Once Ted finds out that the gang had planned and cancelled an intervention for his engagement with Stella, he insists that they tell him what they were going to say anyway.
This episode provides examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch: Marshall claims that Robin is responsible for a hole in the wall, leading into a flashback where she plays hockey in the apartment, implying that she hit the puck into the wall. Instead, Lily stops her, and when Ted breaks up the resulting catfight between them, Barney is infuriated and punches the hole in the wall. As Ted correctly points out, it's quite a stretch to say that this was Robin's fault.
- Brick Joke: When remembering why Ted had to pay the deposit, one of the damages included Ted's collection of encyclopedias, while pronouncing it "encyclopaedia". Back to present day and Ted discovers that the gang was planning on staging an intervention for him, he requests Robin to read her letter for him. It turns out that she didn't write one for the Stella issue, but did write one for his pronunciation of the word "encyclopaedia" because he sounded pretentious.
- Cat Fight: Lily and a drunk canadian Robin almost get into one in a flashback, only for it to be broken by Ted, much to Barney's fury.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Once the gang realizes they're getting a bit too much into interventions, they stage an... Intervention intervention!
- Europeans Are Kinky: The gang is immediately unimpressed once it turns out that the 22-year-old Barney was making out with in his old man make-up was French.Robin: That's like playing tennis with the net down.
- Flash Forward: While everyone is getting ready to go on their separate ways (Ted moving to New Jersey with Stella, Lily and Marshall going to their new place and Robin moving to Japan), a year later the gang is having a bottle of scotch at McLaren's and they still have the apartment, which means Ted and Robin didn't go through with their plans.
- Foreshadowing: The Flash Forward lets us know that Ted won't be moving to New Jersey.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: In the flashback, Barney was reaching for his phone to record Lily and Robin's catfight and is angered when Ted breaks it up at the last second. He angrily shouts "Ted! Nooo! You never break up a girl fight! NEVER!!!!!" and then punches a hole in the wall with his bare hand.
- Jerkass Has a Point: When the rest of the gang staged an intervention for Barney and his pyrotechnic magic tricks, he told them that interventions are supposed to be for helping a person confront problems that are negatively affecting their livelihood, not to just get them to stop doing things you find annoying. Later on they did accept that they were doing too many interventions and stopped. At least until the present-day events.
- Likes Older Men: After the "Time Traveler" strategy worked on a girl, Barney challenges himself to get laid while dressed up as an old man. He succeeds, but the gang immediately tell him that it doesn't count, since the girl is French.
- Mondegreen Gag: In The Tag we see yet another intervention taking place. This time for Barney who by now got far too much into playing an old man.Robin: Barney, this is an intervention
Barney: I'm sorry! I can't hear you!
Marshall: Alright. Enough with the old man bit!
Barney: What about the old sand pit?
Lily: Let it go!
Barney: Let it snow? I love that old diddy.
Ted: I'm getting my flail.
Barney: You're setting sail? - Playing with Fire: One of the final interventions they did before stopping them (until present day, at least), was because of Barney's habit of doing dangerous magic tricks with fire, which caused the first Intervention banner to be destroyed. Barney still does them despite their complaints.
- Staging an Intervention: The gang started staging interventions for each other after they saw an intervention for Stuart's alcohol problem. After they made it a frequent thing, and decided that they needed to stop it, Ted discovers that his friends intended to stage one last intervention for him, because they thought he was moving too fast with Stella.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Ted asks why they wanted to have an intervention for him, Marshall lets it slip that it's "Not Stella" in a panic fit.
- Red Herring Twist: When the gang remembers how many of the damaged spots in the apartment happened, Marshall gets into a hole in the wall next to the door, and claims it was on Ted because it was Robin's fault back when she was still dating him. Then in the flashback, the guys bet Robin to shoot the puck through the door, but Lily catches it, she and Robin start to fight over it, and Ted breaks up their fight, which angers Barney enough to punch a hole into the wall. In short, it's not directly Robin's fault.
- Techno Babble: Courtesy of Future Barney.Barney: I have to get back to the reality accelerator before the vortex closes!
