How CBS’ How I Met Your Mother led to the Karate Kid revival in Cobra Kai, according to William Zabka

Should we be thanking Neil Patrick Harris for Cobra Kai? Maybe.

Cobra Kai wasn’t built overnight. Putting together a great karate dojo (and hit television series) takes patience, dedication, and a little bit of help from Neil Patrick Harris.

The 1984 film The Karate Kid portrayed Johnny Lawrence and his dojo Cobra Kai as villains. However, the Netflix series Cobra Kai has put William Zabka’s Johnny Lawrence in the spotlight, showing hidden depths to the character and the dojo. Who could’ve seen this coming? Well…someone named Barney Stinson.

The television sitcom How I Met Your Mother had a running joke where Neil Patrick Harris’ character Barney would sympathize with the villains of popular movies, including Johnny Lawrence. Zabka would go on to guest star in numerous episodes of the series in 2013 and 2014. By 2018, he was starring Cobra Kai, which seemingly built on Barney’s view that Lawrence was a misunderstood hero.

During a panel at GalaxyCon Raleigh, Zabka was asked if his HIMYM guest spots led to the creation of Cobra Kai. “That’s a great question. A lot of people ask that and wonder that, including Neil Patrick Harris himself. We’ve talked about this. I think that having Barney Stinson embrace Johnny Lawrence as the real hero of The Karate Kid didn’t hurt anything, and you know he also thought that Darth Vader and Hans Gruber were also the heroes of their movies, so you know where he was coming from.”

“To show up on a hit network show, that was an Emmy-winning show, and do the whole ninth season, I’m so thankful to that, to the writers, to the directors, to the entire cast, I love those people. It was really surreal to be there. I come in, and I’m playing Billy Zabka, so I’m sitting at a table with Neil Patrick Harris, but you just see all their names, Barney Stinson, Ted Mosby, and then Billy Zabka as himself. And I’m like, how am I even here.”

But did it have any role in creating Cobra Kai? Zabka can’t say for sure, but he thinks it helped the momentum. “I don’t know, did that have anything to do with the show? If anything, I think it might have been a little proof that there was an audience out there for this, an appetite for it, but it kind of went along with a lot of other things in pop culture at the time. There was some videos going around, the kick was illegal and Johnny Lawrence was the real hero.”

Zabka also credits the Sweep the Leg music video for inspiring Cobra Kai. “I directed a music video called Sweep the Leg by No More Kings. If you haven’t seen that check it out. It was really a seed of all this. It was the first time I had decided to turn back into The Karate Kid world and played a version of myself. That exploded when that came out. Marty’s [Kove] in that, Raph’s [Macchio] in it. So, a lot of things along the way. How I Met Your Mother was a great experience and I’m good friends with them still.”

Cobra Kai season 6 part 2 premieres November 15 on Netflix. Maybe Neil Patrick Harris can show up for a cameo, bringing things full circle.