Recurring Themes

• The word “awesome” appears in almost every episode. The word awesome does not appear in the episode entitled “Purple Giraffe.”
• Barney’s catchphrases: “Legendary,” “True story,” “Suit up,” “High five,” “What up?” various uses of the word “awesome” and “awesomeness.”
  
• For emphasis, Barney inserts the phrase “wait for it” into the middle of a word, e.g. “Legen– wait for it– and I hope you’re not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is– Dary.”
  
• Barney calling himself Ted’s best friend or Marshall’s best man, only to be corrected.
  
• Barney first uses the “Have you met…?” line, introducing Ted to random women in the bar, simply by saying, “Hi, have you met Ted?” then walking away. The phrase has been adapted and used with all of the characters except for Lily.
  
• Slap Bet: The season two episode “Slap Bet” featured a wager between Marshall and Barney where the winner would slap the loser. Lily (the Slap Bet Commissioner) gave Barney (who lost the bet) the choice of 10 slaps immediately or five to be dished out at any time. Barney, having chosen the five slaps, has been slapped twice by Marshall since then:
  
  • At the end of”Slap Bet”, a few minutes after losing the bet.
    
  • At the end of season two episode “Stuff,” while performing his one-man play “Suck It Lily.”
    
  • There is a “slap bet countdown” on cbs.com that implies that the third slap will be dealt out on Monday November 19th at around 8:23 pm ET.
    
• “Famous telepathic conversations:” If the characters want to have a private conversation in the presence of others, they will attempt to communicate with each other telepathically. Marshall has done this successfully with Ted and Lily, but when Robin attempted it with Lily it failed.
  
• When asked what his job is, Barney laughs and says “Please” (and never reveals it).
  
• Barney loves laser tag and Sky Mall.
  
• Barney often makes up statistics (Ted claims that he always uses 83% but he has only done this once, using completely different statistics on previous occasions) in order to make his arguments sound credible. Marshall always catches him out and ‘lawyers’ him.
  
• In response to a snarky comment about him Barney will often silently nod his head “no” slowly to hilarious effect
  
• Similarly, Marshall can often be seen staring incredulously at someone after being the butt of a joke. This usually is visible in the outer edges of the screen while another characer is talking.
  
• Marshall often does The Robot when he is excited about something.
  
• Robin being teased about being Canadian. She will sometimes respond with a truism about America, such as a flawed medical system or poor knowledge of international geography.
  
• “Lawyering”: Marshall uses his law skills to interrogate someone else in a courtroom-style fashion.
  
• Giving each other a variety of unique high five, such as the “hypothetical high five”, the “air five”, and “the phone five” (slapping the phone in a way that imitates the high five).
  
• Characters (or more specifically Barney) calling Robin by her surname, Scherbatsky.
  
• Robin hates olives and Ted loves them. This parallel was used to describe what makes “the perfect couple”. Throughout thier relationship, Marshall and Lily based their great compatibility on this “olive theory”. In the pilot episode Barney revealed that Marshall had been faking and does, in fact, like olives (it was he who allegedly disliked them, Lily has always liked them). Lily was not put off by this revelation.
  
• Ted has bad luck ending relationships.
  
  • In the episode Return of the Shirt (S01E04) he tries to rekindle a relationship with an old girlfriend that he’d broken up with on her birthday, on her answering machine.
    
  • Later in the episode, when the second try at dating hasn’t worked, he inadvertantly chooses her birthday to break up with her a second time.
    
  • In the episode Columns (S02E13) Ted must fire his one-time boss for poor performance. As he’s about to fire him, a birthday party begins.
    
• Ted apparently likes/loves jazz.
  
  • He has two jazz related posters in his room. One of Count Basie, the other of Thelonious Monk.
    
  • He’s worn two jazz related shirts. One of John Coltrane’s album Lush Life, the other of Max Roach, worn on the show shortly after Roach’s death.
    

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