Friends And HIMYM Share One Character Between The Two Sitcoms
There's one girl that existed both in Friends and How I Met Your Mother universes, and the story of her relationships with the main characters is quite tragic, frankly speaking.
Summary:
- In Friends, Mike Hannigan dated a girl called Precious who he dumped on her birthday for Phoebe.
- In How I Met Your Mother, Ted Mosby dumped a girl called Natalie on her birthday, too — twice.
- Precious and Natalie are played by the same actress and share the same fate and character development, allowing us to assume it was the same person.
Friends is, without a doubt, one of the most legendary sitcoms in history that paved the way for many new shows. How I Met Your Mother is one of those shows that followed Friends’ example and included countless subtle and blatant references to it. But did you know that apart from Easter eggs, there was an entire character that HIMYM creatively “borrowed” from Friends?
Precious Dated Mike Hannigan In Friends
In the final seasons of Friends, Phoebe finally found the man she loved: Mike Hannigan. Unfortunately, their future plans didn’t match, and the two broke up. They still had strong feelings for each other, though, and when they spontaneously reunited, there was a small problem on their hands: Mike’s new girlfriend.
Her name was… Scratch that, no one knows what her name was, but everyone called her Precious. She had the ultimate golden retriever vibes, making Mike’s dumping her all the more heartbreaking — but not quite as heartbreaking as the fact that it happened on her birthday. Poor Precious was devastated by the news and, after her short appearance, left Friends forever, giving space to Mike and Phoebe.
How did her life go after that, you may wonder? To learn that, just watch How I Met Your Mother: Precious exists in that universe, too… To some extent.
Natalie Dated Ted Mosby In HIMYM
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In How I Met Your Mother, Natalie was one of Ted Mosby’s ex-girlfriends. She was portrayed by the same actress as Precious, Anne Dudek, and had a very similar fate. Natalie hated Ted for dumping her on her birthday three years prior to his convincing her to try again — and dumping her on her birthday once again. Yes, Ted Mosby is a jerk, but that’s beside the point.
The thing is, Natalie’s unfortunate fate perfectly matches that of Precious, and it makes sense that someone called “Precious” would have a real name, right? Her character in HIMYM is also in line with the events of Friends, with Precious-Natalie becoming more impulsive and bitter after having been left heartbroken on her birthday. Natalie’s more intelligent than Precious, but it also makes sense: quite a few years have passed since her sad experience with Mike Hannigan.