No Cobra Kai without Harold and Kumar

I believe that the Netflix show Cobra Kai would not have existed without the movie Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, via the show How I Met Your Mother.

This post is the cinema / TV equivalent of "No F-15 without XB-70".

(I'm taking a risk with my readers' free time by linking them to TVTropes, because TVTropes will ruin your life!)

Harold and Kumar (2004)

I had no intention of seeing this movie in 2006. I was a summer-camp counselor out with my friends: our kids were all asleep in their bunks being watched by a few counselors on night duty, so we all went out to see Cars. But we arrived too late for the only showing that would get us back before curfew. While the group was deciding what to do, I was idly watching the screens around the theater, which were showing a preview for Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. I thought it looked like the dumbest movie I'd ever seen and very much not something I'd enjoy. So of course the group decided that we should watch it, and I bought a ticket along with everyone else; what was I going to do instead?

Side note:  now that I'm looking at the dates, the movies came out two years apart: am I misremembering the movie we intended to see, or was the theater showing a two-year-old movie for giggles?

I ended up actually liking Harold and Kumar so I'm glad I went. But one of the notable features of the film was this guy:

Neil Patrick Harris was known the time for Doogie Howser, MD, and that was about it. That was also the joke from Harold and Kumar: this wholesome child-actor icon was playing himself as a hard-partying womanizer with no self-control. He was hilarious in every scene (remarkably few given his impact on the movie). My theory is that Harold and Kumar led to some combination of

1. Neil Patrick Harris realizing that he missed acting and wanted to get back into it, and
2. Various types in Hollywood realized that Neil Patrick Harris was still around and could act

So his next major role was a hard-partying womanizer with no self-control in...

How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014)

Neil Patrick Harris played Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM), who started as a very close model of the Neil Patrick Harris from Harold and Kumar.  His drug use was toned down, but he remained over-the-top at all times.

One of Barney's quirks was his thinking that many villains in cinema were the actual heroes.  That included him revealing in season 4, episode 15 "The Stinsons" that he thought the real "Karate Kid" was Johnny Lawrence / William Zabka, the bully from that film, not Danny LaRusso / Ralph Macchio.

Both actors appeared in season 8, episode 22 "The Bro-Mitzvah" as themselves and the alternate reading of Johnny and Danny are heavily discussed (spoilers for that episode below).

I have to imagine that Zabka and Macchio had some downtime on the set and discussed the old days, and HIMYM either recreated interest in the Karate Kid franchise or reminded Hollywood that interest still existed.  And some combination of that led to...

Cobra Kai (2018-2025)

In Cobra Kai, Johnny Lawrence is portrayed very sympathetically, including his character making same claim as appeared in HIMYM that Danny LaRusso's tournament-winning kick at the end of the first movie (spoiler?) was illegal.  Throughout the show, both characters are flawed but understandable.  The show struggled with this sometimes as sometimes it seemed to become "Poor Communication Kills:  the Series", but it wouldn't have happened at all without a 2004 stoner comedy.

Discussion

Do you see a the same throughline from Harold and Kumar to Cobra Kai?  Have any inside information that supports or invalidates my theory?  Let me know via email at blog@saprobst.com or in the comments below!