!Trivia tropes for ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold''
!!Trivia With Their Own Pages
[[index]]
* [[WhatCouldHaveBeen/HeyArnold What Could Have Been]]
[[/index]]
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* ActingForTwo:
** Whenever Helga talked to Campfire Lass, or Sheena, or Stinky's girlfriend Gloria ("Helga's Boyfriend"), it was Francesca Smith doing both voices.
** Grandpa Phil, The Jolly Olly Man, and Nick Vermicelli were all voiced by Creator/DanCastellaneta.
** The same could be said for Big Bob Pataki and Creator/OrsonWelles {{expy}} Douglas Cain, who were both voiced by Creator/MauriceLaMarche.
* ActorExistenceLimbo: For some reason, Lou Rawls stopped doing voice work for Harvey after the season 4 episode "Chocolate Turtles". According to the leaked plot details from the cancelled ''Jungle Movie'', Harvey was supposed to have a speaking role again, but this did not happen in the 2017 ''Jungle Movie'' due to the death of Lou Rawls in 2006 and unlike Oskar and Pigeon Man, whose actors had likewise died during the hiatus, Harvey was not recast and was simply kept silent.
* ActorInspiredElement: When Gerald's then-actor Jamil Walker Smith started going through puberty, the episode "Gerald's Tonsils" was written to accommodate his breaking voice.
* ActorSharedBackground: In "April Fool's Day", Arnold is able to trick Helga into thinking his "gift" to her is a belated birthday present, because her birthday was "last week" - as in, late March; Francesca Marie Smith, who voices Helga, was born on March 26. (By contrast, Arnold was born on "the 7th" - a reference to the series premiere date of October 7, 1996.)
* AdoredByTheNetwork: Some have accused ''Hey Arnold!'' of becoming this for the Creator/NickRewind block (back when it was called ''The '90s are All That'') on [=TeenNick=]. While most of the cartoons shown from 10:00PM-11:00PM were supposed to rotate each week, ''Hey Arnold!'' seemed to fill this slot every other week, and whenever the block has time to fill, one could expect to see ''Hey Arnold!'' there. This may be because A: the show has a huge fanbase and B: Nick is making up for having treated the show badly during its' final couple of years. This treatment stopped when the block was retooled into [=NickSplat=]; that being said, it was the final Nicktoon to air on the block before it became entirely live-action, concluding its run on 17 January 2022 (fifteen days before the block would take its final breath).
* BannedInChina: The show got banned in Kenya in 2017 for supposed suggestive content.
* ChildrenVoicingChildren: Applies to most of the kids, which led to several cases of TheOtherDarrin as their actors' voices changed.
* CreatorBacklash: Not exactly backlash, but Creator/CraigBartlett regrets how Lila's subplot got her a bad reputation among fans, and wished he'd have ended Arnold's crush on her long before he did.
* CreatorsFavoriteEpisode: Creator/CraigBartlett named "Helga on the Couch" as his favourite episode.
* CreatorsPest:
** Craig admits that in the latter seasons, Arnold did indeed become too "perfect", and had less stories focused on him than before.
** He also didn't like Miss Slovak, feeling she was a boring character, which is why Mr. Simmons replaced her as Arnold's teacher in the second season.
* TheDanza:
** Arnold's mother, Stella, is voiced by writer Antoinette Stella.
** Vincent, aka the Pigeon Man, was aptly voiced by Creator/VincentSchiavelli.
** From the episode "Summer Love", the dancing instructor named Carlos was voiced by Creator/CarlosAlazraqui.
** Maurice, the actor who played "The Abdicator" in "Eugene Goes Bad" was voiced by Creator/MauriceLaMarche.
** WordOfGod confirmed that Arnold's middle name is "Phillip", his third voice actor was Phillip Van Dyke (though Phillip is also his grandfather's name).
* DawsonCasting: Most of the child actors on the show were at least a few years older than the characters they portrayed and many were grown or almost grown by the time the show ended. For example, Anndi [=McAfee=], Phoebe's voice actress, was 17 when she ''began'' recording dialogue for the nine-year-old Phoebe. And that's not even going into the middle-aged Creator/CraigBartlett providing Brainy's voice.
* DescendedCreator:
** Steve Viksten, voice of Oskar Kokoshka, also wrote a whopping one third of the show's 180+ stories.
** Creator/CraigBartlett (show creator) voices Brainy and Arnold's dad (among others), while Antoinette Stella (writer) voices Arnold's mom.
* DuelingShows: With ''WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}'', and arguably, ''[[{{WesternAnimation/Doug}} Disney's Doug]]''.
* EarlyBirdRelease: ''Part-Time Friends'' was released on the "Partners" VHS five months before airing.
* ExecutiveMeddling: Apparently, this is the reason why the episode "Monkeyman!" was not produced until late in Season 4.
* GodNeverSaidThat:
** There was a widespread internet rumor that claimed that the original ending of the episode "Pigeon Man" had Vincent plunge himself off of the building, committing suicide, and Nick execs rejected this ending due to it being too depressing. Some people even claimed that Arnold seeing Vincent fly off into the sky in the actual ending was some [[EpilepticTrees sort of way for him block out the image of seeing Vincent jump to his death]]. In an interview, Craig Bartlett debunked the rumor and stated that not only was the ending the only one they had in mind, but the image of [[spoiler: a guy being tethered to numerous pigeons and flying away]] was the starting point, with the writers working backwards to figure out how to get to that. This rumor saw the final nail in its coffin when it was announced the Pigeon Man would return for ''The Jungle Movie''.
** Though lesser known than the previous one, there also was a rumor claiming that Craig Bartlett hated "Arnold Betrays Iggy" so much that he asked Nickelodeon to pull it from rotation and made the writers publicly apologize. Bartlett debunked these rumors too on his Instagram page.
** In a related vein to the previous two, some sources claimed Nickelodeon trying to get Craig to sign a two-year exclusivity contract was part of the reason for the Jungle Movie not being made back in 2002. In fact, Craig and his crew simply left Nick after finishing "The Journal", and didn't come back since TJM wasn't put in production.
** The claim about background character and resident in Arnold's building, Lana Vail [[MrsRobinson having a crush on the 10-year-old]] Arnold is often attributed to Bartlett, with a claim execs wisely turned it down due to unfortunate implications.... but it has never been sourced to an actual interview, although it was on the wiki for a very long while.
** Another early Internet rumor was that Arnold's parents were originally meant to be dead, and that the reveal of their mysterious disappearance in "Parents Day" was just a case of NeverSayDie mandated by Nickelodeon. But according to his interview, Craig Bartlett always envisioned Miles and Stella as still alive – in his original concept, they were documentary filmmakers who were just abroad making movies, and he only changed them to humanitarians who disappeared when he realized their absence deserved more emotional weight.
* InspirationForTheWork: Many of the stories seen in the show were based on experiences Creator/CraigBartlett and his crew had as children. Plus, several characters are inspired by real people Bartlett grew up with.
* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: The original pilot hadn't been seen since it was shown alongside ''Film/HarrietTheSpy'' in theaters only 3 months before the series premiered. Until 2018 when the entire series was rereleased with it as an extra feature.
* KidsMealToy:
** In Summer 1997, Dairy Queen released a set of four Nicktoons beach toys, which were based on this series, ''WesternAnimation/Rugrats1991'', ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'', and ''WesternAnimation/AaahhRealMonsters''. The ''Hey Arnold!'' toy was a beach gear holder.
** In 1998, Burger King released a toy based on the series as part of their [=NickelOZone=] promotion, which also included toys based on ''WesternAnimation/ActionLeagueNow'', ''Series/CousinSkeeter'', ''Series/TheJourneyOfAllenStrange'', and ''WesternAnimation/TheWildThornberrys''. The ''Hey Arnold!'' toy was a football shaped like Arnold's head.
** In 2003, Wendy's sold bendy figures of Arnold, Gerald, Helga, and Grandpa Phil, as well as a two-sided "Urban Games" game board.
* MissingEpisode: For some reason, Creator/TeenNick never reruns "Married". That episode is only available in the DVD or digital releases. It wouldn't be until the month long marathon hyping up ''The Jungle Movie'' over a decade later for this episode to be seen again in syndication.
* TheOriginalDarrin:
** Phillip Van Dyke wasn't comfortable singing for "What's Opera, Arnold?", so Toran Caudell sung for Arnold instead, since he could still sound like Arnold when he sang.
** Adam Wylie, Curly's main voice actor, was replaced and quickly reinstated ''twice''.[[note]] Though the second time this was done using archived recordings rather than him voicing new lines, since Curly's only speech was laughter.[[/note]]
* TheOtherDarrin: The show went through several instances of this in its original run, despite not being a LongRunner. This was due to the fact that the child characters were [[ChildrenVoicingChildren played by real children]], whose voices tend to change as they get older:
** Eugene was played by four actors. Creator/BenDiskin, his 3rd voice actor, lasted the longest at three-and-a-quarter seasons.
** Gerald's older brother, Jamie O was originally voiced by Ben Aaron Hoag, in his first few appearances, but was portrayed by Creator/PhilLaMarr in his later appearances.
** An interesting example with Curly is that they replaced, then reinstated his 2nd voice actor, Adam Wylie, ''twice''.
** Arnold himself has probably the most extreme example of this trope, with a grand total of ''five'' (if you count the original pilot) different voice actors! They consist of J.D. Daniels (The pilot), Toran Caudell (Season 1 and Arnold's Singing Voice in "What's Opera, Arnold?", Phillip Van Dyke (Seasons 2 and 3), Spencer Klein (Seasons 4, 5 and TheMovie), and Creator/AlexDLinz (the post-movie episodes "April Fool's Day" and "The Journal"), and that's not even counting his TimeShiftedActor Rusty Flood during flashbacks. Spencer Klein lasted the longest with 37 episodes and a movie, and is considered the favorite Arnold voice actor by many fans.
** Sid was voiced by Sam Gifaldi for most of the series, but his voice changed at the very end of the last season and he was replaced by his younger brother Taylor for "April Fools Day".
* OutOfOrder:
** Due to Season 1 episodes being held over on TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment, some episodes featuring Miss Slovak were aired after Mr. Simmons had already been introduced. A similar thing happened with Lorenzo. His introduction episode aired long after he'd already appeared in another episode.
** "The Journal" was the last episode produced, and it was intended to be the last to air before ''Jungle Movie''. It wound up airing before four other Season 5 episodes.
** Strangely enough, this trope seems to be exclusive to the US. In every other country, every episode (except maybe holiday specials) was aired in the intended order and finished airing by 2002, with "The Journal" being the final episode.
* PlayingAgainstType: Mr. Simmons is the complete opposite of Creator/DanButler's [[Series/{{Frasier}} other famous character.]] Though Simmons is closer to Butler's real-life persona than Bulldog.
* PromotedFanboy: When Nickelodeon heard the story of how an eight-year-old girl named Francesca Valencia saved her friend from choking on a jawbreaker thanks to the episode "Eugene's Bike", [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVQa4xeqjuk they invited her and said friend to tour the Nickelodeon studios]] and preview the episode "Stuck In A Tree".
* QueerCharacterQueerActor: Mr. Simmons, who's [[WordOfGay confirmed to be gay]] and shown as such in ''The Jungle Movie'', is voiced by openly gay actor Creator/DanButler.
* RecastAsARegular: After [[Creator/LaneToran Toran Caudell]] got replaced by Phillip Van Dyke as Arnold in Season 2, Caudell would then get recast as the fifth grade bully, Wolfgang.
* RecycledScript: A fair amount of the later episodes are retreads down the paths of older ones.
** "The Little Pink Book", "Helga's Parrot", "Helga's Locket" and "Helga Blabs It All" all share the same concept: an item that reveals Helga's secret crush somehow gets into Arnold's hands, and Helga goes to extremes in order to retrieve it or destroy it, usually by breaking into the Boarding House.
** "Sid the Vampire Slayer", "Sid's Revenge" and "Sid and Germs" can all be summed up in a sentence: "Sid gets paranoid about something and spends 11 minutes freaking out about it while Arnold tries to snap him out of it".
*** "On The Lam" is basically a combination of the above three episodes and "Full Moon".
** Rhonda learns [[AesopAmnesia not to be stuck-up]] at least three times. (Rhonda's Glasses, Polishing Rhonda, Rhonda Goes Broke)
** "Olga Get Engaged" and "Jamie O in Love" revolve around Helga's older sister and Gerald's older brother respectively, falling in love with complete jerkasses.
** Both "Beaned" and "April Fool's Day" have Helga fake an injury long after recovering from it in order to have Arnold take care of her. "Phoebe Breaks a Leg" has Phoebe do it to Helga.
** The most prominent example, however, is "Love and Cheese," which ''is'' "Operation Ruthless," just with Lila replacing Ruth while showing off the deeper development the characters had been given in the years between the episodes. Fully cognizant of this, the episode is full of references to ''Ruthless'' - several lines from the first episode are repeated and/or referenced, Ruth herself cameos on several occasions in the background (despite not appearing at all in the show for quite a while), and Phoebe and Gerald are shown walking past scenes together - a reference to [[BetaCouple how they hooked up in the background during the plot of]] ''Ruthless.''
* ReferencedBy:
** ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBeavers'': In "Dumbwaiters", when Dagget and Norbert open up a box full of rubber masks, one of them is of Helga Pataki.
** ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'': In the final episode, one of the inventors at the convention has a machine that looks oblong when in motion. She describes it as, "And when it moves, it looks like Arnold. Remember Arnold?"
** ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': In "[[Recap/TheLoudHouseS1E8LincOrSwimChangingTheBaby Linc or Swim]]", Phil Shortman makes a cameo appearance. He is seen in the first community pool, alongside [[WesternAnimation/Rugrats1991 Lou Pickles]], [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender Iroh]], [[WesternAnimation/InvaderZim Ms. Bitters]], and [[WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius Ms. Fowl]].
** ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic'' has covered the show as part of his "Nicktoons" review.
** Arnold appears in a commercial for Creator/ParamountPlus, where Sir Creator/PatrickStewart attempts to toss him over Paramount Mountain, due to him having a football-shaped head. Arnold ends up smacking into the wall of the mountain and sliding down.
** ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'':
*** A sketch from "Jew No. 1 Opens a Treasure Chest" involves Helga having killed Arnold and placing his head over hers so they can become one a la ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs''. Anndi [=McAfee=] reprised her role as Phoebe Heyerdahl.
*** A sketch from "May Cause Immaculate Conception'' involves Gerald finding Arnold upset on Mother's Day because he never got to meet Stella, his mother. A flashback shows Stella dying after giving birth to Arnold and Miles having also died due to falling out a window while trying to catch the newborn Arnold when he popped out.
*** A sketch from "May Cause One Year of Orange Poop" involves Helga killing Arnold's friends and family so that she and Arnold can be together.
** ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesMutantMayhem'': At one point, Donatello tells Michelangelo that his head looks like "[[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy Stewie]] had a baby with ''Hey Arnold''."
* SameVoiceTheirEntireLife:
** In "Helga on the Couch", Harold is still voiced by Creator/JustinShenkarow.
** In "Married", in which Arnold and Helga are dreaming about growing up and marrying each other, Arnold still has Spencer Klein's young boy voice in both dreams. Creator/FrancescaMarieSmith, Jamil Walker Smith and Ashley Buccille were still voicing Helga, Gerald and Lila as well.
* SendingStuffToSaveTheShow: Around 2009, fans started writing letters and signing petitions to get ''Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie'' back into production, and possibly save ''The Patakis'' as well. And well...they succeeded on their first mission.
* TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment:
** Season 1 consists of 26 episodes, but Nickelodeon only aired 20 during its 1996 run. Out of the remaining six, five aired a year later at the end of Season 2; and the last one made it into ''late season 3'' in 1998.
** "Parents Day", the last Season 3 episode, was held back from a U.S. airing until May 2000, during ''Season 5''. For comparison's sake, that episode aired in December 1998 in the U.K., a full year and a half before the U.S.
** Season 5 in general. While Season 4 aired in 1999, Season 5 aired during 2000-2004. That's right: it took 4 years for one season! The first five episodes of the season (along with the aforementioned "Parents Day" and three heldover episodes from Season 4) were aired during early 2000. Then, only three episodes were aired in January 2001, and six more episodes aired in 2002. The final episode produced, "The Journal", aired in November 2002. After that, Nickelodeon held back four episodes, which were aired over the span of ''two years''. Three in 2003, and the final one in June 2004.
* ShortRunInPeru: Interestingly, pretty much ''all'' of the delays mentioned above were US-only. In most other countries, the series was aired in the correct order, and was finished by ''2002''!
* TechnologyMarchesOn:
** Bob's business is built on selling beepers/pagers. Today, beepers are obsolete, having been replaced by cellular phones and then smartphones.
** The events of "Buses, Bikes, and Subways" likely wouldn't have happened in TheNew20s. Although cell phones did exist in 2000, a 9-year-old having one was unheard of at the time. Now that cell phones and smart devices are far more common for kids to carry, Helga likely would have been able to call or message Phoebe to have her alert Mr. Simmons to turn the bus around, and she and/or Harold wouldn't have had to resort to using a pay phone where they could only afford one call each.
* WordOfGay:
** Mr. Simmons. His voice actor is openly gay as well. This one's more a confirmation of some deliberate subtext in the series itself (it's pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that Mr. Simmons' "friend" Peter from "Arnold's Thanksgiving" is actually his romantic partner). Made about as {{canon}} as possible without explicitly ''saying'' it in ''The Jungle Movie'', where Peter is at the airport to see Mr. Simmons off on his trip to San Lorenzo and they share a very intimate embrace.
** Eugene is "sort of proto-gay", in Craig's words.
* WordOfGod:
** Arnold and Helga are meant for each other, and they do ultimately get married as adults.
** Helga's mom ''is'' an alcoholic and those "smoothies" she drinks are just [[FrothyMugsOfWater a child-friendly substitute for booze]] as Nickelodeon is, first and foremost, a kids' network and, despite having adult jokes in it for the PeripheryDemographic, references to alcohol and alcoholism is best left to the adult shows on Nick at Nite (though there ''are'' mixed alcoholic drinks that exist as smoothie-type drinks, like the daiquiri, the hurricane, and the pina colada). The scene in "Arnold's Hat" where she asks Helga to pass her the Tabasco is especially telling, considering it's an ingredient for a Bloody Mary (or a Bloody Maria, if Miriam prefers tequila to vodka) and Caesar. She also tries reaching for Tabasco from a high shelf in "The Beeper Queen".
** Arnold's last name? Turns out it's been said many times by Phil: [[spoiler: Shortman]]. His middle name is [[spoiler: Phillip]].
** The show takes place in the Pacific Northwest, most likely in Washington State.
** Craig Bartlett has announced that if ''The Jungle Movie'' is successful enough, then ''Hey Arnold'' could be revived for at least one more season.
** Sometime between the events of "The Journal"[[note]]Which, production-wise, is the last regular episode of the series prior to ''The Jungle Movie''[[/note]] and ''The Jungle Movie'', Suzie finally divorced Oskar and moved out of the Sunset Arms Boarding House.
* WorkingTitle: "Love and Cheese" was originally called "Operation Lila-less". And for good reason.
* WrittenByCastMember: Oskar Kokoshka's voice actor, Steve Viksten, wrote a large amount of episodes for the show and helped developing it.
* WriteWhatYouKnow: Some stories are based on experiences the production crew had when they themselves were kids. For example, the episode "Field Trip" was inspired by Creator/CraigBartlett's own experience of freeing a turtle in a lake.
* WriteWhoYouKnow: Creator/CraigBartlett based many of the series' characters around people he knew growing up. In particular, Curly was inspired by a friend of Craig Bartlett in elementary school named Tim Jenson who once jumped onto his desk and sang the entire theme song to ''Series/DanielBoone''.
* WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants: The circumstances around Arnold's parents. When Creator/CraigBartlett pitched the series to Nickelodeon, he told them something along the lines of "[[WhenYouComingHomeDad His parents make documentaries in Africa, and that's why they're not around]]". Aside from one tiny appearance in "Arnold's Hat", they were completely forgotten about... until fans began writing in to Nickelodeon asking about them. To respond to the fans, Bartlett wrote "Parents Day", which went into detail about their absence to answer fans' questions. Then, a few years later, when Nick ordered a ''Hey Arnold!'' theatrical film (which later became known as "The Jungle Movie"), they told Craig to do "the biggest idea he could think of"; and that idea ended up being Arnold going on a search for his lost parents. ''And then'', at the very end of the series[[note]]When the movie about saving the neighborhood was nearly complete, and ''The Jungle Movie'' was the only thing left to do.[[/note]], Nick told Craig to make a prequel episode to ''The Jungle Movie'', "The Journal".
!Trivia for ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnoldTheMovie'' and ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnoldTheJungleMovie'' go [[Trivia/HeyArnoldTheMovie here]] and [[Trivia/HeyArnoldTheJungleMovie here]].
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