<P> Having spent the entire day anticipating bad news, Marshall receives good news about his fertility from Stangel (after a failed impersonation by Barney attempting to trick Marshall into becoming his laser tag partner). While at MacLaren's, he tries to call his father about his good news, but Mr. Eriksen does not pick up the phone . At that moment, Lily pulls up in a taxi and tearfully informs Marshall that his father had been rushed to the hospital after having a heart attack, and that he did not survive . Shocked and grief - stricken, Marshall embraces Lily, and begins to weep, repeating the words, "I'm not ready for this ." </P> <P> The twist ending of Marshall's father's death was the result of show co-creators and producers Carter Bays and Craig Thomas' desire to explore the issue of the characters experiencing such a loss . Bays said that "these kind of moments happen when you don't expect them . We wanted to shock the audience the way the characters were shocked . So much of what we love about the show is the relatability of it, and we try to create characters and stories that people see themselves in . As we've ticked off every milepost of young adulthood, sadly this is another one of those mileposts". Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan themselves were kept in the dark about the final scene . Segel said the original script had Lily saying she was pregnant, but on the scene's actual shooting day, the producers revealed that the scene will turn out differently . He and Hannigan worked out a plan wherein Segel would only know that his cue to react would be on Hannigan finishing her line with the word "it". The scene was done in only one take . </P> <P> Throughout the episode, numbers appear on ordinary objects counting down from 50 to 1 . This is a countdown from the beginning of the episode to the eventual bad news, which is told right after the "1" is shown . As the final scene of the episode closes, a parking meter is in the background displaying a red' expired' state . The countdown was an idea taken from the 1988 film Drowning by Numbers; through the course of that film, the numbers 1 to 100 appear in order, sometimes seen in the background, and sometimes spoken by the film's characters . According to Bays, the countdown was used to give an early signal to the audience that something big was about to happen at the end of the episode . </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section needs expansion . You can help by adding to it . (December 2015) </Td> </Tr> </Table>

What does the countdown mean in how i met your mother