Posted 1 hour agoSubscribe to Screen Time NewsletterCaret DownI Can't Watch "How I Met Your Mother" The Same Way After Learning These 35 Behind-The-Scenes FactsThree of the cast members' spouses played minor roles on the show!by Kristen HarrisBuzzFeed StaffFacebookPinterestLink How I Met Your Mother will always be a comfort show to me (as long as I pretend the last episode doesn't exist). In the nine years the show was in production, some pretty interesting stuff went on behind-the-scenes. CBS Photo Archive / CBS via Getty Images Here are 35 interesting behind-the-scenes facts about HIMYM: 1. Series co-creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays decided to reveal Robin wasn't the mother in the pilot episode to avoid comparisons between Ted and Robin and Ross and Rachel from Friends. At the 2006 William S. Paley TV Fest, Carter said, "We knew we didn't want to do 'will they or won't they?' We were already worried about the Friends comparisons, and thank God that's gone away. I think that the rhythm of the show is different from that. We didn't want to do Friends; we didn't want to do Ross and Rachel and 'will they or won't they' for ten years. We wanted to do an interesting friendship where they're kind of in love, but for some reason, it's just not in the stars for them." CBS / Via Netflix 2. Barney and Robin's relationship was Neil Patrick Harris's idea. He told Fan Carpet, "I've been actively trying to make that happen. I talk to the writers, and I was pitching it, and I'd try to do little things in our scenes together where I gave her an extra look and an extra glance or would stare only at her during a whole scene just to see if anyone was noticing. I thought there was a nice wrinkle about Barney liking the chick that Ted wants. Though, really, I was just hoping that I'd get to 'F' her once and get it out of my system, but it was a good 'F.' It was a capital 'F!'" CBS / Via Netflix Cobie Smulders added, "I agree with all that Neil said. I think when she was in a relationship with Ted, and it came up, and they were like, 'You're going to hook up with Barney,' I was like, 'No way. That is not cool. They're like best friends!' I got kind of weirded out by it. Then I just feel like, in life, these things happen. That's one of the things that I love about our show: a lot of our writers take from their own personal experiences. At the beginning of the show, Carter Bays is Ted, and Craig Thomas is Marshall. It is based on their lives. So it's very much filled with their own life experiences. So I went that way in my mind of like, 'Listen, this stuff happens when you're a close group of friends. People hook up, and it happens.' Then, once we got together, I really enjoyed working with Neil. I enjoy our scenes so much, and I feel like it's a very interesting and comical pairing." CBS / Via Netflix 3. Britney Spears's guest appearance helped "save" the show. In a 2014 Reddit AMA, Carter said, "We got a call a few weeks after the writers' strike ended saying that Britney Spears wanted to be on our show. And she specifically wanted to be in the episode 'Ten Sessions,' which sent a chill down our spines, because that's the one where we meet Stella. I immediately imagined Britney playing Stella and had a minor panic attack, because it's such a big role and needed [a] proven, experienced actress like Sarah Chalke. But to her credit, Britney liked the character of Abby and wanted to play that part. So we said, 'Sure!' And by golly, she put our show on the map. It can't be overstated. Britney Spears rescued us from ever being on the bubble again. Thanks, Britney!" CBS / Via Netflix 4. Real-life couple Jana Rugan and Timothy Russo got engaged on the Season 2 finale! Since it's Jana's favorite show, Timothy got his brother, who's a comedy writer with a friend on the HIMYM writing staff, to help him arrange a tour of the set. Timothy told the New York Daily News, "I told him the [proposal] plan, and, a few days later, I get a call from my brother, saying, 'Do you want to propose on the show instead?' I couldn't believe it. I was, like, 'What do you mean?' He said in the season finale, they were writing in a proposal, and had planned to use extras, so [they] thought, 'What a great chance to do it for real.'" CBS / Via Netflix In the restaurant scene, Robin is served a champagne glass with an engagement ring in it that isn't meant for her. The real-life couple was placed as extras during rehearsals, but when the cameras started rolling, the director gave the signal. Timothy said, "The actors are sitting at the table, and the woman says, 'Whose ring is that?' And the guy says, 'I don't know, it's not mine,' and then I get up from our 'extras' table and say, 'It's mine.' And then I walked over and proposed to Jana. At first, she thought I was messing up the scene, then it dawned on her, and she started crying, and everyone was clapping. It was awesome." CBS / Via Netflix CBS / Via Netflix 5. Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders were b