- "Settle down? Are you kidding?! I'm at the top of my game! I'm right there with the big dogs! Girls, come on! Leave the saving the world to the men? I don't think so! {Giggles} I don't think so."
- —Helen being interviewed
Helen Parr (née Truax),[1] also known as Elastigirl, is the overall deuteragonist of The Incredibles franchise. She is the wife of Bob Parr, and the mother of Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack Parr. She is the deuteragonist of The Incredibles and the main protagonist of Incredibles 2.
Personality[]
In her younger days, Elastigirl was very adamant about breaking into a man’s world (that is, the world of superheroes). She also didn't feel that marriage was in her future because she believed that marriage would ruin her style. However, she ultimately falls in love with Mr. Incredible and marries him. Following their marriage and the subsequent outlawing of Supers, Helen gives up her feminist attitude of breaking into the male-dominated world of Supers, as their abolishment makes that a moot point. She takes on a more traditionalist mindset as a wife and mother.
As a housewife, she has a sharp wit and cares for her family's well-being. She wants to make them happy but is concerned with ensuring nobody finds out that they are superheroes. While she can sometimes be a little irritable, she usually tries to remain composed, though she can get panicked or angry under pressure. She is often more authoritative with her children than her husband Bob, who is often too distracted to be substantially authoritative. An argument with Bob occurred over Dash being punished for performing a prank, which Bob actually thought funny. Helen argued that Bob is encouraging rebellious behavior in Dash, something she wants to nip in the bud. Her biggest concern is that since both she and Mr. Incredible were superheroes, their marriage has begotten "superkids", and she does not want her children to break the anti-Super law (whereas her husband takes the stance that the kids need to revel in their very special abilities).
Helen adjusted skillfully to the anti-Super law by completely renouncing her career as Elastigirl, which spared her from becoming Syndrome's target, unlike her husband and Frozone. She uses both her superpowers and her innate abilities as a wife and mother to unify her family and protects them at all costs. She is quick-witted, resourceful, talented, passionate, driven, and supportive. Throughout the story, she is the only unwavering character, always sure of herself and always caring for those around her. She is the stronghold of the Parr family and is the glue that holds them all together.
Physical Appearance[]
According to official sources, Helen is in her late thirties, and she is 5'8" (173 cm) in height, and she is 125 pounds (56.8 kg) in weight. She has fair skin, rosy cheeks, pink lips, auburn (reddish-brown) hair, and brown eyes.
In her glory days as Elastigirl, she had long reddish hair and a slim, athletic figure, with the exception of rather wide hips. She wore a light grey leotard with a black and white "E"/"G" insignia on the chest, with a scarlet headband, mask, and belt, long scarlet gloves, and thigh-high scarlet boots. When she wore the outfit again when first visiting Winston Deavor, she wore dark tights.
After fifteen years of forced retirement and three children, Helen wears her hair in a medium bob, and much to her chagrin carries a little extra weight on her abdomen, hips, thighs, and buttocks. Following Mr. Incredible's secret return to hero work, the family's old friend and designer extraordinaire Edna Mode designs a new super suit for him, along with matching suits for Helen and their three children. Helen's "Mrs. Incredible" super suit is a red leotard with an orange, black and yellow "I" insignia on the chest that houses a homing device, along with a black mask, long black gloves, black bottoms, an orange belt, and thigh-high black boots.
When Helen is tapped to lead a campaign to bring the supers back in Incredibles 2, she gets a new suit designed by Alexander Galbaki. The suit has a silver leotard with a magenta belt and a magenta "EG" insignia on the chest, with a black eye mask and black gloves, tights and thigh-high boots. However, the suit gets ripped on the shoulder near the end of the film on the EverJust, and she reverts back to her red "Mrs. Incredible" suit. When she's in her hotel room, she wears a white bathrobe and is barefoot.
Biography[]
A Real Stretch: An Elastigirl Prequel Story[]
As a teenager, Elastigirl was recruited by Rick Dicker into the NSA program. She operated under the secret identity of Helen Highwater.
The Incredibles[]
Elastigirl encounters Mr. Incredible when they help each other apprehend a robber. They marry that night with Helen taking Bob's last name, being Parr (her maiden name was Truax). After a series of lawsuits filed against superheroes and a major uprising of the people, the supers are forced into retirement and hiding. Elastigirl permanently assumes her secret identity and bears three children, named Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack. She becomes a homemaker who does her best to unify her family and help them adjust to a normal life. She only uses her superpowers in private for convenience. Bob, however, does not adjust well to civilian life. Helen eventually discovers his clandestine crime-fighting with Frozone (Lucius Best), using the cover story that they're going bowling. This results in a marital conflict between Helen and Bob.
Bob is fired from his job at Insuricare after he loses his temper with his boss and injures him by throwing him through several walls. Soon after his termination, he's lured by Mirage to Syndrome's private island, Nomanisan Island, under the ruse of an assignment, in which Mr. Incredible must disable a formidable weapon called the Omnidroid 08. Bob begins taking on more assignments on the island, telling Helen all the while that he is attending Insuricare conferences out of town. After resuming hero work, Bob's temperament at home changes dramatically for the better. He gets back in shape and spends more quality time with Helen and their children. Helen finds a strand of platinum-blonde hair on Bob's clothes, and she becomes suspicious when she hears Bob talking on the phone to his contact, Mirage, and begins to believe that Bob might be having an affair.
Mr. Incredible is lured once more to the island by Syndrome, who secretly intends to kill him. Meanwhile back at home, Helen notices the new patch on Bob's old super suit and contacts Edna, who insists upon seeing Helen immediately. She shows Helen all of the super suits, and Helen is angered at Edna for helping Bob resume secret hero work behind her back. Edna, who was unaware that he was hiding anything from Helen, informs Helen of the homing device she included in each super suit. Helen uses it to locate Bob and is briefly overcome with emotion, convinced that Bob is cheating on her. Edna snaps her out of it, smacking her furiously with a newspaper and encouraging her to go to him and win him back. An accomplished pilot, Helen borrows a jet from Snug, her pilot from the Golden Days, to journey to the island and find her husband. During the flight, she finds Violet and Dash stowed away. Syndrome sends missiles in response to her request to land on the island and the plane is destroyed, with the transmission of Helen's pleas to call off the missiles playing in the containment unit where Bob is being held. Helen uses her body as a parachute, and with the help of her new, indestructible super suit, saves herself and her children from the wreckage. They land safely in the water, and Helen morphs her body into a boat, which is propelled by Dash's super-speed and carries Violet to land. Mirage confirms the destruction of the jet, leaving Bob to believe his family has been killed.
Helen and the children seek shelter in a cave, where Helen tells Dash and Violet that she is afraid their father is in trouble and instructs them to stay hidden while she goes to look for him. She warns both Violet and Dash that the enemies that shot their plane down are merciless killers, and urges them to use their powers to protect themselves at all costs. Violet apologizes for not being able to protect the plane but Helen replies, saying that it was asking too much of her. Helen also tries to bolster Violet's confidence by telling her that she has more power than she realizes, and not to worry or think because she will do the right thing when the time comes.
Helen leaves the cave to save Bob. She uses her quick thinking skills and elasticity to make her way to the containment unit where her husband is being held captive. On the way, she looks at herself in a hallway mirror and notes that she has put on weight since she retired from superhero work. She runs into Syndrome's security guards, but defeats several of them at once while her body is caught between two sets of sliding automatic doors by kicking one, using her abdomen unintentionally to knock out two others and punching two more to knock them out and obtain the keycard to the doors to free herself. She takes the unconscious guards to a locker and hides them.
Mirage, disillusioned by Syndrome's narcissism and callousness, frees Mr. Incredible and tells her his family survived the crash. Flooded with relief and gratitude, he draws Mirage into an embrace right as Helen enters the room. Livid, she delivers an extended punch from the doorway, knocking Mirage to the ground, believing Bob has been unfaithful to her. Bob grasps her extended arm and pulls her in as quickly as he can. Helen resists, but of course, is no match for his strength, and he kisses her passionately, asking her how she could think he would ever betray "the perfect woman." Mirage urges them to hurry because their children are in danger, and Bob and Helen escape into the jungle to find them. Meanwhile, Violet and Dash are attacked by Syndrome's security force, but manage to evade them using their powers. The children and Bob and Helen run into each other along the way and continue to fight the security forces until Syndrome arrives and recaptures the family. Syndrome, recognizing Helen as Elastigirl, is surprised to see that Bob married her and had a family with her.
Back in the containment unit, Syndrome reveals that he intends to use his latest Omnidroid model to attack the city of Metroville, and then orchestrate a rescue, in which he appears to defeat the immense weapon, which is in reality under his control. The Parrs escape again and manage to journey back to Metroville with the help of Mirage, where they, along with Frozone, destroy the Omnidroid v.10 and save the city once again.
Back at their house, they are again confronted by Syndrome, who tries to kidnap Jack-Jack. Syndrome uses his rocket boots to reach his plane, and Jack-Jack reveals his shape-shifting powers in mid-air to overcome Syndrome. Helen orders Bob to throw her into the air and she catches Jack-Jack, using her body as a parachute once again to return them safely to the ground. Bob throws his car at Syndrome's plane, and Syndrome is killed when his cape is sucked into the turbine of his private jet, also resulting in the explosion of his plane.
Three months later, Helen is seen with the rest of the family cheering on Dash at his school's sports day where he finished second. With the threat of The Underminer looming in the city afterward, Helen is seen wearing her mask as she joins the family in the fight against the villain.
Incredibles 2[]
Elastigirl helps her family attempt to defeat the Underminer, though he escapes. They manage to save the Municiberg town hall, however, they are arrested by the police and require Rick Dicker to bail them out. Dicker escorts them to a motel that they will live in until they find a new home. He tells Helen and Bob that the Super Relocation Program has been shut down and they can only stay at the motel for two weeks. At dinner, she argues against fighting crime against, telling her family that the law dictates they cannot do so.
That night, Frozone shows up at the motel and escorts them to DevTech. There, they meet Winston Deavor and his sister Evelyn. The Deavors tell them that they are going to come up with a campaign to make Supers legal again and they want Elastigirl to be the public face of it since she causes the least collateral damage. Helen is reluctant to accept but Bob urges her to do so as their choice is to accept the offer and try to make themselves legal again or remain illegal and become homeless.
Helen and her family move into a luxurious mansion provided by Winston. She is given a grey super-suit modeled after her original Elastigirl suit and designed by Alexander Galbaki, but bemoans how 'dark' it looks. In the garage, she is shown a new Elasticycle and marvels it, noting it is electric-powered. She says goodbye to Bob and rides off to find crime to fight. Evelyn tells her via the bike's radio that there is a high chance of trouble at the Metrolev train line opening. On her way there, she encounters some boisterous fans in a car, to who she is gracious toward.
Elastigirl arrives at the train station and watches the Metrolev train take off for the first time. However, it stops and starts traveling the wrong way. Elastigirl gives chase, asking Evelyn if there's any way the train can be stopped, to no avail. During the chase, Dash calls her, asking where his shoes are since he lost them, to which she tells him to look under his bed. She continues to give chase to the runaway train, but must ditch her bike as the train reaches a tunnel, leading to the bike exploding when it hits the wall above the tunnel entrance. After it exits the tunnel, she manages to split the train in two and pulls the front half of it in her parachute form just before it falls off the end of the track. Just as Elastigirl thought she was finished, the other half of the train shunts into the front half and leaves the front half teetering over the edge. Elastigirl goes inside the train to check on the passengers and driver, but sees that the driver was hypnotized by the Screenslaver. He transmits a welcome message on the screen to Elastigirl, announcing himself to her. That night, she rings Bob to tell him she saved a runaway train, to which Bob congratulates her through gritted teeth, hiding his jealousy.
Elastigirl attends an interview regarding the campaign to revoke anti-Super laws. Before the interview, she meets Ambassador Selick, who tells Elastigirl she is the 'gold standard' of superheroes. Her interview with Chad Brentley starts smoothly until he is hypnotized by the Screenslaver, along with the recording crew. A hypnotized Chad tells Elastigirl that the ambassador's helicopter could be hijacked by the Screenslaver, so she uses a chair to break a window to quickly leave the building and get to the helicopter. She initially boards the wrong helicopter, but is shown which one the Ambassador is on. She commandeers the aircraft and stabilizes it, then pushes the crew out of the helicopter and into a river. Since the ambassador cannot swim, Elastigirl uses her parachute form to jump while holding her. She asks the ambassador if she is fine, to which she says she is, but then faints from shock.
The following day, Elastigirl attends a rally celebrating her efforts to improve the reputation of Supers. She appears grateful for the support until a young girl holds up a placard reminding her that Screenslaver is still at large. She reports to Winston's office and claims that she is happy with the progress that has been made, but Winston senses that she is uneasy. She is worried since Screenslaver is still out there, but Evelyn tells her to stop worrying and shows her a room where several 'wannabe' Supers are conversing. Voyd is immediately ecstatic to meet her hero Elastigirl, and fumbles over her words. She shows off her ability to create portals, which impresses Elastigirl. Elastigirl then converses with the other wannabe supers, who also show their powers off. She then talks to Evelyn, who talks about how she invents stuff while Winston is the face of the company. This gives Elastigirl an idea, which is for Evelyn to build a device to track down the Screenslaver, and fist bump each other in celebration.
Another interview is arranged with Chad Brentley, only this time Elastigirl is perched on top of a telecommunications tower. Soon after it starts, she picks up a signal, and locates the direction of Screenslaver's lair. She makes her way towards the lair and enters an apartment building through a window a few stories high. After looking around for a few seconds, the Screenslaver reveals himself, and a fight ensues. They trade blows until Screenslaver decides to activate a time bomb and escape from the apartment. Elastigirl gives chase until she corners him, tackling him out of the window and using her parachute form to carry him safely to the ground. Screenslaver is revealed to be a pizza delivery boy and is arrested by the police.
The next night, a celebration of Screenslaver's capture is held at Devtech. Winston gives a speech, saying that representatives from all over the world will meet on the Everjust, Winston's superyacht, to sign an accord legalizing Supers. Elastigirl is called to the stage to give a word for the occasion, and then meets Voyd, who starts asking for advice. Elastigirl is distracted by the screens around the auditorium showing the Screenslaver and decides to investigate the video of her capturing him. Evelyn enters the room, checking up on her. Elastigirl ponders why one of Screenslaver's monitors was tuned into her suit cam. Just as she figures out the pizza delivery guy was hypnotized by screens built into glasses, Evelyn puts a pair of hypno-goggles on her.
Elastigirl wakes up with the goggles turned off, realizing she has been captured by Evelyn. Evelyn tells her not to use her elasticity to break free since the chamber she is in is extremely cold, which makes her body brittle. Evelyn makes her intentions clear, telling her that she made a mistake by trusting someone that she just met, and that Evelyn will use her to keep supers illegal forever. Evelyn rings Bob to tell him that his wife is in trouble, so he decides to suit up and go to Devtech, but not before asking Lucius to look after the kids. Once at Devtech, Evelyn leads him to Elastigirl, but she attacks him. After he reminds her of who he is, Elastigirl kisses him, but this was so that it was easy to place a pair of hypno-goggles on him.
A hypnotized Elastigirl boards the Everjust with Evelyn and the other hypnotized supers, which now includes Frozone. As part of the super legalization ceremony, Elastigirl, Mr. Incredible, and Frozone are in attendance, with Winston thinking they will give speeches in celebration. However, Evelyn hypnotizes everyone else at the ceremony so that Elastigirl can give a speech that puts supers in a bad light. The three Supers proclaim that supers have grown tired of having to hide and of the flaws of non-supers, and that only the fittest will survive. Elastigirl tips over the camera, leaving Chad Brentley confused.
The three supers are directed by Evelyn to the superyacht's bridge, where they knock the sailors unconscious. Evelyn tells Elastigirl to steer the superyacht so that it is facing Municiberg, then Mr. Incredible destroys the control panel. The Parr children enter the bridge and are immediately attacked by their parents and Frozone, but are protected by Violet's force field. Jack-Jack floats into his mother's hands, but does not receive any affection from her. Jack-Jack notices the hypno-goggles and uses his telekinesis power to dislodge them from his mother's eyes, freeing her of hypnosis. She gives him to Violet and frees Mr. Incredible and Frozone of their hypnosis. Elastigirl hugs her children, but is interrupted by Frozone asking where they are. The hypnotized wannabe supers enter the bridge, who fight the other supers. Since the DevTech Elastigirl super suit was badly damaged, Violet gives Helen her Mrs. Incredible super suit and so Helen becomes Mrs. Incredible once again. She helps her family and Frozone free the wannabe supers of their hypnosis, with the exception of Krushauer, who is dealt with by Mr. Incredible.
While the others focus on stopping the superyacht from crashing into the city, Elastigirl chases after Evelyn's jet and is teleported into it through Voyd's portal. Once she encounters Evelyn, Evelyn steers roughly to throw her around the cabin. Evelyn taunts her as she feels the effects of hypoxia, but as Evelyn keeps talking, she sees a flare gun. She shoots Evelyn's oxygen tank, which propels her out of the jet. Elastigirl pilots the jet and figures out her bearings, then jumps out of the jet to catch a falling Evelyn. Evelyn breaks free, not wanting to be saved by her enemy, but is grabbed again by Elastigirl. She uses her parachute form and Voyd's portal to safely land on the superyacht, just before it reaches the city. Frozone's ice protects the buildings from damage and Evelyn's plan is thwarted. Afterward, Winston thanks her for saving his sister. She is present at the courthouse as the Super Relocation Act is officially repealed, enabling supers to resume hero work freely.
The Parr family and Tony Rydinger are in a new family car on their way to the cinema. Bob and Helen claim they will not be watching Violet and Tony in the cinema, though Bob winks in the rearview mirror. Two cars engaged in a shootout drive past once they get to the cinema. Helen and her family prepare to intervene, though not before Violet shoves Tony out of the car and tells him they will be back before the previews finish. The car transforms into a redesigned Incredibile, and drives off towards the shootout.
Powers & Abilities[]
Powers[]
- Elasticity: Elastigirl can convert the mass of her entire body into a highly malleable state at will. In such a state, she can stretch, deform, expand, or compress her entire body or parts thereof into any contiguous shape she can imagine. She can extend her limbs, torso, or neck to great distances: according to her NSA file, Elastigirl's functional stretch length is 30 meters. The Operation Kronos database stated that she can leap up to 80 feet (24.39 m) via her elasticity. She can also extend her body in two directions, creating a canopy, parachute, or sheath, its thickness determined by the extent of its distention; Elastigirl's minimum thickness is recorded by the NSA as being 1 mm. Her overall strength diminishes in direct proportion to her maximum elasticity.
- Superhuman Agility: Helen possesses super agility, which allows her to perform acrobatic and gymnastic movements very easily.
- Enhanced Strength: Though superhuman strength is her husband's specialty, she is strong enough to lift and toss a manhole cover, with some difficulty, even though a manhole cover weighs over 200 pounds. She can also knock out a man with one punch.
- Shapeshifting: She has also shown the ability to shape-shift by means of her elasticity. An example of this is when she transforms into a boat in the middle of the ocean to get Violet and Dash to shore. Another instance is when she transformed into a parachute twice in the first film: first to safely land Violet and Dash in the ocean and second to safely bring Jack-Jack back onto the ground.
- Density Changing: Helen can augment her bodies shape including compressing it down into a compact form, with her mass remaining the same her can increase or decrease accordingly.
- Superhuman Durability: Due to the great malleability and elasticity of her body, Elastigirl has high durability to physical injury. A high degree of protection is also afforded by her super suit. Combined with her super-flexibility, this, in theory, should make her immune to bullets, though this is never truly demonstrated, save for when she is caught in between several doors while sneaking into Syndrome's compound and manages to have a ricochet of bullets deflected from hitting her leg by her super suit's boots. However, Edna Mode verified her suit was capable of withstanding gunfire.[2]
Abilities[]
- Piloting: Helen Parr is a highly skilled pilot, with implied military training due to the way she communicates when piloting.
- Expert Hand-To-Hand Combatant: Elastigirl is shown to be an exceptional operative, investigator, and tactician, as well as a masterful hand-to-hand combatant. She could easily take out Syndrome's grunts using a combination of her combat skills and her powers and could even determine where a grunt's face was without being able to look at him. While under the control of Evelyn Deavor, she easily defeated Mr. Incredible, who is a skilled hand-to-hand combatant in his own right. However, it should be noted that she caught him off-guard and Mr. Incredible was holding back at the time.
- Enhanced Eyesight: Elastigirl has shown to be able to spot minuscule objects with Eagle Eyes, even at long distances because her own sight stretches as far as her own limbs: she was able to spot a tiny piece of wall on Bob's shoulder even from the other side of a dim-lighted room.
- Expert Motorcyclist: Elastigirl is an expert at driving motorcycles, having once had her own personalized motorcycle that was called the Elasticycle before her retirement. She demonstrated great skill in driving the one given to her by Evelyn and was able to ride precarious ledges and use her elastic powers to slingshot herself and her cycle across far distances in order to catch up to a runaway train.
- Stealth: Elastigirl managed to invade Syndrome's compound without being caught, even when taking out multiple guards. Furthermore, completely retiring from her superhero identity kept her from being targeted by Operation Kronos.
Weaknesses[]
- Temperature Extremes: If Elastigirl is exposed to extreme cold, her body becomes harder and less pliable as the temperature decreases until ultimately it actually becomes brittle, possibly breaking if she exerts too much force. Likewise, if she is exposed to extreme heat, such as electricity, she seems to enter a pseudo-melted state, where she is limp and extremely pliable.
- Elasticity: Her own elasticity can sometimes be problematic, as it caused her leg, torso, and arm to be caught in three doors.
- Blunt Force: Absorbing large shocks to her form is physically exhausting and a sufficient amount of blunt force, such as three anti-aircraft missiles going off at the same time, can render her unconscious. Also, in spite of her bodily malleability, Elastigirl can be disoriented by solid enough impact, such as her own blows, as seen when Voyd re-directed one of Helen's elongated punches through a portal and causing Elastigirl to accidentally punch herself, leaving her briefly dazed.
- Forced Stretching: Forced stretching, even under several tons of load, appears to cause pain and discomfort but no permanent or even temporary harm.
Other appearances[]
Video Games[]
- The Incredibles
- The Incredibles: When Danger Calls
- The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer (not playable, but only appears in some cutscenes)
- Kinect Rush: A Disney/Pixar Adventure (on the game box cover, on a picture on the menus, in concept art and mentioned only)
- Disney Infinity
- LEGO The Incredibles
Novels[]
Trivia[]
- The first concept sketches of an Elastigirl prototype was pencilled out back in 1993 during the production of Toy Story. Helen being first imagined by both Brad Bird and Tony Fucile as having long and wavy brunette hair (which she wears into a ponytail as a civilian), had a figure and build similar to Jessica Rabbit, as well as wearing a white super-suit with a cape and no mask.
- Because of Helen's maiden surname being Truax, she is possibly of either French, Belgian or Canadian descent.
- Helen wears her hair in a 1960s-style medium length side-bob shaped like a curved heart. But when her hairstyle gets submerged in water or mud, it falls down straight to her shoulders; but when it dries, her hair goes back the style it was before.
- Elastigirl is also the name of a superheroine with similar stretching abilities on the DC Comics superhero team, the Doom Patrol. Pixar needed to receive permission from DC Comics to use the name in the film. In early promotional materials, you may recall that Helen Parr was referred to as Mrs. Incredible. This was necessary to avoid copyright infringements with the DC character (though today you’ll find her called Elastigirl in toys and other merchandise).
- In Incredibles 2, Helen tells Bob that she used to have a motorcycle and a mohawk during the glory days, both of which Bob was unaware of.
- In Disney World, the Incredibles cast are usually seen as mascots. This is because Helen Parr is the most difficult to bring to live-action, due to the rarity of finding a slender-but-shapely Caucasian actress who is capable of dancing and martial arts as well as being able to pull off the Southern-Country Georgian accent with a slight lisp and a "hiss" to the distinctive voice that is identical to Holly Hunter's.
- During the interview that opens the first movie, Helen's attitude towards a possible retirement is denying the idea completely, while Bob admits he would do it; while actually retired, their attitudes are reversed.
- In the Operation Kronos database, she is given a threat warning of 6.2.
- How her body's respiration and circulatory systems function at the distorted extremes she can achieve is currently unknown.
- She is the only Parr family member to have brown eyes, her husband and all three of her kids having blue eyes.
- In the alternate opening to the movie, Helen Parr (then known by Helen Smith) was to be present at a welcoming ceremony by their neighbors along with her husband and daughter Violet (who was an infant at the time). One of her neighbors talks badly about children, causing Helen to snap at her and almost reveal her true identity, but managed to stop herself when her neighbor asked what her former job was. She also ended up allegedly taking Bob Smith to the hospital after the latter allegedly severely injured his fingers with a butcher knife while working the barbecue (In actuality, he was not injured at all and dented the cleaver with his fingers as a result of his superhuman durability, so they were forced to fake his injury in order to maintain his secret identity). They were later endangered by an old enemy of Mr. Incredible, Syndrome (then a minor villain), but they managed to escape the house when their encounter with Syndrome caused a gas leak that detonated, although Syndrome was not nearly as lucky.
- In earlier scripts of The Incredibles, after Helen calls her friend Snug Porter inquiring about a jet, he pilots her and the hidden children to Syndrome's island, and is killed when the plane was destroyed by the missiles. Helen realizes he is dead when she spots his cap sinking into the ocean depths with the wreckage. This is foreshadowed by photographs of Snug and Elastigirl together in her youth as companions seen in the final cut of the movie, suggesting he was her flight instructor instead. Brad Bird fought to keep the scene as it was originally written which reached the storyboard stage, but ultimately accepted that having Helen at the controls, and thus having the situation entirely in her hands, created more tension and impact.
- The reason why Helen was referred to as Mrs. Incredible in promotional material and merchandising for The First Incredibles Movie and Maybe The Second Incredibles Movie, is because Elastigirl (Helen's original superhero name), is also the name of a superheroine with similar elasticity-based superpowers that originated from the DC Comics superhero team, the Doom Patrol. Pixar was forced to use this name for marketing to avoid copyright claims, though this name was only heard once in the first film, by Mirage since she didn't know she and Mr. Incredible were married. DC's Elastigirl has since changed her superhero identity to "Elasti-Woman", however, since 2006, the name Mrs. Incredible was still used afterward.
- Elastigirl looks at the size of her buttocks in the mirror and sighs, just as Tinker Bell did in the movie, Peter Pan (1953), when Tinker Bell was surprised by the size of her figure and hips.
- Elastigirl shares a power set with Mr. Fantastic of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, just like the other members of her family with other Fantastic Four characters.
- Helen Parr's (Holly Hunter) flight approach into Nomanisan Island is similar to Dorinda's (Holly Hunter) end-of-movie flight in Always where the plane is in an uncontrollable dive and then she pulls hard on the controls to regain control of the plane. In both, she is initially distracted before returning to the controls to avert complete disaster when the plane crashes.
- When borrowing a plane, Helen's pilot call sign is "India Golf Niner-Niner", which translates to IG99, a reference to the 1999 film The Iron Giant, also directed by Brad Bird.
- She bears a resemblance to Annie Hughes from The Iron Giant (a film also directed by Brad Bird) and Alice Thompkins from The Critic (a television series where Bird served as a creative consultant).
- Helen’s voice actress (Holly Hunter) in “The Incredibles” learned different flying terms so Helen’s voice would sound more realistic in the plane crash scene.
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