‘How I Met Your Mother’: Where Did Ted Mosby Get the Pineapple?
Where the heck did that pineapple come from? Way back in the first season of How I Met Your Mother, main character Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) discovered a mysterious pineapple at his bedside. However, he had no recollection of how the fruit got there. The rest of the How I Met Your Mother clan may have moved on from the mystery after that, but Ted continued to think of the incident until season 9. Like Ted, many fans always wondered about the pineapple’s origins. Has the mystery ever been solved, or will The Pineapple Incident live on?
What exactly is ‘The Pineapple Incident’?
In season 1 episode 10, titled “The Pineapple Incident,” Ted woke up with a woman in his bed, but he couldn’t remember her name. To make matters worse, she faced away from him in bed, so he couldn’t even see her face. Meanwhile, a pineapple rested on his bedside table, and he had no idea where it came from.
Ted left the woman in his bed and headed out to consult his friends on the problem. He realized that he had gotten blackout drunk the night before, and wondered if Robin (Cobie Smulders) may have been the woman in his bed. After all, he had drunkenly called her during his wild night out. Ted and his friends worked together to retrace his steps and discover the woman’s identity. Soon enough, the woman woke up, revealed herself as Trudy (Danica McKellar), and helped fill in the blanks from the night.
Unfortunately, Trudy had no idea where the pineapple came from, either. Ted and his friends decided to eat the pineapple, leaving fans to wonder about where the architect found it.
The mystery was solved in a ‘How I Met Your Mother’ deleted scene
It took nine years, but How I Met Your Mother did finally reveal the truth. However, the answer to the Pineapple Incident could not be found in any of the series’ aired episodes. In 2014, after How I Met Your Mother ended, a DVD box set of the series included some of the show’s deleted scenes. One such scene finally put The Pineapple Incident to rest, as seen in an exclusive BuzzFeed release.
The deleted scene came from season 9 episode 20, “Daisy,” when Lily (Alyson Hannigan) ran off to The Captain’s house after her big fight with Marshall (Jason Segel). Ted, Marshall, and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) found their way to The Captain’s house to discover how Lily ended up there. Apparently, Ted discovered something else, too.
In the clip, Ted said his goodbyes to The Captain and noticed that there was a pineapple sitting on the porch. He asked The Captain about the fruit, prompting the boating expert to explain that it was an old sailor’s tradition. The Captain revealed that he kept a pineapple at his manor, as well as one at his “townhouse in the city.” As it turns out, all those years ago, a drunk Ted stole the pineapple from The Captain’s townhouse and brought it with him to his bedside table.
The ‘How I Met Your Mother’ creators wanted to leave the mystery alone
Had it not been for fan requests to receive an answer to The Pineapple Incident, the mystery may have never been solved. As E! News reported, show co-creator Carter Bays once revealed in a Reddit Ask Me Anything about How I Met Your Mother‘s final season that he and co-creator Craig Thomas wanted to leave the incident open.
“We had always said we’d never reveal it, but now I’d say it’s 50-50. It’s always been an appealing idea to us artistically to leave it as the one mystery that never gets solved,” Bays said at the time. “But on the other hand, we do have an explanation for it that we like so it may make its way into these last few episodes.”
Bays and Thomas did ultimately decide to include The Pineapple Incident’s answer, but they then cut the scene due to the episode’s time constraints.
