Grunkle Stan

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 knickknacks 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, Duck-tective and period dramas. He also enjoys fishing.

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 hoards 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's 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.

When it came to matters of love and romance, Stan had a tendency to be excessive and/or over-the-top in his behavior, appearance, or actions and would often come across as flamboyant and/or attention-seeking towards women he liked. In "This Is Not A Website Dot Com", it is revealed that Stan has been in several romantic and sexual relationships with women over the years whom he genuinely loved and could've settled down with but for one reason or another he was never able to bring himself to fully commit to any them due to his traumatic past with his own family and his drive to make something of himself believing falsely that the only way he could truly be happy is if he had made it big first with Bill mentioning that this was one of his biggest regrets in life.

Stan has brown eyes with cataracts, gray eyebrows, and gray hair (both of which were brown in his youth), that is almost always covered by Stan's trademark maroon fez. The fez bore a yellow crescent shape (through episodes 1 to 13) and later a similar figure (after the original fez was eaten by Gompers), albeit with straight edges and a dot next to it, resembling an oyster with a pearl in it. He bears a somewhat large, droopy, pear-shaped, bumpy, reddish-pinkish nose, large ears, and fair skin. As a result of his age, Stan has wrinkly skin, a hearing aid, and dentures. He has a faded burn mark of the symbol on the side of Ford's desk on his back. He usually wears a pair of rectangular glasses with a black rim which later had its outline thinned. Stan also has a perpetual five o'clock shadow covering his lower face.

Stan's typical outfit is a black suit, with the jacket buttoned closed, a bow tie similar in color to his fez, and a white dress shirt. He also wears big, light brown shoes, the aforementioned fez and his glasses. He frequently carries an eight ball cane with him and often wears an unnecessary eye-patch over one of his eyes while working. He has mentioned that he owns a girdle, which he'd presumably wear while in the suit; this would explain why his prominent belly doesn't show in this outfit.

Around the house, Stan wears a white wife beater, a gold chain, striped blue boxer shorts, slippers, and his glasses and fez. This outfit reveals Stan's vast amounts of body hair, burly arms, skinny legs, and his very large belly.

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 combined 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.