When Ted wants nothing to do with Goliath National Bank revisiting its headquarters project, Barney uses his womanizing techniques to try and get Ted on board.
This episode provides examples of:
- Brick Joke: At the beginning of the episode, Barney says he will never buy dinner to "get the yes." However, in the end, Ted makes him do just this after he spends the episode using his pick-up artist strategies to get Ted to agree to design the new GNB tower.
- Call-Back: GNB decides to pick up the skyscraper project from Season 5, and Barney tries to convince Ted to take over the project.
- Continuity Nod: In the flashback to Marshall's gig with his funk band, he's wearing the Dr. Seuss hat he's seen wearing in "Intervention".
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Played for Laughs with Barney's attempts to "seduce" Ted into taking the GNB project. The conversations between Ted and Barney, and those between the rest of the gang, often make the situation seem indistinguishable from Barney seducing Ted for more conventional reasons.Robin: Oh, Ted. You are going to spread your legs and design that building.Ted: [aghast] I am not that kind of architect!
- Living Lie Detector: When Lily was little, she had a dog named "Bean", and every time the dog approached her with a big smile, she knew the dog pooped somewhere in the house. That's how she knows if Robin did something bad at the end of the story.Lily: Where's the poop, Robin?
- Shipper on Deck: Since the gang knows that Barney is using his seduction techniques on Ted, they reply in different occasions that Ted and Barney would look well together.
- Shout-Out: Ted and Marshall discuss the design flaws in the first Death Star, although their arguments are undermined by the future release of Rogue One, which revealed that the design flaws were intentional on the part of the designer, Galen Erso.
- Unfinished Business: The main theme of both subplots.
- Ted discarded his lifelong dream of adding a skyscraper to New York City's skyline because he got burnt out of working for big companies. And while he is happy now being a college professor, he still hasn't fulfilled his dream project.
- Robin didn't have a clean break up with Don, so every time he appears on TV, she would dial his number from memory and insult him while drunk. She would eventually move on from her break up by forgetting his number.
- As a gag, Lily still had unfinished business with a kid from a dojo. She would eventually go back and challenge him for a rematch.
- Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Downplayed, but Robin acts as one to Don throughout the episode, frequently calling him while drunk and issuing death threats. She gets better by the end after gaining a sense of closure.
