Arnold (Hey Arnold!)

Arnold
File:Arnoldheyarnond.jpg
First appearance	Downtown as Fruits
Created by	Craig Bartlett
Portrayed by	Toran Caudell (1996-1997) Phillip Van Dyke (1997-1999) Spencer Klein (1999-2002) Alex D. Linz (2002)
In-universe information
Nickname	Arnie Short man Football Head
Species	Human
Gender	Male
Occupation	student
Family	Miles (father) Stella (mother) Grandpa Grandma
Spouse	Helga (in one possible future)

Arnold is a fictional character in the Nickelodeon animated television series Hey Arnold!. His head is shaped like an American football (prompting his classmate Helga Pataki to call him "football head"). He is a dreamer and an idealist who always tries to see the best in people and to do the right thing. Whenever he sees someone in trouble, Arnold goes out of his way to help them out, even if it is not sensible to do so (example, when he tried to protect some of his classmates, who had mooned the school principal). Arnold often acts as the stable center to those around him, whether he is around his "family" in his grandparents' (Dan Castellaneta and Tress MacNeille) boarding house The Sunset Arms, or around his friends at his school, P.S. 118. According to the Parents Day and The Journal episodes, Arnold's parents, anthropologist Miles and biologist/physician Stella, were doing missions in the Central American jungle when they disappeared.

He has had two major crushes in the series: with sixth-grader Ruth McDougal (through most of season 1), and with a classmate named Lila Sawyer (who was introduced in season 2). His crush with Ruth ended in Arnold's Valentine when after going on a date with her, he decided that she was not really interesting, and his crush on Lila ended when she didn't approve of him stopping his hanging out with his best friend Gerald's younger sister, Timberly in Timberly Loves Arnold. Most recently, he has had to come to terms with Helga's confession in the movie based on the series. Though over the series Arnold has displayed his own intentional and unintentional shows of affection for her (seen in episodes like "Arnold's Hat", "Summer Love", and "Married") which indicate he'll eventually accept them.

Throughout the series' run, he was voiced by at least five different voice actors: J.D Daniels (who did his voice in the pilot), Toran Caudell, Phillip Van Dyke, Spencer Klein (who did his voice in the movie), and Alex D. Linz (who did his voice in the last two episodes of the series).

History

Arnold was originally created in 1986 by Craig Bartlett, who was also responsible for the clay-animated Penny shorts on CBS's Pee Wee's Playhouse. The original Arnold was visualised as a kid with a vivid imagination, who always wore a prep-school uniform (though he attended public school) and a cap, and was rendered in clay in a series of shorts, one of them televised in the 1990s on Sesame Street, and continued to air there, even after the Nick version debuted.

In 1991, the Hey Arnold comic stories, written and drawn by Bartlett (who's also a comic book artist), were published in Simpsons Illustrated magazine (Bartlett is Matt Groening's brother-in-law).

The familiar, cel-animated Arnold came about in the mid-1990s when Nick picked up the new series. Apart from the animation style, Nick's Arnold now wears a sweater, with his plaid shirt untucked (resembing a "kilt"). Only Arnold's beloved cap remained from the original wardrobe.

Last name

A question about Arnold often raised by fans is the that of his last name, which has never been revealed on the show. With the exception of a few secondary characters (including Sid and Brainy), the only other notable characters whose surnames are unknown are Arnold's grandparents. They presumably have the same last name as Arnold, since in "Parents Day" and "The Journal" it is revealed they are his father's parents. The mystery surrounding Arnold's full name became a running gag on the show, by the last name almost being revealed, then someone or something interrupting or otherwise preventing it from being heard (much like the location of Springfield on The Simpsons, the recipe for the Krabby Patty on SpongeBob SquarePants, or Timmy Turner's parents' first names on The Fairly OddParents). Some notable occasions when the name is almost revealed include:

• In a commercial for the show that aired in the early part of the show's run, Arnold talks to the viewer to straighten out some facts about himself (such as the revelation that his notable red outerwear is a shirt, not a skirt). He ends with, "And yes, I do have a last name. It's..." at which point the screen becomes "snowy" and the sound cuts off.
• In the episode "Fighting Families" Arnold wins the school's raffle drawing for the chance to be on the game show Fighting Families. The lady doing the drawing announces, "The winner is Arnold...hmm, there seems to be a smudge over the last name." Here it is revealed that Arnold is the only one in the school with this first name, thus making his surname somewhat unnecessary.
• A similar instance to the one above occurs in "Eugene, Eugene!", where Tim Curry's character is casting the school kids for an upcoming play, and says, "I can't read my own handwriting", when he's casting Arnold as the villain. However, that scene did at least reveal Lila's last name (Sawyer, as mentioned above).
• In one episode, "Crush on Teacher", in which Helga does one of her many passionate monologues about her love for Arnold, she says that she would one day like to become "Mrs. Arnold...wait, what is his last name?", revealing that she is just as clueless as the viewer.
• In the episode "The Journal" Phil is reading the part of Miles's journal that recounts his and Stella's wedding. He gets to the part when they are pronounced "Mr. and Mrs...." at which point Grandma interrupts with a loud belch.

Series creator Craig Bartlett had been planning to finally reveal his last name in a second feature film for the series, which would also deal with his search to find his parents. Craig mentioned in a subsequent online chat: "I had an idea for the Jungle Movie (how Bartlett refers to the planned film), in the opening scene, a man comes to the door of the boarding house, and Arnold signs his name. Right, that's how you find out." However, problems between Bartlett and Nickelodeon, as well as the low gross of the first film, led to the cancellation of this second film.

In late 2002, Bartlett teased the viewers even further, by claiming that Arnold's last name is a name that was actually mentioned throughout the run of the show. This claim lead many fans to believe that his last name could be 'Shortman' due to the constant use of the term 'Short Man' used by Arnold's grandpa.