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Invasion of Falls - TV Tropes

  • ️Mon Apr 08 2024

Invasion of Falls is a Gravity Falls/Invader Zim crossover fic by LordStar8045.

Dib thought he had seen the last of Zim after the Florpus incident. However, in the strange and wondrous town of Gravity Falls, Dib would find not only his old nemesis but other crazy things that would drive him up a wall.

The story can be found on Archive of Our Own here.

Invasion of Falls contains the following tropes:

  • Abhorrent Admirer: Miss Bitters shows an interest in Stan, to his horror and everyone else's disgust.
  • Accidental Hero: Zim destroys the monster transformation amulet because it's a threat to him personally, and ends up praised for saving everyone else from it in the process.
  • Accidental Murder: When a defeated Zib is ranting, Mabel tries to shut him up by splashing him with punch. However, this causes his damaged PAK to malfunction and fry him, causing him to melt into goo, much to her shock.
  • Arc Villain: Some of the multi-chapter plots in the story have their own main villains responsible for events, who so far aren't an overall Big Bad:
    • "Sins and Dookies" (Chapters 3-4): Zim himself, who unleashes the Seven Deadly Sins curse on the town.
    • "Sumerweenies" (Chapters 7-9): Iggins, who is responsible for the Forced Transformations that the main characters undergo.
    • "Snarling Beast" (Chapters 12-14): Tak, who abducts the characters as part of a revenge plan.
    • "Doomsday Disco: Party Edition" (Chapters 16-18): Zib, who attacks the party being held by the Skoolmates and Fallers to get revenge on Dib and Zim.
  • Armor-Piercing Question:
    • In Chapter 14, Ford asks Zim why he's so loyal to the Tallest despite how they treat him, actually causing him to stop and think about things.
    • In Chapter 19, Ford cuts into a petty argument between Zim and Dib to ask if they think that a species can be entirely evil. When this gets their attention, he uses it to segue into an explanation about how in his view neither of them is really the bad guy, they're both just stuck trying to live up to their respective species' expectations.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: Gaz and Mabel do this while fighting Zib's Mecha-Mooks in Chapter 18.
  • Commonality Connection: Mabel and Keef form a friendship based on their shared cheerfulness.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: At one point while interrogating a captive Robbie in Chapter 16, Zim threatens to have GIR (whose mouth is full of literal garbage) kiss him, which Robbie is understandably disgusted and afraid of.
  • Dance Battler: GIR defeats Zib's robot minions by literally dancing around them.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Gaz finds herself reluctantly warming up to Mabel and the other girls when forced into a slumber party with them.
  • Everyone Has Standards: Stan and Ford are both furious when they hear about Professor Membrane's history of poor parenting, noting that for all his faults, their own father never sunk so low as to institutionalize them for being inconveniences.
  • Forced Transformation: During the Sumerween arc, a magical amulet changes all the core characters (and Wendy's friends) into various monsters. Zim and GIR, meanwhile, are turned into humans.
  • Friendly Enemy: By Chapter 19, it's obvious to everyone that Zim and Dib have a friendly interaction underneath the constant bickering and insulting.
  • Gamer Chick: Gaz, as usual, has her eyes pressed against a gaming console.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: As Wendy teasingly points out, Pacifica becomes this regarding Dipper.
  • Here We Go Again!: Stan manages to turn down Miss Bitters' advances, only for her to turn her attention to Ford instead.
  • Hidden Depths: Zim shows some surprising vulnerability when Dipper asks him whether conquering Earth would actually make him feel satisfied.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Blind Ivan intends to completely wipe the minds of the Pines and their friends, only to get subjected to the mind wipe himself, reducing him to a drooling moron.
  • Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Dib is an awful singer, so much so that his attempt at karaoke during the party in Chapter 16 leaves everyone screaming and covering their ears.
  • Horrifying the Horror: Even as scary as Gaz can be, she's terrified of Miss Bitters.
  • How the Mighty Have Fallen: How "mighty" Zim was beforehand is debatable, but after the Membranes and Pines manage to catch him, he's reduced to indentured servitude in the Mystery Shack.
  • Hypocritical Heartwarming:
    • Mabel states that since Gaz is her "frenemy", only she gets to insult her.
    • Zim says that only he gets to insult GIR's stupidity.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: The Skoolmates, who have spent years bullying Dib for believing in the paranormal, find themselves on the receiving end from Gravity Falls youngsters for being too "normal".
  • Mistaken for Gay: Gravity Falls' local gossip newspaper sees Dib and Dipper interacting and jumps to the conclusion that they're dating. Pacifica actually believes this, despite Mabel trying to explain that Dipper doesn't swing that way, only for Gaz to rile her up by implying it's true as a form of Revenge by Proxy.
  • Morality Pet: Gaz develops a surprising soft spot for Waddles.
  • Not Me This Time: When McGucket brings word to the Mystery Shack about finding a mysterious signal connected to a raid on a power plant, everyone assumes that Zim is involved. He has to point out that they have him on house arrest in the Shack, so couldn't possibly have been involved.
  • "Not So Different" Remark:
    • When Dib is arguing with Zim about the fact that his leaders, the Tallest, aren't coming because they are dead and the whole Irken Armada sucked into the Florpus Hole, forever lost thanks to him:

      Zim: YOU LIE! What would a failure who can't even convince his own bigger failure of a species to recognize your 'greatness'?

      Dib: ...So are you.

      Zim: What did you say to me?

      Dib: You and I are the same… (Dib starts giggling crazily) Guess we are both failures to our respective species, HAHAHAHAHAHA!

    • Ford later delivers a speech to both Zim and Dib about how in his view they're both stuck trying to live up to the norms enforced on them by their respective societies.
  • Oblivious to Love: Dib is completely blind to Gretchen's obvious crush on him at first.
  • Oh, No... Not Again!: Dib's reaction when Zib sends everyone into the Room With a Moose.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: When confronted over the monster transformation amulet, Iggins uses it to turn himself into a dragon.
  • Out-Gambitted: Zim figures out that Tak is planning an attack and plays along with it to lure her into a false sense of security, then reveals at a critical moment that he's set up countermeasures to everything she tries to use on him.
  • Parents as People: Professor Membrane, after the events of the Florpus, has been making more of an effort to be more involved in his kids' lives and sends them to a summer camp in Gravity Falls to get them to socialize more.
  • The Quisling: Blind Ivan agrees to help Tak conquer Earth just so that he'll have the resources to restore the Society of the Blind Eye, regardless of the consequences.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Upon being defeated and captured, Zib explodes in a diatribe against everyone around him, telling them all why he believes they're all worthless idiots.
  • Restraining Bolt: Ford infects Zim's PAK with nanites that keep him from using his weapons without consent. By Chapter 14, he's figured out how to counteract them, freeing himself.
  • The Rival: Pacifica and Jessica develop a rivalry based on who can be the biggest Alpha Bitch.
  • Save the Villain: Dib and Dipper insist on taking the moral high ground and saving the defeated Zib from his collapsing Pocket Dimension, much to Zim's disgruntlement. Not that it matters, as Mabel ends up accidentally killing him.
  • Seen It All: The Pines and other Fallers have seen so much weirdness, up to and including Bill Cipher, that their reaction to an insane Zim/Dib hybrid from another universe is more general surprise than the shock and disgust felt by the Skoolmates.
  • Seven Deadly Sins: During the "Sins and Dookies" arc, several characters are cursed with manifestations of the sins, leading to among other things Dipper lustfully kissing every girl he comes across and Wendy being so slothful that she doesn't even get up to use the bathroom. Notably, Gaz is cursed with wrath, but since that's so similar to her normal persona, she's able to control it.
  • Ship Tease:
    • Pacifica and Gretchen have clear crushes on Dipper and Dib, respectively.
    • Mabel gets along incredibly well with Keef from the get-go, and starts referring to him by a nickname shortly after they meet.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The scene in Chapter 14 where Zim mentally breaks Tak is based on a confrontation between Eggman and Starline in Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW).
    • This exchange between Dipper and Zib in Chapter 17 is paraphrased from the one between Juste and Maria in Castlevania: Nocturne before the latter killed the Abbot:

    Dipper: You shouldn't be killing stupid people!

    Zib: Most of what is bad in the world is BECAUSE OF STUPID PEOPLE!

  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Gaz and Mabel do not get along at all, constantly butting heads and arguing, but occasionally agreeing on other things like disliking other characters' stupidity. Mabel refers to the situation as them being "frenemies".
  • Spotting the Thread: Ford starts to piece together oddities about Dib and Gaz, most prominently the fact that they even exist when Professor Membrane has no history of serious relationships with women who could be their mother, or of having adopted them.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: At one point, Zim performs a Super Window Jump, and ends up cutting himself on the resulting glass shards.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Zim gives this as the reason why he saves Dib from dragon Iggins.
  • Villainous Breakdown: In Chapter 14, Tak has a total breakdown when she realizes that Zim actually thought his plan to counteract hers through and has Out-Gambitted her.
  • Villain Team-Up: Tak finds Blind Ivan and restores his memory so that he can work with her in her plan against Zim, the Membranes and their allies in Gravity Falls.
  • Weirdness Censor: Downplayed: While the public didn’t completely overlook the events of the Florpus, they chalked it up to some strange cosmic event.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Dipper is horrified when he catches Dib about to dissect Jeff the Gnome, calling him out for his Fantastic Racism towards nonhumans.
  • You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Stan's reaction when he manages to shake off Miss Bitters' advances, only for her to turn her attention to Ford.