Hey Arnold!/WMG

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


On the day of Hey Arnold's cancellation, Hillwood City fell into a black hole and turned into San Andreas a few months later after falling out of the black hole. The Hey Arnold cast was reincarnated as the GTA: San Andreas cast.

  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released just a few months after Hey Arnold! was cancelled.
  • Both San Andreas and Hillwood city are on the west coast
  • Now for the characters
    • Arnold and Gerald are CJ and Sweet. They are the main heroes of their respective stories. Also, Gerald is sometimes the voice of reason on the occasions that Arnold is not.
    • Helga is Catalina. Both of them love the main character but don't know how to express their love. Also both are aggressive characters.
    • The 4th graders are the Grove Street Families/Varrios Los Aztecas and the 5th graders are the Ballas/Los Santos Vagos. If the 5th graders are in a Hey Arnold plotline, they are almost always the big guys picking on the 4th graders, much like the powerful Ballas having dominance over Los Santos for most of the game.
    • Ronnie Matthews is OG Loc. Both are totally fake mainstream artists. Dinomania could also fit the role as OG Loc.
    • On a similar note, Dino Spumoni is Madd Dogg. At the time that Arnold/CJ first meet Dino/Madd Dogg, Dino and Madd Dogg both present themselves as has-beens, but both heroes help them make a comeback.
    • Mickey is Ryder and/or Big Smoke. He seems to be allied with the 4th graders/Grove Street families but he is working for the 5th graders/ballas.
    • Principal Wartz is Officer Tenpenny. Although Wartz isn't evil, he definitely abuses his power a lot.
    • Big Gino is Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. He's pretty much the Italian gangster stereotype to begin with.
    • Stinky and his family are reincarnated and multiplied as almost the entire population of Red/Flint Counties, where there are a lot of stereotypical hicks.
    • Wolfgang and Chocolate Boy are B-dup and Big Bear. Wolfgang humiliates Chocolate Boy, but he puts up with it because of his chocolate addiction. The second half of Chocolate Boy's episode is Beat Down On B-Dup; both Chocolate Boy and Big Bear have had enough of putting up with their dealers. Also, Chocolate Boy could represent everyone in the Grove Street Families that got addicted to crack. In this representation Wolfgang is Big Smoke; he's enormous, and Smoke is probably the most famous Ballas pusher.
    • Oskar Kokoshka is Nico Bellic because he is Eastern European, has a similar accent, and looks very similar to Nico

Hey Arnold and World in Conflict take place in the same alternate Seattle.

  • It is confirmed by Word of God that the town Hey Arnold takes place in was heavily influenced by Seattle Washington, but is known as "Hillwood" in the show. But in every episode you never see the Seattle Kingdome in the background. This is because the Kingdome was demolished by Soviet artillery fire during the Third World War in 1989 and was never rebuilt. In addition to that, smaller townships within Seattle may have been established thus giving birth to "Hillwood" after the war. Or Hillwood just happens to exist as one of the smaller municipalities within this alternate Seattle.
    • I have also realized this can also explain the absence of Arnold's parents. Perhaps they were killed during the invasion or perhaps they died in Cascade Falls and Arnold survived. Arnold's Grandpa made up the adventurer stories and forged the journal to buy him some time before Arnold finds out how they really died or wait until Arnold is old enough to understand the truth.
    • In addition to this, Lila's last name is "Sawyer". Plus her father looks like he could be a related to Colonel Sawyer who successfully repelled the Soviet invasion on the west coast and in Europe.

Arnold's parents were murdered by La Sombra.

  • As payback for foiling his evil schemes, La Sombra blackmailed Eduardo into convincing them to return to San Lorenzo. Once they were in his clutches, he either killed them both or kept Stella alive as a sex-slave, bearing a child who will go on to become Arnold's arch nemesis if the series ever gets revived.
    • That... No. NO. That's just too sad, dammit! What actually happened is that after La Sombra was Defeated For Good, the trip into the mountains delivering medicine went awry, stranding them in a mix of Shangri-La and Brigadoon. Both parents are alive and well, they're just unable to get back to Arnold because the refuge they were given shelter in has yet to return to the Earthly plane.

Helga's mother is an alcoholic and/or is being abused by Big Bob Pataki.

  • The former part of this may or may not be confirmed by Word of God, but it has certainly been heaily implied. She's tired all the time, has no energy for anything, and certainly never seems happy. She's also constantly drinking 'smoothies' that aren't explicitly mentioned as being alcoholic, but seem to have a similar effect on her. Furthermore, rumour has it that a spin-off from Hey, Arnold was proposed aimed at an older audience, and in which Helga's mother explicitly attended Alcoholic's Anonymous meetings.
    • There are some moments (though regrettably I can't recall a specific episode) where you can actually hear ice clinking in a glass as Miriam speaks to Helga. These moments generally occur while she is not visible- and if she was drinking something innocuous, why hide it? There are lots of clues- for example, in one episode Helga is looking for Miriam and is told by Bob that "she's asleep behind the couch," whereupon Miriam pops up looking disoriented, glasses askew. She often slurs while speaking, also- the list goes on.
    • Makes sense because in one episode, she was looking for Tabasco sauce while making a drink and Tabasco sauce is an ingredient in a Bloody Mary.
  • Furthermore, Big Bob's pushy, aggressive personality and (borderline, at best) emotional abuse of Helga while singing the praises of her sister Olga certainly support the idea that he possibly abuses their mother as well (emotionally, if not physically). This may also explain why she became an alcoholic in the first place, and why she never stands up for Helga when Big Bob starts cutting her down.
    • Both Helga's and Olga's personalities are reactions to their abusive father; Olga pretends to be the perfect girl to not be pestered by dad, while she does have to walk from problem to problem to keep the facade. The fact that she prefers to mantain distance might make this true. Helga's aggressive personality was the way she found of counter-attacking fire with fire, and even though she doesn't like Olga's way to withdraw from the conflict, she protects the big sister and mom at the same time. She loves Arnold for being the exact opposite of her father, but at the same time, can't keep liking him not only by her fear of bullying, but the fear of what her father would be capable to do to the poor boy if Bob discovers. Her mother's reactions to Arnold memorabilia (throwing it away, burning it in the fire), although mostly because Helga told her to do so, might be for the boy's protection as well. That might be the reason that we never hear Olga talking about boyfriends at all, she might fear for the guys' lives (or maybe she's a lesbian and doesn't even mention girlfriends because Bob is probably homophobic as well). You know what an abusive and jealous guy with an unlimited supply of highly flammable and heavy beepers might do with anybody that makes the family's "harmony" go awry (not to mention he probably has a shotgun somewhere, but Helga might manage to hide the bullets to not see any tragedies).
      • I disagree. Bob's main flaw always seemed to be neglect as opposed to outright abuse.

The whole CHAM incident with Phil in World War 2 wasn't dumb luck.

  • It was The Plan by Phil's superiors to adversely affect the Germans' combat effictiveness through mass food poisoning. Why else would they send a truck alone, with only one apparently unarmed driver, through territory where Germans were crawling around if they didn't want it to be captured? Also, they just sent some no-name private who didn't really ask too much questions. Whether the mission worked or not, he would've been no big loss. It just turned out that Operation Chikenshit was more successful than they'd dreamed it could be. The reason why it's not in any major history book was that it all sounded so utterly silly that no historian could bring himself to believe it, let alone write about it.

Arnold and friends are all in Helga's head, and do not exist in reality.

  • I don't believe that Arnold or any of Helga's other friends are ever mentioned by Bob or Miriam, and Olga may just be playing along with Helga.
    • Bob definitely has talked to Arnold before. Remember when he tries to bribe Arnold into losing the Spelling Bee? Or when he made fun of Arnold for having no parents.
  • Miriam is a depressive alcoholic miserable person, she wouldn't tell anything she knows to not make things worse, and Bob is just too much stupid to ever notice he has two daughters already in the age of discoveries, and afraid of what a moron like him could do with them, or their mother if they ever told about any friends in particular; or even what could happen with their friends themselves, that is.

Lila is Arnold's half-sister.

  • Lila's mother is never shown in the series, she's presumably dead. Plus, Stella and Lila both have red hair.
    • Or perhaps is his twin separated at birth, since they're around the same age, and we never really know what happened when Arnold was born.
    • Either of the above theories thus implies that Arnold may have unwittingly attempted to engage in Brother-Sister Incest or Twincest...
  • This may be why Arnold isn't the "oh-so-special someone" Lila is looking for. Somehow, she's always known...

Gerald's father actually did have some combat experience in Vietnam.

  • He just told Gerald that he was inept at fighting and got assigned to clerical duties to hammer the point home that serving your country wasn't just about grabbing a gun and going gung-ho action hero on Faceless Mooks since he knew that Gerald, being a young boy, would've completely missed the point and focused on all the action if he just told him about all the fights he'd ended up in. That, and recalling combat can be pretty hard on soldiers who found the whole thing terrible. He only offhandedly mentioned that he managed to save a soldier from bleeding to death without really going into details so as not to appear to be singing his own praises. Further, the reason he looked so disheartened when he overheard Gerald complaining about how he seemingly hadn't been in combat thanks to earlier his story was because, despite his efforts, his son still missed the point he'd been trying to impart.

Arnold's father's journal was fake.

  • His Adventurer Archaeologist gig was just a cover for his work with La Sobra's criminal operations. His wife &/or law enforcement started getting suspicious, so he had his associate Eduardo cook up a reason to get them back to South America where he could finish her off & then "disappear" for a while.
    • Or, it was a fake created by Arnold's grandfather to not reveal that his parents were kinky bastards, never really wanted a son, and the poor kid was just an accident. The story seems too fantastic to be real. Of course, if Arnold ever knows the truth, he'll become extremely depressed, with suicidal tendencies. His gramps didn't like to lie to the kid, but he was doing it to avoid any more tragedies.
    • Seriously, what secret agent would keep all of their plans and family information in one book like that, that they brought on adventures where they could easily be captured? The real journal was in code, with fake names and locations.
    • On a happier note, maybe Arold's Grandfather did know there were codes - he just solved them.

Gerald knows about Helga's secret but doesn't reveal that so Phoebe won't be in trouble.

  • While the end of "Operation Ruthless" was one of the more definite cases of Gerald and Phoebe being an Official Couple while the two were at the Tunnel of Love Phoebe was telling Gerald about what she was doing before her trip on the tunnel with him. While Gerald and Helga never really got along, Gerald knew that if he told Helga that he knew about her secret Helga would jump to the conclusion that its Phoebe's fault that he knew. So in other words he never told Arnold and/or Helga about how Helga is so obsessed over Arnold so he won't get Phoebe in trouble.

Arnold's parents are still alive, they just abandoned him.

  • Think about it, they lived in the jungle from the time he was conceived until some time after he was born (when, if I remember correctly, Arnold was almost eaten by a snake). While Arnold's parents did love him, they loved their jobs more and weren't great parents while out in the field. Perhaps dropping Little Arnold off with Grandma and Grandpa was the best way for both parties to be happy.

Fuzzy Slippers is related to Socko

Harold is actually Jesus.

  • The H in the exclamation "Jesus H. Christ!" is thought to stand for "Harold," as a reference to a mistaken version of the Lord's Prayer ("Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be thy name"). The clincher? Harold, like Jesus, is Jewish.

Helga can read dreams

In "What's Opera, Arnold?", she continues Arnold's dream from EXACTLY where his left off. Coincidence? No. She was reading his dreams. If thats not true then...

Arnold talks in his sleep

Pretty much a seperate theory for how Helga continued Arnold's dream in the episode. Arnold talks, or in this case, sings in his sleep, everything that goes on in his dreams and describes it so anyone near him can know exactly whats going on in his dream. So Helga, hearing him, fell asleep and continued his dream.


Olga is Helga's invention or Helga is Olga

Related to the "Arnold and friends are all in Helga's head, and do not exist in reality" theory. Miriam drinks and Bob has his naster character because they only have Helga. Helga in her delusions adds also what her family should be with a successful daughter. However, Olga appears to some people in Hilliwood, so Helga is disguising herself as Olga to the others. In the episode "Student Teacher" where Olga teaches in PS. 118, Arnold never talk with her and Helga in the same room... so it's easy to trick the others into thinking Olga is another person.

    • Interesting to note that Helga and Olga are two versions of the same name.

Arnold parents die of some strange illness or are in a coma

This is pretty sad... but also is a big possibility. Arnold parents go missing after going to San Lorenzo to cure another strange illness. Maybe this time they contracted the dissease, get sick and die. Or maybe they get sick at fall into a Coma. This is why they never return with Arnold.

Eduardo is actually an avatar of Nyarlathotep and is the true Big Bad of the show. He orchestrated the entire backstory and planned on using Arnold to cause the downfall of the Green Eyes in the Jungle Movie.

Quite a few people have noted that Eduardo comes off as strangely suspicious in the episodes dealing with Miles and Stella. This could easily be chalked up to just being part of his personality, especially considering that he is their closest friend, but it is entirely possible that he is something far more sinister than he seems.

As Nyarlathotep, he was the patron deity of the Green Eyes and provided them with unnatural powers in exchange for worship and subservience. As time went on they either turned against him or he grew bored of them, so he began to plot their destruction. Although he clearly had the power to kill them outright, he desired to put them through such incredible suffering that they would yearn for death. He set to work on a lengthy plan that would ensure a spectacularly fitting defeat for the Green Eyes.

The first stage of his plan was to bring in pawns that he could use to orchestrate the destruction of his traitorous followers. Assuming the guise of Eduardo, he surfaced in the United States and searched for possible candidates. He eventually found one in Niles and befriended him in order to earn his trust. After some time passed he told him of San Lorenzo and encouraged him to go there for his research. In a different form, he also arranged for Stella to head to San Lorenzo and orchestrated their meeting. He had specifically chosen someone that Niles would be romantically attracted to, as the final stage of his master plan required a couple to be the harbingers of the Green Eyes' destruction.

Once they were situated in San Lorenzo, he needed the Green Eyes to welcome them into their village. First, he sent Niles and Stella on a hiking trip and used his powers to send them plummeting into the waterfall from the mountains, where the Green Eyes would be waiting to save them. Now that the Green Eyes were aware of them, he enlisted the aid of La Sombra, a mercenary treasure hunter, and ordered him to steal La Corazon, an important relic of the Green Eyes. Since Miles and Stella were indebted to the Green Eyes for their help, he had little trouble in convincing them to take it back from La Sombra.

Now that they had the trust of the Green Eyes, he needed them to form a stronger bond as a couple. He arranged a honeymoon for them in a resort and orchestrated the entire catastrophe with the lifts to test their strength and bring them closer together through a brush with death. Next, he would do the same by spreading a plague among the Green Eyes: by sending them on a mission to cure it, they would not only get more experience as adventurers and grow in their love, but they would become more revered by the Green Eyes, as well.

Next came what would be the most important stage of his plan: he needed them to have a child. Nyarlathotep arranged for Stella to become pregnant, either through continuing to strengthen their relationship and letting it occur naturally or by directly interfering. Once the time came for Stella to deliver, Nyarlathotep led them directly to a sacred sanctuary of the Green Eyes that was located near a volcano. He told them that it was on the way to the hospital, but he needed Stella to give birth in the temple itself, which he knew the Green Eyes would be monitoring from a distance.

Finally, everything would come to fruition: once Stella had Arnold, Nyarlathotep calmed the mountain in order to make it seem like Arnold's birth was divine. The Green Eyes who witnessed it reported it to the tribe, and he would eventually become their new deity, replacing Nyarlathotep. As it would take a great deal of time for Arnold to become the central deity of their culture, he allowed Stella and Niles to return to the boarding house with their boy until he needed them again. In the meantime, he monitored the Green Eyes to ensure that nothing went awry with his scheme.

When the time was right, he came to see Niles and Stella and told them that the sickness had returned in order to get them to return to San Lorenzo. Whether or not he actually caused another disease is uncertain, but his main intent was to bring them back to Central America. Once they returned, he put them into captivity and hid them away, giving Arnold reason to want to find them once he was old enough.

He fell into the shadows after this, monitoring Arnold's growth and the Green Eyes from a distance. Once he felt that Arnold was ready to head to San Lorenzo, he arranged the essay contest and ensured that he would win the trip there, knowing that he would take the opportunity to look for his parents. With Arnold in San Lorenzo, he would manipulate him into unwittingly causing the ultimate destruction of the Green Eyes, who loved him and his parents dearly. In the end, the Green Eyes would fall into unbelievable despair as their savior consigned them to their death, and the malevolent deity would delight in their misery as they withered away. As for Arnold and the others, he would either kill them with the Green Eyes or torture them for his sick amusement.

Obviously Arnold and the other kids would stop him during the movie. As for how that happens, beats me.

Arnold's original teacher, Miss Slovak, is a lesbian.

She's obviously elderly and unmarried. She also seems resentful that she never found true love. She quits her job to become a professional golfer, and a stereotype of lesbians is love for golf. Word of God says that Mr. Simmons, her successor is gay.

  • Why would the successor's sexuality have any bearing at all that of the previous one?

The Pigeon man committed suicide.

At the end of the episode, The Pigeon Man. His mistrust of people, caused by the kids wrecking his place sent him over the edge. The ending we saw was Arnold's way of coping with what happened. He jumped into the air and Arnold thought hew flew away with pigeons holding him. That...doesn't make much sense. Plus because of the sunset he never really clearly saw what was happening. If he pieced it together it would be too much to cope with for a kid.

Helga was the result of an unplanned pregnancy.

Aside from the parental neglect mentioned several times in other WMGs, take note of the 12 year age difference between Olga and Helga. Seems odd that if Bob and Miriam actually wanted another kid, they'd wait that long to have one. Additionally...

Bob is the father of both Torvald and Big Patty

  • Torvald's father is never mentioned in the story, and not having a father around is likely to have made him delinquent, or the fact that he know that his father will never claim him in general, let alone publicly. He is dealing with a frustrating truth that patty was saved from by her adoption (or was she?). Looking at Torvald's "house", his mother may have received financial support for her "services" (with out being totally dependent on him) up until the birth (young childhood?) of, or pregnancy with, Torvald.
  • Big Patty is possibly adopted due to her large size compared to her "parents". It is likely that her birth mother was a customer of Big Bob's and missed one (or a few) payments and he had a few ideas on how she could pay her back. The end result of Big Bob's "revised payment plan" was Big Patty. Ashamed and powerless(he is a powerful town mogul after all), her mother gives her up for adoption, as opposed to carrying the shame of having his "love child". Patty and her parents are not likely to know about this until sometime after the show's cancellation. Also, Big Patty, Big Bob.
  • Both of these kids look as similar to Helga as Jamie-o does to Gerald, if not more so. Both are large in stature, mono-browed,and arguably, Big Patty has the same facial design as Helga with Torvald being eerily similar. All three of the children are subject to displaying aggressive behavior, which can be a genetic trait considering Big Bob's behavior. Helga is smaller than the two because Miriam is a fairly small woman, Patty and Torvald either inherited Bob's size or the size of their potentially large mother's. It is likely that Miriam would not have done anything about it seeing that she is an alcoholic and that Bob may be trying not to wreck his already unflattering reputation ("How can I run a beeper emporium with everyone knowing I have all of these kids running around? How does that make me look!")

Helga will marry...

Brainy

Almost all the characters are Expies of Peanuts characters.

Arnold is a combination of Charlie Brown and Linus, while Helga is Lucy combined with Peppermint Patty. Then we have Lila, who's both The Little Red-Haired Girl and Peggy Jean, Phoebe (perhaps the most blatant Expy of Marcie ever created) and Gerald (Franklin--Black Best Friend of Charlie Brown and Linus, who someimes had little background moments with Marcie, dancing with her and so on.) Rhonda is the snobby Violet, and Nadine is Frieda. Chocolate Boy is Pigpen. Harold's a camp bully. Big Patty is the original Patty--she's got a plaid skirt, and the same haircut. Curly? Well, considering how insane he is...could it be that he's just Snoopy in human form? Not to mention that Craig Barlett has spoken about considering Peanuts a huge influence!

Arnold is the spawn of the devil.

His parents' entire relationship was ensconced in disaster after disaster, the perils mounting in the time leading up to Arnold's birth, and then on the day Arnold's born, it's in the midst of a volcanic eruption that ceased once he actually came out.

Brainy's real name is also Arnold.

This would give Fridge Brilliance to his crush on Helga. He is only known by his nickname and shows up whenever Helga is ranting about Arnold; although he seems to be a Stalker with a Crush, if his real name is Arnold, then he would think that Helga is talking about him all the time and his feelings are reciprocated. Seems like a perfect misunderstanding for the show.

Arnold is an Aspie.

This is mostly from Arnold's willingness to help people, sometimes Arnold imagines some stuff in his world (Like him climbing an ice cream mountain in the beginning of "Heat"), Him understanding Helga, and likes protecting everyone's smiles. He also showed a streak of "No forgiveness" and sudden outbursts (Example being not listening to Iggy after Iggy humiliating him in public in "Arnold Betrays Iggy" and Shouting "This is Ridiculous!" in the episode where his grandma and Ernie argued about the theater).

Arnie is a vampire.

Think about it. He has pale skin, is always reading food ingredients (possibly to check for garlic), and loves to count things.

Rhonda and Sid are cousins.

Not only do they resemble each other, they are both rather high-strung and can be quite mean-spirited at times.

Eugene is an Eldritch Abomination

Maybe the most friendly one ever in the history of cartoons. Open your mind to this theory real quick. Arnold Shortman was partial to noticing an energy unlike everyone else. Helga was typically resentful of him, yet everybody else was passively scornful of his personality too. His unpopularity might be justified. A key factor to my idea is the flooding accident in the school. When the storm came Eugene transcended being The Jinx. Typically an abomination wouldn't be just a danger to itself, but an abomination to anything and everything opposite to a reckless destroyer. Hence the trope. Eugene is a rare exception where the concept of self destruction is a gateway into others. When Harold and Stinky rigged Eugene's bicycle, not that it was ever necessary in the first place, just to see him intentionally be put into an unlucky spot. However; the aftermath wasn't even what the audience expected. Because we never seen the result of such a prank, it was particularly suspicious that even the two major idiots of the show had freaked out to Arnold. That anyone would eak out over Eugene having a major accident. My grand assumption is that Eugene doesn't vocally or physically plot revenge. Instead he haunts those who interfere with the system of typical bad luck using paranoia and extreme guilt or insanity. The episode where Principle Wartz slips on a facial soap carving towards the end has no connection to Sid's stalker-feuding. But a long-waited Karma trigger which Eugene's everyday life relates to, painfully. In fact how similar the soap incident was is even more relevant. Wartz believes that Eugene is suspiciously (there's that word again) clumsy, as if any medical events had been planned. As a whole, Wartz is the only one to have been unknowingly right. If the series was able to be truly finished, Eugene would have been revealed as less than normal. This entire idea would follow up to the aforementioned Black Hole theory.

Grandpa is extremely well-endowed.

It may explain why he calls himself "Steely Phil", as well as calling Arnold "Short man" (to demean him). It may also explain the phallus in his face, if you look hard enough.

  • And that's what made Arnold's Grandma so crazy.

Oskar was only illiterate when it came to reading English.

Oskar is obviously an immigrant. He was able to learn to speak English but never learned to read or write it, and could only read and write in Czech.

Coach Wittenberg's son Tucker is not Trish's child.

This would at least partially explain why we never see him in any of the later Wittenberg-and-Trish episodes--it's kind of weird to miss your father's wedding, but significantly weirder to miss both parents' wedding to each other. Presumably Tucker is seen less because he lives with his mother.


If 'The Movie' did better we would have gotten a sequel where Arnold goes on an adventure to find his parents.

The jungle special seemed like a teaser for something like this, and he would have found them in the protection of the mysterious Green Eye tribe all these years.

Hey Arnold! and Family Guy takes place in the same universe.

One show takes place on the west coast, the other on the east coast. Herbert the pedophile and Arnold's grandpa Phil are blood relatives, they look alike. Fridge Horror means that Arnold and Stewie, both football heads, are related so Herbert is attracted to a blood nephew, Stewie's brother Chris!

Back to Hey Arnold!
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Hey_Arnold!/WMG?oldid=1760155"