Are Barney Stinson of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and Count Olaf of ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ the Same Person?

By now, surely you’ve realized that How I Met Your Mother’s Barney Stinson and Count Olaf from Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events bear more than a passing resemblance. Sure, IMDb will tell you that they’re both played by Neil Patrick Harris, but we’re here to tell you that the connection goes much deeper than that. How much deeper? Who’s to say, really? There are those who believe that Barney and the Count are related. In darker corners of the Internet, there are those who say that they’re…

THE SAME PERSON!

We will leave it to you, distinguished readers, to separate fact from fiction. Here are the facts; do with them what you will.

Wrong

Now, the layman might miss the resemblance here, much as one untrained in the art of handwriting analysis might miss the significance of a dotted “i” or a crossed “t.” Note the gutturalness of the vowel, how deep in the throat the “o” is pronounced. It might take you several listens to notice the similarity, so feel free to replay the accompanying videos. We’ll wait.

Money

An astute (some would say obsessive) viewer did the math and calculated that Barney spent some $56,000 a year on suits alone. That’s quite a lot of money. You’d have to work very hard to make that much money just for clothes — to say nothing of room and board.

Over the years, one would grow very accustomed to nice things, and were those things taken away suddenly by, say, a stock market crash, it would be easy to see how someone could become the sort of person who would, say, marry or murder, or marry and murder, a 14-year-old girl to reclaim that lavish lifestyle.

Good Looks

The stunning cheekbones. The aquiline nose. The eyebrows (having them). While pride in one’s appearance isn’t an attribute shared only by Barney and the Count, there is a certain delusional quality to their pride that puts them in a much smaller percentile of … well, for lack of a better word, narcissists.

No, you know what? That is the right word.

Ego

Another thing these two men have in common is that they are dreamers. Nobody thought America could break away from Great Britain, but we dreamed big, and then we did it. Could Count Olaf be a model or a playboy? Does Barney Stinson actually fly jet planes? What does it matter? America is the land of dreams. USA! USA! USA!

Disguises

Much like a fingerprint, a disguise is as unique as its owner. Don’t believe it? Look at these pictures. You’ll be surprised to learn that they don’t show the same costumes. The ones on the left are the Count’s and the ones on the right are Barney’s. Impossible to tell the difference, right?

Dressing as a Woman

There is a grand theatrical tradition of men dressing as women onstage. Indeed, it was once illegal for women to be actors, so men were forced to dress as women. After centuries of the practice, techniques have been devised that can make even the most masculine of men look like the most feminine of ladies. That both Barney and Olaf have defeated those long years of tradition and look gawdawful speaks to something deeply hereditary in their genetic structure.

Marshall’s Grandpa Olaf

Grandpa Olaf is the reason why Marshall wears a nightshirt. You might think to yourself, “Self, if Count Olaf is Marshall’s grandfather, then it’s simply not possible for him to also be Barney Stinson.” Clearly, you know nothing of time travel. Please go rent Back to the Future I through III. We’ll wait.

Younger Women

As Barney has made abundantly clear, he’s no creep: He will hit only on young women who are of age. Similarly, the Count’s interest in marrying Viola isn’t sexual — he just wants to marry her so that he can steal her money. There’s nothing creepy about that at all.

Words of Wisdom

A lot of people selfishly hoard their hard-won life experience, but Stinson and Olaf are both very giving in this regard. Think of it this way: Would you rather be forewarned about the dangers of sex in a porta-potty? Or would you prefer to know about them in advance? Do you want to wait until you’re an old man to find out how to avoid loneliness? Or will you heed the advice of someone who’s been there?

Theater

Legions of theater scholars spend their days poring over yellowing copies of Elizabethan-era plays trying to uncover the identity of Shakespeare. They do chemical analyses of the ink; they run the text through powerful computers that uncover similar uses of grammar and vocabulary. If you ran the text of The Marvelous Marriage and The Barney Stinson Theatre Experience, do you know what you would find?

No, seriously. Do you know? The Folger Shakespeare Library isn’t returning our calls.

Mother

After nine seasons, it was revealed on HIMYM that Cobie Smulders wasn’t the mother, causing an uproar the likes of which hadn’t been heard since the M*A*S*H finale caused a water surge in the New York sewers when millions flushed their toilets simultaneously. In ASOUE, she is the mother, not just the weird tacked-on happy-ending sort-of-mother-but-not-really. Coincidence? Possibly. Not a coincidence? Definitely.

A Series of Unfortunate Events is currently streaming on Netflix.