5 HIMYM Scenes That Crushed Our Souls (Besides the Finale), Ranked

How I Met Your Mother has made fans weep on multiple occasions, be it happy tears or devastated wails. Here are five times this show broke our hearts beyond any repair.

5. Bad News (Season 6 Episodes 13)

You don’t expect to shed so many tears when you watch a sitcom, and yet you do every time you watch the scene where Lily tells Marshall that his dad died. By the way, Jason Segel’s reaction to this devastating news is 100% genuine – he reportedly had no idea how the episode would end prior to filming the scene.

4. Tick Tick Tick (Season 7 Episode 10)

This episode has given so much hope to Barney and Robin’s shippers, only to take it all way with a single scene. When Robin arrives at MacLaren’s with Kevin and shakes her head as if in response to Barney’s silent question, Barney’s heart is immediately broken – and so are ours. Barney didn’t deserve this at all.

3. Symphony of Illumination (Season 7 Episode 12)

How I Met Your Mother has had fans bawling their eyes out lots of times, but the episode where Robin finds out that she can’t have children is one hell of a tear-jerker. Watching such a strong woman going through this horrible thing all on her own is terrifyingly realistic. However, the Christmas display scene where Ted tries to cheer Robin up is so wholesome and sweet.

2. The Time Travelers (Season 8 Episode 20)

Many fans consider this episode as one of the show’s best. It’s beautifully written and performed, but the ending has crushed us. Ted spends the whole episode dealing with Barney and the future versions of himself and Barney, trying to decide whether to go to Robots vs. Wrestlers.

In the end, it turns out that Ted has been sitting at the bar all by himself with a single ticket to the event – the rest of the gang was busy doing something else.

1. Vesuvius (Season 9 Episode 19)

This episode features the biggest hint at what’s to come in the series finale. When Ted tells Tracy that Robin’s mom ended up coming to her wedding and calls it “a surprise ending,” Tracy says that there’s nothing surprising about it and asks a rhetorical question, “What mother is going to miss her daughter’s wedding?” Ted completely breaks down upon hearing these words – and he’s not the only one.