Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27704373-20161203225220/@comment-24674051-20161205174032

Gideon is Rumple and Belle's son. I think the biggest question is why he knows so much about Rumple. And Yes, I realize I overthink things at times.

However, in this case, my guess is that there is some magical property to goes along with being the scion of the current Dark One. This could even be related to the Holy Grail magic that is the source of the DO powerss. There are no reported instances of previous dark ones conceiving (or participating in the conception process) while they are the Dark One (at least none that we are aware of, the writers could always change that later), which means that the probablity is high that Gideon is the first such child. That property was further augmented when Rumple entered Belle's Dream, providing the child with some for of consciensness, that was then able to manifest itself later.