Shawn gets the demons briefed on their mission.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Call-Back: When the demons throw John Wayne Gacy, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler as candidates for the experiment, Shawn has to shoot them down, as Gen made it clear that serial killers and dictators are ruled out in "Chidi Sees the Time Knife".
- The Cover Changes the Meaning: The theme music in all the episodes is the theme music for the show in general, but rewritten in a minor key and with added dissonance to make it more...Bad Place-y.
- Evil Cannot Stand Cuteness: Shawn threatens to make the demons watch videos of red pandas if they can't come up with good (or "bad") candidates, threateningly reminding them that they are extremely cute.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: After Val throws Joseph Stalin as an idea, Bambadjan pitches the same man. When Shawn points out that Val just said it, he says that he wasn't listening because she was a woman.
- Take That!:
- Shawn explains to the demons that they have to pick humans who were the same level of awful as Team Cockroach, making a point that they can't choose dictators, serial killers or white musicians who ever did a "semi-ironic cover" of a rap song.
- Bambadjan recommends the person who invented the phrase "think outside the box." While Shawn likes it, they can't use it because the first person to say it was Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
- Shawn regularly tortures Emily Dickinson by making her listen to Joe Rogan's podcast.
