I loved these theories, great video 🙌

"The kids sit there, same couch, same clothes every single episode" and then proceeds to show 2 shots of the kids wearing different outfits.

One of my favorite things about this show is how he usually changes things like smoking marijuana to eating a sandwich, but he's completely fine telling his children about his sex life.😭😭😭

Barney is into crafts. He's made a scrapbook of everyone he slept with.

Anyone feeling old, the 2030 year Ted is telling his kids, is only four years away ?

Imagining Barney yelling “Shoot up!” Instead of suit up, really changes the whole dynamic

"Yellow Umbrella" is a non-profit organization that raises awareness about cervical cancer, and it started in the early 2000s. I always figured the mother's death and the yellow umbrella was a nod to that.

Can't believe you didn't mention the Tracy didn't die theory.  Ted wanted to fantasize about getting back together with Robin, but like Marshall who had to imagine Lily dying of a disease, and waited an appropriate number of years to romance the pizza girl to relieve the guilt, Ted also imagines Tracy dying of a disease and him waiting 6 years.  In reality, Ted isn't telling his kids stories, and Tracy is probably in the next room, and Robin probably is still with Barney.

So when Barney donated a bunch of suits to his step-dad's church, he was donating drugs?

Barney and his suits is way too big of a gag to be debunked with a single episode. The episode "girls vs suits" is not using suit relapse to show drug relapse but using drug relapse tropes to make fun of his suit addiction 😂😂. You got it backwards there.

Barney is real. He refers to Barney as Uncle Barney to the kids and they don't correct him. The more exact reason we know Barney is real is because he showed up on the show's sequel series "How I Met Your Father," and that was not narrated by Ted.

The Alzheimer theory is wild, many things he forgets or mixes up are unimportant details.
The only major one is the goat birthday, but if you live in a place for like 10 years, a lot of stuff will blend together, alzheimer or not.
And some casual hookup or weeklong relationship is not a name you will remember forever.
The specific details he goes into in his stories, look like the exact opposite. I doubt we could tell an indepth story of 9 years of our lives 15 years after it happened

The " Barney is dead thing is disproven, considering how Neil Patrick Harris reprised his role as Barney in the 2022 How I Met Your Father series.

The theory I liked the best is that the Barney we see is only the lies Ted tells about him. Barney never had the playbook and he was not nearly as sexist as Ted claimed, but Ted needed Barney to look bad next to him. Ted was a huge jerk and this is how a jerk would need someone else to look bad next to him. Lily never did the Front porch test, but Ted needed to shift the blame for sabotaging his own relationships.

The women aren't dumb for Barney's schemes remember. It's New York City. You never know what kind of people you'll come across

Funny that How I met your father debunks most of these

That Barney is a Recovering Addict is stupid. Not because of your presented logic (which is actually very sound) but because the show had obvious metaphors for taboo stuff, like sandwiches for doobies. Him acting like an addict for the suits was just a creative way to show a gag and to show how Ted remembered Barney's addiction for suits.

it's fascinating how there's more discourse over Robin, a strong, independent woman, being a sociopath than about Barney, who literally sold a woman.

i get that we treat characters differently and just take the "over the top comedic relief" less seriously but it still kinda makes me angry tbh

great video though!!

Barney is Ted's Tyler Durden. "People think that you're me, because you and I happen to share the same body. Sometimes I control it and you imagine yourself watching me... And sometimes you control it... You can see me and hear me, but no one else can... But, when you fall asleep, I do things without you... I go places without you. Get things done..."

Huh... the theory about the show being all about Barney, not Robin, is actually something to think about. Especially since Ted always shoots forward and there's him, Marhshall and Lily as older people, where Tracy is supposedly there, as well. Yet never Barney, nor is he mentioned. Though Robin is.

Not sure why the need for altering Barney's mental issues to drug addiction, unless maybe it's just easier to get your head around. Sexual addiction is a very real thing, as is obsession with a perceived persona. Barney acts like an addict in the Girls v Suits episode because they were intentionally pointing out the mental addiction. I find it a far more enjoyable character study to look at him as represented, as a person who responded to emotional trauma with self delusion, hedonism, and an obsession with protecting himself from being hurt again. Still deeply messed up, just doesn't need a chemical dependency as an excuse