[1][2][3] The Cipher Hunt began on July 20, 2016, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and concluded on August 2, 2016, in a forest in Reedsport, Oregon, where the statue was found.

The statue was later taken by local authorities because of a property dispute and was temporarily displayed at Bicentennial Park in Reedsport before it was relocated permanently to Confusion Hill, a roadside attraction in Piercy, California.

He very quickly came up with the idea of sending fans on a worldwide treasure hunt for a real life Bill Cipher statue.

After the finale aired on Disney XD on February 15, 2016, Hirsch took a trip to a couple of conventions and vacation spots, and he would secretly leave behind a clue for the hunt at every place he visited.

[8] Fans utilized social media outlets such as Twitter, Tumblr, Periscope, and Reddit to communicate and share their findings.

[9][10] Russian fans of the show recognized the diagram at the middle left of the image as an architectural plan of the Kazan Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.

Using a diagram at the middle right of the image which showed the first clue's exact location inside the cathedral, it was successfully found.

The second clue was located at the Kanda Shrine in Chiyoda, Tokyo, which Hirsch and his partner Dana Terrace visited during their trip to the country in February 2016.

400 before his name is written...",[14] with the first phrase describing the avenue's namesake, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León.

This led community streamers to find a lost poster for Waddles, Mabel Pines's pet pig, in the area, which was water damaged and difficult to read.

[17][18] The recorded phone message revealed that the fourth clue's location was in the Ochre Court building of Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island.

The recording featured Grunkle Stan being taunted by the ghost of Sister Mary Hilda Miley (a reference to the lost clue at Salve Regina University) about not finding the treasure, with music and sound effects from the 1990 video game Super Mario World in the background.

The sixth clue was accidentally discovered by a student in the campus' sublevel in the form of a graffiti on a wall a week before the Cipher Hunt began.

[26] The decoded hex codes from the sixth clue form co-ordinates that led to Piedmont, California, the hometown of both the Pines and Hirsch twins.

The cryptogram on the Waddles missing poster found in Atlanta, as well as some guidance from Hirsch, led fans to a pink key tied to a tree stump in Piedmont Park, in addition to a small chest with a cryptex locked behind a five-letter keyword.

[31] After another day, Hirsch tweeted an image which showed a rough idea of what the completed puzzle should look like, but with a different code that translated to "THIS IS WHERE THE CLUE WILL APPEAR".

[33][34] The View-Master from the ninth clue contained slides depicting the area around Confusion Hill in Piercy, California, a tourist trap similar to the Mystery Shack, Grunkle Stan's business in the series.

The password was "FILBRICK," the word written in invisible ink on the back of the Stan Bucks packaged with the jigsaw puzzle.

[35] Additionally, Hirsch stated that fans will receive a prize if they take a selfie with the framed photo of the Gravity Falls crew at Confusion Hill.

A family raced to Enchanted Forest in pursuit of the clue and dug around in the dirt at the base of a sign that reads "Here lies the bones of a man named Bill" which was located near Pa's laundry shop, but found nothing.

The fan uploaded the image of the twelfth clue online, which was a ripped piece of paper that contained an encoded riddle.

[7] Fans used the initial image and final clue combined to search for the statue in several locations across the West Coast with no results.

Through clever cryptoanalysis of the branches and knots, and by manipulating the possible results with the assumption that the decoded message was a location that had to end with the letters "OR" (the abbreviation for Oregon), a "reverse" code cracking method was used.

[44][2][45] The treasure chest contained a wide array of loot, such as plastic coins and gems, Russian and Japanese currency, a copy of the book Gravity Falls: Journal 3 which was signed and contained a special drawing by Hirsch himself, a black light flashlight, a plastic crown, a sash that says "Mayor of Gravity Falls," a music box with Bill Cipher's eye drawn on it that plays the show's theme song, a slip of paper with a message written by Hirsch in invisible ink, a miniature Bill Cipher statue, a framed sketch of the main characters standing with the statue, and a USB drive.

By August 5, the statue ended up in Reedsport's Bicentennial Park, where it was bolted to the top of a tree above the ground, lacking its hat.

Three days later, on August 18, the statue had been removed from Bicentennial Park with a sign in its place that read "BILL WAS HERE", when decoded through a substitution cipher.

Numerous online media outlets have reported on the hunt and its progress, including Atlas Obscura,[3] The Daily Dot,[1][45] and io9.

[51] During an appearance on the Mystery Shack Lookback Podcast in July 2022, Alex Hirsch revealed the full story behind what happened and how Bradley's name ended up in the chest.

[54] Before the hunt started and after paying off Bradley, Hirsch realized that he had forgotten to add the voice memo of Grunkle Stan singing “We’ll Meet Again” to the USB drive inside the treasure chest.

He would later upload a video of him finding the statue to help answer questions fans had about why his name and link to his Twitter account were in the treasure, however, the full story would not be revealed until 2022 by Hirsch.