How I Met Your Mother (or HIMYM) is a American situation comedy created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays for CBS Broadcasting. The show is based around the main character, Ted Mosby, telling his son and daughter about the events that led to his meeting their mother. How I Met Your Mother ' s other main characters are Marshall Eriksen, Robin Scherbatsky, Barney Stinson, and Lily Aldrin. Thomas and Bays drew from their friendship in creating the characters, with Ted based loosely on Bays and Marshall and Lily based loosely on Thomas and his wife. The character Barney Stinson has been compared to the Fonz in Happy Days, in which a secondary character often takes over much of the focus of the episodes.

On May 16, 2007, CBS executives announced at the annual Upfront presentation that How I Met Your Mother was renewed for a third season. While airing CSI-style promos for the show, it was announced that the show would be moving to the 9:30 ET / 8:30 CT Monday timeslot for summer reruns, after reruns of the highly-rated Two and a Half Men. The show shifted back to 8:00 ET / 7:00 CT at the beginning of the third season, which premiered September 24, 2007.

During the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, How I Met Your Mother shut down production, however once the strike ended, CBS announced the show would return March 17, 2008 with 9 new episodes. It was also announced another change in timeslot to 8:30 ET / 7:30 CT , flip-flopping from the summer schedule with The Big Bang Theory.

Writers/producers/co-creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas (II) are members of the band "The Solids," which performs the show's theme song "Hey Beautiful".

Barney and Ted meet at the urinal for the first time.

Marshall is from Minnesota.

Lily's nickname for Marshall is "Marshmellow".

From season 2, there are scenes shown before the opening credits

Ted's favorite music artist is Otis Redding.

Ted is from Ohio.

Ted's middle name is Evelyn.

Alyson Hannigan's character on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997), Willow Rosenberg, once mentioned that she wrote "Doogie Howser, M.D." (1989) fanfiction as a girl. Hannigan went on to star in "How I Met Your Mother" (2005) with Neil Patrick Harris, who as a boy played Doogie Howser.