How I Met Your Mother: they make an appearance in the spin-off How I Met Your Father!

The Captain (Kyle MacLachlan)

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Ex-husband of Zoey Pierson (Jennifer Morrison), George Van Smoot, aka Captain (Kyle MacLachlan), is a wealthy boat lover in How I Met Your Mother. After her divorce from Zoey, who had a brief fling with Ted (Josh Radnor), the Captain engages Lily (Alyson Hannigan) as a consultant to buy paintings for a time before marrying Becky, Robin’s former colleague.

So we see him again years later in episode 9 of season 1 of How I Met Your Father cheating on his wife Becky. And the Captain’s story will be important for the rest of Sophie’s adventures (Hilary Duff). In episode 10, he is negotiating the terms of the divorce with Becky, an event that will have consequences on the life of the heroine.

Becky (Laura Bell Bundy)

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In How I Met Your Mother, Becky (Laura Bell Bundylisten)) is Robin’s former colleague on television. After starring in a commercial with her famous song “Boats, Boats, Boats”, she falls in love with the Captain (Kyle MacLachlan) and marries him. We therefore find her years later in How I Met Your Father, where she discovers that the Captain is cheating on her.

In revenge, she demands, during their divorce negotiations, the seizure of her boats so that she can destroy them, even the one in Australia on which Ian was working (Daniel Augustine), the marine biologist with whom Sophie had a Tinder date in the first episode of the series. In the Season 1 finale, Ian returns to New York and bumps into Sophie at the photo exhibit she is attending.

Carl (Joe Nieves)

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This is one of the key characters of How I Met Your Mother who accompanied the band from near and far during their evenings at MacLaren’s: the bartender Carl. In How I Met Your Father, he’s back, now bald but still at MacLaren’s, to pour a drink for Sophie (Hilary Duff), who is wondering about her feelings for Jesse (Chris Lowell).

Robin ScherbatskyCobie Smulders

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In How I Met Your Mother, she was the new girl in Ted’s band, who knew how to make a place for herself. In the final episode of season 1 of How I Met Your Father, we find Robin (Cobie Smulders) at MacLaren’s sipping a drink and advising Sophie on her romantic relationships. Robin is still a journalist and she is divorced from Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), at this precise moment in 2022.

Bonus: Ted, Marshall and Lily’s apartment

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Another more material link between How I Met Your Mother and How I Met Your Father: Ted and Marshall’s apartment (Jason Segel), which later became Marshall and Lily’s! We learn from the pilot that Jesse and Sid (Suraj Sharma) live there and managed to find this apartment thanks to an ad from an “old couple” (namely Marshall and Lily) on the alumni website of Wesleyan University, the college where Marshall, Lily and Ted studied. And they left a small souvenir: the two sabers hung above the fireplace!