How I Met Your Mother never took the time to explain Robin's bullfighting career. It wasn't until a deleted scene was released after the series ended that viewers got a resolution to one of Future Ted's weirder teases.
Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) had the most interesting resume out off all of the characters on How I Met Your Mother. Not only was she a news anchor, but she also grew up as a Canadian pop star who performed in malls during the 1990s. She tried to keep her past identity as Robin Sparkles a secret from her friends but the truth eventually came out. But Robin Sparkles wasn't her only surprising career move.
In the season 7 episode, "Symphony of Illumination," Robin thought she was pregnant with Barney's (Neil Patrick Harris) child. In reality, she was not pregnant and she subsequently learned that she would never be able to have children. As Robin didn't want to tell her friends due to their reactions, she used a metaphor as a way to explain she will never be able to become a "pole vaulter." Pole vaulting was Robin's code for motherhood and she had trouble dealing with the news. As Future Ted (Josh Radnor) was telling his kids the story about trying to cheer Robin up, he mentioned that Robin never became a pole vaulter but he listed all of the other amazing things she accomplished: famous journalist, successful businesswoman, world traveler, and bullfighter.
While the rest of that came to pass by the time How I Met Your Mother ended, the show seemed to forget Robin's bullfighting. However, that wasn't entirely the case: as with the Pineapple Incident explanation, it was in a deleted scene, in this case from the series finale, which had 18 minutes of content cut.
In the specific scene, Ted and his young daughter Penny run into Robin while walking through the city. The pair have lunch the next day where Robin shared the story of her brief bullfighting career. She was still a TV journalist at the time and her network was doing a segment in Spain. The producer urged Robin to get into the bullfighting ring to do her report. She did so but was gored by a bull. The incident convinced Robin to stick to anchor work which is why she moved back to the city.
Although not extremely important to the overall story, the bullfighting explanation was a part of a scene that provided more context into why Ted ended up with Robin at the closing moments of the How I Met Your Mother series finale. There were a number of loose ends when the series closed out, but it was especially odd for the series to cut a scene that better explained why Ted so willingly went back to Robin. It was no secret that Ted and Robin had a long history before the Mother (Cristin Milioti) came along. Knowing that Robin spilled her heart out to Ted and that she still wondered about him as detailed in the deleted scene would have made the finale feel less forced.
Next: How I Met Your Mother Almost Ended After Season 8 - Here's Why