Sometimes people think that the show is being referenced a whole lot but a bunch of times it's not a reference at all. The creator of Gravity falls, Alex hirsh stated that the unicorn was based more on mythology and not as much by MLP. So many times we just assume a unicorn, alicorn, or colorful horse is a reference when it was just simply a basic mythological character like Bigfoot, Zombies, Aliens, and other things.