History YMMV / TheGoodPlace

** Some fans of ''The Good Place" have latched onto ''WebAnimation/TheAmazingDigitalCircus'' as a semi-successor, as both series feature a group of humans TrappedInAnotherWorld (both worlds even featuring a MagicalProfanityFilter), all with their own personal problems, and who have to work together to find a way out of their predicament.

** When Chidi [[spoiler: pretends to be a demon named "Trent" and advises other demons to torture a particular human by forcing him to read Moral Philosophy books is he just playing along to avoid detection, expressing self-hatred since he points out everyone "hates moral philosophers," or is he subtly talking the demons out of normal tortures in an effort to spare the man significant pain and possibly help him grow as a person?]] On the flip side [[spoiler: do the demons go along with it because they sincerely believe it will be a worse torture for that human, because "Trent's" friend vouched for him as an authority, or because they're just bored out of their skulls with more traditional tortures, and wanted to try something new?]]
** Was Shawn [[spoiler: a constant victim of his own hubris, who kept snatching defeat from the jaws of victory when he underestimated the heroes? Or was he having so much fun he purposefully sabotaged himself to keep the game going? The ending of the show strongly hints at the latter, as he refuses to let the heroes lose and leave him without an opponent.]]

** Michael's motivational speech to [[spoiler: his demons in the Season Two Premiere: "we are all here because we believe there's a better way to make people miserable".]]

** It's at most just implied in the show, but it's pretty much unanimously agreed within the fanbase that the Good Place committee [[spoiler: was ''intentionally'' incompetent because they didn't want new people coming into the Good Place because they couldn't keep it entertaining.]]

* FoeYayShipping: Michael and ''Shawn'' have spawned a lot of shippers. Yes, really. But it's not actually that far-fetched to think they'd love each other -- [[spoiler: the latter half of Season 4 makes it clear that Shawn ''does'' adore Michael. Shawn, the boss of the InUniverse equivalent of (secular) ''Hell'', even defects to the good side because of Michael. Given that this is a development that has been going on for a literal eternity, it's easy to see the appeal of shipping them]].

** Florence Nightingale says in her book ''Suggestions for Thought'' that she cannot believe in a God who would condemn people to Hell and that all who die will eventually make it to Heaven, making her own condemnation to The Bad Place a case of situational {{irony}}.[[spoiler: She did turn out to be right about Hell not being forever, if not for the reason she thought.]]

** When Michael, Chidi, and Eleanor are testing out the trolley problem, they roll by the movie theater which is showing movies with titles playing on ''Film/StrangersOnATrain'' (''Strangers Under a Train'') and ''Film/BendItLikeBeckham'' (''Bend It Like Bentham''). Philosopher Jeremy Bentham is considered the father of the "ticking time bomb scenario", a variation of the trolley problem. As a bonus, the variation is about whether or not it is permissible to use torture to get information from a suspect that will save lives, [[spoiler: and Michael is using the simulation to torture Chidi, albeit purely for his own amusement.]]

** In Season 2, Janet begins glitching due to her unresolved baggage over Jason (who doesn't have the memories of their relationship), and pragmatically asks Michael to marbleize her (basically shutting her down) so the neighborhood, which she maintains, won't be compromised. Later, in Season 3, where the characters get reset to their lives and survive, Chidi has to break up with Simone so he doesn't reveal the truth about the afterlife and blow her chances at getting into the Good Place, since Michael and Janet blew their own cover and confessed that the humans knowing about the Good Place instantly corrupted their intentions. [[spoiler: These two scenarios combine in a tragic way at the end of Season 3, when the Bad Place puts Simone in the neighborhood experiment being run by the humans, Michael, and Janet. Chidi is unable to handle being around Simone, perhaps even less so with her memories of him being wiped to maintain cover, and he asks to be rebooted solo to avoid compromising the experiment, fully knowing the relationships he will lose. With no other options, his request has to be carried out, and while Chidi avoids Janet's Season 2 predicament, Eleanor enters it.]]

* LoveToHate: Much as they're dedicated to making the Soul Squad's lives (and afterlives) miserable and ensure [[spoiler: all of humanity spends an eternity being tortured thanks to an outdated point system]], the Bad Place demons are so entertainingly evil that any scene they enter is a delight. This applies to Shawn most of all, thanks to his CardCarryingVillain and EvilIsPetty tendencies.

** The chime that plays over the public address system in [[spoiler: the real Good Place]] is a LITERAL version of this trope. More than one character describes it as the most pleasing sound they've ever heard.

** Michael's desire to be a human, which manifests in feeling like his current biological status does not suit him coupled with feeling ashamed over his natural physical form [[spoiler: and eventually deciding to live as a member of his desired species permanently]], has been argued as a possible [[https://www.themarysue.com/michael-good-place-trans-allegory/ transgender metaphor.]]

** The Season Two finale. [[spoiler: While sending the heroes "Somewhere Else" was a given, sending them ''back to Earth'' to re-live their lives in the hopes that they'll become better on their own merit, getting into the Good Place for real,]] was something almost no one saw coming. [[note]]Well, unless you were on Reddit, where it was a ''very'' popular fan theory.[[/note]]

** The earlier episodes of Season 3 while not bad per se, were seen as not as fun since [[spoiler: taking the action out of the afterlife robbed the show of its quirkiness that made it so special and sort of aimless. However, around episode 8 "Don't Let The Good Life Pass You By" the season picks up again as the main four die (again), and Michael shifts his mission to reform the whole afterlife.]]

** Season 2 starts off with [[spoiler: Eleanor having successfully passed her self a note from the first version of the Good Place and trying to piece together what's going on based only on that and no other memories. But rather than following up on this system as a way to undermine Michael long term, she blurts out her secret after the first go and Michael eliminates it from all future resets so it never comes up again.]]

** When Gen [[spoiler: tries to delete all of humanity, all the characters treat this as an unconditional CardCarryingVillain move. However, it actually would have instantly ended the suffering of billions, and averted the suffering of billions more. She did seem to need Shawn's consent to make a more fundamental change, which she didn't expect to get.]]

** The [[spoiler: collapse of the fake Good Place as they leave it for good]] is pretty awe-worthy.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Jason exclaims "Bortles!" or mentions the Jags about every five seconds, but neither of them are exactly household names to the average person, so a lot of viewers initially don't realize that Blake Bortles is a real person who actually was the Jacksonville Jaguars' quarterback for majority of the show's run.

*** The sheer level of obliviousness Brent displays could be seen as evidence not simply of a spoiled narcissist, but of a poorly socialized autistic person. This could have even been part of [[spoiler: Shawn's plan, if he knew Brent would be unlikely to pick up on subtle nudges that would be obvious to a Neurotypical.]]
*** I'm sorry but as an autistic person I REALLY don't see it. He doesn't come off as on the spectrum to me he just comes off as an asshole who doesn't want to believe they are one and has their ideas of their own superioriety so deeply engrained that they refuse to believe they're someone that needs to change until the last moment... it seems like it's just he's got plenty of denial left from that he spent his whole life on Earth like this too. I think there's things that they could have one to get him out of that sooner but someone has to WANT to change and I don't think he's particularly autism-coded and even if he was that wouldn't excuse his behavior.

*** I'm sorry but as an autistic person I REALLY don't see it. He doesn't come off as on the spectrum to me he just comes off as an asshole who doesn't want to believe they are one and has their ideas of their own superioriety so deeply engrained that they refuse to believe they're someone that needs to change until the last moment...