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Josh Radnor revisited How I Met Your Mother's long-standing pineapple incident in the latest episode of his podcast How We Made Your Mother. He discussed how the mystery, which spanned all nine seasons, was ultimately solved, not in an episode, but in a DVD extra.
"If I've been asked about one thing—like, I don't know that I've been asked about anything more—than, like, ‘What the hell was the pineapple?’ Like, and I know we kind of solved it in a DVD extra," Josh Radnor remarked.
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The incident in question first occurred in How I Met Your Mother Season 1, Episode 10, aired in 2005. According to a September 19, 2014, article by BuzzFeed, Ted Mosby (played by Radnor) got exceptionally drunk one night. The next morning, he woke up to find an unknown woman in his bed and a pineapple on his nightstand.
While the identity of the woman was later revealed, the origin of the pineapple remained a mystery for the entirety of the series. It wasn’t until the release of the complete How I Met Your Mother's DVD box set that viewers finally got an answer. As per the article by BuzzFeed, the DVD box set featured a deleted scene, not part of the original TV run, and this scene explained the origin of the pineapple.
In the aforementioned June 2 podcast episode, Radnor further acknowledged that although the deleted scene in the DVD box solved the pineapple mystery, "a lot of people haven’t seen it".
What was the mystery behind the pineapple that Josh Radnor's character woke up to in season one of How I Met Your Mother?
On September 19, 2014, BuzzFeed featured an exclusive deleted scene from the How I Met Your Mother complete series DVD that finally revealed how Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) woke up next to a pineapple in Season 1, Episode 10.
The deleted scene, originally part of Season 9, Episode 20, showed Lily (Alyson Hannigan) running away to The Captain’s (Kyle MacLachlan) home. Ted, Marshall (Jason Segel), and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) retraced her steps and ended up at Captain’s home, where they discovered she was pregnant.
In that scene, after the group calmed down, the Captain said a key line that eventually unlocked the pineapple mystery (as per an article by HuffPost). He spoke to Ted about Ted’s awful former girlfriend—Zoey—who had been married to the Captain. Hinting at how Ted stole Zoey from him, the Captain warned Ted.
"You stole one thing from me, one thing I can forgive. Steal more than one thing, well, that’s another matter," he said.
After that, the scene featured Ted leaving the townhouse when he noticed a pineapple outside the door. The Captain explained that he kept one pineapple each at his house and his townhouse in the city because it was
"An old sea captain’s tradition to put a pineapple on your porch as a symbol of hospitality".
After that, the deleted scene changed to a flashback of Ted in 2005, referencing Season 1, Episode 10, where Josh Radnor's character drunkenly stole the pineapple from The Captain's townhouse and put it on his nightstand
Josh Radnor discusses more details about the "pineapple" from
How I Met Your Mother season 1
During the aforementioned podcast episode, dated June 2, 2025, Josh Radnor discussed several details surrounding the pineapple, which later became one of the "beloved How I Met Your Mother props".
The American actor and filmmaker asked How I Met Your Mother co-creator Carter Bays about the choice of the fruit itself:
"So where did the notion of this pineapple... come from?" he asked.
This prompted Bays to attempt an explanation, stating that the "pineapple came out of the room" and that was the closest he could get to a real answer. However, Bays further dug deeper into the behind-the-scenes and shared that the show had many "quasi-animated moments" showcasing the wild, drunken memories from the night Ted got drunk.
But he stated that "the pineapple wasn’t in that list of things." In fact, Carter Bays revealed that the choice of the fruit was solely based on its visual appeal and randomness.
"I think pineapple's... a funny word. It's a funny fruit. It's a ridiculous-looking fruit," Bays added.
He further clarified that part of the decision to use a pineapple was simply because, visually, the pineapple looked "like a comedy".
This particular statement, made by Radnor, states that pineapple was indeed a "comedy fruit" because of its odd, "porcupine"-like appearance and size, and therefore, it was the "perfect size for a mysterious object".
At present, Josh Radnor co-hosts the podcast How We Made Your Mother with the CBS sitcom co-creator Craig Thomas.
Although the CBS sitcom itself ended long ago, fans can stream How I Met Your Mother on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu.
