he often enjoyed playing games with people, either to make himself more trustworthy or because he likes manipulating people, regarding how easily they fall into his traps. It also gives whoever doesn't know his true nature the false impression that he isn't evil when in actuality, Bill is a completely heartless monster. He was unfailingly nice and friendly to his so-called "friends" as well as long as things go the way he wants. However, when this is not the case, he is quick to lash out to them and does not care about their well-being. He usually spoke with a high-pitched voice with a synthesized effect, but when furious or expressive, it becomes very deep and intimidating in a way that's more in line with traditional demon depictions. When Bill got mad, he becomes full of rage, as he attacks without mercy and for the most part, stops fooling around. He is also very masochistic, as he enjoys hurting himself, as shown when he tortured Dipper's body while possessing it, even exclaiming that pain is hilarious. He also has no problem killing or hurting children like Dipper and Mabel, as shown when he purposefully harmed Dipper's body while possessing it and nearly killed one of the twins to force Stanford to surrender to him. An expert manipulator and a masterful liar, he is clearly capable of fooling others into trusting him long enough for him to betray them in a heartbeat and is falsely affable enough to influence others into becoming one of his many pawns or making deals with him (which he will almost always double-cross to his advantage).

Powers and Abilities

While Bill is vastly powerful and competent, he cannot normally interact with the physical world while trapped inside the Nightmare Realm. He is able to observe the world, but not influence it, as he can only appear to people in dreams, being virtually omnipotent within the dreamscape. Bill can also act by making a pact with a willing vessel, but in doing this he is subject to all the constraints of the vessel body and cannot use his own power to reshape the world at will. He also has a great vast of knowledge available, claiming he knows "lots of things". Bill is also an expert manipulator as, while he tends not to lie, he doesn't outright tell the truth and can easily bend the rules of his deals to his favour by exploiting loopholes. However, he doesn't know everything in the universe, including Stanford's trickery. When Bill Cipher escapes the Nightmare Realm, he becomes able to use his full power within the real world, and his power seems to be almost limitless, possibly next to godlike. He is able to reshape reality and everything in it to his will and can even defeat similarly powerful entities such as Time Baby, effortlessly wiping out the infant Time Giant and his minions with a single blast. On the brink of defeat, he offered Stanley Pines "his own galaxy", implying that his power could potentially be on a cosmic scale. However, he has some weaknesses, due to not being entirely powerful. Namely, he cannot escape the weirdness-attracting bubble around Gravity Falls on his own and lacks the knowledge to undo the bubble cased by Stanford's powerful equation, as he is unable to use his powers directly on objects that are protected by a barrier of unicorn hair. Bill’s singular eye also seems rather delicate, causing excruciating pain to him whenever it’s hurt and being the point of Bill Stan punches to defeat him.

Physical Form

After smashing the inter-dimensional rift and creating a gateway from the Nightmare Realm, Bill became incarnate, which allowed him to both exist and affect the real world. In his physical form, Bill is nigh-omnipotent, bringing inanimate objects to life and turning people into statues of the material of his choice. He can regenerate every aspect of himself, create everything from objects to elaborate pocket dimensions (like Mabel's prison bubble) and produce electric charges (shot from his eye). His abilities in this form also include: apportation, inter-universal travel, matter manipulation, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, time manipulation, telepathy, mind control, illusion manipulation, dream manipulation, nightmare inducement, madness inducement (can create bubbles that induce madness in whatever they touch), clairvoyance, objects summoning, intangibility, reality-warping, levitation, possession, precognition, size-shifting, fourth wall awareness (he is aware of the real world and can "see" us), and resistance to reality-warping and space-time manipulation. He even surpasses Time Baby's powers, which he displays by disintegrating him during "Weirdmageddon Part 1." Bill himself declares that he controls space, matter and, after getting Time Baby out of the way, time itself. However, even an incarnate Bill discovered limitations in his power. Bill's physical eye proved particularly sensitive and took more time than the rest of him to regrow. "Ah! My eye! Do you have any idea how long it takes to regenerate that!?" Even while capable of vastly affecting the physical world, he still could not enter bodies or conscious minds without the contract-and-handshake process. Gravity Falls' bubble of weirdness also thwarted Bill's powers, as no amount of hitting or shooting at it dissolved the barrier, which stopped Weirdmageddon from advancing into the rest of the world.