23 surprising things you probably didn’t know about ‘How I Met Your Mother’

New York City may be a central character in the series, but the show was filmed on a studio lot in Los Angeles that was designed to look like the Big Apple.

Real-life Canadian Cobie Smulders eventually snagged the part of Robin, but only after Jennifer Love Hewitt turned it down.

Cocreator Craig Thomas wrote on Reddit that Love Hewitt decided to do CBS’ “The Ghost Whisperer” instead of “HIMYM.”

The theme song of “HIMYM” is known for its infectiously catchy tune, and it turns out the show’s creators had a big hand in creating it.

The song, “Hey Beautiful,” is by the band The Solids, which Bays and Carter are both members of. Bays does vocals and guitar, and Thomas plays the drums. 

In 2014, Bays and Thomas told Yahoo News that some of the show’s iconic props ended up going home with the stars after the series ended. 

Harris took Barney’s Playbook and the tabletop from their booth at McLaren’s, Smulders kept Robin Sparkles’ bedazzled jean jacket, Alyson Hannigan ended up with a little red British phone booth, and Radnor got to keep Ted’s coveted blue French horn. 

Bays also ended up decorating his own home with the two swords that were hanging up in Ted and Marshall’s apartment, and Thomas ended up taking a few set pieces from McLaren’s, including one of the gang’s red booths. 

The theory speculated that Ted made Barney sound extra sleazy and womanizing in his story for his kids because he didn’t want them to judge him for falling for Barney’s ex-wife, Robin.

“I think that that’s very accurate,” Harris told Digital Spy in 2018. “Given the story structure, and with [Ted] telling the story to his kids, everything was able to be overdrawn.”

During season five, the actor who played Robin and the actor who played Lily were both pregnant, but their characters were not. So the props team just kept hiding their growing bellies behind large props and handbags.

“We have the biggest purses of any show on the air,” director Pamela Fryman told the Chicago Tribune.

The actor has written a children’s book about magic, so it’s clear that Harris influenced Barney’s hobby.

Most of the websites the characters shout out on the series are actually live on the internet.

See for yourself at tedmosbyisajerk.com, barneysvideoresume.com, and notafathersday.com, to name a few.

McLaren’s is modeled after a pub in New York City called McGee’s.

Bays and Thomas reportedly spent a lot of time in the real-life establishment when they were both writing for “The Late Show With David Letterman” earlier in their careers.

During his AMA, Bays told Reddit that a season-one cancellation would have resulted in them writing Victoria in as the mother.

Of course, the show actually went on for nine seasons, so that plan got scrapped.

“How I Met Your Dad” was in the works after the “HIMYM” series finale, but it was ultimately scrapped in 201. Many sources cited creative differences between the writers and CBS.

The unaired pilot starred Greta Gerwig as Sally, a recent divorcée on the hunt for new love. 

After the failed “How I Met Your Dad” spin-off, “How I Met Your Father” went into development in 2017. But it took a few years to get it off the ground.

The Hulu sequel series stars Hilary Duff as Sophie, the leading Ted-like role, who is telling her son the story of how she met his father. 

This story was originally published in September 2018 and most recently updated on September 4, 2024. 

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