Hilarious In Hindsight / How I Met Your Mother

• During the first season, a stripper named Tracy introduces herself to Ted. Future!Ted then tells his children that that was how he met their mother. The moment became funnier later when the mother's name was revealed and it turned out they share a name. It would also explain some of the Ted's kids' bewilderment. According to Carter Bays in an AMA, they chose the name "Tracy" for the mother because of this scene and the fan theories surrounding it.
• Future!Ted mentions in Season 6 that he met his future wife at a wedding. If the show hadn't been renewed for a second season, Victoria would have been the Mother, with Victoria and Ted's first meeting being at Stuart and Claudia's wedding.
• One of the first lines of the series is Ted's daughter asking if Ted's story is going to take a while. It takes him 9 seasons to actually tell the story.
• Not that watching a gay man play straight is hilarious, but much like his role in the Harold and Kumar series, the extreme degree to which Neil Patrick Harris's character womanizes was cast in a humorous, ironic light after the actor announced his homosexuality.
• Pre-infamous-Jason Segel-nudity-in-Forgetting Sarah Marshall:
  Barney: [after being slapped in the face by Marshall] Ow. Your hand is monstrous.
  Marshall: Well, what did you expect? You've seen my penis.
• In Season 3's "How I Met Everyone Else", Blah Blah is about to ask Robin how she and Barney met, assuming that they're a couple and then, Robin vehemently said "No", sixteen times. Of course, they did end up together eventually.
• Bob Odenkirk's role starting in Season 3 as a feared senior partner of a law firm becomes this when you consider the character he's most known for. Especially when in Better Call Saul, when Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill is the one who often clashes with one of the senior partners of HMM, his brother, Chuck McGill.
  • He also does a Take This Job and Shove It against his law firm, Davis & Main.
• Barney's insisting that no one should have children until they're at least 45. He was already expecting twins at the age of 37 when that episode aired.
• This exchange, considering Neil Patrick Harris would go on to star in The Smurfs 5 years later.
  Lily: No, friends make each other feel good. They build each other up and support them. That's what being a good friend is about.
  Barney: Yeah, if you're a Smurf.
• Katy Perry guest starred as Zoey's cousin, who ended up having a one-night stand with Barney. Later, she voiced Smurfette in the Smurf movies, which Neil Patrick Harris also starred in.
• In December 2010, just over a year after the premiere of the relevant episode, what was effectively a real life version of Million Dollar Heads or Tails premiered in Britain. Unfortunately, there was no Alex Trebek, nor was there a currency rotation specialist (there was a lot of Padding though).
• Barney's habit of mocking Canada just gets even more hilarious after the revelation that he's one-quarter Canadian.
• Related to the above, the show's habit of mocking New Jersey as well, since Cristin Milioti (who plays The Mother) is from there.
• Ted's comments in "We're Not From Here" (about going to NJ in the pursuit of a hook-up), considering a major point with Stella the next season was moving to NJ to be with her.
• Ted had a date with a girl named Cindy who spent their entire date bitching about her roommate (The Mother) and being jealous over her love life. When we met her again two seasons later, she was on a date with another woman. This quickly raised the suspicion that there was another reason for her obsession, which was finally confirmed in the 200th episode.
• In the fourth season, Barney insists that girls whose names end in -ly are always dirty, and gives off a list of examples: "Holly, Kelly, Carly, Lily". Four years later, his half-sister Carly hooks up with Ted on a one-night stand.
• One episode shows a picture of Robin appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman. In real life, around the week later, Cobie Smulders appeared on that show to talk about her role in The Avengers.
• On season 6, "Unfinished", Barney walks into Ted's classroom. Think of his reaction, considering Josh Radnor's film from 2 years later, Liberal Arts.
  Ted: What are you doing here? Oh God, you’re dating one of my students. It's Rachel, isn’t it? Barney, I know she wears provocative sweaters, but she's 19!
• In season 5 episode "Zoo or false", Ted tells Barney, "You can't just tack on a new ending because you're not satisfied with how a story wraps up". Considering of many fix fics had been written after the series finale aired and that an alternate ending was eventually released on DVD.
• In the finale, Barney makes a remark about entering his "Clooney years", when referring to being middle-aged and single. Barely a month later and George Clooney is engaged to activist Amal Alamuddin.
• Ted's doppelganger is "Mexican Wrestler Ted." During the 2014 World Cup, the Mexican Goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa is noticed for his uncanny resemblance to Josh Radnor, hence becoming Mexican Goalkeeper Ted◊.
• Ted angrily comparing Zoey to Cinderella's evil stepmother is funnier given that Jennifer Morrison's very next role would be as Emma Swan on Once Upon a Time.
  • Zoey being married to a man named "The Captain" while having an incredible aversion to boats is even more hilarious as Emma's Second Love is Captain Hook. They marry in season 6, and have their first child at some point before season 7's present.
  • Even better, in season 7, Emma's son Henry has fallen in love with and had a child with a Cinderella.
  • Ted's friends doubt that Zoey would let him name their kids Luke and Leia. On Once, Emma would take on the alias of Princess Leia in the Enchanted Forest during a time travel adventure, obviously referencing the exact namesake.
• Cobie Smulders' role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe gets pretty ironic in Avengers: Age of Ultron when Hawkeye is revealed to be Happily Married to a newly introduced character, with his popular shipping partner Black Widow being just his kids' honorary aunt. And just like this show, the fans largely supported his existing relationship once they found out about it, and this time got their wish.
• In the first episode ever, Ted tells a woman that he wants 'a band, no DJ' for his wedding in a throwaway line. When the gang is later planning Barney and Robin's wedding, the debate whether to have a band or a DJ is discussed even further to hilarious effect and the choice to get a band is how Ted meets The Mother.
• Lyndsy Fonseca and David Henrie playing Ted's children—given that they are now best known as Alex and brother of a different Alex.
• Barney put some hidden cameras around his apartment for "other purposes", which Robin finds creepy. Then comes Gone Girl, where NPH's character also had cameras installed in his house for security purposes which can be as counted creepy when he brought in Amy (played by Rosamund Pike) who pretended that she ran away from her husband (played by Ben Affleck). She used this to tarnish him as a stalker ex-boyfriend by pretending that she's abused by him on-camera and later killing him "in self-defense" while having sex before going back to her husband in the film's climax.
• The various references to Star Wars:
  • Barney's squirming to defend the Star Wars prequels to Ted after asserting that "new is always better" is this after the release of The Force Awakens; in the case of that movie, new was indeed better.
  • Even more Hilarious in Hindsight (or Harsher in Hindsight) when considering the reputation of the next two movies.
  • Speaking of Star Wars, this exchange from "Unpause", being set in 2017, could be retroactively interpreted as the characters making a reference to The Force Awakens; given Ted's love of the series:
  Ted: Everything is fine, okay? Just don't freak out.
  The Mother: I'm not freaking out!
  Ted: I'm talking to myself.
  • Ted, Barney, and Marshall's argument over the fatal exhaust port weakness of the Death Star. Ted argues that it was not a flaw in the architects design, but a fault of the contractor who ending up building it; Barney and Marshall argue that it in fact was the architects mistake. Come the release of Rogue One, revealing that it was the architect, who intentionally added the flaw so the Rebels could easily destroy the superweapon.
• In "The Pre-Nup," Victoria's ex-fiancé Klaus wants them to watch a German sitcom about two men who live together, one of whom is neat and one of whom is very neat, being both a parody of the Odd Couple and of German culture (that even the slob would be neat). Thomas Lennon, who played Klaus, would then go on to star in an Odd Couple remake a few years later.
• After being already confirmed in the first episode that Robin is not the Mother, in A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017), Cobie Smulders is credited as playing "Mother." Bonus points for it having Neil Patrick Harris as the antagonist.
• Barney's Misaimed Fandom over Johnny Lawrence being the real Karate Kid and loathing Daniel LaRusso becomes more hilarious today, with the film's Sequel Series Cobra Kai making Johnny the protagonist who attempts to revive the Cobra Kai dojo to teach bullied kids karate and has to contend with Daniel trying to thwart his plans with somewhat unethical schemes.
• Robin is known for being a news presenter and formerly a pop idol. Not the last time we'll see something like this.
  • Not just in fiction either, now that fellow Marvel alumnus Chloe Bennet is known for having a very similar foray into pop (down to the backdated fashions stemming from being made in a different country, only in China instead of Canada).
• Hammond Druthers was laughed out of the architecture industry for designing a skyscraper that looked too phallic. Who's laughing now?
• Turns out The Captain really is a killer after all. Doubly hilarious as it involves a doppelganger.
• Robin ditching her bubbly Robin Sparkles persona in favor of the Darker and Edgier Robin Daggers was at the time a reference to Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill era (as beforehand she was basically the Canadian Debbie Gibson, much like Robin Sparkles),^note This includes Robin Daggers' song "P.S. I Love You" raising speculation about who is its subject, much like Morissette's "You Oughta Know" did. but nowadays seems prophetic◊ in regards of Taylor Swift attempting a makeover of her bubbly persona in favor of a darker one with her album reputation. It goes to the point that it's common to find comments on clips on YouTube of Robin Daggers reading "I'm sorry, the old Robin can't come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead!", paraphrasing Swift's song "Look What You Made Me Do" from that album.
• Barney mocking curling as a sport no American would care about in 2009's "Dual Citizenship" looks pretty hilarious after curling skyrocketed in popularity in the United States after the 2010 Winter Olympics Games, which took place in Vancouver, Canada.
• Ted's need to use sandwiches in place of marijuana when talking to his kids is funnier after recreational marijuana was legalized in New York in 2021.
• Hammond Druthers (played by Bryan Cranston) is a Mean Boss who gets his divorce and gets fired by Ted in his birthday. Few years later, Walter White (again played by Cranston) in Breaking Bad has an ongoing divorce with his wife Skyler (while an attempt for divorce was made in his 51st birthday) and fires himself against the Mean Boss.
  • This is also not the only time a character played by Cranston goes against a character named "Ted".

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