Even though it has been a good few years since How I Met Your Mother ended, streaming has kept the show in many people’s binge watching rotations- even if the ending left a lot of fans furious. Over the course of nine years and 208 episodes, there were countless bad decisions and what seems like an endless stream of side characters that came in and out of the lives of the core group.
Some of them were good people, and some of them were bad enough to make the main characters look practically like saints- not a small feat after some of the terrible things viewers saw them get up to.
Arthur Hobbs
He manages to show up time after time just to ruin people’s lives. First he’s Marshall’s shouting boss at the law firm he works at for a while. Then he shows up at GNB when Marshall works there, adding insult to injury when he doesn’t even Marshall.
Arthur tries to keep him from getting another job after Marshall leaves GNB, purely out of spite. Then his advice to Barney about the prenup ends up ruining the relationship with Quinn- seemingly only because of his own bitterness towards his ex-wife.
Hammond Druthers
He’s obnoxious in his own right, and the only thing that puts him further down the list than Arthur is that Lily made things even worse when she tried to solve his bad behavior the same way she would with one of her kindergarteners.
He’s an arrogant jerk, and he treats everyone like they’re scum beneath his feet. It’s probably not much of a surprise that, like Hobbs, his relationship ended in divorce (and probably because both of their wives found them intolerable).
Stella
Stella seems like a nice enough person out of the gate. She isn’t willing to compromise her professional lines for Ted; she only gives and gives him a change when he’s no longer her patient. It’s pretty quickly apparent after, though, that maybe she isn’t the best person around.
She’s willing to lie about how she feels about Star Wars to Ted. She never actually has a discussion about where they would live, instead declaring it and refusing to even consider differently. She of course then springs the sudden wedding on Ted, only to leave him at the altar. To compound her sins, she seemingly had no problem letting Tony make The Wedding Bride, casting Ted as the bad guy.
Judy
She’s a loving mother and wife, but she’s a terrible mother-in-law to Lily. She even goes so far one time as to tell Lily it doesn’t matter, because Marshall will go to heaven and Lily won’t. Lily’s own personality faults aside, it seems like Judy isn’t ever willing to give Lily a chance, instead just choosing to see her as a stuck up city person who will never belong in their family.
It definitely seems like she’s completely unwilling to give even a little bit in her relationship with her daughter-in-law, even when Lily tries to make amends and fit in with the family.
Mickey
The only reason Mickey is higher in the list than Judy is that it seems like he does genuinely care, he’s just a non-functioning human most of his life and fails even when he tries.
He’s ruined event after event in Lily’s life- ittedly, for selfish reasons- but it does seem like he at least has good intentions. They never work out, although as his part in the series moves on he does start to become a better person, and turns out to be a much better grandfather than he was a father.
Zoey
She appears so far down the list just because of her relationship with Ted, even though their ideals are so far apart from each other. She’s just as ionate about saving the Arcadian as Ted is about attaining his dream of building a skyscraper in the city.
There’s a reason that before they actually got to know each other, the group grew to like her after meeting her at the bar one night, and recognizing her as the activist that Ted was at odds with- she’s a fun person to be around, and Ted isn’t always the best judge of character.
Victoria
Other than Robin, Victoria is easily Ted’s best girlfriend until he meets Tracy. She’s kind, caring, funny, and seems like an all-around great person. The moral issues with her leaving her wedding with Klaus seems to be more than balanced out by the fact that Klaus also ran away from the wedding.
If anything, Ted is (unsurprisingly) the bad person in the relationship, leading to their eventual breakup because he can’t let Robin go as a friend. Considering his past with Robin (especially where Victoria was involved)- and his future- Victoria wasn’t wrong.
Ranjit
Other than the children in the framing story, Ranjit is the only secondary character to appear in every single season of the show.
He turns up time after time for the group’s big moments, and he’s always there to give them advice or get them where they need to be. He’s almost always cheerful, and never really gives you a reason not to love him.
James
James is like a more grounded Barney- even though he has his own problems in his relationship, it’s far easier to overlook his infidelity when it isn’t with characters we’re familiar with.
He’s fun to be around, and does a good job of being one of the few people who seem to be able to keep Barney under any sort of control. Much like his little brother, he eventually does get a handle on his life and starts to make better choices, and it seems like his decision to stop messing around stuck.
Marvin
Marvin doesn’t seem to have had any of the weaknesses that his wife had. He was upset that Lily wasn’t going to change her name, but it seemed to be more out of obliviousness than the anger that Judy showed over it.
He was a great dad, and Marshall seemed to have taken a lot of who he was as a person from him. If he had one fault, it was that he couldn’t stay out of other people’s business, but never in a malicious way- he was just used to being a central part of his son’s life.