Helga Pataki

Villainess Overview

Gallery

Evil-doer

The Jungle Movie
TV Series

Full Name

Helga Geraldine Pataki

Alias

Madame Fortress Mommy

Harold Cecile
Mighty Falcon
Deep Voice
Olga (mistakenly; repeatedly by her father)

Origin

Hey Arnold!

Occupation

Elementary school student

Powers / Skills

Enhanced strength

Hand-to-hand combat
Trickery
Cunning
Slingshot skills
Weaponry skills
Detective skills

Hobby

Writing love poems about Arnold
Creating shrines dedicated to Arnold
Bullying and antagonizing her friends and classmates (formerly)
Causing mischief (formerly)
Plotting and scheming (sometimes; formerly)
Despising Arnold (formerly)
Calling Arnold "Football Head"
Hanging out with Phoebe and others
Being touched by Arnold (sometimes).

Goals

Hide her true feelings of love from Arnold.
Torment her fourth-grade classmates who gets in her ways.
Make Arnold's life miserable and ensure that he would never be on her side.
Prove that she is better than her sister Olga.
Prevent the other girls from having a relationship with Arnold beyond friendship (all formerly).
Confess her feelings to Arnold (indirectly succeeded).
Help Arnold in his adventures (sometimes; succeeded).
Help Arnold and Gerald save their neighborhood from Scheck (Hey Arnold!: The Movie; succeeded).
Reunite with Arnold and help him find his parents (Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie; succeeded).

Crimes

Blackmail

Abuse
Child-Abuse
Assault
Abuse of power

Type of Villain

Misanthropic Bully

“	Arnold. What a nincompoop. What a dopey little dumb-headed dingbat. How I despise him, and yet... I love him! His naïve yet admirable innocence. His willingness to embrace the best qualities in a poor, lonely farm girl... even if deep down, she's probably just simple and shallow, and only looks brilliant because she has a watch. Sure, she looks pretty and acts smart, and... and she's funny and kind and popular, but... that's still no reason to go all ga-ga over her! I mean, what's she got that I haven't got? OK, so maybe I'm not pretty, and I'm not popular, and maybe I don't act nice and sweet and kind like Lila always does, that still doesn't change the fact that I'm the one, the one and only one who truly loves Arnold... if only he could see past my mean, blustery veneer, and into my soft, mushy interior, wherein, I adore him! Oh...	„
	~ Helga admitting her feelings towards Arnold to herself.

Helga Geraldine Pataki is the tritagonist and occasional antagonist in the Nickelodeon animated television series Hey Arnold! and the deuteragonist of the 2017 television film Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie.

She is a tomboyish and deeply insecure fourth grader who usually portrayed as the resident bully of her class at P.S. 118 and hostile to Arnold which she constantly provokes and claims to despise him. However, she merely acts to cover her true feelings toward Arnold and secretly in love with him. She is both Arnold's arch-rival and love interest. While usually an antagonist and anti-heroine, she also has played a villainous role in some episodes.

She is voiced by Francesca Marie Smith.

Appearance[]

Helga has yellow hair tied into pigtails without any visible hair ties both of which are shaped like broomstick ends and a black unibrow. She usually wears a pink bow tied into her hair along wears a pink dress with a red stripe over a white shirt. Helga may continue to wear the bow due largely to a remark by Arnold when he was younger age, stating that he thought it looked pretty on her.

Although Helga's wardrobe features a broad variety of clothes, she is never seen wearing them. In the show's continuity though, Helga has most often dressed differently from her everyday attire, including appearances as a french girl, a hall monitor, a sophisticated lady, and others. In the pilot and clay animation shorts, Helga wore a pink dress that had sleeves and a white collar.

Personality[]

Helga could be classified as a cynical, deceitful, violent, tough and bossy tomboy who enjoys playing contact sports, bullying her classmates with an iron fist and taking advantage of her best friend Phoebe. She tends to reply sarcastically to express her annoyance and usually mocks her classmates by calling them nicknames. Helga has a much softer side which becomes apparent when she is alone and involved in her schoolwork. She is able to comprehend a spectrum of emotions, such as love, hate, jealousy, frustration, annoyance and spite on the other.

Biography[]

Backstory[]

Helga was born the second child to her parents Robert and Miriam where she was neglected by her parents shower of their attention onto her older sister Olga, depriving her of the love and attention she needs to grow up. When it was her first day of preschool, she sees her parents were still caught up with Olga playing piano and decides to walk to school by herself. But when it's raining outside, she meets a young boy named Arnold who was the first person to show his kindness to her, which Helga was touched by it that she develops a crush on him.

When the other kids took notice this and mock her affection, she immediately becomes a tough and mean bully to avoid ridicule for having a softer which she constantly bullies and despises Arnold to hide her feelings for him out of fear of rejection, but Arnold still continues to show kindness towards Helga which amplifies her feelings for him. She would also befriend another girl named Phoebe who would become her best friend.

Persent[]

Helga is a tomboyish girl as evidenced by her interest in playing contact sports alongside her male classmates and enjoys bossing her fourth-grade classmates around with an iron fist, including Arnold and her older sister Olga. However, Helga also has a much softer side which becomes apparent only when she is alone. She periodically dislikes Arnold because of his football-shaped head which she constantly bullies him and yet does this to hide her true feelings of love for him. While Helga is usually a regular bully, she sometimes done villainous things throughout the series.

Several times in the series, Helga has also gone to considerable lengths to make her secret love Arnold happy, such episodes in "Arnold's Hat" where she spent literally hours digging through the city dump to find Arnold's lost hat and "Arnold's Christmas" as she give up a highly coveted gift in order to facilitate the fulfilment of a holiday wish for him. Helga is heavily emotional, and able to comprehend spectrum emotions such as love and hate. Helga is also running joke throughout the series as she is often to go into hysterics in times of crisis.

Villainous Acts[]

"Various": Helga sometimes abuse some people and being rude to them. She is also jealous of her older sister Olga and hatred towards Ruth and Lila which she schemes to against them three.
"Arnold's Hat": Helga steals Arnold's hat to complete her the sculpture head of him, but she later feels sorry for Arnold and decides to retrieve his hat.
"Operation Ruthless": She schemes to sabotage Arnold's relationship with Ruth at the Cheese Fair.
"Spelling Bee": Helga helps Big Bob complete against Arnold in a Tri-City spelling bee to win money so she can follow in her older sister's footsteps.
"Helga's Boyfriend": She hires Stinky to act as her boyfriend to make Arnold jealous so he won't be on her side again.
"Biosquare": Helga is furious over staying too long with Arnold in the greenhouse and decides to create the line by preventing Arnold from being on her side. When Arnold observes Helga, she throws her ball at him, but misses it which hits the ant farm instead. After the ants escaped, Helga tries to kill them, but Arnold saves them from getting smashed. She gets ready to fight Arnold and attempts to break the faucet.
"The Big Scoop": Helga schemes to compete against Arnold and Gerald in the school newspaper, even she creates fake information for her newspapers.
"What's Opera, Arnold": In Helga's dream, she portrayed as a bad guy to destroy Arnold's relationship with Ruth, but she later flirts with Arnold.
"Helga and the Nanny": When Helga believes Inga ruins her life, she schemes to get rid of her, like dumping her glue onto Bob's armchair, attempting to ruin the meal which Inga cooks it and switching to a heavy duty cycle on the washing machine to ruin Miriam's irreplaceable tablecloth, but her three plans backfired. Helga then successfully steals Big Bob's lucky diamond studded belt to frame Inga for the theft in order to make her lose her job.
"Parents Day": She helps Big Bob compete against Arnold, Phil and Gertie at the Parents Tournament Weekend.
"Dinner for Four": Helga sneaks out of paying for dinner at Chez Paris and causes the restaurant closed for no reason. She also orders lots more food and demands Nadine to bring the cockroaches by letting them loose in the restaurant. However, she almost gets into trouble with the police for refusing to pay the bill.
"Student Teacher": Helga schemes to get rid of her sister Olga, like giving her car a flat tire, putting a worm inside an apple and stealing her work papers, but all three of her plans backfired.
"Love and Cheese": She schemes to make Arnold and Lila separate from each other at the Cheese Fair.
"Helga's Masquerade": Helga schemes to disguise as Lila so she belove Arnold more than Lila during the party.
"Big Sis": Helga is jealous of both Olga and Lila and schemes to against their friendship, like stealing their opera tickets, taking out motor oil from Olga's car and loosening a screw from a horse carriage, but all three of her plans backfired.
"Ghost Bride": She schemes to disguise as a ghost bride to scare Arnold and his friends and get revenge on them for not including her in a tour of the cemetery.
Hey Arnold!: The Movie: Helga helps Big Bob involved in the evil plans of Scheck until she helps Arnold and Gerald save the neighborhood instead.
"April Fools Day": Helga schemes to get revenge on Arnold for pranking her with the flash gift. She fakes blindness and makes Arnold as her slave, followed by lying to Arnold and his friends that she being blind forever. However, she starts to get along with Arnold while secretly plotted her revenge prank.

Trivia[]

Helga's middle name is never mentioned in the show explicitly, so while no in-show canon exists, the producers of the series gave her the name "Geraldine" as a tribute to former Nickelodeon executive Geraldine Laybourne.
Helga and Olga are variants (respectively, Russian and German) of the same name.
Helga is left-handed or south-pawed. Considering the fact the she's left-handed, she used her right hand to write "Arnold loves Lila" in the episode "Arnold & Lila".

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