History Series / TheGoodPlace

* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: Beyond Chidi's not quite authentic accent, to put it mildly (see NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent, below), his word choice is very obviously a [[BlindIdiotTranslation literal translation from English]]; when telling his colleague he'll be with him shortly, he says "je serai là" (literally, "I will be there"), when the far more idiomatic and natural phrase would be "j'arrive."

* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: William Jackson Harper tries, but Chidi's French is...not what any native speaker of French, including from sub-Saharan Africa, sounds like. Beyond the accent, his word choice is very obviously a [[BlindIdiotTranslation literal translation from English]]; when telling his colleague he'll be with him shortly, he says "je serai là" (literally, "I will be there"), when the far more idiomatic and natural phrase would be "j'arrive."

*** Bad Janet, the only Janet who deviates from the flight attendant uniform, does so because she... doesn't provide the best assistance. Her leather jacket and dyed blond hair reflect her insufferable personality like the other Bad Place residents.

''Michael'': Yeah, yeah. [[DeadpanSnarker The Time-Knife, we've all seen it]]. Let's get back on track, bud.\\

** He also at one point tells Shawn he's basic.
-->'''Michael:''' It's human insult. It's devestating. You're devestated.

The show is also available on Creator/{{Netflix}}, and as such is labeled as a Netflix Original in some countries. Episodes aired on [=NBC=] first, then on Netflix the following day. On June 7, 2019, it was announced that [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8gTX_FUEAE-ZLy.jpg the fourth season]] would be [[FinaleSeason the show's last]]. A six-episode web series titled ''The Selection'' was [[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpgOGnLxJ6X9fWTlndyqI1v4jQ0qn5uPv released]] as a bridge to the end of the third season and the beginning of the fourth season. The series ended on January 30, 2020 with a 75-minute GrandFinale.

** [[spoiler: Jason's]] mother died from cancer when he was a child, and while his father [[spoiler: Donkey Doug]] wasn't abusive on purpose, his stupidity, laziness, neglect, criminal and irresponsible behavior ensured that his son grew up into a low-life criminal like himself. While they're shown to be friendly with each other, they don't even treat each other like father and son, acting more like a pair of frat boys together. The surprising reveal that [[spoiler:Donkey Doug]] is his father will, once you get there, really explain a lot.

* AccidentalTruth: In the first episode, Eleanor states how unfair it is that a select few get to the Good Place while ''everyone else'' gets tortured for eternity, even if their "sins" were just being slightly selfish and anti-social, and there should be a Medium Place for everyone who weren't saints or straight up evil. There ''is'' a Medium Place, but due to how the afterlife works, it only exists due to a unique circumstance of its sole inhabitant, Mindy St. Clair, having her positive and negative actions completely cancel each other out, meaning that neither the Good Place or the Bad Place had a definitive claim to her. It doesn't actually have anything to do with being a "medium" person. [[spoiler: Eleanor is also right that the afterlife is unfair, because the complexity of the modern world means that even positive actions have unintended negative consequences, which the points system wasn't designed to take into account, meaning that it's effectively impossible to be good enough for the Good Place, and has been for centuries.]]
** Michael pairs Eleanor with Chidi as soulmates. Over the course of the series [[spoiler: they come together over and over. Eleanor always seeks him out for help and Chidi always helps. In the end, "There is no answer. But Eleanor is the answer."]].
* AchievementsInIgnorance: [[spoiler: "The Good Place" was designed by Michael to be a cunning place of torture where rather than physical pain, the demons are perpetually putting these unredeemable humans through psychological and emotional torture. He hoped it would last at least a thousand years, but Eleanor figured it out after about six months. Through resetting the experiment and wiping their memories, Michael proceeded to make countless minor variations hoping to perpetuate this emotional torture but found them always [[TookALevelInKindness improving their moral compass]], even if only a little. This was something the entire afterlife system deemed impossible and through numerous other types of experiments the Good Place / Bad Place system became redefined, with Michael leading the revolution]].

* AmnesiacLover: In the season 3 finale, [[spoiler: Chidi decides to have his memories of Simone erased so that he won't ruin the experiment by being awkward around her. Unfortunately, this also erases his entire relationship with Eleanor.]]
* AmnesiaLoop: In Season 2, [[spoiler: no matter how many times the four humans have their memories erased, somebody (almost always Eleanor) always manages to figure out that they are actually in the Bad Place. It takes ''802'' iterations before Vicky forces Michael to give up. As she threatens to overthrow him, he decides to let the four humans retain their memory in order to work with them for their mutual survival.]]

** When Bad Janet[[spoiler:, who was imprisoned in Good Janet's void for six months by Michael,]] explains what's happening on Earth, she says "Wars, murders, women in $400 yoga pants refusing to vaccinate their children. Vindictive nerds at Apple are changing the charger cable shape again."
* ArtifactTitle: The title of the series becomes this after the season finale in which it's revealed [[spoiler: they're actually in the Bad Place. It isn't until the second to last episode of the entire series where the characters finally enter the actual Good Place.]]

* AwesomeButImpractical: Michael's idea of the Good Place. [[spoiler: It requires literally hundreds of demons all working together to torture just four people, and the torture that is produced is ultimately less satisfying for most demons than the traditional methods. Really, the only thing Michael's plan has going for it is its novelty. In the end, the ''novelty'' of it is why it works to fix the afterlife.]]

** [[spoiler: The Good Place has been the Bad Place all along.]]
** [[spoiler: No human has entered the actual Good Place for ''521 years''.]]
** [[spoiler: Everyone in the REAL Good Place is actually miserable, having become dulled by an eternity of paradise.]]
* BackForTheFinale: [[spoiler: Several characters previously exclusively seen in flashbacks of the main characters' lives show up in person at various points in the series finale, having died and gotten into the Good Place, including Eleanor's old friends Brittany and Madison, Tahani's sister Kamilah and both their parents, and Chidi's childhood best friend Uzo.]]

** In Season 3, the cast eventually realizes [[spoiler: that the points system is completely incompatible with modern life and that almost all positive actions are unwittingly outweighed by the myriad possible negative effects they might tap into (like the act of buying flowers indirectly fueling child labor in a foreign country), meaning it is literally impossible to even try "being good" in the first place.]]

* BigBad: [[spoiler: Michael in Season 1 and the start of Season 2. After he performs his HeelFaceTurn, this role is passed on to Shawn for the rest of the series.]]

** The situation is flipped in Version 2, with Tahani [[spoiler: assigned a claustrophobically small cottage. The same fancy mansion is given to another resident and Tahani jealously demands that it be given to her when she gets drunk at the welcome party.]]

** Like season one, season 4 once again involves four humans being in a [[spoiler:pseudo-]]Good Place neighborhood, [[spoiler: which is actually an experiment to test a new way to run the afterlife.]] Several elements from season one return, such as frozen yogurt shops and [[spoiler: Jason pretending to be a Buddhist monk named Jianyu, and the experiment once again ends with the humans SpottingTheThread and concluding they're in the Bad Place (they're incorrect this time, but Michael and Eleanor don't tell them that).]]

** [[spoiler: The series also begins with Eleanor's very first moment in the afterlife, and ended with her very last moment in it, in which her fragmented soul impacted someone on Earth.]]

** "Janet(s)" only has two real sets: the [[spoiler: accounting office]] and [[spoiler:Janet's void, a blank white space where anything can appear.]]

** Janet mentions that she doesn't really eat so when she reboots, which she considers to be as close to a birthday as she's got, she'll just smash cake around where her mouth is. [[spoiler: When she and Jason get married, he does just that when cutting their wedding cake.]]
** Eleanor is exasperated in the first episode by the lack of stairs to her bedroom. In episode 9, Real Eleanor arrives at the house and immediately knows where the button to move the stairs in place is. [[spoiler: The reveal of the stairs is also an effective little bit of the ongoing Bad Place torture.]]

** Pillboi's nickname is introduced long before we learn its origin. It's set up to sound related to street drugs at first...[[spoiler: but when we see more of his life, it turns out the nickname comes from his job distributing meds at a nursing home, with the suggestion that the elderly patients were the ones who first nicknamed him!]]

** Janet mentions in one episode that she can't actually eat anything. This becomes relevant in the finale of season 1 when [[spoiler: Eleanor, needing a place to store her message for her future self, has Janet put it in her mouth, knowing she can't swallow it.]]

* ChekhovsGun: Early in the first episode, Michael explains that memories of particularly traumatic deaths are erased for the sake of easier transition into the afterlife. [[spoiler: Michael's control over the memories of the heroes becomes an enormous obstacle that takes ''hundreds of years'' for them to overcome, and later recurs in a tragic one-two punch at the end of Season 3.]]

** Tahani wears nothing but the most gorgeous of haute couture. Initially it's because she's obsessed with apperance, with always having to be the best. In the end, [[spoiler: it's out of a genuine appreciation for craftsmanship and a love of the best that humanity can produce when they really care.]]

* ContinuityReboot: Played with in-universe: The events of Season 1 still happened in the show's continuity, but [[spoiler:Michael has wiped the main characters' memories so many times that for the most part, those events don't really matter and the CharacterDevelopment that resulted from them is negated. However, there are exceptions: Even after over 800 reboots,]] Janet still feels the attraction to Jason that she developed in Season 1, which becomes a source of conflict in "Janet and Michael", [[spoiler: since Janet's attempts to cover up her jealousy of Jason and Tahani is causing her to glitch out and pose a danger to the neighborhood.]]

** "...Someone Like Me As A Member" reveals that the whole plot of the show is based on one: [[spoiler: Two people with the exact same name, in the exact same place at the exact same time, both killed when one makes a desperate attempt to save the other's life.]] What are the odds of that? Michael and Trevor imply that this is the first time this has '''ever''' happened. Definitely the first time they've ever seen it, and possibly the first time it has happened in the history of the universe. [[spoiler:Subverted when it is revealed that "Real" Eleanor turns out to be a Bad Place demon merely playing the role of Eleanor's name-doppelganger, leaving it unclear whether such a situation has actually ever happened before.]]

* CosmicPlaything: Michael [[spoiler: designs "The Good Place" so that he and the other architects can be entertained by the four humans who will torture each other simply by their presence]].

* CouncilOfAngels: Both the Good Place and Bad Place have been run by something like angels (The Good Place Committee) and demons (The High Council) for millennia if not longer. The closest being there is to God seems like the Judge, who's largely content letting the two sides keep running things on their own, though she eventually intervenes when the system has been shown as wholly messed up. Strangely, unlike the Committee, the Council never actually appears, and Shawn is shown to have near-total authority over the Bad Place, especially during season 3 and 4. [[spoiler: He's also the only demon who is invited to the discussion about how to fix the Points System]].

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: "Pandemonium", the Season 3 finale. In order to make sure he doesn't jeopardize the experiment around Simone, who had her memory wiped of the season's events, Chidi decides to have his memories erased as well, causing him to forget about his past relationships with Eleanor - and by extension, everything that happened throughout the series up to that point. Add that to Tahani being forced to cope with John Wheaton, who made her life miserable on Earth, Jason struggling with his feelings for Janet, and Michael trying to work through his involuntary new role in the experiment indirectly caused by [[EvilIsPetty Shawn]], and you have one of the worst season endings to a comedy sitcom in a long time.]]

** Chidi mentions in the first episode that he is apparently always speaking French in the Good Place and the language filter automatically translates it. This fact is never substantially brought up again besides the first episode, and in season three [[spoiler: when they go to Earth, Chidi never speaks French again]]. All his flashbacks to his life on Earth showcase Chidi speaking perfect English, and it seems the writers basically just dropped it.

** Early depictions of the Bad Place had its demons wear more stereotypical "trashy" clothes, such as leather jackets and poofy faux fur coats. All other depictions give them more of a cold business attire, with the men wearing suits and the women wearing work dresses. Bad Janet, with her black leather clothes and dyed blond hair, is a remnant of the Bad Place's original attire. [[spoiler: However, their original clothing choice could have been part of the pseudo-Good Place ruse, as it might have been suspicious if Michael and the Bad Place demons wore the same type of clothing.]]

** In the first season of the show, it was heavily implied that [[spoiler: people were going to the Good Place, even though in season three it would be revealed no one had gone to the Good Place in over 500 years. Michael mentions that Abraham Lincoln made it in the Good Place despite dying less than 200 years ago, and his map showcasing which humans go to the Good and Bad Place featured relatively few, but still numerous, green dots. This could be handwaved as being part of Michael's ruse, but less deniable ones are Mindy St. Claire (where it's heavily implied that, if she had made her charity herself, she would have gone to the Good Place), and Tahani and Chidi's flaws that are cited as being why they were sent to the Bad Place (which, again, implies that, if they hadn't had those flaws, they would have made it to the Good Place).]]

** An extreme example in the series finale. [[spoiler: The main characters quite literally change how the universe and afterlife system works, ensuring that most people eventually have a shot of getting into the Good Place, even after being tortured for a bit in the Bad Place. On top of that, people now have the ability to relinquish their consciousnesses to the universe if they've had enough of paradise, which Eleanor, Chidi, and Jason do, while Michael is made a human and lives on Earth.]]
* EnemyMine: In Season 2 Michael realizes that the situation has gone completely out of his control and the only thing that might save him is to team up with [[spoiler: Eleanor and the other humans]].

** The demonic inhabitants of the Bad Place even do this to ''each other'', shown when the main characters go there in disguise [[spoiler: on their way to see the Judge]], and they arrive at the train station. The conductor announces that all the trains are delayed for no reason, then calls all the passengers fat losers and says she hates them.

** [[spoiler: Shawn continues to meddle with the Medium Place experiment in Season 4 and tries to damn the main cast despite being personally warned by the Judge and his plans all repeatedly blowing up in his face.]]

* FictionalColor: Michael's favorite color is "pleurigloss," which is imperceptible to humans and defined as "the color of when a soldier comes home from war and sees his dog for the first time." [[spoiler: As this was in the first, deceptive iteration, we don't know whether pleurigloss is real or if Michael made it up to be as unhelpful as possible -- Tahani was just looking for decorating guidance.]]

** In a MidSeasonTwist [[spoiler: Eleanor confesses to Michael and the neighborhood that she doesn't belong there. This turns the story into a scramble for her and Michael to figure out what happened and how she can possibly earn enough points to earn her place there]].
** In the season one finale, it's revealed that the Good Place we've seen in [[spoiler: has actually been the Bad Place the whole time. Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason were all carefully selected by Michael to annoy and infuriate each other for a millennia. All other people in the neighborhood were demons playing a role. It is then revealed that Michael can reset their memories at a whim, and makes plans to start the system over again with some differences]]. This revelation ''shatters'' the status quo, and becomes the key to the tone of later seasons.

** In the flashback at the beginning of "Michael's Gambit", right before Dave drops the "Project No. [=12358W=]" file on Michael's desk, you can just catch the title of the file he was working on beforehand: [[spoiler:"Flesh Ripping Lightning", [[{{Foreshadowing}} a big sign]] that he doesn't really work for the Good Place]].
** In "Dance Dance Resolution", [[spoiler:all the different resets seem to have [[https://imgur.com/a/pszEx different themed signs]].]] In the same episode, there is [[spoiler: the poster of all the plans they've tried, including "Stab with small knife", "Find Doug Forcett," "Stab with ''large'' knife," and "Try to stuff Michael back into his magic lamp"]].

* GaggingOnYourWords: In "Mondays, Am I Right?", Shawn has trouble admitting that [[spoiler: he and Michael are about to work together on the new afterlife system in front of the demons they plan to make the first Bad Place architects.]]

** Eleanor's presence causes things to go haywire whenever she does something really selfish. [[spoiler: Then it turns out that it was all actually happening by design]].

* GodAndSatanAreBothJerks: There's apparently no version of the traditional God, but the closest thing in the show, The Judge, has complete jurisdiction over both physical reality and all three afterlives. She considers herself TrueNeutral, but takes it to an extreme, refuses to consider things like extenuating circumstances or motivation, and changing her mind is incredibly difficult. [[spoiler: Even once it's been comprehensively proven to her how flawed the Points System is and how complex human existence is, she decides to completely reboot the universe, wiping out every human soul in the process, rather than try to fix what's wrong with the system.]] There doesn't seem to be a Lucifer either, but Shawn, who runs the Bad Place, is basically Satan in all but name. He not only takes delight in torturing human souls, but is a perfect example of EvilIsPetty too.

* GoodIsNotNice: Eleanor is convinced the other residents in the Good Place can't be as great as they seem. It turns out that they are, all dedicating themselves to great deeds in life. However, Eleanor claims that many of them were doing such deeds for recognition and Tahani is rather self-absorbed and condescending, intentionally or otherwise. [[spoiler: Eleanor's dead-on about Tahani, but misses that it's a sign they're all in the Bad Place unawares.]]

** Courtesy of the episode "A Chip Driver Mystery". People of color can't be expected to excuse mediocre white men's feeble attempts to become a better person when the men in question are racists and sexists who put in the bare minimum for basic decency. Doing so is insulting to the [=POC=] in question, especially when they have accomplished a lot. [[spoiler:Simone says as much when Eleanor asks her to try and make peace with Brent. Meanwhile, Tahani, as an accomplished writer who wrote a great book, takes offense at how racist and sexist Brent's book is, and at his refusal to realize it. It says something that ''Chidi'', an anxiety-ridden NiceGuy who sometimes borders on being an ExtremeDoormat, punches out Brent for calling Simone a "bench" and then shoving him for knocking a book into him by accident]].

** In Chapter 13, Tahani realizes that [[spoiler: all the good acts she's performed were meaningless, because she only did them for praise and recognition, rather than because they were good deeds. Shortly afterwards, Chidi realizes how much his obsession and indecisiveness over doing the right thing led to him hurting everyone in his life and got him sent to the Bad Place.]] She has another extended one in Season 2 when she realizes that [[spoiler:the Bad Place's method of torturing her is through ordeals around event mismanagement]], and it's working, which means she's a shallow, frivolous and arrogant person.

** At the end of Season 3, things are running smoothly as [[spoiler: Michael's experiment is being repeated with new subjects for non-malicious reasons to evaluate if people are being unfairly sent to the Bad Place. A lot rides on the results, which Gen will judge. Unfortunately, Shawn has chosen the subjects to torture the leads, and for Chidi, sent in Simone, his ex. Knowing he can't be around her without compromising the experiment, even after her memory was wiped, Chidi asks to be rebooted, knowing he'll lose his relationship with Eleanor and his friendships with the others. His request is fulfilled, as there are no other options.]]

** The Season 2 finale has a large hope spot [[spoiler: where it looks like Eleanor is going to turn her life around, but then things go poorly and she reverts to her old ways... until another push in the right direction steers her back right]].

** In the Season 3 finale, [[spoiler: Chidi is convinced that he should have his memories be erased, losing his relationships with the cast, after Simone is brought into the experiment to torture him. The group tries to think of things, and Michael even tries to strike up a brainstorming session with the express goal to find something that can prevent them from needing to reboot Chidi, but nothing comes up.]]

--->'''Tahani:''' Jason, how did you know that was [[spoiler: Bad Janet?]]\\

** Gen "The Judge" is shown to be a bit of a jerk who is a bit vain and egocentric. [[spoiler: She is willing to destroy humanity and restart the universe on a whim which the group has to stop, and later still continues to not like the group at the end of the show even after they have made a better system for the afterlife.]]
** [[spoiler: "The Good Place" Committee trick Michael into taking charge of the Good Place and run away, washing their hands of the responsibility and disappear before Michael can do anything to stop them and they aren't seen again...]]

* TheJourneyThroughDeath: The protagonists journey throughout the afterlife during the series. [[spoiler: In the end, they create a new system in which a deceased person must endure torture, which is personally tailored to cause the subject to improve as a person until they have improved enough to enter paradise.]] Once they have had enough of paradise, they are allowed to end their existence and their essence returns to the universe.

* LiteralMetaphor: When Michael and the humans go the Judge, Michael says the humans might be able to improve if they were given "a push in the right direction." [[spoiler: This inspires the Judge to allow Michael to go down to Earth and give the humans a second chance at their lives, which, in the case of Eleanor, Chidi, and Tahani, means ''literally'' giving them a push in the right direction that prevents them from dying.]]

** Episode 21, "Derek": The midseason finale of Season 2 is also pretty eventful. [[spoiler: Janet creates a rebound guy named Derek to get over Jason, Tahani and Jason almost get married, and Chidi learns about the videotape.]] The biggest twist is at the very end of the episode, with Michael walking into his office only to find [[spoiler: Shawn is sitting at his desk]].

* MistakenIdentity: Somehow Eleanor's past got mixed up with someone much nicer - Michael got her name right, but not much else. [[spoiler: However, this was all a fake story to make Eleanor feel like she was placed in the Good Place by mistake, when she's actually been in the Bad Place. The "good" Eleanor is a demon in a role.]]

** In a much, ''much'' more serious example, it's revealed [[spoiler: the afterlife itself runs on this. Either accidentally/intentionally do bad things (which means in the 21st Century, ''interact'' with anything at all) and be sent to the Bad Place, or mull over the ethical consequences of the interaction, trouble everyone around you, and get sent to the Bad Place anyways.]]

** Present in the final episode. [[spoiler: Since you can only reach heaven once you have cleared out all your emotional baggage, virtually all animosity is wiped out by default. The biggest case is definitely Tahani and her family who all become very close with each other. Eleanor and her mother also count.]]

** Jianyu Li/[[spoiler:Jason Mendoza]] is the Scarecrow, being a [[spoiler: dumb but lovable imp in desperate need of a brain. Part of his CharacterDevelopment is him learning greater impulse control and showing off how he's ''wise'', not ''clever'' (much like how the Scarecrow was ultimately revealed to have had a brain all along)]].
** Michael is the Wizard, being the leader of Oz/Good Place Neighborhood [=12358W=] who is a benevolent demigod/wizard [[spoiler:who in reality isn't at all what he seems. Additionally, behind the proverbial curtain he's shown to actually be a pretty pathetic loser and NoRespectGuy, and Michael's CharacterDevelopment driving him into a HeelFaceTurn results in him (much like the Wizard of Oz) actually assisting the Soul Squad in resolving their character flaws and finding their way back to where they really belong (as in, the real Good Place)]].

** This is done after the Season 1 reveal [[spoiler: of Michael creating a fake Good Place to torture the main 4 humans, showing how he knew what multiple characters were up to all along and showing him conspiring with the other residents to make the 4 miserable.]]

** Averted and a central plot point. The pilot establishes that Eleanor Shellstrop, the protagonist, was mistaken for a different, much nicer Eleanor Shellstrop. [[spoiler: The latter appears in "Most Improved Player", having been sent to The Bad Place. And ''then'' played straight, as it turns out there never was another Eleanor Shellstrop at all, and that real Eleanor was a demon playing a part in an elaborate Bad Place torture scenario.]]

* OneTrueLove: Everyone has one, and in the Good Place you get to be with that person forever. [[SpannerInTheWorks In theory.]] [[spoiler: Michael made it up as part of his plan to torture the main four; soulmates aren't a thing]].

* PlotTwist: [[spoiler: Eleanor reveals her secret - that she's not supposed to be there - in order to protect the rest of the crew after a season of trying to be better.]] Which is all well and good except [[spoiler: the actual plot twist is that they're actually in the Bad Place.]]

* PygmalionPlot: When Jason and Tahani [[spoiler: start sleeping together]], Janet feels sad since she was married to Jason before. On the advice of Eleanor, [[spoiler: she gets a new boyfriend by creating one in her void]].

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: [[spoiler: While Bad Janet was pretending to be our Janet, she tortured Jason by not only breaking up with him, but informing him that Blake Bortles was cut from the Jacksonville Jaguars immediately afterward. It's a bit of {{Foreshadowing}} that could have never been done if Bortles wasn't actually cut from the team in real life, as having Janet make such a blatant and cruel lie would have been a dead giveaway.]]
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: The immortal beings in every realm have existed since the beginning of time, yet they all look like normal adult humans. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] as those aren't their real forms and they're all wearing skin suits.

** Tahani's cause of death is revealed in "Team Cockroach" - [[spoiler: having been upstaged by her sister yet again, she gatecrashes her sister's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and tries to tear down the statue of her sister - which does come down, but straight onto Tahani.]]

** [[spoiler: Season 4 is set up with the idea of Eleanor and the others proving the same is true of most humans, by having Michael's neighborhood experiment be repeated with new subjects to show that the leads' situation can happen again.]]
** [[spoiler: This turns out to be true of the villains, who HeelFaceTurn one by one. By Season 4, Vicky, Bad Janet, and even ''Shawn'' are working to build a better afterlife. When the last episode rolls around, the show has fully embraced A NoAntagonist status.]]

** The way in and out of [=12385W =] is via coal-powered locomotive.

** Chidi speculates Eleanor being sent to the Good Place is one of these, and that she'll be allowed to stay if she admits she shouldn't be here. Eleanor's too afraid of being sent to the Bad Place to try. [[spoiler: He was partially right. She was picked just for him... but to torment him for eternity instead.]]

* SecretlySelfish: It's revealed that good actions and deeds can be negated if they're performed for less-than-altruistic reasons. Hence why [[spoiler: Tahani is in the Bad Place - she may have raised a lot of money for charity and humanitarian causes, but only because she wanted to one-up her sister and get everyone's attention]]. Overlaps a bit with WantsAPrizeForBasicDecency, as the Judge herself says that being good is meaningless if it's being done with the expectation/desire for a reward at the end.

* SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil: UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln is the only U.S President to have made it to the Good Place according to Michael, heavily implied to be due to the Emancipation Declaration as "ending slavery" is shown as one of the biggest possible ways to gain "points" for entrance to the Good Place. [[spoiler: This is revealed to be a lie after TheReveal. Lincoln, along with every other President, as well as every single U.S citizen to have ever lived are all in the bad place, due to the flawed Points system not letting anyone into the Good Place for longer than the U.S has existed as a nation. That said, this trope still applies as it's revealed that several famous ancient philosophers are all in the Bad Place because they supported slavery as part of their writing. Hypatia of Alexandria is one of the few who made it to the Good Place.]]

* SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay: In Season 4, Michael is put under serious suspicion of actually being Vicky in a Michael suit after things have taken a suspicious downturn, with it being possible he was swapped out during an incident where a demon impostor had to be taken back to the Bad Place. Part of Michael's frustration is that there's no specific thing he can say to prove he's the real deal...[[spoiler: but Jason [[SpottingTheThread spots an inversion of this]]- an ''absence'' of something the real person ''should always say'' when Janet doesn't correct him by saying "not a girl" when he says "I love you, girl". Because of this omission, Jason correctly deduces that she's the saboteur who got swapped over: a Bad Janet pretending to be the good one. Michael's talk of this trope was what made Jason realize how suspicious Janet's omission was.]]

** "Dance Dance Resolution" reveals that Eleanor is extremely good at this and she is able [[spoiler: figure out the truth in over 800 different scenarios Michael puts her through.]] This is probably due to her extremely cynical nature and belief that people are always hiding something.
** "Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy" has [[spoiler: Jason outing Janet as the spy impostor despite Michael being the one under suspicion because she didn't correct him with her customary "not a girl" when he said "I love you, girl."]]

* TimeyWimeyBall: While time on Earth is linear, time in the afterlife loops around and winds up looking like the name "Jeremy Bearimy" in English cursive. The dot of the "i" is both Tuesdays and July, and sometimes never. This concept causes a [[spoiler: HeroicBSD for Chidi. He states that the dot "broke him", and he proceeds to spend the next little while having a massive freakout, including making chili with M&Ms and Peeps.]]

* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: Eleanor was not a good person in her life, and once she finds herself in the Good Place she is fully aware she does not belong with the other people. This sets her up as being one of the more naturally flawed characters, if only because she recognizes her flaws and seeks to improve even if she struggles against her nature. Flashbacks to her life show that while she could be selfish and meanspirited it never reached true cruelty, Michael even goes down a list of truly bad things (which includes getting a vanity license plate) and she didn't do any one. [[spoiler: When it's revealed that Chidi, Tahani and Jason are all with her in the Bad Place, Chidi remains the more morally sensible one but Tahani is actually an UpperClassTwit ignorant of her selfishness and Jason, despite seeming the most likable and laid back character, has probably done the more objectionable actions including drug smuggling (and a vanity license plate)]].

** Chapter 38. Michael and Team Cockroach successfully manage to convince Gen that the sorting system is flawed, so she brings in Shawn so they can all discuss how to fix the system. They decide to [[spoiler: build a new neighborhood in Mindy St. Claire's Medium Place, similar to the one from Season 1, and bring in four recently-dead humans to test and see if they can become better people. However, before the test subjects arrive, Michael learns that Shawn is planning to torture Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason with a clone of himself if the new neighborhood fails. As a result, Michael freaks out and collapses, leaving Eleanor to take care of the first test subject.]]
** Chapter 39, the Season 3 finale. Michael's anxiety forces Eleanor to [[spoiler: take over as "the Architect" of the neighborhood. Shawn attempts to sabotage the experiment by sending humans who would be ideal for making things as miserable as possible for the Soul Squad, including ''Simone'', who has died off-screen. This causes Chidi to freak out and request to be rebooted, fearing that he'll let something slip and ruin the experiment, ending his relationship with Eleanor. His request is granted because there's no other solution.]]

** In Chapter 39, Eleanor opens the door to the waiting area and reveals that the next test subject being added to the new neighborhood is [[spoiler:Simone]]. This happens again at the end of the episode, only this time, the person sitting on the couch is [[spoiler: the freshly-rebooted Chidi]].

** Vicki and the other demons on her level: [[spoiler: They are all far too invested for it to be a personal grudge with Michael. Vicki genuinely wants to express herself. Trevor seriously wants to punish people.]]

* AWizardDidIt: Jeremy Bearimy (the timeline by which the afterlife operates by) pretty much allows the show to do whatever the hell it wants with the timeline. It functions so differently from our earthly, human perception of time, and trying to wrap your head around it is pointless because the entire joke is how INSANELY confusing and nonsensical it is. It allowed Michael to [[spoiler: go down to Earth and save the lives of the main four]] even though their deaths had occurred three hundred years prior.

* YourMagicsNoGoodHere: Most afterlife magic does not work on Earth. [[spoiler: When Janet and Michael go down to Earth, Janet has a hard time adjusting to not being able to teleport and instantly conjure items.]]

** The pilot reveals that each of the world's major religions got the afterlife about 5% right...and then there was Doug Forcett, a random Canadian who ''guessed'' a whopping 92% while he was high on shrooms in 1972.

** "Janet(s)" only has two real sets: the [[spoiler: accounting office]] and [[Janet's void, a blank white space where anything can appear.]]

* AesopAmnesia: [[spoiler:A rare justified example, since actual memory loss is involved. Every time the experiment gets rebooted, the MainCharacters' memories get reset, wiping out any lessons they may have learned in the most recent iteration. It's even lampshaded by Chidi, who points out they're literally living a philosophical dilemma; they're being punished for their sins, but they have no ability to learn from the punishment since their memories are being erased.]]

** The Type 2 Flavor is exemplified with the Cowboy Skyscraper Buffet America-themed restaurant seen in "The Brainy Bunch": it's got a tacky Wild Western design complemented with trashy pop culture decor, a "Manifest Destiny" package where you can kick the current occupant of a table off, a Florida table that smells like a swamp, and seating being announced by guns going off. Even Eleanor calls it the world's worst restaurant. However, the restaurant is in Australia, and the setpiece serves as a joke on how other countries perceive the U.S.

** Early depcitions of the Bad Place had its demons wear more stereotypical "trashy" clothes, such as leather jackets and poofy faux fur coats. All other depictions give them more of a cold business attire, with the men wearing suits and the women wearing work dresses. Bad Janet, with her black leather clothes and dyed blond hair, is a remnant of the Bad Place's original attire. [[spoiler: However, their original clothing choice could have been part of the pseudo-Good Place ruse, as it might have been suspicious if Michael and the Bad Place demons wore the same type of clothing.]]

* CosmicPlaything: Michael [[spoiler: designs "The Good Place" so that he and the other architects can be entertained by 4 four humans who will toture each other simply by their presence]].

* MassiveMultiplayerScam: In [[Recap/TheGoodPlaceS1E13MichaelsGambit "Michael's Gambit"]], it's revealed that the characters are in the Bad Place. Almost all the residents are demons whose goal is to psychologically torture the only four real humans. Arguably also applies to season four, only now it's the main characters running a fake "Good Place" as a social experiment to prove that people can improve themselves.

** Michael pairs Eleanor with Chidi as soulmates. Over the course of the series [[spoiler: they come together over and over. Eleanor always seeks him out for help and Chidi always helps. In the end, "There is no answer. But Eleanor is the anser."]].

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: In-universe during Season 2, Tahani says that ''Home Alone'' is actually a horror thriller where a LonelyRichKid has to fight off a home invasion, and Kevin is way out of his weight class to fend off two adult burglars. [[spoiler:She still enjoys it and watches the movie with her parents in the real Good Place]].

Eleanor confides in her system-designated [[OneTrueLove "perfect soulmate"]] Chidi Anagonye (Creator/WilliamJacksonHarper), a neurotic ethics and moral philosophy professor, and emotionally blackmails him into teaching her to become a good person who ''deserves'' to stay in The Good Place; lest her rottenness be discovered, which would result in her being tortured for eternity in "[[{{Hell}} The Bad Place]]".

The show is also available on Creator/{{Netflix}}, and as such, is labeled as a Netflix Original in some countries. Episodes aired on [=NBC=] first, then on Netflix the following day. On June 7, 2019, it was announced that [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8gTX_FUEAE-ZLy.jpg the fourth season]] would be [[FinaleSeason the show's last]]. A six-episode web series titled ''The Selection'' was [[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpgOGnLxJ6X9fWTlndyqI1v4jQ0qn5uPv released]] as a bridge to the end of the third season and the beginning of the fourth season. The series ended on January 30, 2020 with a 75-minute GrandFinale.