The image used in the background of the Gravity Falls logo HAS BEEN FOUND!!
I made a thread on Twitter explaining the full story and how I even asked Ian Worrel and Alex Hirsch about it, but lemme run down quickly how it was found and where it is!
After 3 years of searching with some friends on and off, we had no real luck. I've been working on a video about it for a while but decided to try one more time. My friend @trickengf suggested looking at international logos as they may have more of the image available and sure enough...we found logos like the Japanese and Russian GF logo had more visible detail of the image.
From that, Tricken made a remake of the image and used it to find it. He ended up finding the source at about 3AM for me, lol!
My friend Fried Oreos then confirmed the image was old enough to fit the criteria of pre GF pilot, by determining the image was on the Textures website it was sourced from since 2008!
Then, my friend Alex M managed to buy the HD image and we were able to analyze its metadata for more info!
Turns out, the image, called "LandscapeMountains0009," was taken by a Nikon D70 camera on April 18, 2007!
THE GRAVITY FALLS LOGO IMAGE IS ALMOST 18 YEARS OLD!!
From there, we began looking for the location. The meta data had no location, but other images taken around the same time showed signs of maybe the location being in Europe.
After over a day of searching, Tricken, Alex M and Oreos FOUND IT!!
The location of the image is a mountain range near the town of Sers, France...near the border with Spain.
Exact coordinates of the closest viewable angle of the image is 42°54'23.2"N 0°06'05.6"E
This is a major discovery and one I cannot believe we did. While this search was started by me in 2021 with some friends, it was TrickenGF, Alex M and Fried Oreos who deserve all the credit for this discovery! They were the geniuses who tracked all of this down and were able to connect the dots to get to this point.
You guys are amazing and I am beyond grateful for all of this.
Finding this image means that fans can now recreate the Gravity Falls logo as they want with anything they want. For example, Tricken made this for me using the image :D
For 12 years as we looked at the Gravity Falls logo...we were in reality looking at a mountain in France...NOT Oregon!
So, I guess this is a major W for France but sorry, Pacific Northwest, Gravity Falls is actually French, lol!
I still can't believe we found this. I'm so happy :P
