Top 10 Stories Behind Your Favorite HIMYM Scenes

In the early seasons of HIMYM, you would frequently see Ted’s kids interacting with the narrator - asking him questions, or commenting on his stories. Since people change appearance over time, this created a logistical issue for the actors who portray Ted’s kids. Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, creators of the sitcom, always knew the show would end with the kids talking about Robin. To ensure they looked the same age as they did at the beginning of the series, they shot the very final scene during production of season two and held onto it until “How I Met Your Mother” ultimately ended in 2014 with season 9!

By the time season two rolled along, fans learned how much of a romantic Ted was. So when two glasses of champagne are delivered to the table, Robin discovers an engagement ring in hers and proceeds to freak out. When Ted tells her it’s not his, a background actor claims it belongs to him and proceeds to propose to the woman sitting with him. On the surface, this might look like a simple plot device. In reality, it was a setup for a real proposal. The man giving the proposal, Timothy Russo, was friends with staff writer Matt Kuhn, who got Tim and his girlfriend Jana Rugan booked as extras on the show. Watch it again and look at Cobie Smulders’ look of surprise.

Have you mastered the art of eating food with chopsticks? If not, you have something in common with Barney Stinson. Throughout the course of the show, the five friends can be seen using chopsticks to eat various Asian dishes. If you look closely enough, you’ll spot Barney trying unsuccessfully to get the food into his mouth. It’s been said that Neil Patrick Harris reportedly has difficulty eating with chopsticks, so the writers decided to poke some fun at the actor by putting Barney in these situations. It’s also been said that they thought it would be a funny running gag. Perhaps it’s a bit of both? He does seemingly get the last laugh though, as we see him successfully use the wooden utensils in the season seven episode “Ducky Tie”.

Quick question: how many dogs did Robin have? [“I have five dogs”]. You must really love dogs if you have five of them in an apartment. Yet after the events of the season two episode “Stuff”, the dogs were conveniently written out of the show. Although it fit with the plot of the episode, the real reason for getting rid of the dogs had to do with actor Josh Radnor’s allergies. Prior to that episode, Radnor had dealt with the ailment using Claritin. But after paramedics had to be called to help with a severe reaction during the filming of one episode, the dogs were written out of the show.

“Have you met Carter?”. It just doesn’t have the same zing to it as the one we know. Fans learned early on that Barney Stinson was a character who had his fair share of pickup lines. During the pilot, he randomly chooses a woman from the bar, and asks her [“Hi, Have you met Ted?”]. It’s definitely one of Barney’s far more tame pickup lines, but nonetheless has a great backstory. When Carter Bays was a writer for the “Late Show with David Letterman”, he, along with other staff members, would hang out at McGee’s, which is one of the bars that inspired McClaren’s. Bays’ co-worker, Justin Stangel, would apparently use that exact pickup line to introduce girls to Carter.

One of the hallmarks of great situational comedy is the ability to pivot from comedic bits to serious moments without seeming contrived. One of the best examples of this came in the season six episode “Bad News”. After playing with a countdown of numbers throughout the episode, the very end sees Marshall learning that his dad has passed away unexpectedly. What some may not know is until the day of shooting, Jason Segel thought Alyson Hannigan’s Lily was going to tell him she was pregnant. Segel specifically asked not to be told the specifics and chose to just react to Lily’s news. It gave us one of the most genuine moments in the show’s nine year run.

When you look back at the high profile guest stars that appeared on this show, it’s easy to recall the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears or even “the captain” Kyle MacLachlan. But do you remember when Conan O’Brien was on HIMYM? Conan apparently won a charity auction to appear on the series. The writers wanted to give him a bigger story, but he thought it would elicit more laughs if he just appeared as a background actor. If you look closely during one of the bar scenes in season seven’s “No Pressure” episode, you’ll spot the famous late night host sporting a leather jacket and holding a beer. No spoken lines, just a reaction to Barney’s panic.

After nine years of listening to Ted tell his story, we finally got to hear him say [“That’s how I met your mother.”]. For many fans however, it was not the happy ending they were looking for. They felt the story had been dragging on for years and when we finally got to meet her, they killed her off... and put Ted and Robin back together. Some viewers felt the entire Robin thing was shoehorned in to satisfy the writer's original series finale vision. An alternate ending was included in the season’s DVD release. No new footage was shot, but it was edited in such a way that the mother remained alive and Ted never went back to Robin.

In a mid-season one episode, Ted wakes up to find a strange woman in his bed, and a pineapple on his nightstand. As the story unfolds, we learn plenty about the woman, but nothing regarding the pineapple. The narrator tells the viewer they never did get an answer about the pineapple, but that’s not entirely accurate. A deleted scene from the season 9 episode “Daisy” gave us the origin story we wanted. We come to learn that Ted actually stole the pineapple from “the captain” who had put one outside his door at his home in the city. A drunken Ted can be seen laughing hysterically as he takes the fruit from the doorstep.

It only took 184 episodes before we finally got to see who the mother of Ted’s kids was. During the season eight finale, we see a woman with a yellow umbrella approach a ticket booth and as the camera pans up, fans rejoice as that elusive question is finally answered. To further help conceal who the mother was, the show chose not to cast extras in the train station scene. Instead, all of the background “actors” were members of the show’s production team. All hard copies of the script for the episode were destroyed to help contain the secrecy of who she was. Fans would then learn plenty more about her in the show’s final season.