"How I Met Your Mother" Conspiracies

" How I Met Your Mother" has always been able to throw its fanbase into a frenzied round of theorizing. After almost eight seasons, HIMYM diehards have become quite skilled when it comes to crafting and debunking theories about the show.

Regardless, with eight seasons of material on the books, there's evidence to support all three options. So, let's take a closer look at each one and see if we can make some sense of it all.

Theory #1: The Mother is dead
This theory is actually one of the oldest HIMYM theories out there, speculating that Ted is telling his two teenage children the story about how he met their mother after she’s passed away. So, what breadcrumbs support this idea? For one thing, the Mother has never interrupted Ted's epic tale. Wouldn’t she want to participate in telling a story like this one?
Add to that the fact that, while HIMYM has shown us flashforwards on several occasions, the Mother never appears in them.

Theory #2: The Mother's not dead... Ted is
Something that Ted said in “The Time Travelers” made me question whether we’re looking at the "the Mother is dead" theory all wrong:
“Until the end of my days ... and beyond.”
If the Mother is, in fact, deceased, why would Ted have focused on the end of his own days?If Ted is alive, shouldn't he have said that he’d love his future wife even after she’s passed away? Instead, we saw Ted offering the haunting pledge to love the Mother even after he’s gone.
Of course, that brings up the question of how he's telling this story. Well, maybe he’s not. It could be that Ted knew he was dying and recorded a bunch of videos of him telling his kids about his escapades when he was younger, some sort of parental advice he wouldn't be able to give since he was no longer alive.

Theory #3. Nobody's dead—HIMYM is a sitcom, and the theorists doth assume too much
HIMYM loves introducing new rules. The "the Mother is dead" and "Ted is dead" theories both require lots of assumptions in order to work; they force us to read into minor details of the show that probably mean very little.

Why is the Mother never in the room while Ted is telling stories? Odds are, she’s at work or out running errands. Why is Ted telling his kids about past girlfriends and hook-ups? The guy's done a lot of dumb stuff in his life—couldn’t this just be another blunder?

Culled from TV.com