“How I Met Your Mother” is an American sitcom that originally aired on CBS from September 19, 2005, to March 31, 2014. Let’s see some fun facts and trivia about the series!
1.The series concerns the adventures of Ted Mosby (played by Josh Radnor) and how he met the mother of his children.
2. The story starts in 2005 with a 27-year-old Ted Mosby living in New York City and working as an architect; the narrative deals primarily with his best friends, including the long-lasting couple Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel) and Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan); the eccentric, womanizing-playboy Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris); and news anchor Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders).
3. The series explores many storylines, including a “will they or won’t they” relationship between Robin and each of the two single male characters, Marshall and Lily’s relationship, and the ups and downs of the characters’ careers.
4. The show’s frame story depicts Ted (voice of Bob Saget, uncredited) verbally retelling the story to his son Luke (David Henrie) and daughter Penny (Lyndsy Fonseca) as they sit on the couch in the year 2030.
5. While the traditional love-story structure begins when the romantic leads first encounter each other, How I Met Your Mother does not introduce Ted’s wife (Cristin Milioti) until the eighth season finale, and only announces her name (Tracy McConnell) during the series finale.
6. How I Met Your Mother was inspired by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas’s idea to “write about our friends and the stupid stuff we did in New York”, where they previously worked as writers for Late Show with David Letterman, among others.
7. The two drew from their friendship in creating the characters. Ted is based loosely on Bays, and Marshall and Lily are based loosely on Thomas and his wife.
8. Thomas’ wife Rebecca was initially reluctant to have a character based on her, but agreed if they could get Alyson Hannigan to play her. Hannigan was looking to do more comedy work, and was available.
9. Josh Radnor and Jason Segel, who were cast as Ted and Marshall, respectively, were not well known, though Segel had been a cast member on the short-lived Freaks and Geeks and a recurring guest star on Judd Apatow follow-up Undeclared.
10. The role of Barney was initially envisioned as a “John Belushi-type character” before Neil Patrick Harris won the role after being invited to an audition by the show’s casting director Megan Branman.
11. Pamela Fryman invited Bob Saget to be the voiceover narrator, Future Ted, explaining to him that the show would be like The Wonder Years but “kind of into the future”.
12. Saget either went to the television studio and recorded the narration while watching the episode, or did so separately and rerecorded with the episode if necessary.
13. He normally did not attend table readings, but did so for the last episode.
14. In various interviews Bays and Thomas have stated that “a pretty famous actress” turned down the role of Robin, whom they revealed in February 2014 to have been Jennifer Love Hewitt.
15. They then cast Cobie Smulders for the role who, at the time, was fairly unknown.
16. Bays and Thomas later said, “Thank God we did for a million reasons… when Ted’s seeing her for the first time, America’s seeing her for the first time — the intriguingness of that propelled the show going forward and kept the show alive”.
17. Although Ted is initially smitten by Robin in the pilot, it is quickly established at the end of the episode that she is not the mother, which Thomas said was done so they would not copy or rehash the “will they or won’t they” Ross and Rachel storyline from Friends.
18. According to an Entertainment Weekly article, the writers adopted facets of each main actor’s personality and incorporated them into their characters.
19. This includes Neil Patrick Harris’s skills with magic, Jason Segel’s passion for songwriting, Alyson Hannigan’s absent-mindedness while pregnant, and Josh Radnor’s intellectualism.
20. MacLaren’s, an Irish bar in the middle of New York, in which some of the show is set, is loosely based on four favorite bars of Bays, Thomas and others from the Late Show staff.
21. They include: McGee’s, a Midtown tavern near the Ed Sullivan Theater where the Late Show is taped; McHale’s, a legendary Hell’s Kitchen bar which closed in 2006; Chumley’s, a since-closed historic Greenwich Village pub; and Fez, another closed bar on the Upper West Side.
22. McGee’s had a mural that Bays and Thomas both liked and wanted to incorporate into the show.
23. The name for the bar is from Carter Bays’ assistant, Carl MacLaren; the bartender in the show is also named Carl.
24. Episodes were generally shot over a three-day period in the Los Angeles-based Soundstage Studio 22 and featured upwards of 50 scenes with quick transitions and flashbacks.
25. However, the “Pilot” episode was filmed at CBS Radford.
26. The laugh track was later created by recording an audience being shown the final edited episode.
27. Thomas claimed that shooting before a live audience would have been impossible because of the structure of the show and the numerous flashforwards in each episode and because doing so “would blur the line between ‘audience’ and ‘hostage situation'”.
28. Later seasons started filming in front of an audience on occasion when smaller sets were used.
29. The theme song is a portion of “Hey Beautiful” by The Solids, of which Bays and Thomas are members.
30. Episodes from Season 1 generally started with the opening credits.
31. A cold opening has been used since Season 2.
32. Viewers then occasionally see Ted’s children on a couch and hear him talking to them, telling the story of how he met their mother.
33. Alternatively, scenes from previous episodes or shots of New York City with Ted narrating over the top are shown.
34. Thomas has stated that Future Ted is an unreliable narrator since he is trying to tell a story that happened over 20 years earlier; this has been a plot point in several episodes including “The Goat”, “Oh Honey”, “How I Met Everyone Else” and “The Mermaid Theory”.
35. Nevertheless, Thomas has also emphasized maintaining a coherent and consistent universe, and trying to avoid continuity errors, a problem he noticed in other shows.
36. A scene relating to the identity of the mother, involving Ted’s future children, was filmed near the beginning of Season 2 for the show’s eventual series finale.
37. This was done because it was likely that the teenage actors portraying them would be adults by the time the final season was shot.
38. During the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, How I Met Your Mother shut-down production; when the strike ended, the show returned on March 17, 2008, with nine new episodes.
39. In September 2008, Lifetime Television announced it had purchased the cable rerun rights to How I Met Your Mother at a rate of about $725,000 per episode.
40. The four-year syndication contract stipulated that the studio deliver at least 110 half-hour episodes by the year 2010, and allowed for up to eight seasons of the show.
41. At the end of the fourth season only 88 episodes had been produced, and a further 22 episodes were required, ensuring that there would be a fifth season.
42. Reruns of the series began airing on local U.S. broadcast television stations and on Chicago-based cable superstation WGN America September 13, 2010.
43. Featured in these airings are vanity cards previously unseen in the CBS and Lifetime airings due to marginalized credit sequences used by the two networks.
44. Shown in between the closing credits and the production company credits, these vanity cards show portions of “The Bro Code”, a list of rules frequently referenced by Harris’ character, Barney Stinson, on how men should interact with each other, with an emphasis on activities involving pursuing members of the opposite sex.
45. The opening theme song for the syndicated reruns is also slightly edited, running shorter and not using all the pictures seen in the opening montage that runs on DVD and the original CBS broadcasts.
46. The episodes are also slightly edited, leaving out a few details.
47. One of the series’ ongoing traditions involves giving guest roles to actors from various Joss Whedon productions, many of whom co-starred with Hannigan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Bays attributes this to their being “huge fans” and to those casts representing “a big talent pool”.
48. Another tradition involves the use of euphemisms for culturally sensitive issues. These include “eating a sandwich” for smoking marijuana, “thumbs up” for giving the middle finger, as well as “playing the bagpipes” for loud, raucous sex acts. These euphemisms, among others, have been used extensively throughout the show and have even been used as central plot themes, such as the episode “Benefits” in Season 4.
49. Although cast members had previously stated that the show would not run longer than eight seasons, a ninth season was secured in December 2012 amidst tense negotiations with the studios and the actors – especially Jason Segel, who had wanted to move on to other ventures after the eighth season.
50. During these negotiations, Bays and Thomas originally approached the eighth season as if it was the show’s last year, but also had a “Plan B” if the show was renewed.
51. After producers secured a ninth and final season, they implemented plans to secretly cast the titular future mother, with Cristin Milioti eventually winning the role, besting at least two other contenders.
52. Milioti first appeared in the last scene in the season eight finale “Something New” and was a regular cast member in the show’s final season.
53. This marked the first time that the show had expanded its core roster.
54. In January 2013, How I Met Your Mother was renewed for a ninth and final season.
55. Carter Bays stated to Entertainment Weekly that season nine “will feature some of the most non-linear episodes we’ve ever done”.
56. The show’s highest viewed episode was the series finale, Last Forever, watched by 13.13 million viewers.
57. Previously, the most viewed episode was the season 1 episode “The Pineapple Incident”, watched by 12.3 million viewers.
58. The lowest-viewed episode was the season 6 episode “Landmarks”, watched by 6.4 million viewers, approximately 52% of the show’s series high.
59. Season nine was the highest watched season overall and among the 18-49 adults, scoring a 4.5 rating in that sector up from the second-highest rating of 4.1 in season seven.
60. The show has been nominated for 72 awards, winning 18. The show has been nominated for 28 Emmy Awards, including a nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series. Stars Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris have each received acting accolades, with both receiving People’s Choice Awards, and Harris receiving Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
61. In 2012, seven years after its premiere, the series won the People’s Choice for Favorite Network TV Comedy.
62. The show’s art direction, editing and cinematography have also been awarded.
63. The clock in Marshall and Teds apartment is always set at 4:20.
64. After the show ended, Josh Radnor kept the blue french horn, Neil Patrick Harris got the Playbook and the gang’s MacLaren’s booth, and the three yellow umbrellas now belong to director Pamela Fryman, as well as creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays.
65. Due to Jason Segel’s (Marshall) real-life smoking habit, he and his co-star and on-screen wife, Alyson Hannigan (Lily), rarely kissed on-screen during the run of the show; kisses between the two were infrequently scripted, at Hannigan’s request, because she disliked the taste and smell of smoke on Segel’s breath
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