How I Met Your Mother: 10 Times The Main Characters Should Probably Have Gone To Jail

The How I Met Your Mother cast of characters has had their share of fun, and some of their antics were pretty wild, even too wild to be considered legal in some instances. From stealing animals to jumping on top of moving cars to trespassing in jealous rages, the gang has done it all.

Some of their actions were too problematic, and perhaps even qualified as a misdemeanor (and most of these were committed by Barney Stinson, of course). But when did the main characters of the series do something that could have landed in jail?

10 The Naked Man

The Naked Man is definitely a problematic ‘play’, and for once, Barney didn’t come up with it. It is Robin’s date who decides that it is acceptable to strip naked and flash his date without consent or encouragement, and tells the gang that it works ‘two out of three times’. Robin, though shocked, wasn’t completely put off by her date Mitch’s Naked Man act, but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to do this.

The same tactic does not work for Barney when he tries it on his date. The woman in question was clearly shocked and possibly traumatized at his gesture, which is why she screamed at him and berated him, forcing Barney to leave. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable on her part to call the cops on him, and for Barney to have spent the night in jail.

9 When Barney Pretended To Be Ted

In the second season, Ted and Robin get into a huge fight; later when Robin and Lily head to the bar, Robin learns that Ted was chatting with an attractive kickboxing instructor about kickboxing and then left the bar with her to go to Marshall’s law school party. Robin followed Ted into the party only to learn from a man named Brad that ‘Ted Mosby, the architect’ left with his date to go dancing in the club. At the club, she learns that Ted and the woman have moved to the apartment across the street.

Robin is of course, convinced that Ted is cheating on her, but on reaching the apartment Robin discovers that it was Barney who had been introducing himself as Ted Mosby, to hit on women, while the real Ted is at work. Impersonating someone else is actually a class B misdemeanor in many states, and Barney could have easily landed up in jail if someone reported this. 

8 When Ted And Barney Were In A Fight

It is quite unreasonable to resort to violence to get a regular booth at a bar. Doug from MacLaren’s started a fight because his favorite customers couldn’t sit at their usual table, which is quite uncalled for. Though Barney and Ted pretended to join in, Doug was the only one who actively engaged in the scuffle.

Later on, Barney and Ted, along with Doug are sued by the two men who were assaulted, and Ted and Barney have to come clean about how they were never involved. Lying about being in a fight is no criminal offense, but what happened next definitely was. Ted punches Doug when he mocks him about his break-up and when Doug punches back, he is again punched by Marshall. And though Doug most likely never filed a complaint against them since they were regulars at the bar, Ted and Marshall could have been arrested for this attack.

7 Ted Committed Credit Card Fraud

In the third season, Ted basically commits credit card fraud and is never held accountable or charged by the law. On Saint Patrick’s Day, while he is out partying with Barney, he realizes that the universe is rewarding him for his bad deeds, so he purposefully ditches his date, orders drinks on someone else’s tab, and kisses a married woman. 

The tab- holder eventually finds Ted in the bar and punches him, but Ted was able to drink for free on the same tab the whole night and was never held accountable. But if it was the real world, chances are Ted would have been charged with credit card fraud. 

6 When Barney And Marshall Lied To Ted About His Job

Barney and Marshall lied to Ted about his work at the Goliath National Bank; Ted who was hired to design the new headquarters of the bank, meets a design supervisory task force, only to realize that it was a ruse planned by Barney and Marshall to keep Ted from finding out that the project has been scrapped and Ted is to be fired. Since Ted was on contractual pay for two months, Barney and Marshall come up with an elaborate ruse instead of telling him the truth.

This is a sort of corporate fraud; not only did Barney and Marshall lie to a fellow employee about his future of the company, but they also deceived their own company and lied to their boss, and wasted Ted’s potential on an abandoned project when he could have been using the time to look for other jobs. If the three men weren’t friends, Barney and Marshall would have had some serious explaining to do, maybe in court.

5 Lily Rode On Top Of A Car

In the fifth season, Ted, Marshall, and Lily head to Chicago on a nostalgia trip because Ted and Marshall’s favorite pizzeria Gazzola was closing down. They reminisced about the road trips that they would embark on in college to get to Gazzola, and binge on jerky and highly caffeinated soda named Tantrum. As they are headed back to New York from their Bed and Breakfast, they realize they’d forgotten Lily, and a few seconds later they found Lily suddenly jumping on top of their moving car.

Clearly, this maneuver was scripted for some laughs, but Lily would surely be arrested for pulling this off on a highway; the sequence basically wanted to convey that Lily had consumed too much Tantrum which according to Ted has ‘the highest caffeine level legally available over the counter,’ and it obviously provided Lily with a burst of energy.

4 Barney’s Playbook

Barney’s playbook essentially listed ways of tricking women into sleeping with him under false pretenses; ‘the plays’ were just lies and disguises that Barney used to lie to women for one-night stands. And though it’s not a criminal offense, he deceived women into sex acts, which brings in the question of consent.

If no one could haul him to court for lying to them, he did deserve to be penalized in some way for designing something so problematic. In fact, some plays were elaborate to the point of being quite deceitful, when Barney actually messed with the minds of women to confuse them and then made his move.

3 Barney Sold A Woman

Barney actually admitted to pulling a Chuck Bass and selling a woman to a stranger, which is surely criminal. “I’m pretty sure I once sold a woman. I didn’t speak the language, but I shook a guy’s hand, he gave me the keys to his Mercedes and I just left her there,” he tells someone.

Aside from being totally cringe-worthy, this moment also goes to show how HIMYM simply put a veneer of comedy over some really toxic predatory behavior by simply refusing to take them seriously.

2 Ted Projected Stalker Tendencies

It has to be addressed how Ted’s behavior towards women was creepy and problematic, and many times he went into a full-blown stalker mode to pursue someone, especially if he believed they were rejecting him. “When you love someone you don’t ever stop. Ever. Even when people roll their eyes or call you crazy. Even then, especially then. You just, you don’t give up,” Ted was quoted saying once. This line itself goes to show that he systematically overlooked consent.

A good example would be the episode titled ‘The Window’ where Ted gets a call from an old woman who tells him that the “window is open”. This was a reference to Ted’s college crush Maggie who was apparently never single, and Ted was essentially trying to pin her down in a relationship and set up an elaborate network just to keep tabs on Maggie’s life.

1 Zoey Stole A Horse And A Van Full Of Rabbits

Zoey had already been arrested after she had set a car on fire after the 2009 Guns n’ Roses concert. But she also did a bunch of other illegal things, and it’s a wonder she never got in trouble with the law for any of these.

Once as part of a protest she chained herself to a century-old redwood tree, she stole a police horse at an anti-war rally, and she also stole a van full of rabbits from a beauty company. Now, everything that she did was obviously done in the spirit of activism, however, she could easily be arrested for any of these actions.

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