Gina Hemphill-Toms

**Gina Hemphill-Toms** is one of Nate's classmates and rivals. Gina is P.S. 38's know it and over-achiever and sometimes finds herself in academic competition with Nate's fellow over-achiever Francis. Nate and Gina despise each other with a fierce passion, viewing each others' personalities and work ethics as utter nonsense. Again, Nate is oblivious to the similarity between the both of them. Nate listed Gina as number one on his list of worst potential project partners in Big Nate: Strikes Again.

## Early life

Gina's past is mostly unknown. According to her baby picture, taken when she was 14 months old, she was beautiful with blue eyes and a button nose. Nate said she was the "best-looking baby. By far," because he thought the photo was of Jenny. She also has four older brothers. Nate thought she was beautiful when she was young.

Her grandfather works at the best hospital in the state, won all kinds of doctoring rewards, and even has been on TV. He also has a second wife who looks forty years younger than him, probably because Gina's grandmother died or divorced her grandfather.

## Sixth grade

### Nate Wright's poem

Gina loves getting Nate in trouble. In Big Nate: In a Class By Himself, when she sees Nate writing a love poem to Jenny, she immediately snitches on him, causing Nate to destroy the poem in anger. When asked about the affair by Mrs. Clarke, he screams, "THAT GINA SHOULD KEEP HER BIG, FAT MOUTH SHUT!!" leading to detention. Ironically, Gina indirectly and unintentionally leads Nate to achieve his fortune, which was surpassing all others.

### The Benjamin Franklin Project

In Big Nate Strikes Again, Gina has a huge role. She is first seen humiliating Nate in front of the whole school when he openly mistakes her baby picture for Jenny's (Nate's crush). Shortly afterward, Gina and Nate are forced to work on a school project together. While Gina begins typing several works for the essay, she also joins the fleeceball team under Coach Calhoun and Nate's team captain. She ruins the baseball team by using the name Kuddle Kittens, angering Nate, who attempts to pour egg salad on her.

Later, it is revealed that she could receive an "F" for copying visual aids from sources other than herself, but Nate saves her (and himself) by presenting his comics of the essay's subject, Benjamin Franklin. She also plays with the Kuddle Kittens in the final round. She is last seen getting her first detention for screaming in the library about Nate's comics that she believes is fake.

### Math Olympiad

Gina is first seen talking to Mrs. Godfrey and showing her the book she's reading. Gina is not seen again for a while, though her next appearance in the book involves her ranking the highest in the entire school in mathematics. She ends up leaving for two days, which she reveals to Nate. Later, Gina ruins Nate's plans of getting her and Artur Pashkov together so Nate can have Jenny for himself. Nate's plan backfires, and Artur misunderstood his intent, so he tells everyone Nate has a massive crush on Gina. When Nate finds out about the rumour, Gina tells Nate that she hates his guts, and Nate punks her by telling her he does not hate her guts, and it is her face that disgusts him.

### Beach Party Dance

Gina did not make an appearance in "Big Nate Goes For Broke"; however, The audience saw her in Nate's flashback in one of Nate's comics, and she also made a cameo at the P.S. 38 Beach Party Dance dancing next to Teddy Ortiz.

### The Chronicle

Gina was the captain of the former champion trivia team, Gina's Geniuses and co-editor of The Chronicle, the P.S.38 yearbook. She was forced to work with Francis Pope as the yearbook captain.

### The Fitness Zone

In Big Nate In the Zone, when she overhears Nate and Mrs. Godfrey arguing over a "War of 1812" paper, Gina insults him for it when he sits down, calling him a half-wit. Nate angrily responds, telling her to "stuff a sock in it, needle nose," though Gina is not initially offended because Nate used that same insult the day before. Gina is the captain of the sixth graders on the Fitness Zone. Not intending to win, she has deliberately orchestrated her team's failure. This backfires, however, when Nate sets Chad up to race with Maya.

### Scavenger Hunt

Gina is once again the captain of Gina's Geniuses in the P.S. 38 Centennial Scavenger Hunt. She barely skewed ahead of Nate's team for the entire time, but Nate's team caught up and won the competition by finding a mural.

### Comic portrayal

Nate has portrayed Gina in his *Ultra-Nate: Super Sixth Grader!* as a sentient dinosaur named Flunky. She was the sidekick of Mrs. Godzilla (Godfrey). Flunky tries to steal a device to transfer Ultra-Nate's powers to Mrs. Godzilla, but their scheme comes to naught.

## Description

### Physical appearance

Gina wears a pink shirt and white shoes. She also has blonde hair in a ponytail, golden earrings, and stereotypical square glasses. She appears to be very slender, even though she has been proven not to do any sports. She is also loved by the teachers. She has blue eyes and is 11 years old.

### Personality and traits

Gina is most known for being a "know-it-all" student in P.S. 38. As thought by Nate, she is terrible, although Gina and Nate view each other's work as terrible. She considers Nate as a dork. Gina loves getting Nate in trouble or even in embarrassing situations. She also likes going up to Nate and making fun of him even when she sees him. Gina is also a very nerdy and highly devoted person. It is also implied that she is a suck-up, especially to Mrs. Godfrey, who is her favorite teacher.

She has also stated that she would like to attend Harvard College.

## Relationships

### Nate Wright

Nate Wright and Gina Hemphill-Toms are complete opposites to each other. From the start, Gina was Nate's archenemy. For separate reasons, both were extremely annoyed with the other. Nate was annoyed by Gina's geekiness, obnoxious personality, perfectionism, and arrogance. Gina, in turn, was annoyed by Nate's arrogance, as well as his tendency to avoid schoolwork, being messy, and hatred for Mrs. Godfrey.

They were seen screaming in terror when they were forced to work on a team project. Nate was even more annoyed after Gina joined his sports team, and became very angry at her for thinking she could take leadership of the team, thus naming the team the "Kuddle Kittens", to the extent of seeking revenge (this backfired, however, when Nate's egg salad rebounded onto Jenny Jenkins, his love interest, instead).

Soon after, Gina made it very clear that she hated Nate's guts, and Nate told her it was her appearance, not attitude, that disgusted him. However, this was likely a ploy to drop the subject (this is especially hinted by Nate's reaction afterward).

He also competed against Gina during the Trivia Slam and came out ahead. Many people suspect that Nate and Gina strive to see the bad in each other but secretly love each other deep down. Even Francis Pope and Teddy Ortiz have come to suspect this, which both Nate and Gina find outrageous.

Nate dressed up as Gina for Halloween in 2014, describing her as the "worst teacher suck-up of all time!" and thus a suitable "evil... super-villain". When Gina saw him dressed as her, she turned the tables by suggesting that Nate had done so out of envy for her many academic achievements and to mask his inadequacies, concluding with "That's sad. I pity you."

### Whiskers

In 2014, Gina got a dog whom she named Whiskers. At first, she wasn't happy that she got a dog because she wanted a cat, but over time, she got used to Whiskers, and it can be assumed that they now have a loving relationship together.

### Francis Pope

Francis is shown to have a distaste for Gina. He and Gina have competed for the Outstanding Scholarship medal in a 2006 story arc, trying to outscore her by 12 points, but he outscored her by 11 points, and Gina said that she let him do that. He has been seen cooperatively working with her, though.

### Teddy Ortiz

Teddy Ortiz thinks that Gina is a pain, yet has a sense of humor when it comes to Gina punking Nate.

### Randy Betancourt

Gina picked Randy on her team as a replacement to Nick Blonsky for the Trivia Slam. Gina might have only picked Randy to get under Nate's skin. Randy is also very athletic in *Big Nate Blasts Off* when he threw the frisbee the entire field.

### Annie

Gina became friends with this Jefferson student when P.S. 38 got colonized by mold, although at first, they were fighting because Annie got a 106 on a math test while Gina got jealous of her with only 105 points.

### Chad Applewhite

In one instance, Gina had a crush on Chad Applewhite. After being rejected, she quickly returned to her normal self and moved on.

### Sarah Hemphill-Toms

Sarah Hemphill-Toms is Gina's mother. They probably get along well.

### Clara Godfrey

Gina is constantly sucking up, as described by Nate Wright, to Mrs. Godfrey, often to Nate's personal loss, as she is often telling Mrs. Godfrey of things that Nate was doing that were disruptive or insulting to her.

## Trivia

* She first appeared on March 27, 1997. Her first major appearance was February 15 to 18, 2000
* In *Big Nate: On A Roll,* she made it into the Math Olympiad along with Artur and Francis.
* On both the April 13-14, 2010 comic strips, her hair was brown instead of blonde; a coloring mistake.
* In *Big Nate: On A Roll*, Gina says that her math grade is the highest in the school.
* Gina has four older brothers who taught her a few hockey moves.
* She is the least likely person to get detention, even though she received detention once in Big Nate: Strikes Again.
* Many people think that Gina and Nate secretly have feelings for each other so Lincoln Peirce confirmed that they will never get in a relationship.
* Gina got a dog for Christmas in 2014, named Whiskers, which angered Nate. In 2018, it is revealed that she had gotten another dog, who had wandered onto Nate's porch, to keep Whiskers company.
* In recent strips, Gina's grandfather is a famous doctor, while her grandmother is deceased. Her grandfather remarries a woman decades younger than him.
* In Epic Big Nate, Lincoln Peirce explains that he originally called Gina "Gina Hemphill", then "Gina Toms". In order not to confuse readers, he decided to permanently call her "Gina Hemphill-Toms".
* She starred in one of Nate's movies in May 2016. At first, she refused to play the part of a super-villain but Nate persuaded her when he announced that it would include "romantic tension" between her and Chad, who was playing the hero. In fact, in a scene where they were supposed to fight each other, Gina ended up hugging Chad dramatically.
* During the Fact-Town Smackdown of 2014 she and Francis ended up in a draw due to the appearance of Peter Mason. Gina gets mad about this because Nate claims that Gina has lost to a First-Grader.
* She once said that she’s forgotten more useless information than Francis will ever know.
* She is known to be the worst player in Nate's fleece ball team. She is likely to be bad in other sports as well except chess (chess is a sport, as shown in Big Nate: Flips Out).
* Gina once got 5 detentions from Mrs. Godfrey for making Nate tie her shoelace, Nate got only 2. And afterwards she said "I'll never make it to Harvard."
* Francis and Teddy like to tease Nate that he likes Gina.

## Behind the scenes

Her last name is Hemphill-Toms because in one comic, Peirce made her name "Gina Hemphill", and in another, he made it "Gina Toms". After realizing this mistake, he put the two together to create "Gina Hemphill-Toms".