charlastan | TIMELINE

So, we thought A Tale of Two Stans was going to make things easier, but really it just raised more questions than it answered! Like how the heck is baby Shermy old enough to be a grandfather? And how long was Stan on the road anyway? When did Ford graduate? SO MANY QUESTIONS.

This is the only timeline I've been able to come up with that makes any kind of sense at all, but it strays from the typical fandom one that puts Stan and Ford in their late 50's, so I thought I'd put it here for my own reference. It may or may not get jossed in the future, but it should be workable even if we learn that Stan was lying the whole time and all of my grunkle for grandpa dreams come true.

ALSO if anyone notices any incorrect calculations please PM me and let me know - math's never been my strongest subject but I tried my best to make this hot mess make some kind of sense.

ANYWAY LET'S GET GOING.

Accurate through ROADSIDE ATTRACTION, 2x16

1948

Stanley and Stanford are born; Filbrick was not counting on twins and just named them both Stan.

1960

Stanley and Stanford are 12 years old.

Why?: Because they're meant to parallel Dipper and Mabel at this age, even if they sound a little younger than that. We've seen other minor characters who are meant to be younger than Dipper and Mabel and there's usually a pretty significant difference in design.

Summer: Stan^2 find the Stan O'War and start working on fixing it. Stanley promises they'll sail around the world and hunt for treasure.

1962

Stan twins are 14 years old, and still working on the Stan O'War.

This may have been the point Stanley met Carla McCorkle, if he really did meet her as a teenager, though it's possible it might not have happened until later in high school.

1964

Stan twins are 16 years old.

Sherman "Shermy" Pines is born; Stan twins are 16 years older than him.

Why? This is the absolute latest Shermy could have been born to plausibly be a grandparent and for Ford to not be aware he has a niece and nephew at all.

Stanley probably gets his driver's license.

1965

Stan twins are 17 years old; Shermy is 1 year old.

At some point before he's kicked out, Stanley gets the Stanleymobile, which is canonly a 1965 El Diablo Convertable. This would mean that he got the car either brand new as a gift or (more likely) by paying for it out of his own pocket. Dad Pines might consider this frivolous spending.

Spring: Stanley and Stanford go to their junior prom.

Stanley and Carla do not appear to be an item at this time, since he appears to be at the dance without a date.

Fall: Stanley and Stanford are seniors, Stanford is scouted by West Coast Tech after his amazing science fair project.

Why?: Science fairs are typically held in the latter half of the school year, but it makes sense that a college would be scouting in the early fall, so that Stanford would be able to properly apply to the school (the way he talks about the school seems to indicate that he either hadn't heard of it or didn't think it was a possibility previously). The lighting is more appropriate for fall as well, as are their outfits - when they're on the beach it looks like it's no longer beach season, but it's clearly not winter and spring would be too late to apply for schools.

Stanley wrecks the perpetual motion machine and is kicked out; drops out of high school at 17 years old and begins a life on the road.

1966

Stan twins are 18 years old, Shermy is 2 years old.

Spring: Stanford graduates from high school. He is also rejected by West Coast Tech and accepted by Backupsmore University.

Summer: Stanley tries to survive by beach combing; this predictably does not go well. Goes into sales shortly after this. Dreamscaperers implies that he attempted vaccuum sales first (as the billboard indicates), but everything in Dreamscaperers is questionable.

Why?: We see him not just in shorts on the beach, but bathing suit bottoms - it was warm enough to swim. Also, his face shape changes in a pretty big way, suggesting that at least a year has passed since he was kicked out.

???: Stan neglects to mention how he survived until that point, but it was likely he might have had some savings or sold some things, since he was able to obtain a metal detector.

Carla?: It's possible that Stanley was able to stay in New Jersey as long as he did by crashing with Carla instead of immediately jumping to living out of his car. If this is the case their break-up would have happened later and probably would have been more due to Stanley getting himself into trouble than because she met someone else (though it could have easily been both). The support for this is that Stanley claims they had a favorite 50's-themed 70's diner, which by this timeline's dates would mean they were still together after he was kicked out.

Fall: Stanford begins his college career at Backupsmore and it is underwhelming.

At some point, not necessarily in 1966: Stanford meets Fiddleford. Ford calls him his old college buddy and "young but brilliant", which may mean that Fiddleford is younger than him (but not necessarily). We never see him interacting with Fiddleford in college though, and Fiddleford is later shown to have a son and an ex-wife in Gravity Falls, so it's possible that this is a lie in Ford's story. Currently unclear as of 9/22/15.

1967

Stan twins are 19 years old, Shermy is 3 years old.

Stanley creates and develops the Sham-Total - it's a total sham!

At some point before he turns 21 and before he gets into making Fake IDs, he gets in a fight with a bouncer that results in him getting a very long and deep scar along the inside edge of his forearm that never faded after 40+ years. This could have happened at any point between ages 16-20, but likely happened in New Jersey because he wouldn't have needed to assume a new identity yet and would probably still just have his driver's license. The way he says that's where he gt THIS scar when he's talking to Dipper implies that he has many scars and many stories like this from over the years.

Stanford enters his second year of undergrad.

Also: There's a poster behind Stanford that says PEACE NOW and opposition to the Vietnam War was particularly strong from 1967-1973 - so, effectively the entire time Ford was in college.

This also lines up with Carla leaving Stanley for a hippie - she may have been a more peaceful person than fandom gives her credit for and may have been legitimately concerned about the Vietnam War, and may have gotten sick of Stan's inability to care about it or him bad-mouthing "hippies" when the cause is important to her.

1968

Stan twins are 20 years old, Shermy is 4 years old.

Stanley is run out of town when the Sham Total flops (though this may have happened the previous year). He claims he was "banned from New Jersey" though this may be an exaggeration - it's very flippant, and may be a cover for him being wanted for fraud (and thus not being able to move around freely in New Jersey, and therefore "banned").

This is likely when Stanley and Carla broke up, but it's possible they tried to make it work long-distance first, or that Stan might have wanted to try to do that.

Stanford is in his third year of undergrad, and possibly his final year of undergrad if he's moving through the program quickly.

1969-1971

Stan twins are 21-23 years old, Shermy is 5-7 years old.

Stan goes across the country and is "banned" from more and more states, while Ford finishes his undergraduate degree and possibly his master's degree.

Stanley's Looney Years: In Dipper and Mabel's Guide there is talk of Rorschach tests, which Stan claims to know about from his "looney days" and he says that the inkblot in the book reminds him of "his memory of the 60's". It seems unlikely that he would have spent any significant time in a mental institution during this time, so it may refer to either the fact that the six-fingered hand and the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel symbol both appear in it, or he might be exaggerating about experiences with a child psychologist (perhaps in an effort by his parents to figure out "what's wrong with him"). It's also possible that his looney days might refer to a period of institutionalization in the 1970s, but this also seems unlikely.

It's also worth it to mention here that Stanley's memory of dates is very unreliable. Now that Carla McCorkle has been confirmed as real, his line "my memories get a little hallucination-y after that" needs to be taken into account. Either he's lying to cover up the fact that he did something majorly illegal as revenge, or he legitimately doesn't remember the exact course of events. We've seen Stanley do this before - when something upsetting happens in his life, he rewrites it in his head and doesn't retain the details as they happened but as he wants to remember them, so he doesn't have to think about it or so that it's more in his control. Or even, in the case of people who are supposed to care about him (like his family) that it's his own fault. In the process little details get lost, like specific dates and years.

1972

Stan twins are 24 years old, Shermy is 8 years old.

Stanley and Stanford see each other at some point around this time (either this year or the year before).

Why?: Because when they meet again, Stanley says that it's been over ten years since he's seen his brother, but that doesn't mean it's been ten years since he was kicked out of the house. In order for Shermy to be old enough to be Dipper and Mabel's grandfather, 17 years have to have passed between when Stan was kicked out and 1982, and if it had really been 17 years since he had seen Ford he probably would have either rounded up and said "almost 20 years" or said "over fifteen years".

What happened?: Stanford's graduation from either undergrad or his master's program is possible, but given how ashamed he is about going home without making a fortune I think that might be unlikely. Another possibility is that their father passed away, which would be why the Shack later has their father's Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel things in it - Ford would have inherited them. Stanley probably got absolutely nothing.

Another possibility is that they may have reunited for Stan's failed marriage to Marilyn, but without more details on when that marriage happened and the circumstances surrounding it, it's hard to say. Personally I think that seems unlikely and that Ford would not have forgiven him enough to come back for a wedding, and that its more plausible that either something negative happened that they both had to attend or something good happened to Stanford (because of the two of them, Stanley's more likely to unexpectedly turn up).
However, if they did reunite earlier, this means that both of the Stans neglected to mention their first reunion, which might mean that it's a sensitive subject, and that it did not go well.

This also might be the year Stanley attempts to call home and chickens out when Stanford picks up the phone. At this point in time it's likely that he called his parents' house, because why would he know how to reach Stanford at school?

1973-1975

Stan twins are 25-27 years old, Shermy is 9-11 years old.

Without any other context clues to go on, I would guess that his six-hour marriage to Marilyn happened around this time. It's early enough that he might have still been trying to make his scams work somewhere, and might have actually wanted the marriage to work. For a marriage that only lasted six hours, he holds a lot of resentment about it, the point where it's even carved into the Shack's foundation in his mindscape.

After that fiasco, Stanley falls on much harder times and starts having to resort to harder crime in order to make money. He also likely begins international scams around this time, and at least one of his prison sentences probably occurs around this time.

If we assume the clue from the end of Roadside Attraction occurred in order, he became involved with a woman named Beatrice and she slapped him, but we have so few clues on when this happened that it literally could have been at almost any time, even after Stanford falls in the portal.

Meanwhile, Ford finishes his doctorate degree in 1975 and receives his grant to go study anomalies in Gravity Falls.

This means: that Ford finished his education in 9 years, and it was projected that he would finish in 12 years. This could be broken up into a projected 4 years for undergrad, 2-3 years for masters, and 5-6 years for PHD, but really the schooling could be split any number of different ways and that's more a Ford player's department. POINT IS, he's probably done and in Gravity Falls sometime in 1975.

Ford moves to Gravity Falls and begins work on ~the Journals~.

1976-1980

Stan twins are 28-32 years old, Shermy is 12-16 years old.

Stanley's life goes downhill. He winds up in prison two more times, once in Colombia for what might have been a heist. He is officially a real hardened criminal at this point, as opposed to just a conman looking to make a quick buck.

Considering the relatively short amount of time, in order for him to have gone to prison at least three times he probably broke out once or twice, if not all three times (it's also worth noting that he says he's been in prison in three different countries, not that he's been in prison three times total). With the Colombian jail time, he probably broke out with his cellmate Rico, since they are still connected in 1982.

Stanford is off researching everything under the sun in Gravity Falls!

Eventually though, Ford hits a roadblock in his research. He grows frustrated, but eventually he finds some mysterious ruins. He ignores all of the warnings and reads the inscription out loud, and soon afterwards Bill Cipher begins appearing in Ford's dreams. Bill claims that he's a muse, and tricks Ford with flattery and games until eventually Ford makes a deal with him "from now until the end of time". We never see what the deal is, but it's presumably something along the lines of giving Ford access to the secret knowledge of the universe in exchange for letting Bill come and go through Ford's mind as he pleases. Ford becomes obsessed with Bill's appearances throughout history and religion and even builds a shrine to him and "meditates" with glass pyramids (though this appears to be to open his mind to Bill).

This is also when Ford says he called McGucket, who by that point was in Palo Alto, CA working out of his garage for a computer company he founded. This is meant to parallel Steve Jobs' career, and he founded Apple in his parents' garage in 1976, so that adds up perfectly. If McGucket's version of the story is accurate, then he started working for Ford in 1980.

ALSO: This would mean that Ford began working with Bill before he began working with McGucket, since Ford mentions that the portal was actually Bill's idea and that building the portal is the reason he calls McGucket in the first place. McGucket seems to catch on that something is amiss here, since we see him look on disapprovingly at the meditating and Ford remembers him saying "Where are these ideas coming from? Who are you working with?"

1981

Stan Twins are 33 years old, Shermy is 17 years old.

Ford begins work on Journal Three this year, which begins by saying he came to Gravity Falls six years ago (1975). This journal is ultimately unfinished, and shorter than the other two, though Ford seems to have been making additions to all three journals simultaneously (which is why Journal Two has possible hiding places for the other journals, and all three can be combined to show the instructions for how to operate the portal).

The portal experiment happens this year, likely in Spring. McGucket's head gets stuck in the portal and he's traumatized, and immediately quits the project. He goes on to found the Society of the Blind Eye within just a few weeks.

Word of God says that Ford was not around when the Society of the Blind Eye fully got into the swing of things, which means that the pages on the Society in Journal Three are specifically about McGucket and that he has not gained followers yet. If we assume a couple of weeks to build the memory gun, McGucket has plans to have it be a fully fledged society within a month and a half of the portal accident.

It is also possible that by the time Ford goes into lockdown himself he can no longer keep track of what the Society is doing or how many members it has. We do know that Day 273 of McGucket's forgotten memories takes place during a major snowstorm, and the only other snowstorm we see in the entire series is when Stanley comes to town, so it can be assumed these occurred at approximately the same time.

By the end of the year, shit has gone down and Ford is out of his mind and hiding the journals. The whole thing appears to take about 7-8 months to go to hell. He realizes Bill tricked him immediately after the portal accident happened and learns that Bill wants to use it to bring horrible things to their dimension and possibly even get rid of the mindscape entirely. The journal entries become much more paranoid, because it would seem that the bulk of the Journal was written after he realized Bill was not his friend.

At some point, Ford has a metal plate installed in his head. This likely happens before he encounters the Society of the Blind Eye symbols, since he both knows what the memory gun is and the fact that it cannot erase his memory - which may imply that someone has tried it before. It's also likely that this happened earlier rather than later, since the procedure would probably require shaving at least part of his head to access his skull and he has a full head of hair again by the time Stanley shows up. Also, since you can't just politely request brain surgery at the local hospital, it's likely that he got so desperate to keep Bill out of his head that he either intentionally hurt himself very badly or had someone shady do the procedure who would not ask questions.

Stanley's life is even closer to rock bottom than ever before. It's likely he was stuck sticking with Rico and his goons, and owed them a significant debt. He spends a good chunk of time in New Mexico, living in a motel in a place called Dead End Flats and his life is probably a cocoon of horror. He lived there long enough for it to serve as a mailing address, so he likely moved in this year. It's possible that he's been trying to write to Ford (who probably hasn't been replying), and that's why Ford has his address later. It's also possible Stanley has kept in contact with their mother and/or Shermy.

Meanwhile, Shermy accidentally winds up with a son at age 17. The oldest Shermy can possibly be in 2012 while still having the Stan twins be 12 at a point in the 1960s is 48, which would mean that he was 35 when the twins were born. This is insanely young to be a grandparent, but it adds up if Shermy had a son at 17 and his son had Dipper and Mabel at 18 (or vice versa). For the purposes of this timeline I'm assuming Shermy was the high school pregnancy, but it could go either way (or one could even be 16 while the other is 19, though the odds of that seem somewhat lower.) Ford is surprised he has a niece and nephew, but it is possible that he was too caught up in his paranoia by that point to keep track of who was having children in the family. Also, since Dad Pines is likely dead by that point, it's more likely that Shermy would have received support from his mother and not been thrown out like Stanley was.

1982

Stan twins are 34 years old, Shermy is 18 years old, Dipper and Mabel's father is 1 year old.

The whole mess with the portal probably happens in January. Stanford finally writes to Stanley telling him to come to Gravity Falls, and even though Stanley owes Rico and his goons money he leaves immediately because his brother actually wants to see him, and sounds like maybe he needs him.

Ford falls into the portal, it is devastating and sad, we all saw the episode.

Stanley says he spends weeks trying to fix the portal before he runs out of food, so it is likely February before he has to go into town.

The snow is starting to melt when we see Stan put up signs for the Murder Hut, so it is probably March by then, April at the absolute latest (since he had to make money fast to pay Ford's mortgage).

July 4th: Stanley Pines "dies" in a blaze of glory and the new Stanford marks it on his calendar like a nerd.

I previously assumed that Stanley went to his own funeral, but if his mother was still alive at this time then he probably did not, since she would be able to tell the difference. However, it's possible that she might have recently passed away herself, and both of these deaths would give Stanley an excuse to get close to Shermy, the only relative he has left in this dimension. Shermy would have been so young the last time he saw either Stanley OR Stanford that he would not be able to spot the difference between them.

1983-1990

Stan twins are 35-42 years old, Shermy is 19-26 years old, Dipper and Mabel's father is 2-9 years old.

Ford has been missing for 1-8 years.

Murder Hut is renamed to the Mystery Shack.

Stanley attempts to teach himself physics while trying to fix the portal.

Meanwhile he probably keeps in contact with Shermy and his family, and makes sure they're alright while maintaining a decent amount of distance.

At some point in the 30 years Ford is missing, after Stanley's brand has healed, it's very likely that he had it tattooed over. Yes, he outright says that he doesn't have a tattoo, but scars don't heal that faded blue color and tattooing on top of a healed brand is not an unheard of practice.

1991-1998

Stan twins are 43-50 years old, Shermy is 27-34 years old, Dipper and Mabel's father is 10-17 years old.

Ford has been missing for 9-16 years.

The Mystery Shack is still going strong, and Stan is still continuing his portal work.

Dusk 2 Dawn, the local mini mart where Stan was first hounded by the locals, closes in 1995 after the owners succumb to double heart attacks. Stan is 47.

1999

Stan twins are 51 years old, Shermy is 35 years old, Dipper and Mabel's father is 18 years old.

Ford has been missing for 17 years.

Dipper and Mabel are born at the end of the summer!

2000-2011

Stan twins are 52-63 years old, Shermy is 36-47 years old, Dipper and Mabel's father is 19-30 years old, Dipper and Mabel are 1-12 years old.

Ford has been missing for 18-29 years

Stan hires Soos in 2002! Soos is about 12 at this time, and has worked there ever since. Stan is not above utilizing child labor, but ultimately he grows very fond of Soos. At some point in the decade to follow, Stan attempted to get Soos' birthday banned from calendars because he hated it so much (and now, consequently, Stan is not allowed on airplanes).

Also, Stan obtains a bunch of cursed wax figures around this time (ten years prior to canon events), but this might be an inconsistency because even though they can be seen in the Shack ten years ago, Soos does not seem to remember them when he finds the storage room later.

At some point in this decade, Lil' Gideon is born. He later opens the Tent of Telepathy and becomes Stan's greatest rival in town.

The Mystery Shack is doing well enough now that the other tourist traps of Oregon begin to prank the Shack, though it's entirely possible Stan might have started it. Granny Sweetkins in particular lit his car on fire on two non-consecutive occasions, and in 2011 someone duct-taped Soos to the ceiling, where he was stuck for 78 hours.

Crimes Stan has committed while in Gravity Falls under the name Stanford Pines include shoplifting, "burglebezzlement" (which he invented), first degree llamacide, first degree thermometer theft, pug trafficking, snacks evasion, pick-pocketing, woodpecker baiting, impersonating a dentist, general indecency, goft cart theft (implying that the Mystery Shack golf cart was stolen), bingo fraud, and "telling jokes that go on and on, I mean we have things to do today really". Teaching a bear to drive is also mentioned but we know for certain that happened in Summer of 2012. An entire programming block is dedicated to reading off his crimes, but Stan shuts off the TV and says that at least they didn't mention any of the really bad ones.

2012

Stan twins are 64 years old, Shermy is 48 years old, Dipper and Mabel's father is 31 years old, and Dipper and Mabel are 12 years old (about to turn 13 at the end of the summer).

Ford has been missing for 30 years.

PRESENT DAY! All the events of the series occur.

WHAT ABOUT CARLA?

Okay, you guys I have bad news.

Carla...might not be real. Or at least she might be HIGHLY exaggerated.

There's no point in Stan's life after High School but before he loses Ford to the Portal where he's in one place enough for a long term relationship. He's banned from so many states that it stands to reason that he doesn't go back the same places a lot. Though, if she IS real then that all probably happened at some point in the mid/late seventies.

Also, his Dreamscaperers memories are HIGHLY UNTRUSTWORTHY. It is very likely that Stan is capable of lucid dreaming and picked and chose what he showed Dipper in order to explain his own behavior. It's possible he might have liked a girl, and maybe that punch even happened, but it's likely that it didn't stretch into a relationship that spanned the length of his exile. It's also possible that Carla might be a girl he met on the road who he wished he could be in a relationship with. Finally, it's also possible that the memories might not have been deliberately re-written, but that he might simply not remember them as they actually happened, since he literally seems to remember himself as a sweatier version of Ford even though that's not what he looked like at the time.

His story in Boyz Crazy is highly suspect too, because in his flashback he doesn't even remotely resemble how he actually looked at that time (or ANY time) - he's fabricating the story already to make himself look better than he is (probably so anyone hearing the story would be SHOCKED AND APPALLED that Carla would leave him for a hippie LOOK AT HOW IMPRESSIVE AND BUILT HE WAS)

Conclusion: Carla is now officially confirmed as real, but Stanley's memories are still a little off for various reasons.