Written by Craig Bartlett, Michelle Lanmoreaux, and Joseph Purdy
Directed by Raymie Muzquiz and Tuck Tucker
Animation Director: Christine Kolosov, Donald A. Judge
Storyboard Artists: (none credited)
Cast:
Arnold - Alex Linz
Helga, Sheena - Francesca Smith
Gerald - Jamil Smith
Phoebe - Anndi McAfee
Harold - Justin Shenkarow
Rhonda - Olivia Hack
Sid - Taylor Gifaldi (not to be confused with his brother, Sam)
Stinky - Christopher P. Walberg
Curly - Adam Wylie
Eugene - Blake Ewing
Brainy - Craig Bartlett
Grandpa, Wyatt (ice cream salesman) - Dan Castellaneta
Grandma - Tress MacNeille
Mr. Simmons - Dan Butler
Principal Wartz - David Wohl
School nurse (Sheena's aunt) - Mary Gross
uncredited: Man knocked over on sidewalk
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"Why were there so many voice changes?" Mainly because this episode was recorded about two years after just about all of the other fifth-season episodes and the first movie. (Notice that Taylor Gifaldi - I assume he's Sam's younger brother - voices Sid, for example.) This is one of the two episodes Nickelodeon asked for to fill in the gap in its schedule caused when the three-part "Arnold Saves the Neighborhood" became Hey Arnold!: The Movie; the other one is a two-part episode that is supposed to be the build-up to the second movie, assuming Nickelodeon ever decides to resume production on it (that's a long story in itself, involving Craig Bartlett and Cartoon Network).
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Another of life's great questions is answered in this episode: right after Arnold and Helga are almost hit in the street, they land in front of "Hillwood City Hats", so the name of the city must be "Hillwood City".
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It seems a bit out of character of Sheena to play a "harmful" prank like tying somebody's shoelaces together.
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The reel-to-reel tape machine at the dance was a Purdy; not particularly coincidentally, Joseph Purdy was one of the episode's writers.
* Speaking of which, back in the days before computer sound cards and the ability to record sounds "digitally", the only "easy" way to play a sound backwards was to use a reel-to-reel machine (you could try it with a record player by moving the turntable backwards manually - this is how most people played Beatles songs backwards to hear the "hidden messages" that "proved" Paul McCartney was dead - but you wouldn't get a constant speed and it tended to damage the equipment). (By the way, if you play the music backwards, it does sound like "generic disco" music, most likely played by whoever played the rest of the show's music.)
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Nickelodeon - the network where you can't (or at least couldn't) say "dead", but you can say "farted".
* To paraphrase a not-too-old Saturday Night Live joke (used a lot by David Spade in his "Hollywood Minute" segments), "I liked this episode better the first time I saw it...when it was called 'Beaned'."
* What, you mean there are people out there who have never seen the movie It's a Wonderful Life? (Then again, ever since NBC got the sole rights to show it, it's not on just about every TV station in the USA at Christmas like it used to be.) The movie includes a scene with a dance that ends with the floor opening up into a swimming pool, just like the episode. (The movie is probably more famous as the inspiration for a plot that has been used in what seems to be every TV show ever made: someone thinking that had they never been born, then everybody else's life would be better, until the person is shown (usually by an angel, as in the movie) what would have happened.)
