Grunkle Stan is at first sight a wise and cunning salesman being highly manipulative, very charismatic and charming, running a tourist trap in a town with enough unsuspecting customers to sell worthless Knick knacks to and take on tours of so-called "mysteries." He conducts his business with surprising flair and wit. When not planning or executing money-making schemes (both legal and illegal), he's usually at home watching television. His preferred shows include Cash Wheel, Ducktective and period dramas. He also enjoys fishing
"When life gives you lemons, call them
'Yellow oranges'
and sell them for double the price."
Full name
Stanley Pines
Other names
Stanford Pines, Steve Penington
Stetson Pinefield, Hal Forrester
Andrew "8-Ball" Alcatraz
S618 (prison number)
The Guy I'm Gonna Vote For
Old Dude, Bootleg Sixer
PTSD Barnum
'
Stan is also manifestly greedy and selfish, even stating once that his greatest desire in life is to "possess riches". He sees tourists as easy cash and nothing more. However, this obsession seems to stem from his father's words when he kicked him out of the house, and by the harsh, poverty-stricken life he led after being disowned.
While his trickery might appear unremarkable to some, Stan's cunning transcends his Mr. Mystery persona: he's been able to figure out Lil' Gideon's plots on numerous occasions and even manages to outwit Bill Cipher in the end. Even though he was written off as unintelligent by his teachers and even his father, he was capable of restoring his brother's universe portal and can be seen operating its computer in the days leading up to Ford's return.
Stan has a deep sense of family loyalty. He responded to Ford's request for help after an entire decade of being estranged and was deeply hurt when he realized his brother didn't intend to make amends, even calling him out on how bad a brother Ford turned out to be. He dedicated thirty years of his life to bringing Ford back to their dimension in spite of how strained their relationship had become in the years leading up to the fight. Stan is also shown to be very protective of Mabel and Dipper, despite the morally ambiguous situations he puts them in on occasion: he stood up to hordes of reanimated corpses to protect them, telling the zombies nobody (but him) harassed his family, and ditched the elections for mayor at a crucial moment to rescue the twins as they dangled from Mayor Befufftlefumpter monument. When he believes Ford might put Dipper and Mabel at risk, Stan has no qualms about warning his brother away from them.
Stan's dedication to his family is outright expressed during Weirdmageddon, when he offers to obliterate his own mind to ensure the twin's survival. Once he and Bill are trapped in his mindscape, Stan points out to the increasingly frantic demon that, while he's a wise guy, he made a fatal mistake: he messed with Stan's family. His final thoughts before his mind disappears are for Dipper and Mabel, even remarking that his mind was finally 'good for something' if its destruction protected them.
Despite his lengthy history as a con artist, he has a compulsion to state his honest opinions on the subject at hand. Some examples include during "Headhunters" Stan stated to the man who sold him the cursed wax figures that he would just rob him later on for charging twenty dollars per statue and has blurted out "non-specific excuse" to get out of a bad date. He even admits in "The Stanchurian Candidate" that he has little to no filter between his thoughts and his words.
Stanley Pines was born on June 15th in the late 1940s - early 1950s to Filbrick and Caryn Pines in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey, about 15 minutes after his twin brother Ford. He and his twin brother Stanford were very close. Stan's strong, brawny personality combining well with Ford's brilliance: when together, they were an unstoppable pair. Stan also faced frequent bullying due to his weak appearance as a child, most notably from childhood foe Crampelter. This eventually inspired their father to force the twins into taking boxing lessons, as a means of toughening them up and giving them the strength to overcome their tormentors.
Stan's teenage years were initially pleasant, frequenting the 50's-themed Juke Joint with then-girlfriend Carla McCorkle and building their ship - named the Stan’o’war - with Ford, as they hoped to fulfil their childhood dreams of sailing around the world searching for adventure. His aspirations began to crumble near the end of senior year, when Stanford's intellect attracted the interest of West Coast Tech (a prestigious college on the other side of the country, which meant he'd move away from him), and with Carla ending their relationship over her infatuation with hippie musician Thistle Downe. Stan would later confess to having driven Downe's van into a ravine in an act of revenge, which only served to further alienate Carla from him.
On the verge of losing his closest friend, barely passing high school and seemingly destined to stay in Glass Shard Beach forever, Stan took his frustrations out on Ford's infinite motion machine, accidentally damaging it and causing it to malfunction. As his Toffee Peanuts bag was found at the machine's display, Ford accused Stan of sabotage, driving a wedge between the twins and prompting their father to disown Stan for losing them the "potential millions" Ford's scientific achievements would have reaped. With no friends or family to turn to, a furious Stanley set out on his own, determined to acquire fame and fortune twice the size his twin ever would have earned.
After a failed foray into combing beaches for buried treasure, Stan founded Stan Co. Enterprises. Through his self-managed company, Stan made and sold a variety of cheap and poorly-constructed household utilities, from Stan Co. Pitchforks (which broke apart) to the "Sham Total" sham towels (the cheap dye used to color them made stains worse), both of which resulted in Stan Co. Enterprises, along with Stan himself, being banned from the state of New Jersey. The process repeated itself in Pennsylvania with his rash-inducing "Rip-Off" band-aids. After the failure of his "Stan Vac" vacuums, Stan expanded his business out of the country, resulting in a heist gone awry in Colombia, which landed him in one of the country's prisons alongside cellmates, Jorge and Rico. Stan attempted to bond with them, much to both prisoners' intense dislike.
Upon his release, Stanley returned to the United States. Banned from a majority of states, imprisoned in three different countries, reduced to renting a room at the Dead-End Flats motel, and remaining in debt to Rico, Stan's life had seemingly hit rock bottom - until the arrival of a postcard from his brother Stanford, the first he had heard from his twin in over a decade. It contained a desperate plea for Stan's presence.
Stan travelled to his brother's new home in the woods of Gravity Falls, Oregon, to find Ford confined in his shack and borderline insane with paranoia. Ford then revealed his underground laboratory and the interdimensional portal he invented to his brother, vaguely explaining that its powers were too dangerous and that he needed Stan to take one of Ford's journals, which contained information as to its operation, and go as far away as possible to protect them from falling into the wrong hands. Furious that Ford had only summoned him to send him away again, Stan initiated an argument and prepared to burn the book to spite Ford, causing a fistfight between the duo. During the brawl, Stan received a burn mark on his back from one of the symbols in the machinery as the machine was inadvertently activated, with Stan unintentionally shoving his brother into the portal's range, sending Ford through the machine before its immediate shutdown from lack of fuel. Stan spent the following weeks plagued by insomnia and guilt, cloistered in the lab in an attempt to reactivate the portal and bring Ford back again, only to realize it was hopeless without the other two journals.
Upon venturing into town once the food ran out, Stan discovered the locals were curious about Ford's house, and even willing to pay for a look, which prompted him to open it up for tours, building fanciful faux-paranormal props when Ford's inventions failed to garner interest. With Stan's witty remarks and jokes to liven the visits, the house eventually attracted enough popularity to become the Mystery Shack, a tourist trap focused on 'paranormal' exhibits. Faking his own death in a car crash, Stan took up his brother's identity to remain legally on the property and pay Ford's mortgage; he boarded up Ford's old bedroom and hid access to the lab behind a vending machine in the gift shop. He ran the tourist trap during the day for profit, but by night worked tirelessly to locate his brother's hidden journals and reactivate the portal, hoping to one day bring him back home.
As the years rolled by, Stan applied countless renovations to his tourist trap, intent on keeping its oddities and appeal alive, both for profit and for his love of money. He once stole a collection of cursed wax figures from a local garage sale for this purpose, which became the Shack's Wax Museum of Mystery and was a huge success until Stan inadvertently forgot its existence. Edwin Durland was hired as a handyman for the Mystery Shack during this time; after firing him for his seeming incompetence, Stan caught sight of 12-year-old Soos Ramirez holding a screwdriver and offered him the job on the spot. Over time, the Shack developed a rivalry with the rest of the tourist traps across the state, which originated a yearly tradition that involved vandalizing one another.
At some point before 2012, Stan would take a trip to Las Vegas, where he would meet "Marilyn," the woman who was briefly his wife. The marriage came to an end after a mere handful of hours, with "Marilyn" robbing Stan of his car and money, before then disappearing by jumping into a canyon. Little is known about "Marilyn," with Stan believing her entire identity, and name, was false.
Sometime at the start of the summer of 2012, Gideon Gleeful opened up the Tent of Telepathy, a scam whose success (and whose ads, which often featured unflattering footage of Stan, damaged the Mystery Shack's profits) made Stan profoundly annoyed. The duo soon ended up becoming business rivals.