TV SERIES · 2005–2014 · USA
How I Met Your Mother
- Created by
- Craig Thomas, Carter Bays
- Network
- CBS
- Seasons
- 9
- Episodes
- 208
- Studio
- 20th Century Fox Television, Bays-Thomas Productions
35 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
A father recounts to his children - through a series of flashbacks - the journey he and his four best friends took leading up to him meeting their mother.
Summary: TMDB
16 Facts From the Making of How I Met Your Mother
- #001
How I Met Your Mother originated from Carter Bays and Craig Thomas' idea to write about their friends and the foolish things they did in New York, where both had worked as writers for Late Show with David Letterman.
- #008
Thomas said the pilot established by its end that Robin was not the mother, a choice made to avoid repeating the Ross and Rachel "will they or won't they" storyline from Friends.
- #012
The name MacLaren's for the bar in How I Met Your Mother came from Carter Bays' assistant, Carl MacLaren, and the show's bartender is also named Carl.
- #017
The theme song for How I Met Your Mother is taken from a portion of "Hey Beautiful" by The Solids, a band that includes Craig Thomas and Carter Bays among its members.
- #018
How I Met Your Mother used opening credits at the start of most season 1 episodes, then switched to a cold opening beginning with season 2.
- #020
Craig Thomas has stressed the importance of keeping a coherent and consistent universe and avoiding continuity errors, a problem he observed in other shows.
- #022
How I Met Your Mother halted production during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. After the strike ended, the series resumed on March 17, 2008, with nine new episodes.
- #023
The network moved How I Met Your Mother to 8:30 pm ET/7:30 pm CT, swapping the timeslot with The Big Bang Theory from the summer schedule.
- #024
CBS renewed How I Met Your Mother for a fourth season on May 14, 2008. The fourth season premiered on September 22, 2008.
- #025
In September 2008, Lifetime Television bought the cable rerun rights to How I Met Your Mother for roughly $725,000 per episode.
- #026
The four-year syndication deal required the studio to deliver at least 110 half-hour episodes of How I Met Your Mother by 2010 and permitted up to eight seasons.
- #027
Because only 88 episodes of How I Met Your Mother had been produced by the end of the fourth season, 22 more were needed, which guaranteed a fifth season.
- #028
Reruns of How I Met Your Mother began airing on local American broadcast television stations and on the Chicago-based cable superstation WGN America on September 14, 2010.
- #031
For the syndicated reruns of How I Met Your Mother, the opening theme song was slightly edited to run shorter and omit some pictures used in the opening montage on DVD and the original CBS broadcasts, and episodes were slightly shortened to allow more commercials.
- #034
CBS announced on March 4, 2011, that How I Met Your Mother had been renewed for two additional seasons.
- #035
How I Met Your Mother's seventh season began on September 19, 2011, with two episodes airing back-to-back.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia How I Met Your Mother — Wikipedia
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