Yep. In this case, they applied a distortion algorithm that automatically edited every frame in the exact same place.
Indeed. The first clue one these types of morphs is the frame rate gets greatly reduced. A typical GIF is 15 frames per second, but on these morphs it always gets dropped to around three.
This deceptive process once led to an even greater deception. A Russian GIF morpher once video-morphed a woman on a beach and also a second video of a MILF doing hardcore (I think he claimed the second video was his aunt or some shit like that). Then he put the videos for sale online and got about 3000 orders. He then sold all 3000 of the credit card numbers to Russian hackers, leading to about 3,000,000 unauthorized credit card charges total. I cringe when people re-post his video morphs as though they were new discoveries.