Helga von Streissenburgen

Helga von Streissenburgen is a support character in Ratchet & Clank and Up Your Arsenal. She is Qwark's robotic fitness trainer who manages his obstacle courses, and works with him closely. She became a member of the Q-Force team during Qwark's battle against Nefarious, in which she gained the rank of Training Officer.

Ratchet & Clank
"Listen up, you lardballs! That was the most pathetic display I have ever seen on that obstacle course!"

- Helga

Helga was required to give Ratchet and Clank the Swingshot for completing Qwark's fitness course on Kerwan. However, she believed that the two had "disgraced" her obstacle course, so she instead charged them 1,000 bolts for it, and ridicules the two before leaving in a taxi.

Going Commando
Helga is seen in a cutscene in Going Commando, working as the fitness trainer in the Thugs 4 Less prison on Aranos.

Up Your Arsenal
Helga was inducted into the Q-Force team when established by Qwark, chosen for what he described as "sensual powers of seduction", and aboard the Starship Phoenix she worked as the Training Officer. She provided assistance, trained Ratchet using battle simulators, and made the Phoenix crew take mandatory exercise classes and eat her "healthy" meals.

Helga can also be seen in the fourth Qwark vid-comic in which she instructs Qwark to exercise on her fitness course.

Fellow Q-Force member Al admits having a crush on her over the intercoms.

Appearance
Helga is a large valkyrie robot with a round, plump body, blue eyes and large lips. She is typically dressed in trainer gear with a Qwark logo, though between the original Ratchet & Clank and Up Your Arsenal, her appearance changes significantly. In the original game, her trainer gear is simply a black tank top and blue jogging pants, while in Up Your Arsenal she has a full black and blue suit with orange highlights. Her face also changes between the two appearances, with her face in Up Your Arsenal having longer, narrower eyes surrounded by a black mask.

Personality
Helga is loud, aggressive, hot headed, ignorant and self-confident. She always condescends towards Ratchet and Clank who she considers weaklings that that she could easily beat them in tasks in fitness courses or wrestling matches. Helga's softer side is more often shown towards Qwark, whom she is good friends with and often goes out of her way to protect, and Al.

Abilities
Helga constantly portrays herself as being extremely physically fit. In the the Up Your Arsenal skill point "Beat Helga's best time," it is stated that she completed her own "VR Hacker & Hypershot" training course in 0:50 seconds.

Behind the scenes
Helga appeared in the demo of Ratchet & Clank with a drastically different design, appearing as an organic life form rather than a robot. She also wears full fitness gear without a Qwark symbol in this version.

Helga was voiced by Mona Marshall in both appearances, and has a heavy German accent, and has even used the term "guten tag", which is German for "hello", to Qwark at the beginning of the fifth Qwark vid-comic. The "von Streissenburgen" is also a German-sounding surname, in which the "von" is a sign of noble lineage.

Helga's last name in a promotional poster is revealed to be "von Streissenburgen", but she was known only by "Qwark's fitness trainer" in the original Ratchet & Clank, and not named until Up Your Arsenal.

It is possible that this fitness trainer in the Going Commando cutscene was not intended to be Helga herself, but that her character model was used for a generic fitness trainer robot.

Unused dialogue in Up Your Arsenal depicts Al confessing his feelings for Helga, and the two subsequently start flirting.

Helga is mentioned by Qwark in Tools of Destruction and A Crack in Time. In Tools of Destruction during the challenge "Light A Match Mustachio!" in the Imperial Fight Festival, Qwark commented on the lombax snooze mist claiming "I haven't experienced gas this deadly… since I took Helga to that all-you-can-eat Grubsnucker buffet on planet Veldin." In A Crack in Time, Qwark cries Helga's name after Ratchet and Clank's while fleeing from Snowball.

A Crack in Time also introduced a group of female robots known as valkyries, which was later confirmed to be Helga's species.

A playable skin for Helga can be used in Full Frontal Assault.

In the 2016 reimagining of Ratchet & Clank, Helga does not appear. Instead, the Qwark obstacle course is simply used by the Galactic Rangers.