After the Jungle Series
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In General
- Arnold and Helga's relationship is really sweet—while it has its up and downs, just like any normal relationship, it's clear that they're crazy about each other.
- They also prove to be amazing parents after they have children, especially Helga—clearly not wanting things to be like how they were when she was a kid, Helga goes to great lengths to show her kids that she genuinely loves and cares about all three of them equally and that she's proud of them no matter what.
- It's also really cool how Helga's protective/motherly instincts also extend to Gerald and Phoebe's daughters, Kiara and Kiki (who're also Arnold and Helga's goddaughters), and to Olga's kids (Helga's niece and nephew), Logan and Lisa.
- Arnold and Helga's kids certainly count—while Andy, Megan and Henry have their own quirks and flaws, but they're obviously good kids who were raised right.
- Andy, Megan and Henry's middle names are Phillip (after Arnold's paternal grandfather), Gertrude (after Arnold's paternal grandmother) and Miles (after Arnold's dad), respectively.
- Andy and Kiara's relationship is definitely this—having been friends since infancy, they're very close and do pretty much everything together. They end up getting married as adults and have a son named after Andy's great-grandfather (Arnold's paternal grandfather), Phillip ("Phil" for short).
- Helga's relationship with her family, particularly her parents, has improved tremendously as she's gotten older (not only because of the influence of Arnold and his side of the family, but also due to all the years of therapy she got from Dr. Bliss). Even if she still isn't as close to Bob and Miriam as Olga is (and still tends to call them by the first names), Helga's clearly much closer to her parents as an adult than she ever was as a kid—also, on kind of a minor note, Helga does call Miriam "Mom" and Bob "Dad" more frequently as an adult than she did as a kid.
- It depends on how you look at it, but in a reverse from Helga's childhood, Bob and Miriam now seem to favor Helga over Olga (to some extent at least). Although this could be (at least partially) because of how Helga's become the successful one of her and Olga.
- To go off of Mr. and Mrs. Pataki as grandparents: Bob and Miriam both have a surprisingly good relationship with all five of their grandkids and are generally very loving and affectionate towards them. And this is despite all the issues that Helga had with them during her childhood and despite all the issues that Bob and Miriam (the former especially) have with Olga's husband (the twins' dad), Patrick.
Stories and One-Shots
- In The Graduation (where Helga graduates college), she flashes back to when she got the acceptance letter to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island—after showing it to her parents, Bob and Miriam are clearly very proud of their youngest daughter and Bob notes that not even Olga was able to get accepted into an Ivy League-schoolnote .
- Financially speaking, things seem to be a little better for the Patakis by the time Helga's getting to graduate high school and leave for college—like, they're living in a regular house (albeit a small house) rather than some cheap/rundown apartmentnote .
- In "Jealousy,"note Arnold discovers that Brainy has feelings for Helga—and has had these feelings for quite some time. This makes Arnold jealous, especially since Helga is technically his girlfriend at this point, and he goes to confront Brainy—but Brainy assures Arnold that, despite his feelings for Helga, he won't do anything to interfere with their relationship. Brainy elaborates by explaining that he knows that Arnold's the only one that Helga truly loves and, ultimately, he just wants her to be happy.
- In "A Trip Through Time" (at least in the old version), an even older Grandpa Phil explains to a time-displaced Arnold, Helga, Gerald and Phoebe at one point that most of the old boarders from their original time period have long since moved out of Sunset Arms—during this, it's revealed that Ernie and Lola (the tall fashion model from "Ernie and Lola") eventually got back together (even moving in together and eventually getting married) while Mr. Hyunh eventually moved in with his daughter, Mai, who ultimately got married and had kids of her own.
- In "WHAT THE HECK?!"(which is set before The Jungle Movie), Arnold has a dream where he's married to an unknown woman and they have three kids, whom he obviously grows close to—he also sees that his paternal grandparents are still alive and that this parents, Miles and Stella, are back. The story becomes Heartwarming in Hindsight because it's obvious that the woman Arnold's married to is Helga as an adult and that their three kids are Andy, Megan and Henry.
- In the last chapter of "The Return of Four-Eyed Jack," Kiki's bummed that the ghost of the Title Character supposedly isn't real—feeling bad for her sister, Kiaranote helps Kiki feel better by noting that even if the boarding house isn't really haunted, that doesn't necessarily mean ghosts in general aren't real. In the end, the Johanssen-sisters encounter the real ghost of Four-Eyed Jack, who gets his glasses back and ends up watching them (plus Andy, Megan and Henry) leave later on with their parents to go back home.
- "Am I a good mother?": While the flashbacks to Helga's first day of preschool and her confessing to Arnold that she sometimes fears that she'll end up being like how her parents were when she was growing are tearjerking, it's really sweet to see how excited Andy is about finally starting school and how his parents want to make it special for him.
- While Arnold admits that he sometimes fears he won't be a good father, he's very quick to assure his wife that she's an amazing mother to their son.
- After finally dropping Andy off at Urban Tots Preschool (the same preschool that Arnold, Helga and quite a few of their old friends and classmates had gone to), Helga has the final flashback to her first day of preschool: she ultimately remembers how she met (and fell in love with) her husband, which Arnold is quick to recreate once it's starts raining for real.
- "A Perfect Disaster" shows just how much Helga and her family love and care about Olga's twins, Logan and Lisa—Arnold and Helga (the latter especially) try including the twins in as many of their family activities as possible and it quickly becomes apparent that Arnold and Helga are much better parental figures to the twins than either of their actual parents are.
- Helga's verbal beatdown to Olga in the second-to-last chapter of "A Perfect Disaster" showcases how her Mama Bear-instincts clearly extend to Logan and Lisa, who, despite technically being the children of Olga (and looking like younger brunette versions of their mom) are much more similar to their Aunt Helga. Part of Helga's speech calls Olga out on trying to turn her children into little carbon copies of [Olga] (and, to an extent, Big Bob) and acting like there's something wrong with them if they're NOT exactly like [Olga].
- Helga's speech to Olga could be seen as heartwarming in a Tough Love kind of way, because Helga knows it's something Olga needs to hear if she really wants to improve her current life situation (such as improving her relationship with her kids, particularly her daughter).
- During Helga's speech, she claims that Logan's idol is Thaddeus "Curly" Gammelthorpenote and that one time, Logan showed some of his own artwork to Curly, who gave Logan his genuine/serious opinion of it: Logan's clearly very talented and has the potential to be a great artist when he grows up.
- Also, during Helga's speech, Helga claims that the main reason she's willing to put up with Patricknote is because of his relationship with the twins—for all of his faults, Patrick's shown to not have as distant of a relationship with Logan and Lisa as Olga does and is generally more accepting of them for who they are than Olga is.
- In "Megan's Lemonade Stand", in spite of the fact that he is a jerk who tried to shut down her lemonade stand out of envy, Megan was still willing to give the Jolly Olly Man a free lemonade when she noticed how exhausted and miserable he was due to the heat, showing that she does have a big heart like her father does.
- In "Reunion at the Boarding House," it's shown that even though it's been years since they moved out of Sunset Arms (for one reason or another), Arnold still keeps in touch with most of the old boarders from his childhood. In fact, he even convinced his parents and grandparents to host a reunion party every five years in order to see them again and catch up.
- It's really sweet to see the old boarders fawning over Arnold and Helga's kids, who are also happy to see them (and in Andy's case, reunite since he did technically meet them before).
- While it was mentioned in previous fanfics that Ernie and Lola eventually got back together (even getting married and moving in together), "Reunion at the Boarding House" also reveals that they ended up having children—nine daughters named Fiona (19), Audrey (18), Monica (17), Lily (16), a pair of twins (15) named Ava and Lacey, and a set of triplets (13) named Rosie, Heather and Millie.
- Mr. Huyhn's daughter, Mai, eventually married a man named Thomas and they had a daughter named Kim (7) and a son named Quoc (6), with Megan developing a crush on the latter.
- It's revealed that after Suzie divorced Oskar and moved out of the boarding house, she was able to find success and happiness: she got promoted to manager of the department store she worked at and eventually got remarried to a man named Franklin Jones, who she even ended up having a son with. Suzie's son (who's 18 by the fanfic's events) is named Morgan and is studying to become a chef, even bringing a dessert he made to the party.
- Suzie's ex-husband, Oskar, comes to the reunionnote . While Arnold's willing to acknowledge Oskar's flaws (Helga's goes so far as to claim that he's an even bigger loser than Olga's husband, Patrick), it's really sweet to see that he still cares about Oskar enough to the point of where he just couldn't bring himself to exclude him from the party.
- After Oskar (who was on the receiving end of an epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech from the rest of the people who lived at the boarding house back when Arnold was Andy's age) leaves the party in a huff, it would seem that his ex-wife, Suzienote , feels some pity for his current situation in life (even if it is his own fault), which Franklin (Suzie's current husband and the father of their son, Morgan) seems to sense. While she doesn't try going after Oskar to help him (since pretty much everyone feels that Oskar's a lost cause at this point, with Arnold's wife, Helga, and Franklin outright saying it), a very small part of Suzie seems to want to. Suzie also admits to Franklin that, for all of Oskar's flaws, there were some people at Sunset Arms who did genuinely care about him (even if they weren't very good at showing it).
- In "Andy's Tournament," Andy's getting ready for an upcoming karate competition and starts training even harder once W.J. reveals his intentions of also competing in it—Arnold gets worried that his son will make the same mistakes he did when he first took up karate as a kid. Arnold eventually reveals to Andy how he eventually took it too far and straight-up assaulted some random guy at one point and how, even now as an adult, he still feels guilty about it. After thinking it over, Andy assures his dad that he still loves and looks up to him and argues that he's being too hard on himself—Arnold did ultimately make up for what he did to that guy.
- The hug between Arnold and Andy after said talk also counts.
- As for the guy Arnold attacked, when Arnold eventually found him, he apologized and even told the guy that he'd give up karate for good to show how sorry he was—while the man was still a bit wary around Arnold, once he saw how sorry Arnold was, he convinced Arnold to not give up karate for his sake.
- While celebrating Andy winning the tournament at Slaucen's, Arnold runs into the guy he attacked as a kid—even though the guy had forgiven Arnold during his childhood, he still feels guilty about what happened. But the guy's completely gotten over it at this point (especially since it happened well over twenty years ago) and is willing to understand why Arnold had done it (since he had recently gotten mugged and just went a little overboard in defending himself).
- While the bookie and his goons aren't afraid to use physical force on people who owe them money (such as Wolfgang), they prove to be surprisingly cordial to his ex-wife (W.J.'s mom), Mary-Jo—in fact, the guys even say that Wolfgang should've been way nicer and more respectful towards her.
