The episode was written by Shion Takeuchi, Josh Weinstein, Jeff Rowe, Matt Chapman, and Hirsch, and directed by Stephen Sandoval.
In this episode, Dipper and Mabel begin to question who Stan really is after officers arrest him for stealing chemical waste.
The episode, which breaks the show's status quo by introducing Stan's long-lost twin brother, ends with a cliffhanger to the second half of the season.
It was the biggest broadcast ever for Gravity Falls during its run on Disney XD until the following episode, "A Tale of Two Stans", beat that record four months later.
[2][3] In the secret laboratory under the Mystery Shack, Grunkle Stan rigs drums of chemical waste to power the portal machine.
In the box, Mabel finds a password on a slip of paper and identifies this as a button combination for the shack's vending machine.
In this episode [Stan's] secret double life finally catches up with him, and it puts the pressure on the kids to sort of figure out if they're going to rescue their uncle from what's going on here.
[7] In particular, fans wrote "Zapruder film"-level exposés in the form of "PowerPoint presentations, flow charts, timelines", rare for a Disney Channel show.
[6] Hirsch had the character in his pitch of the show to the network, with the writers placing clues of his existence from the first episode.
[4][10] Hirsch described this character, in addition to Agent Trigger, as plot devices to divide the protagonists and have them face their allegiances to one another.
Kaiser highlighted the episode's utilization of color contrasts to emphasize its tone, as well as describing how it turned the viewer's "assumptions of safety" about the series "on its head".
[13] Storyboard artist Alonso Ramirez Ramos was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on the episode.