Barney Stinson
Barney Stinson is a snow leopard and one of the four friends Robin Scherbatsky drinks with at MacLaren's. He is introduced in the W-Series in "Porch Test", arriving mid-sentence in a suit on a weekday and finding, in Nick, the one mammal at the table who reads the act correctly and enjoys it anyway.
Background
Barney is a heavier animal than Robin through the shoulders, silver-gray beneath his rosettes, and wears his suits like an argument he is always halfway through winning. Nobody at the joined tables asks about his work, and he never volunteers it. He knows menswear well enough to place a discontinued limited run on sight, and he does magic, including one corporate-retreat trick that failed at sufficient length to hold a pub table.
Personality
His position is that everybody reads a room and the only question is whether they admit it, which he does, loudly. The impression the suit makes is the point of the suit. He is quick to declare a liking for somebody in front of them, quick to concede a point out loud when he enjoys the mammal making it more than he would enjoy winning, and prone to pronouncing things legendary.
Series History
W-Series
In "Porch Test", Barney is the first through the door when Robin's friends arrive at MacLaren's, pacing himself so that he reaches it exactly as the sentence he is already speaking runs out. He identifies Nick's shirt as a discontinued limited-run Furioni before he has finished being introduced, announces his approval of Nick to the whole table, and takes the accusation that he dresses like a mammal about to sell something as a straight line rather than an insult. He mouths along with the origin story Ted and Lily have plainly been re-litigating for years. Later he argues room-reading with Nick until Judy asks whether the room consented, at which point he concedes out loud and enjoys it. When Marshall supplies the word "pride" for their table, Barney's verdict is that it is legendary. Told about Lily's test, he claims he would have passed on presentation alone, and Robin informs him he would have failed it for talking while it ran. The pack's one round becomes one and a half because he is midway through the corporate-retreat magic story and interrupting him would have been unkind.
Key Relationships
Nick Wilde
A collision that turns into recognition inside two exchanges. Barney reads the performance, Nick reads it being read, and neither of them minds; Nick is the only mammal at the joined tables who answers Barney in his own register.
Robin Scherbatsky
One of the four friends she drinks with, and the one most likely to be corrected in front of company. She is the last word on his claim to have passed Lily's test.
Trivia
- Barney Stinson takes his name from Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother, whose suits are the character's signature there as here. Zootopia only ever calls him Barney; the surname follows the wiki's convention of giving a crossover character their full source-series name.