10 Small Details You Only Notice Rewatching How I Met Your Mother
3. Barney And Chopsticks
In the Season 7 episode The Ducky Tie, we learn that Barney has been subtly manipulating Marshall for years in order to win a bet he hadn't even made yet. Every time Marshall would suggest going out to Shinjitsu, Barney would sneeze, forging the association in Marshall's mind to the point where Marshall would suggest Shinjitsu every time Barney would sneeze. While he emphasized disliking the food at Shinjitsu, Barney secretly taught himself their cooking style, in order to one day bet Marshall that he could perform the signature Shinjitsu tricks, including the shrimp in the pocket.
In order to keep up his ruse, Barney has pretended to be unable to use chopsticks since as far back as Season 1. Any time the gang eat with chopsticks, Barney struggles silently in the background.
It seems that, like Barney, the How I Met Your Mother writers were also in it for the long haul. They wrote in the chopstick gag for the punchline to a joke they hadn't even written yet.