Foreshadowing / The Good Place

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Season 1, Episode 13 "Michael's Gambit"

The "Good Place" Has Really Been the Bad Place All Along

• Michael's Innocently Insensitive actions and dialogue during the first season turn out to be by design, as do the contrived coincidences. (Although he still struggles with that sometimes even after his Heel–Face Turn, so it might be less of an act than you’d think.)
  • Similarly, his gushing over how good the main characters are and offering to fulfill their every whim seems like Oblivious Guilt Slinging. Turns out, he's openly mocking them, but sounds so earnest that they never get it.
• Whenever one of the main four is going through something tough, the other neighbors will often rub in it. Eleanor's bummed about having to do trash duty instead of flying? Some woman tells her flying is the most fun thing to ever exist. The soulmates Chidi and Eleanor are at each other's throats? They have a meeting with a marriage counselor and her husband. It at first comes off as just Innocently Insensitive, but then it's revealed all the other neighbors are actually demons assigned to torture them.
• Michael makes it clear that he knows everything about Eleanor's death when he first meets her...yet he doesn't mention a word about the woman who died trying to save her, who will later be revealed to be "Real Eleanor" and be an important character in the second half of the season. This hints that Michael made up the "Real Eleanor" thing on the spot and that there was no woman who tried to save her.
• In the series premiere, Michael says most artists are in the Bad Place, naming Mozart specifically. However, what's the music playing when Eleanor attends Tahani's very first party in the Good Place? Papageno's first aria, from Mozart's The Magic Flute. Now, why would music composed by someone damned to the Bad Place be played in what's supposed to be the Good Place?
• Despite his apparent interest in humanity being the reason for designing the project, Michael only ever seems to spend time with the main characters and Janet. Not surprising, since he knows the main characters are the only real humans there.
• In the first episode, every minor character in the Good Place is an absurdly kind Parody Sue, and every detail they bring up about their lives involves a great humanitarian act done for entirely selfless reasons. However, almost every time one of the main characters flashes back to their own lives, it's something bad they did, something good they could have done but didn't, or something good they did with selfish intentions. Turns out, the main characters are the only humans in the "Good Place"; everyone else was a demon pretending to be a good person to make them feel worse about themselves.
  • Similarly, it's a bit concerning none of the other residents of the Good Place are worried about the massive number of souls in the Bad Place, which also might include their family members and other loved ones, despite being such paragons and noble souls. It's because none of it is real, and it's all a cover story to maintain the illusion.
• When the various sins and virtues are shown in Michael's video in the series premiere, "Never discuss veganism unprompted" is shown to be worth many more points in the Good column than simply "Eat vegan": If one takes this at face value, then it implies that bragging about doing good things negates much of the impact of doing good things, which turns out to be the whole reason for Tahani being in the Bad Place.
• Late in the very first episode, Eleanor suggests that maybe her dead parents are being used to torture each other in the Bad Place, saying it would totally work. Then comes The Reveal of the true nature of the "Good Place" the story takes place in, showing that everyone there is effectively meant to do just that to one another.
• When Eleanor is viewing the footage of "her" humanitarian work from her point of view, you can see her hands, and they match our Eleanor's skin tone. The hands in the video are obviously not those of "Real" Eleanor/Vicky, who is much darker.
• In the first episode, Janet knows about one of Eleanor's crushes, hinting that the people who run "The Good Place" know more about who Eleanor really is than they let on.
• Chidi hasn't really seemed to have done anything to warrant being accepted into the Good Place. As the first episode makes clear, you don't get into the Good Place just for being a nice person with good intentions, you had to have been on the highest point-getters who made a positive impact on the world. Chidi was just a college ethics professor, and every flashback to his life shows him making everyone around him miserable. One of the most blatant examples is with his three-thousand page philosophy book, which was never published because everyone found it impossible to understand. If Chidi's life's work was incomprehensible and pointless, then how could he have ended up in the Good Place?
• The fact that not one, but two people were incorrectly sent to the same neighborhood in the Good Place seems almost impossibly unlikely considering Michael's claim that this has never happened before in all of recorded history. Until The Reveal, which states Eleanor and Jason belonged in the neighborhood after all.
• In the second episode, a huge garbage bin falls on two side characters, but they immediately recover and explain that nobody ever gets hurt in the Good Place. This is seemingly contradicted later in the same episode, when Michael tells Eleanor that flying lessons were cancelled due to too many people getting injured. This is another hint that Michael isn't to be trusted.
• Several times through Season 1, Eleanor attempts to deflect guilt by criticizing the other residents. Most of what she says is extremely petty, like some of them being overweight, but her comments about Tahani being self centered and condescending are actually valid. Of course, that's because everyone else are playing perfect characters, while Tahani is an actually flawed human who, like Eleanor, is secretly being punished for her sins.
• When stressing out over first hearing how Eleanor isn't supposed to be there, Chidi complains "I'm in a perfect utopia and I'm getting a stomach ache!" Of course, he's not in a utopia and can definitely get stomach aches.
  • On a similar note, Chidi and Eleanor argue over Eleanor's refusal to do the dishes or laundry and the way Chidi needs to pick up her slack. Why would you need to do unpleasant menial chores in the Good Place?
• One of the first things we see Michael do is the classic act of any villain: Kick the Dog. Literally!
• When Michael seems to out Eleanor as the true disturbance behind the weird things happening in the Good Place and instead outs himself as the main reason, he wasn't lying at all as he was the one who designed the Neighborhood that way to react to Jason and Eleanor, the focus of the Neighborhood.
• When Jason first speaks to Eleanor, he suggests that they're in an alien zoo or on a prank show. From a certain point of view, he's right on both counts. Jason later recalls this when he learns the truth at the end of Season 1, and Eleanor admits that (rational or not) he had a point.
• Jason comments on him being mistaken for a Taiwanese monk when he's really a Filipino-American from Florida and complains that "Heaven is so racist." As the season would later reveal, the demons of the Bad Place like to perform the actions that get people sent there, so a supposed Heaven following Interchangeable Asian Cultures serves as an early indicator that it's really the Bad Place.
• Tahani offhandedly mentions to Eleanor when Jason/Jianyu's not speaking to her is "Eleanor, you don’t know what it’s like to be in paradise and feel like there’s something that’s just not quite right." That's the exact situation the humans are facing in the "Good Place" — it's supposedly paradise, but is actually an Ironic Hell.
• Chidi mentions suffering a nightmare induced by the stress over teaching Eleanor. Chidi can't even escape from the neighborhood's torture in his sleep.
• When Eleanor requests Michael to implement ice-cream in the Good Place, Michael says he has begun liking frozen yogurt, and muses aloud "There's something so human about taking something great, and ruining it a little, so you can have more of it." This sounds pretty odd for a Good Place Architect to say, as he should be aiming to further improve the Neighborhood's well-being (particularly since he later notes that he's a rookie at this). It's also a bit weird for someone who's basically an angel and who otherwise seems to be really nice to just obliviously blurt out such a cynically negative comment about humanity... Until the season finale, at least, where it's revealed Michael is actually torturing them and his line about taking Heaven and ruining it by just a little bit is the true goal of the Neighborhood, and his obliviousness is actually his true feelings for humanity slipping out without either of them noticing.
• In the middle of his Heroic BSoD over his failures of maintaining the Good Place in "The Eternal Shriek," Michael takes a moment to explain how the logistics of the train in and out of the Good Place works. The fact he'd stop to explain this in the middle of his emotional departure is a sign that he's trying to bait Eleanor into running a Zany Scheme to torture herself and Chidi with.
• The Eternal Shriek itself is an example, as it's a bit odd that the angels of the Good Place would have such an absurdly torturous way to retire their employees. Then we find out he's no angel and is working for Shawn (who's basically Satan).
• When the sinkhole opens (supposedly) due to Eleanor's actions with the cake, Michael orders everyone to stay in as the sinkhole being of extra-dimensional origin can mess up with a human, as shown when Tahani approaches the sinkhole. But, Glenn falls in it and he doesn't glitch out like Tahani, hinting at the other neighbors' true nature.
• In "Most Improved Player", Trevor meets Chidi and offhandedly mocks how he tried to make Eleanor a good person. Chidi confesses the same thing to Michael, but only near the end of the episode — meaning Trevor shouldn't be able to logically know about that just yet.
• When the Bad Place representatives have "Who Let The Dogs Out?" playing as a song fit for demons, the only person not grooving to the music is Tahani, the only human there. Even Michael is grooving to it, as he's actually a demon.
• Trevor claims that one of the clown paintings in "Real" Eleanor's house is identical to one that was supposed to be used to torture "Fake" Eleanor, hinting that she's in a place that's meant to torture her.
• Michael says the reason they mixed up Real Eleanor with Fake Eleanor is because the two Places accidentally picked up the wrong Eleanor's file. So this means that Michael has supposedly been working with Real Eleanor's file the whole time. However, when Michael described Eleanor's death to her in the first episode, he described the way Fake Eleanor died, not Real Eleanor.
• Michael explains that the two Eleanors got mixed up because, for the first time ever, two people with the same name died at the same time and place - but later he doesn't seem surprised when Jason gets confused with someone who had a different name, was in a different country, and didn't even die.
• After Eleanor protests Michael's nicknames of "Real Eleanor" versus "Fake Eleanor", Bambadjan mentions that he finds the nicknames helpful. It's really just one more way to twist the knife and remind Eleanor that she doesn't belong.
• When Michael chews Trevor out, he mentions the Bad Place's four-headed flying bears, and then in a very calm, confident, matter-of-fact way, says that "They have those down there." Previous interactions have made it clear that it's not very common for the different Places to interact, so Michael knowing about what random torture device they have in the Bad Place foreshadows that he's from there.
• In "What's My Motivation", Eleanor eventually learns that the morality scoring system takes the reason the deed is done into account, not just the intended and real impact of it — specifically, if you do a good deed because you expect to benefit from it, not because you care about the happiness and well-being of others, it doesn't count. Since Tahani's good deeds were rooted in a need to outdo her sister and earn her parents' approval, she ended up in the Bad Place.
  • On a related note, in "Tahani Al-Jamil", Tahani talks about wanting to go around and visit the other Good Place residents and make sure everyone feel safe, because she thinks that "helping others will make [her] feel like she truly belong[s]" in the Good Place. When she says it, it doesn't mean much in particular, but in hindsight it can be seen as an early hint that she knew deep down that her good deeds were selfishly motivated and she still felt like she had to earn going to the Good Place.
• When "Real" Eleanor is brought into the neighborhood, she is portrayed as fairly well-adjusted and not the least bit spiteful for being tortured for what basically a clerical error, even willing to go back to protect "Fake" Eleanor. While this was originally chocked up to her being too good of a person to hold a grudge or for the Bad Place to break her spirit, it makes a lot more sense when you find out that she was a demon playing nice the whole time.
• One clue that Chidi isn't the soulmate of Real Eleanor is that he thinks the clowns in the house "Fake" Eleanor inhabits (and which is supposedly intended for Real Eleanor) are creepy.
  • Additionally, Real Eleanor states "The more I work on [Fake Eleanor's] case, the more I believe she truly belongs here!" when seemingly trying to help keep "Fake" Eleanor in the Neighborhood. She's right — "Fake" Eleanor really belongs in the Bad Place, and the Neighborhood is the Bad Place.
• Michael acts more rude and unsympathetic than normal when he discovers that Jason and Janet are married, bluntly telling Janet that her love is a glitch and that he's going to have to murder her for it. Michael had never expected that Janet and Jason would fall in love, and his bewilderment at it is causing his persona as a Good Place architect to crack.
  • In general, Michael acts ruder when it's just him and Jason. This makes sense once it's revealed that Michael knew who Jason was from the start (and subsequently that he was the dumbest person to ever live). As evidenced by his reaction when it actually happened in season two, Michael never expected in a million years that Jason would figure it out, so when it's just the two of them, Michael basically feels like he's been given a free pass to let his true personality and cruelty loose.
• When we finally do get to see how Eleanor died (struck into the path of a truck by a stack of shopping carts while picking up a bottle of margarita mix as Real Eleanor tried to save her) "Real" Eleanor is nowhere to be seen, indicating that "Real" Eleanor's story might not be true.
• Chef Patricia at "The Good Plates" restaurant has the quirk of saying friendly things in an angry tone, to which Michael says she's just very intense. This seems quirky at first watch, but really foreshadows that she's a demon playing a role in the whole scheme who never got the hang of acting convincingly nice, and Michael has to cover for her.
• In "Category 55 Emergency Doomsday Crisis," Michael leaves the technical manual open, seemingly by accident. When Tahani opens it, however, the Neighborhood Rankings option is conspicuously highlighted green. Given the Season One reveal, it's all but guaranteed he did this intentionally to get her to look at the rankings and her low spot in them to feed into her inferiority complex.
• In one episode, Eleanor wakes up to dripping water from the bathtub she's been sleeping in. Doesn't seem like a tap would be dripping like that in paradise, does it?
• When Janet is in her rebooting cactus phase, Jason takes one and pricks his finger on it, drawing blood. It seems suspect that one could sustain even the smallest bloody injury in the Good Place, especially since "Flying" showed two residents get crushed by a dumpster with no ill effects.
• Mindy's welcome video in the Medium Place is presented by representatives from the two Places. It makes sense that Trevor would be the Bad Place spokesperson, as he's the Bad Place demon we've seen the most of. However, this makes it rather noticeable in contrast that Michael isn't the Good Place spokesperson. He's the only Good Place architect we've seen, yet he's replaced with some random woman for seemingly no reason. This hints, of course, that no one we've seen is actually of the Good Place.
• When Tahani accidentally cocoons Shawn and everyone is frustrated with her, she blurts out "Oh, like you all are so perfect!" Of course, they aren't - That's why they're all in the Bad Place.
• The flashback of Michael being told he'll be designing his first neighborhood is shot in muted colors and in a dark bank vault-like place, hinting this is not a heavenly spot.
  • Right before Dave drops Project No. 12358W on Michael's desk, you can just catch the title of the file he was previously working on: "Flesh Ripping Lighting." An extremely easy-to-miss but massive hint that he's not working for the Good Place.
  • A light bulb goes off in Michael's head when his colleague advises him to do a "good job." Why would a Good Place architect experience a revelation upon being told to do a "good job"? Wouldn't that be their plan from the get go?
  • Likewise in Michael's flashback, when he starts re-designing his neighborhood the blueprint is titled "The Good Place" in quotation marks. While titles are sometimes given quotes like that, it makes more sense as sarcasm quotes.
    • Also, one wouldn't expect Michael's neighborhood to be called "The Good Place" because he's not constructing (or, as a rookie, wouldn't have the authority to alter) the whole Good Place.
• Just a few minutes before the big reveal, Shawn tells Michael that he's likely to be in deep trouble for the failure of his neighborhood and suggests that he might even get retired. Michael's genuinely startled reaction may seem a little odd in the moment, given that he contemplated initiating his own retirement over lesser problems earlier in the season... but after the reveal, it's clear that that incident was part of the ruse and Michael was not actually in any danger. In Michael and Shawn's conversation in the finale, however, Michael's plan has actually begun to fall apart, and as Michael's supervisor from the Bad Place, Shawn isn't just speculating but actively threatening him.
  • Shawn's acting also gives away the twist if you look carefully. His way of stating his identity as the All-Seeing Judge is rather sarcastic, and it's clear he's making fun of Michael in most of their interactions throughout the three Season 1 episodes he appears.
• When the humans all arguing with one another over who should go to the Bad Place, the creepy clown paintings in "Real" Eleanor's house are visible in the background in almost every shot. As per the DVD Commentary, this is a subtle Visual Pun; the humans are all being played for fools by the demons by being led to believe they're in the Good Place when they're actually in the Bad Place.
• In "Mindy St. Claire", Janet, within The Medium Place, loses her omnipresent-assistant capabilities due to being so far away from 'The Good Place', yet Bad Janet retains hers during the demons' stay in the Neighborhood. While later on it's shown that any Janet can function pretty much anywhere, the way this plot point is set up serves as another hint that the 'Good Place' maybe isn't all that far from the Bad Place after all.

Season 2, Episode 9 "Best Self'

Michael Never Knew How to Get into the Good Place

• Despite it being the crux of the entire season, Michael never once elaborates how he plans to get he and the humans to the Good Place. Every detail he gives is incredibly vague, if he goes into any detail about it at all. He never says or does anything that would indicate he's making any progress, always just referring to it as something that will happen sometime in the future. This builds up to the fact that Michael doesn't know how to get into the Good Place and never has, and just made that promise on the spot to convince the humans to team up with him.
• Michael only brings up the idea of getting the humans into the Good Place once the humans make it clear that they don't trust him enough to go along with his plan. For such a ginormous detail, it's a bit odd that he didn't just mention that from the start.
• Chidi asks Michael a very logical question (they didn't qualify for the Good Place based on their time on Earth, so how could Michael convince the Good Place to accept them now?), to which Michael flat-out confesses "Gotta admit, I have no idea."
• The hot air balloon always rejects the person who is the last to enter. In hindsight that it's fake, it's clear that this is being done on purpose by Michael. Each of the humans still have flaws that they can analyze, so Michael's just doing whatever he can to buy just a few more seconds of time.

Season 3, Episode 9 "Janet(s)"

No One Has Gotten Into the Good Place in 521 Years

• In the first episode, Eleanor asks Michael who's in the Bad Place that would surprise her. He lists off a couple names, such as pretty much every artist ever, and Florence Nightingale. The latter, especially, comes as a shock to Eleanor. Then, in Season 3, we find out the actual answer is way worse than either Eleanor or Michael could've ever imagined: everyone who has died in over 500 years.
• Mindy is revealed to be the sole inhabitant of the Medium Place ever (as revealed by both herself and later Gen). During Mindy's own introduction, she mentioned she used to be a somewhat jerkish attorney before she got her Heel Realization and tried to open a charity using her savings (after which she died and got a massive point boost). This means that the Medium Place literally wasn't a concept before her and she would have gone to the Bad Place by default hadn't she died - an early hint how the afterlife is terribly skewed against the humans.
• During the events of "Michael's Gambit", Shawn mentions in a flashback that the Bad Place has tried to force humans to torture each other before, but have been unsuccessful until Michael set it up so they didn't even realize they were doing it. When you find out that everyone who has lived and died in over 500 years is in the Bad Place, this makes a lot of sense; your average person, even an average person who was sort of a jerk like Eleanor, is not going to be okay with practicing Cold-Blooded Torture on another human being. And true, they probably have a fair number of Sadists, Serial Killers, and sociopaths down there, but, well... for the demons, that wouldn't really be torture per se, so it's unlikely Shawn and the others would think that was any fun.
• invoked Relatedly, all of the demons in Michael's Fake Good Place pretend to be over-the-top Purity Sues based on what they understand is required to access the Good Place. Their good deeds being all so ridiculously positive and humanitarian - particularly in contrast to the lives lived by Team Cockroach - turns out to be an early indication for the impossibly high standards set by the points system to access the Good Place. If the only people who seem to have gotten access to the Good Place in the modern day are in reality just faking, then it all but says that no one has come to the Good Place any time soon.

Season 3, Episode 10 "The Book of Dougs"

The Points Systems is Royally Forked Up, and It's Due to Globalization and Technological Advancement

• In the very first episode, after revealing to Chidi that she doesn't really belong in the Good Place, Eleanor complains that the system is unfair, Chidi replies that it might be, but there's nothing they can do about it. Both the last few episodes of Season 3 and most of Season 4 deal mainly with the fact that the system really is unfair and the main characters doing something about it.
• Throughout the first two seasons, we find out several things that can send you to the Bad Place. Included among actions with the worst point values are rape, murder, assault, taking off your shoes and socks on a plane, liking The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and simply being from France or Florida. On a first viewing, you laugh at the joke, but on any subsequent viewings, you realize that the fact that such small actions, many of which are annoying (or not even evil), but ultimately harmless, can get you sent to Hell is actually horrifying. Hmm, it's almost as if the system itself is hopelessly flawed or something...
• In "Michael's Gambit", it's mentioned off-hand that Chidi actually got the closest of the four humans to getting into the real Good Place. Granted, he wasn't even close enough to actually get into the Good Place, but still, he was comparatively the closest of all his friends. Now, remember how Chidi constantly worries about the negative repercussions of even the most minor actions he undertakes? As it's later revealed in Season 3, even the smallest actions in a fully globalized world have negative repercussions that can get someone unintentionally damned to the Bad Place. As such, Chidi having the highest point score of his friends and still getting damned serves as a subtle indicator that him constantly fretting over minor actions like drinking almond milk wasn't that illogical after all.
• Back when Michael was learning ethics from Chidi in "The Trolley Problem", when the latter used Les Misérables to make a point to him about doing bad deeds to help someone (specifically noting Jean Valjean stealing bread to help his family), Michael refutes Chidi's point and says that that would still earn him Bad Place points and states that stealing baguette will cost more points especially due to the act being 'more French'. Michael then also says all the characters in the play (due to being flawed) will go to the Bad Place. Chidi dismisses Michael due to him still being evil, but with The Reveal in the end of this episode, that doing explicit good deeds will also earn Bad Place points due to the world being more and more interconnected and thus having unintended consequences due to the point system accounting for every minute step of the action and its impact on the world but less so for the intent, Michael unintentionally hit the nail on the problem that seemingly two completely opposite approaches to doing an action will ultimately be dealt the same way by the system: losing points and ending up in the Bad Place.
  • Even if Michael only meant the main characters, that still includes Cosette, who never does anything bad and inadvertently facilitates some of Jean Valjean’s Heel–Face Turn.
• In "Janet(s)", it's specifically mentioned that no one has gotten into the Good Place for the past 521 years. This episode originally aired and took place in 2018, and doing the math means that according to the Accountants, no one has gotten into the Good Place since 1497 — roughly 5 years after Christopher Columbus' expedition to the Americas helped kickstart the modern age of globalization. This subtly sets up The Reveal in "The Book of Dougs" that globalization has led to virtually every action having unforeseen negative consequences that can literally damn someone to the Bad Place through no fault of their own.
• A running joke in the series is Chidi, upon discovering he's in the Bad Place in each reboot, concluding that the reason is due to using almond milk in his coffee despite the fact that growing almonds is bad for the environment. This assumption is initially put down by Michael, who claims it was due to his rigidity and indecisiveness hurting all of his loved ones... but with the discovery in Season 3 of how adverse connections to one's actions can cost someone points even if the action itself is not bad, the almond milk may actually have played a part in damning him.

Season 4, Episode 1 - "A Girl from Arizona - Part 1"

• The first clue we get that Linda is actually Chris the demon is that the question she asks on being woken up is, "Is there a fitness center?"

Season 4, Episode 4 "Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy"

"Our" Janet Has Been Replaced by a Bad Janet

• From the episodes "A Girl From Arizona: Part 1" to "Tinker, Tailor, Demon, and Spy", Janet shows some uncharacteristically mean behavior, foreshadowing how the Janet the group is currently with is actually a Bad Janet impersonating her for the purpose of demoralizing the group and sabotaging the experiment.
  • Janet is the first one to voice to Michael the group's concerns over Eleanor's questionable decision making as leader, which makes sense, given that she was the one who manipulated them into believing that in the first place. Similarly, when Eleanor overhears them talking, while Tahani attempts to be polite, Janet makes some rather blunt and belittling comments to her about how "over the last three days with her leadership, she's predicted a 7.1% chance of success" and "she is really pooching it."
  • Janet does not seem particularly sympathetic when she tells Jason they need to break up for the sake of the experiment. While it's somewhat plausible that she would want this given the stakes, she's rather emotionless and to the point when breaking up with the man she's loved for over 300 years, and seems to have made such a difficult decision pretty quickly. On top of that, she reveals to Jason immediately afterwards that Blake Bortles has been cut from the Jacksonville Jaguars, even though it is probably the worst possible time to reveal something like this to him.
  • Janet gives horrible advice to Tahani on how to deal with John, suggesting that she should be more direct with him about his rudeness. When Tahani agrees, Janet is shown quietly saying to herself "yes" with a smug look of satisfaction on her face. After this strategy fails miserably, Janet tells Tahani to punch John, even providing her with boxing gloves.
  • Janet is forced to deal with Chidi's, erm, terribly drawn "horse" that came to life during Pictionary. When she reports back to the Soul Squad, she can't help but explain in graphic detail how she killed the horse despite trying not to.
    • The fact that the horse came to life so horrifically and literally in the first place is also suspicious. Janet, as a benevolent, omniscient being, would clearly know and be able to materialize the drawing based on its intent, and not as a grotesque monstrosity. Hmmm, it's almost like Janet wanted to freak everyone out...
• The whole "Linda" debacle seems to go against the Bad Place's plan, as Jason doesn't get a person to torture him...until you learn the whole thing was actually just a ruse to replace Janet with a Bad Janet. So, in a way, Linda was put there to torture Jason.
• In the "The Selection" web series which shows how the demons came to the idea of using selecting humans that will be difficult for the gang to work with and drag them back into their old patterns, the idea of having Chris pose as a human named Linda is never shown, even though the episode where he is exposed was already shown. At first this just seems to be for time constraints, but given that this was merely a coverup to get a Bad Janet into the new neighborhood to execute the plan to impersonate Good Janet, it makes sense that they wouldn't show this, as it would spoil the twist.
• After breaking up with Jason, Janet dyes a streak of her hair red in an apparent coping move. The effect, however, is that it disrupts Janet's traditional, professional aesthetic which she had previously maintained under arguably worse stresses, and adds a color to Janet's ensemble that does not match her classic outfit and is not associated with her default looks. Red is, however, commonly associated with demons and evil^note The first season even kept any of the demons from wearing red to prevent this connection from being drawn, and dying a hair streak is a fashion choice that a Bad Janet is much more likely to adopt.
• Within "Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy" itself, Janet produces a demon-exploding device when asked for a demon lie detector, which leads to Glenn being accidentally blown up, shocking and horrifying the group. That is a wildly implausible error for Janet to make. Asides from when she was newly rebooted, Janet has never incorrectly produced an item before, with it even having been established during the episode "Janet and Michael" that a Good Janet not being able to instantly and accurately conjure up any item requested is a sign that something is seriously wrong with her. But after knowing it's Bad Janet, it makes sense: the demon-exploder was completely deliberate so Bad Janet could get the group to kill Glenn, shutting up his dangerously-close-to-correct suspicions and whistleblowing along with hopefully traumatizing the humans from the shock of what the device actually was. Furthermore, Janet creating a demon-exploder was very unhelpful and not doing what she was specifically requested to do — or, in other words, she was doing exactly what a Bad Janet is meant to.
• In the show's companion podcast, one of the Season 4 cold opens involves Michael talking to someone who he believes to be Janet, before she reveals herself to be Bad Janet messing with him.

Season 4, Episode 12 "Patty"

The Good Place is Actually a Horrible Mess

• The Good Place Committee being such ineffectual Lawful Stupid wusses isn't just a Take That! at people in power refusing to fight back against their corrupt brethren, but an early indicator of the Good Place actually being a Crapsaccharine World. As "Patty" later reveals, they were all but obviously trying to undermine the Soul Squad's efforts and prevent more people from coming into the Good Place because they had completely run out of ideas to keep the Good Place fresh and interesting, and had instead turned its denizens into glassy-eyed happiness zombies through providing unceasing pleasure.
  • The Good Place Committee not sending even a single denizen to Gen's emergency meeting about the point system's incompatibility may sound like The Law of Conservation of Detail (even Shawn was sent to represent the Bad Place, and he posits some good arguments to the team), but after "Patty", it's more likely that the Good Place Committee was unwilling to face Gen's wrath for the massive mismanagement in the system because they ran out of ideas and have been delaying the Soul Squad (and indirectly the afterlife) from sending more humans because they literally hit a roadblock on how to satisfy the humans there, and are afraid to face the consequences.
  • Similarly, the fact that after Team Cockroach first meets the human residents of the Good Place, none of the humans beg Team Cockroach for any information about any of their loved ones (or descendants, considering that these humans have died more than 520 years in Earth, at the latest) that were previously damned to the Bad Place serves as some Five-Second Foreshadowing for the Good Place's constant pleasure having basically lobotomized everyone. Their general apathy (i.e., no one bothering to inform Team Cockroach of their original cultures) to the Good Place's welcome party being a comically blatant Anachronism Stew also serves as an allusion to both the Good Place having a corroding effect on complex thought and how the Good Place Committee were desperately trying to ward off the ennui and boredom of their wards by adding in as many recent discoveries of humanity as possible ("We try to stay current here").
• When Michael is meeting with the Good Place Committee in "The Book of Dougs", one of their members immediately resigns as soon as possible. On the surface, this is presented as being due to them being a loser Extreme Doormat, but "Patty" later reveals every member of the Good Place Committee is really a Stepford Smiler who is painfully aware of the Good Place being a royal suckfest but having no idea how to fix it. As such, them resigning as soon as possible isn't just them being absurdly nice and having no spine, it's also them trying to get out while the gettin' is good.
• In "You've Changed, Man", the Good Place Committee members are perfectly happy with the idea of giving everyone in the Good Place to Shawn and letting them be tortured in the Bad Place for all eternity (effectively getting rid of the entire purpose of the Good Place). "Patty" later justifies this perspective by revealing that, from the points of view of both the Good Place's denizens' and the other Good Place staff, the Good Place practically is the Bad Place already because of it being a Crapsaccharine World. From the perspective of eternity, there's no real meaningful difference between suffering from Butthole Spiders and being turned into a happiness zombie.
• When Janet uploads all information on the Good Place after first arriving there, the first thing she declares is that seeing the Good Place all at once will scramble their brains. It is later revealed that this is what happens to all humans who spend a long enough time in the Good Place; the great philosopher and mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria is unable to focus on anything for too long or even think complex thoughts because her need to think critically on basically anything has atrophied in a world where everything is provided for her.
• It's been a recurring theme throughout the show that other immortals in the celestial bureaucracy (the Bad Place's demons, the Accounting Department, and the Judge) have major blind spots regarding human nature, which prevent them from doing their jobs properly and fairly. In retrospect, perhaps it should have been obvious that the ones running The Good Place were no exception to that rule.

Other

• Near the end of the first episode, Eleanor angrily rants that she deserves a "Medium Place" instead of getting automatically damned to the Bad Place just for being a Jerkass. The Medium Place, occupied by Mindy St. Clair, is revealed to exist later on in the first season.
• When the Good Place starts going haywire in the second episode, Jianyu Li is seen glancing around nervously. It's later revealed that he, like Eleanor, believes that he's been put into the Good Place by mistake and is causing the breakdown.
• Chidi's diagnosis of directional insanity foreshadows how conflicted he is about ethics. Much more than your average moral philosopher, who probably doesn't consider which muffin to buy a moral dilemma. As Michael points out, hundreds of pages into his thesis, Chidi writes: "On the other hand, the exact opposite could be true."
• In "Jason Mendoza", the episode where Jianyu is revealed to be Jason, he asks if Janet's single. Eleanor indignantly replies that he "cannot date Janet". For most of the show, one of Jason's primary love interests ends up being Janet.
• Mindy got a massive points boost right before she died, which made everyone doubt whether she deserved either fate — Good Place or Bad Place. This foreshadows the same thing happening to Brent, who improved greatly in the last ten seconds before his second attempt was over. It happening a second time is what convinced the afterlife admins that the points system is flawed, and humans can improve, and maybe they shouldn't be judged by how many selfish things they had done at their time of death, which seems to be arbitrary and not a matter of "their time running out".
• In the second Good Place attempt in "Everything is Great!", Eleanor's (fictional) Good Counterpart is claimed by Michael as having been an environmental activist. When she's sent back to Earth at the end of Season 2, Eleanor becomes one for real... for about six months.
• A case of Five-Second Foreshadowing happens in "Dance Dance Resolution": When Mindy St. Clair was first introduced back in her eponymous episode, she was shown to be walking around naked because she was completely alone until then and wasn't expecting anyone to be coming by. When Eleanor, Chidi, and Janet see her here, she's fully clothed, meaning she's been expecting them to come back and hasn't had her memory wiped multiple times like they have.
• Chidi complains to Eleanor in "Existential Crisis" that the main problem stopping Michael from properly learning human ethics is that he's immortal, and therefore ethics basically don't mean anything to him. As the series goes on, the Fatal Flaw of the afterlife system is revealed to be that it's run entirely by eternal spirits who have absolutely no grasp of human nature due to their immortality, and the Soul Squad have to convince them of the folly of their ways through showing that Humans Are Flawed.
• During The Roast for the four humans in "Leap Into Faith", Michael wonders if Chidi wishes he was under the train during the Trolley Problem demonstration. Michael's solution to the Trolley Problem is doing exactly that, putting himself in harm's way to protect everyone else.
• In "Best Self", one of the "normal ways" Chidi wishes he had met Eleanor on Earth is her coming to his office and asking for help with Ethics. When they both return to Earth in the Season 2 finale, this is exactly how they meet.
• In Season 2's "Rhonda, Diana, Jake and Trent", Tahani (posing as the demon Rhonda) tells another demon that "you just start to feel like you're repeating yourself" after millennia of performing the same acts of torture on countless humans. This ends up coming back again in Season 4's "You've Changed, Man", where Michael is able to convince Shawn to agree to Team Cockroach's plan to fix the afterlife system, simply because Shawn has been bored with their conventional torture for many, many Bearimies, and fighting against Michael has been his only source of fun in centuries.
• After learning the truth about the afterlife in Season 3, a spiritually broken Chidi becomes a Straw Nihilist who recites the famous Nietzsche quote, "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him... Who will wipe this blood off us? ...What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?" What he doesn't mention, however, is how that quote continues:
  Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.
  • This serves as some Five-Second Foreshadowing for the decision the characters later make that even if they've lost their last chance to get into the Good Place, they can instead still try to help others in spite of the knowledge that they won't be rewarded for doing so that those people get into the Good Place.
  • The full Nietzsche quote also foreshadows the final season: Having finally proven how flawed the points system is, the group ends up responsible for coming up with a new system of eternal justice and punishment. In other words, having "killed God" by deconstructing the justice of the current afterlife, they then must take on the God-like role of replacing it.
• When Chidi and Simone break up in "The Ballad of Donkey Doug", she comments "See you in the next life." At the end of the season, they do, thanks to the Bad Place choosing Simone for the experiment.
• At the start of the Season 3 finale, Chidi and Eleanor joke about their relationship — with Eleanor posing as the architect and Chidi as a normal resident, it makes their relationship seem like Chidi is dating his "boss". The episode ends with Chidi getting his memories erased, with him becoming a normal resident and with him believing Eleanor really is the neighborhood architect/his boss.
• In "Whenever You're Ready", Chidi says he's read every book on morality and philosophy, and so has started on mainstream fare like The Da Vinci Code... but declares it to be garbage. This is the first hint that he's reached the end of his time in the Good Place.
  • Tahani proving that a human can transcend their limitations and become an Architect is foreshadowing for the ending of the episode, in which Michael does the exact reverse.

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