Who is Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother?

Show

How I Met Your Mother

Played by

Neil Patrick Harris

First episode

“Pilot”Season 1, Episode 1, aired September 19, 2005

Role

Main cast

Network

CBS

Occupation

Mysterious executive at Goliath National Bank

Show run

2005 to 2014

Also known as

Swarley, Barney

Barney Stinson always wears a suit, always has a scheme, and always insists that tonight is going to be legendary. Played by Neil Patrick Harris, he begins as a shameless ladies' man with a secret playbook and slowly becomes one of the most surprising character arcs on How I Met Your Mother.

On How I Met Your Mother, Barney Stinson's story runs through Robin Scherbatsky (Ex-wife), Ted Mosby (Best Friend), Marshall Eriksen (Slap Bet Rival), Lily Aldrin (Friend), Tracy McConnell (Friend), and Ranjit (Driver).

Who is Barney Stinson?

Barney met Ted at MacLaren's years before the series begins and promptly declared that he would teach Ted how to live. He is wealthy, well connected, and deliberately vague about his job at a giant corporation, brushing off every question with a dismissive "Please." Late in the series, the joke pays off when the gang learns that PLEASE is actually his job title.

He was raised on Staten Island by his single mother, Loretta, alongside his half-brother James, and he grew up not knowing who his father was. His mother once told him it was game show host Bob Barker, and young Barney believed her. Those childhood wounds, revealed bit by bit, explain a lot about the grown man.

Personality and comedy

Barney is the show's biggest comic engine. He lives by the Bro Code, keeps a Playbook of absurd pickup schemes, treats any dare as a chance to say "Challenge accepted," and coins catchphrases faster than anyone can keep up. "Suit up!" and "Legen, wait for it, dary!" became pop culture staples.

Underneath the bravado, the show makes clear that Barney is terrified of being alone. A flashback in season one reveals that he was once an earnest young man planning to join the Peace Corps, until his girlfriend left him for a suit-wearing businessman. He reinvented himself in that man's image, and the series gradually peels the costume back.

Key storylines

Barney's love life drives much of the later series. He sleeps with Robin in season three, realizes he has real feelings for her, and dates her briefly in season five before they agree they make each other miserable. In season six he finally meets his father, Jerome Whittaker, played by John Lithgow, and begins to confront why he fears commitment. He gets engaged to Quinn in season seven before that relationship falls apart.

In "The Final Page," Barney burns his Playbook and proposes to Robin, revealing that his recent relationship with her coworker was a long con to win her back. The final season takes place over their wedding weekend, and they marry in "The End of the Aisle." The finale reveals they divorce after three years, Barney slides back into his old ways, and then a one-night stand leaves him the father of a daughter, Ellie, who changes him for good.

Casting and legacy

The creators originally pictured Barney as a big, John Belushi type, and Jim Parsons was among those who auditioned. Neil Patrick Harris, best known at the time as Doogie Howser, M.D., got the part after an audition in which he dove across the room during a laser tag scene and crashed into a wall. The character's rulebook even became a real book: The Bro Code, published in 2008 under Barney's name, was actually written by show writer Matt Kuhn.

Harris earned four straight Primetime Emmy nominations for the role, from 2007 to 2010. Barney is widely seen as the breakout character of How I Met Your Mother, and he even turns up in a 2023 episode of the spinoff How I Met Your Father, insisting he is now in recovery from his womanizing days.

Barney Stinson: frequently asked questions

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