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The Judge's Realm

    Gen 

Hydrogen "Gen", the Judge

Portrayed by: Maya Rudolph
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tgp_gen.png
"Hi, I'm the judge. That's a burrito. What's up guys?"

"I love that! And I love your passion! I mean, it takes a lot of guts to just show here unannounced. Plus I haven't had a case in like 30 years and I'm super bored. So it's either this or start Bloodline (2015). And I don't know I just don't feel like I can see Kyle Chandler as anyone else but Coach Taylor."

The immortal, all-knowing Judge who presides on disputes between the Good and Bad Places. Gen is a generally quirky and approachable television fan, but she takes the laws of the universe very seriously.


  • Abhorrent Admirer: Gen proves to be a bit of a case of this towards Chidi, to whom she doesn't hide being attracted. This hits its crescendo near the end of Season 4 where Gen threatens to reset all humans out of existence, but states that she'll make an exception for Chidi.
  • Always a Bigger Fish: In "The Brainy Bunch", Michael describes Trevor as one of the most dangerous and evil beings in the universe, but when Gen gets fed up with him, she sends him flying off into the void with a simple flick of her fingers.
  • Ambiguously Brown: When she spends some time on Earth, she is surprised to discover that she is considered black. Maya Rudolph, for the record, is half-black.
  • Anti-Villain: Almost sends Team Cockroach back to the Bad Place twice at the end of Season 2, and opposes them for the first half of Season 3, but never maliciously. After Michael successfully convinces her that the point-system is the problem and not humanity, she decides to Restart the World and wipe out all humans (living and dead) from existence and start over from scratch.
  • Arc Villain: For the first half of Season 3. While not an outright evil entity, she serves as a major obstacle for the main characters (even when she's not directly involved) due to her lack of empathy, determination to stick by the rules of the universe no matter what, and her cosmic powers. She changes her tune when the Soul Squad successfully proves to her that the morality system is forked up.
  • Audience Surrogate: Her reactions to the main four mirror the audience's: thinking of them as adorable, that Tahani's accent is lovely, etc.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Despite her quirks, you really don't want to make her angry. She banishes Trevor into the abyss for being annoying. Later, she threatens to torture Shawn for eternity for messing with the new experiment beyond the parameters.
  • Black-and-White Insanity: Played with in a "Blue-and-Orange Morality" sort of way. She is a neutral being and is the absolute highest authority in the Celestial Bureaucracy and applies a strict, incredibly thorough black and white moral standard on humanity that demands that they should be good for the sake of being good and nothing else in their short time on Earth. When she sees that Team Cockroach did not fill out the right paperwork, she tries to send them back to the Bad Place (knowing that it means eternal damnation) and then gives them a test when they ask for one because she thinks they're "so cute". She thinks that it was Michael and Janet's own fault for meddling in human affairs when she demands they go back to the Bad Place where Michael will be retired and Janet will be marbleized. She also thinks that the most rational thing to do after Michael proves that the points system no longer works is to destroy the current universe, restart it from the Big Bang, and hope that the old system works better for whatever sentient life forms eventually develop.
  • Break the Haughty: She accepts the team's challenge to experience life on Earth for herself, and after spending thirty years there (about ten seconds from the heroes' perspective), comes back with her faith in absolute right and wrong completely demolished.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Eccentric, ditzy, and upbeat, she is the celestial being who presides over disputes between the Good and Bad Places, but manages to be an actually very good judge. She shows a great sense of fairness and is very approachable when Team Cockroach gets to her. She is also completely impartial, meaning that even though she likes them, she still needs to send them to the Bad Place when they fail. Subverted by the end of season 4: her solution to the problem of the points system is to wipe out all of creation and start over because she's too lazy to figure out another system.
  • Celeb Crush: On Mark Harmon and Timothy Olyphant, among others. Exploited; Janet distracts her with another Harmon project in one episode and conjures a construct of Rylan Givens in another to get her to listen to the main characters' plan.
  • Cheaters Never Prosper: She holds this view and hates cheaters. When the Bad Place sends in Trevor to mess with the first Earth experiment, she throws Trevor into the void while chiding Michael and Janet for messing with the new timeline even with their good intentions in "The Snowplow". In "Chidi Sees the Time Knife", she asks Michael why she should trust him after he broke more celestial laws than any angel or demon combined, and lied his way in the Accountants' Office as well as in the Good Place. And in "A Girl From Arizona, Part 1", she threatens to torture Shawn for eternity after being informed that he tried to sabotage the experiment.
  • Creature of Habit: Gen doesn't like the effects Michael's tampering has on Earth, not because the results are bad, but because they're weird and different.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Is always referred to and credited as "The Judge". The name Gen was only ever mentioned once, as a throwaway gag.
  • Exact Words:
    • Eleanor believes that the medallion given to her and Chidi by Gen (which is supposedly a ticket to the Good Place) is a test and that Jason and Tahani are being offered the same thing, with the first pair to accept failing. Gen quickly tells her that Tahani and Jason have not been offered that and shows her their tests. However, Gen never said it wasn't a test.
    • Played with in regards to Jason. He quickly tells her to shut up and let him play the video game, however, she intended to say that his test was not to lose by playing Madden NFL while playing against the Jaguars using the Titans. What she meant for him to do is to not even play it, since if he didn't play, he wouldn't lose.
  • Everyone Has Standards: She's horrified when Michael nervously asks if she's going to kill the four humans. Much later on, she calls out Janet for killing the humans and ending their lives too early.
  • Fatal Flaw: Naivete and laziness. Gen, like most cosmic beings, has no idea how complex human life is and how impossible it is to calculate every single unintended consequence. When she goes down to Earth to prove Michael is wrong about how complex things are, she comes back almost instantly (from the Timey-Wimey Ball perspective of the afterlife) having had a Jerkass Realization and is a lot more patient with him. However, she also doesn't care to find complex solutions to problems and tends to take the simplest solution.
  • Foil: To Shawn, the Accountants, and the Good Place Committee. Shawn explicitly states he has no desire to fix the broken system because it gives him more souls to torture—all of humanity, in fact. And unlike the Judge, he will cheat and otherwise resort to underhanded methods to keep the broken system in place. The Judge is at least willing to hear out the humans despite them lacking paperwork, hates cheaters, and is curious to see if Michael is right that people can change. The Accountants are even more inflexible than she is by insisting their system is perfect and ignoring suffering by those who die, as well as ignoring Matt's trauma of seeing too many Weird Sex Things. Gen is Nice to the Waiter with her doorman and goes to Earth to witness the broken system for herself. Finally, the Good Place Committee believes Michael when he says the system is rigged but won't bend the rules that require a millennia-long investigation and ignoring how many people will get unjustly tortured. The Judge is understandably more cynical but when she finally sees how hard it is to be good on Earth, she immediately says something needs to change.
  • Genki Girl: She's enthusiastic, energetic and a bit mercurial.
  • God: She's the closest equivalent the series has to a portrayal of the All-Father, as she's the most powerful being in the universe who sits above both the Good and Bad Places to determine the fates of humans in the afterlife.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Both physically and intellectually. Gen spends much of her time binge-watching TV instead of running the afterlife, completely fails to notice multiple instances of cheating in the experiment she was supposed to be monitoring, and when confronted with irrefutable evidence of the problems the system has, she takes the easiest way out and plans to reset the world.
  • Great Gazoo: A powerful eternal judge who tests the protagonists using unorthodox methods. She's also a cheerful eccentric TV addict who agreed to test them in the first place mostly because she was bored out of her mind and has little idea about what human existence is actually like.
  • Has a Type: In "You've Changed, Man", she admits that she is attracted to all of the father figures she sees on TV because she herself never had one. This could explain why she is always hitting on Chidi.
  • Hypocrite:
    • She believes that a person not looking into the moral implications of their actions (no matter how banal) means that they should be held responsible for the negative consequences of those actions, even if those consequences are eternal torture in the Bad Place. Unfortunately, this line of thinking is born of willful ignorance, holding back her omniscience (and thus keeping herself ignorant of Earth's current state and the afterlife system's massive flaws) under the misguided idea that it keeps her "impartial." This is pointed out to her by Jason of all people and she realizes this egregious error after seeing Earth for herself.
    • When Michael manages to make the case that the point system is the problem and not humanity, Gen's solution to this problem is to erase humanity and the Earth from existence. Not only is genocide an unambiguously bad thing, but she does this out of both impulsiveness and laziness, a moral flaw that she criticized Jason of having two seasons prior.
  • I Am Not Spock: In-Universe, she's reluctant to start Bloodline (2015) because she associates Kyle Chandler too strongly with his role in Friday Night Lights.
  • Innocently Insensitive: After sentencing the humans to the real Bad Place, she happily burbles about how great it was to meet them and shows them the pictures she's taken of their time together. The fact that none of them are in the mood to appreciate the sentiment seems to be lost on her.
  • Jerkass Gods: Played with. Unlike most other examples of this trope, Gen isn't really actively malicious, but her strict adherence to the rules of the cosmos and moral absolutism make her blind to the fact that humans are morally complex creatures and life on Earth is just as morally complex. After Michael and Team Cockroach manage to convince her that the point system is the problem, she tries cancelling the Earth and erasing humanity from existence in the belief that it's the most effective (and easiest) solution.
  • Jerkass Realization: She finally realizes the errors of her Lack of Empathy ways in "Chidi Sees the Time Knife". She finds that it is indeed very difficult to engage in society without somehow causing harm to someone else or benefiting a bad person in some way, and decides it is time to do something about the issue. However, it's subverted in "The Funeral to End All Funerals", as she still sees nothing wrong with the points system and decides to reboot the universe and erase everyone, living and dead, from existence to make people less complicated, showing that she didn't really learn anything.
  • Kick The Son Of A Bitch: She exiles Trevor to the void for interrupting her What the Hell, Hero? speech to Michael mainly because she found him annoying. Michael and Janet have an Alas, Poor Villain look of horror when she does that.
  • King of All Cosmos: Gen is the highest authority in the afterlife (if not the universe) whose rulings are considered objective and final, goes to great lengths to remain impartial whenever the Celestial Bureaucracy needs her to the point of limiting her capacity of omniscience, and even has the authority to end all human life on Earth and in the afterlife on a whim if she wanted. She is also a Large Ham who spends all of her free time watching modern television shows, wears a floofy court dress 24-7, carries around a purse with lip-balm, a device that can wipe out all humans from existence, a device that can "end all the wars" and a DVD box set of Justified Season 2 with her.
  • Lack of Empathy: Despite her quirky and bubbly personality, she's unable to empathize with others as she passes down her harsh sentences, and is determined to see the system stay in place because it "works." This is also part of the reason the points system is so borked; it honestly never occurred to her that the points system was made with a much simpler world in mind or that humans don't have as much agency as she does until she does a God in Human Form experiment. This comes back with a vengeance after the experiment is concluded. After realizing the points system is indeed deeply flawed and unfair, her solution is to... wipe out all of humanity, living and dead, reboot the Earth, and start over. "It's been fun!"
  • Mrs. Robinson: Variation. She's as old as the universe itself, but frequently makes passes at Chidi and swoons over contemporary male celebrities.
  • Nice to the Waiter: She treats her doorman Jeff kindly and forgives him for letting Janet and Michael escape to Earth. To a lesser extent, she treats Janet like a person, which is more than we can say for most of the demons and some people.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Played With in Season 4. After seeing that humanity has become too complex for the afterlife system to judge effectively, she decides to reboot existence, wiping out the entire human race in the process. However, she bears no malice over humanity for this; she just simply believes wiping the slate clean and starting over again from scratch is the best solution.
  • The Omniscient: Played with. She can know anything she wants with ease but she finds actually being omniscient to be boring. Instead, she prefers to skip over things so she can be surprised and also keeps her distance from human's files just in case they ever become a case and so she can remain impartial.
  • Pure Is Not Good: Although not bad like the Bad Placers are, she's so committed to being neutral that she ultimately decides that wiping out humanity is the best solution to the problem Michael discovered with the point system's flawed moral judgments. She clearly harbors no ill intent towards humans, but in her mind, they've become too complex to be judged effectively by the system.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: For the most part. She listens to Team Cockroach's requests without much problem (though she almost throws them out for lacking the proper paperwork) and allows them to take a test to define their fates, even complying to what she considers a bad idea by grading them as a group. However, she is a professional, and rules to send them to the Bad Place when all of them except Eleanor fail their tests, but is willing to give them another chance when Michael pleads their case. In Season 3, after she finds out about Michael's meddling, she ends the experiment, but decides to let the four humans live out their lives in the new timeline and give them the chance earn a place in the Good Place for real. But she also decides to send Michael and Janet back to the Bad Place despite knowing what Shawn and the others will do to them. Later, she is far more sympathetic to Michael's case after learning just how bad life on Earth is. She's also the first person to agree with Michael that the system is forked up and they have to do something about it immediately. But then it's subverted in "The Funeral when she decides the solution is to "cancel Earth" rather than actually fix anything, then played straight again in "You've Changed, Man" when she decides to hear out the Soul Squad's proposed solution for fixing the judgment system.
  • Rules Lawyer: She is adamant about her rulings being followed to the letter and doesn't take cheating or bending the rules well at all.
  • Special Person, Normal Name: This trope, which is the show's standard for naming supernatural beings, is played with in her case. The Judge introduces herself as "Gen" (pronounced like "Jen"), comments that this is a "boring" name, then goes on to explain how her full name (Hydrogen) signifies that she's one of the oldest beings in the universe. Of course, to her, her age is just a fact of life and does not detract from the mundanity of her name.
  • Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She is very kind and approachable most of the time, but defying her orders or making her angry will not end well.
  • Time Abyss: The reason her name is Hydrogen? It was the only thing in the universe when she came into existence. Whether this technically makes her older or younger than Michael and the other non-humans remains an open question as Michael is "as old as time itself" and due to how time works as "Jeremy Bearimy" in the afterlife.
  • Took a Third Option: Played for horror. In "The Funeral to End All Funerals", when she's finally presented with irrefutable proof that humans are morally complex creatures and not so easily broken down by a point system that started with literal cavemen, she concedes that the system no longer works on modern humanity. Her solution? Wiping out all humans - living and dead - and starting Earth over from scratch. Rather than revise a clearly broken system explicitly meant to mirror and evaluate human behavior, she stubbornly decides to Restart the World in the slim hope that a new species will evolve that better fits the framework she clearly thinks is infallible.
  • Top God: Implied to be one of the highest ranking beings on the celestial hierarchy shown yet, possibly the highest. Even Shawn (the boss of The Bad Place) is implied to have to abide by her decisions; this is seen in Season 4 when she says to him that any further attempt by the Bad Place to interfere with the experiment will result in her ripping off his eyelids and making him watch uplifting videos of soldiers reuniting with their dogs. Shawn actually shows fear.
  • Womanchild: Has shades of this. She enjoys geeking out and having fun, and would rather avoid dealing with complex issues.

    The Doorman 

Jeff, The Doorman

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tgp_jeff.png

Portrayed By: Mike O'Malley

"Wow, I haven't heard a joke in 8,000 years. And I still haven't."

The Doorman between the afterlife and Earth. He also really likes frogs.


  • Because You Were Nice to Me: For the most that we see him, he doesn't seem to care what happens to anyone around him; however, when Michael brings him a thermos with a frog on it, his face lights up like a child at Christmas, hinting that Michael was the first person to ever do anything for him. In return, when Michael gets into trouble with Gen, he gives him the key to Earth to escape.
  • Cuteness Proximity: Loves frogs. Classic, green frogs. In the finale, he is seen with lots of frog toys and plushes on his desk, and Michael even gives him a real frog.
  • Deadpan Snarker: "Wow. I haven't heard a joke in over 400 billion years... And I still haven't heard a joke."
  • Easily Forgiven: Gen doesn't smite him for helping Michael and Janet escape.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Seemingly known as The Doorman; he's even got a nameplate for his desk. In "The Brainy Bunch" however, Gen refers to him as "Jeff".
  • Flanderization: In his first appearance, he was characterized as a stiff, curt man, with his liking of frogs being a quick gag. By the finale, he is so gleefully obsessed with frogs that it is his entire character.
  • Flat Character: His character pretty much begins and ends with liking frogs.
  • Not So Above It All: Seems at first to be a stereotypical humorless bureaucrat, but over time, it's revealed that he loves frogs, finds something like a sink tap interesting, and, at the end of "The Brainy Bunch", he helps Janet and Michael escape from Gen back down to Earth.
  • Perpetual Frowner: He normally has a stony scowl on his face. However, every now and then, he genuinely grins, like when messing around with a sink on Earth, or getting a thermos with a frog on it.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In "The Brainy Bunch", he directly defies Gen to help Michael and Janet escape to Earth, because Michael was nice to him.
  • The Stoic: He beats out Shawn in terms of a stiff, expressionless demeanor. Except with frogs.

The Good Place

    In General 
  • Crapsaccharine World: Season 4 reveals that everyone in the Good Place eventually becomes a mindless husk concerned only with pointless hedonism, with Patty being one of the only — if not the only — person to realize what's going on, because an eternity of anything eventually gets painfully dull, even paradise. As Eleanor puts it, the Good Place is a neverending vacation, but vacations are only special because they end. Doing and seeing everything, and then realizing there's quite literally an eternity left to go, renders everyone's existence pointless, and soon, they become unfeeling and uncaring. Mercifully subverted by the end of the show, since the Soul Squad add a door to Cessation Of Existance for people to walk through when they're ready.
    Patty: You get here and you realize that anything's possible, and you do everything, and then you're done. But you still have infinity left. This place kills fun, and passion, and excitement, and love, 'til all you have left are milkshakes.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Someone in the celestial bureaucracy made Janet an all-powerful AI that can survive several rounds of hand-to-hand combat if a Janet ever had to fight. Since Janet reveals that her mental programming and not her physical body advanced with each reboot, the Made of Iron tendencies are all hers. It comes in handy when Shawn tries to take the Soul Squad back to the Bad Place.
  • Death Seeker: They become much happier when they are finally given the option of ending their existence.
  • Failure Is the Only Option:
    • The whole problem with the points system and getting in to the Good Place is that every decision, no matter how minor, can and often does result in point deductions due to the massive complexity of everyday life. And even treating every decision as an important one with the intention of finding the most moral choice doesn't work as Chidi did exactly that and was condemned anyway for making everyone around him miserable with his neuroses and indecisiveness. Simply put, it's impossible for anyone to get in to the Good Place.
    • Doubled down on in the second half of the fourth season when we learn the Good Place is a nightmare where constant pleasure turns you into a zombie that doesn't care about or desire anything.
  • Gilded Cage: The ultimate flaw of the Good Place is that it is truly eternal. Getting everything your heart desires and being able to do everything you've ever wanted to do loses its novelty after awhile, especially when you can't ever leave. After the Soul Squad installs a door that leads people out of the afterlife forever, morale immediately picks up.
  • Good Is Impotent: While the demons have no compunctions with using dirty tricks and underhanded tactics to get their way, the angels absolutely will not break or bend the rules, no matter how urgent the problem that's been brought to their attention is.
  • Hell of a Heaven: Turns out, eternal paradise isn't all it's cracked up to be. Every human in the Good Place has become so bored, listless, and directionless, having done literally everything, that they don't feel much of anything anymore. The only way to fix this, Eleanor realizes, is to let people leave when they're content — they can stay as long as they like, but once they feel they're done in the Good Place, they can move on to Cessation of Existence.
  • Our Angels Are Different: They run the setting's equivalent of Heaven and are Always Lawful Good. They are even referred to as "angels" by their Bad Place counterparts.
  • Stupid Good: While their Bad Place counterparts seem to think this of them on principle, text and context have shown that they are Super Gullible. They leave their Good Janet warehouse unguarded in a neutral zone under the assumption that nobody would steal them out of the honor system and every angel seen tends to trust anything anybody tells them.

    The Good Place Committee 

The Good Place Committee

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/committee.png

Played by: Paul Scheer (Chuck), Dana Powell (Paula), Phil Augusta Jackson (Kellen), Takato Yonemoto (Daisuke), Tatiana Carr (Meg), Denise Sanchez (Andie), Marc-Sully Saint-Fleur (Bruno)

'"Committee, Michael the Accountant has brought us evidence of a problem, and now it is up to us to find a solution. While you wait, Kellen will stand by you, showering you with compliments."

The council of celestial beings in charge of matters concerning the Good Place.


  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: For all their overbearing niceness, it's heavily implied that they knew the flaws in the points system prevented anyone from getting in but allowed it to continue because they couldn't figure out to stop people who arrived from turning into borderline mindless zombies, essentially condemning billions of people to unspeakable and never ending torture in the Bad Place because of their own mistakes.
  • Celestial Bureaucracy: Of the Obstructive variety. Not on purpose, mind you, but the committee is so busy tangling themselves up in memos and internal investigations that they don't actually do anything about the problem Michael brings to their attention. However, the revelations in "Patty" suggest that some of this obstruction was their way of covering up their inability to fix the Good Place's fundamental flaw.
  • Extreme Doormat: When their predisposition towards following the rules doesn't get in the way, their default towards any conflict seems to be giving their opponent (which unfortunately is usually the likes of Shawn) everything and hope to appeal to the honor system. Though it's heavily implied that their constant Honor Before Reason and Lawful Stupid tendencies were just desperate stalling tactics to keep people from learning that they completely screwed up the Good Place with their mismanagement.
  • Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Zigzagged. They completely believe Michael and his story that he is an architect who found a flaw in the system, which is a half-truth. With that said, they are willing to believe that the Bad Place would tamper with the system since it "is something they would do", as Shawn confirms.
  • Good Is Impotent: Their response when Michael asks why they can't just fix the points system immediately is "We're the good guys, we can't just do stuff".
  • Honor Before Reason: They feel the need to take at least 1,000 years to form a blue-ribbon committee and suss out any possible conflicts of interest/corruption within their proposed investigative group, despite the fact that being from the Good Place, any chance the members would be unscrupulous in any way is extremely unlikely. This and the fact during that hypothetical time, billions of humans would be eternally damned by which time it would be too late to help them.
  • Innocently Insensitive: Justified; Michael was posing as an architect, so when they say that all Bad Place demons are evil, he tries not to take it too personally. After all, he was once evil. More seriously, they would rather take several thousand years to run a proper investigation and leave billions of humans condemned and tortured.
  • Lawful Stupid: The Committee is very strict and committed to following procedure and filing the correct paperwork, to the point that it gets in the way of them making any effective change in any sort of reasonable timeframe. In addition, their ideological opponent, Shawn, is more of a "screw the rules" type of person, which further allows the Bad Place to take advantage of them.
  • Multinational Team: They're all different ethnicities and genders to represent the collective best of humanity.
  • Nice Guy: Obviously, being residents of the Good Place. While they decide whether or not to assist the Soul Squad, they assign Kellen to stand by Michael and shower him with compliments while he waits for their decision. Michael actually likes it.
  • Not So Above It All: They call the Bad Place full of evil people and get very judgmental about the demons there.
  • Principles Zealot: They're so dedicated to following the rules to the exact letter that they're incapable of immediately solving the glaring issue in front of them.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Subverted. As they're from the Good Place, Michael expects them to be this, and while they are kind and willing to hear out Michael's plea, their plan of action is too inefficient to deal with the problem.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the new system is designed so more humans can enter the Good Place, they trick Michael into becoming the new man in charge and then all resign.
  • Stepford Smiler: Turns out, the Good Place is a disaster, and they know it. They've tried everything they can think of to fix it, and nothing has worked. Not that you'd guess this from their constant, gentle smiles and kind words. Michael doesn't catch on until they trick him into becoming the new head of the Good Place, and promptly ditch him.
  • Strongly Worded Letter:
    • Their proposal to Michael in a nutshell–they form an elite investigative team to root out any possible tampering with the points system and resolve why no one has gotten into the Good Place for over 500 years. But... first, they have to take 400 years to properly select the members of said group, and then it's a further 1000 years during which they form another council to sort out any conflicts that would arise in that investigative team. Michael even compares them to passengers on a sinking Titanic writing a strongly worded letter to the iceberg.
    • Later, one of them mentions he's writing Gen some "very sternly worded letters" over her decision to wipe out the human race. When it's suggested that "stern" might not set the right tone, he promptly resigns on the spot.
  • Take That!: From their outfits to their willingness to concede to the Bad Place's demands under the excuse of following the rules and being reasonable, they are a subtle one to establishment Democrats and other so-called "liberals/progressives" who don't wind up accomplishing much. Takes on new meaning when the big reveal of the Good Place shows that they were intentionally propping up a broken system because doing anything proactive would've put them at risk.

     Gwendolyn 

Gwendolyn

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gwendolyntgp.png

Portrayed by: Nicole Byer

"'If' I could believe it? Watch this: I believe it."

A postal worker for the Good Place's Correspondence Center (aka their mail department).


  • Easily Forgiven: Inverted in that she easily forgives others. Even after finding out the Soul Squad lied to and manipulated her, Gwendolyn still cheerily waves them off and says it was nice to meet them as they are summoned by Judge Gen and leave the Good Place.
  • Genki Girl: She is very cheerful all the time, even when Michael and the humans end up annoying her, it takes literally seconds to her being cheerful again.
  • Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Either through the Good Place's profanity filter or her own nature as a Good Place resident, a lot of her expletives come out as G-rated curse words. Even when she discovers Michael and the humans' deception the best she can muster up is a mildly annoyed "Gosh darn it" as she tries to angrily shake her fist.
  • Nice Girl: Naturally being someone from the Good Place, Gwendolyn is bubbly, polite and friendly towards Michael, Janet and the four humans.
  • Super Gullible: Is naive and a bit too trusting. She is fooled by Michael's lie that the four humans won a contest specifically to visit the postal office in the Good Place. To be fair, this is justified, as she is from the Good Place and presumably has never been exposed to anybody who might try to deceive or take advantage of her.
    Michael: (trying to distract her) Say, is that a dog barking in another room?
    Gwendolyn: I doubt it, because I don't have a dog. But out of politeness and an abundance of caution, I'll go check. (leaves the room to look) Hello, doggy.
  • That Makes Me Feel Angry: When she discovers that Michael, Janet and the humans have been lying to her, she makes it very clear that she is upset and, amusingly, attempts to shake her fist at them in anger. Or an awkward flailing of her wrist, in this case.

    Hypatia of Alexandria (Spoilers for Season Four) 

Hypatia of Alexandria/Patty

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nike_nfl_jersey_worn_by_lisa_kudrow_in_the_good_place_season_4_episode_12_patty_1.jpg

Played by: Lisa Kudrow

'"Listen carefully before I forget how to say this: you gotta help us. We are so screwed!"

Hypatia of Alexandria, also known as "Patty", was a 4th/5th-century philosopher and one of Chidi's heroes, having been in the Good Place ever since her death.


  • 11th-Hour Ranger: She doesn't appear until the penultimate episode of the show, but she's ultimately the person that lets the Soul Squad know how messed up the Good Place is and how desperately it needs to change before they let millions of approved souls in from Earth.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Just call her "Patty".
  • And I Must Scream: Having exhausted every conceivable thing one could do in Heaven, she (like every other human there) has been twiddling her thumbs waiting out the rest of eternity and has allowed her stress-devoid mind to atrophy. Even worse, whenever she manages to clear her mind long enough to realize just how miserable she is, she always winds up getting distracted and quickly forgets what she was doing.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: If she goes on for too long without being an active participant in a conversation, she briefly forgets what they were even talking about.
  • Blessed with Suck: Hypatia was one of the few great philosophers to make it into the Good Place where she has spent the last baker's dozen centuries enjoying eternal bliss. Unfortunately, being in a world where everything is tailor-made to make sure you're happy with a finite number of things to occupy your time has rendered her higher brain functions severely atrophied, making her easily distracted and prone to forgetting higher conjugation. Despite having been there for so long, she seems to be the only human there who has any remaining hold on her bearings.
  • Celebrity Paradox: She's played by Lisa Kudrow, most known for playing Phoebe in Friends. Michael himself is a big fan of Friends and specifically mentions Phoebe when talking about which of them should go to the Good Place.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: She isn't entirely all there, what with having gone crazy from centuries of boredom.
  • The Ditz: Not in the same way as Jason, but having spent centuries without anything to contemplate has rendered her academic mind down to a Kindergartner's level.
  • Heroic Willpower: Unlike every other person in Heaven, she's been able to maintain enough knowledge and self-awareness to realize what's happening to her (and by extension everyone else). The fact that she's kept her mind intact for millennia speaks volumes about her mental discipline and determination.
  • Historical Domain Character: Hypatia of Alexandria, philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician. In this show, of course, the philosophy is the most relevant.
  • Humble Hero: While she fully agrees that she was super cool when she was alive, she's actually very friendly and approachable, and is rather bemused when Chidi gushes over her.
  • Nice Girl: Being a philosopher that was good enough to get into the Good Place with the original point system, this is a given.
  • Only Sane Woman: Downplayed. While she's still gone more than a bit cuckoo from boredom like the other residents and is only a shadow of the philosophical genius she was during her lifetime, she's the only resident who's got enough of a hold on her bearings to carry out a (mostly) normal conversation with the Soul Squad and properly convey to them why she and the other Good Place residents feel so unhappy.
  • Riddle for the Ages: How is her first name supposed to be pronounced? This is a long-standing mystery in Real Life, and appropriately, the show dodges the question by having her tell the gang to just call her "Patty".
  • Sanity Slippage: The boredom from the lack of any challenges has basically caused her to lose her mind.
  • Stepford Smiler: Somewhere between the "depressed" and "crazy" varieties. Like everyone in the Good Place before the Soul Squad's arrival, she's mostly too far gone into becoming a "happiness zombie" to fully process (or remember) just how miserable and bored she really is. When she has a moment of lucidity, however, she is not happy about her situation, and is desperate to find a way out.
  • Took a Level in Dumbass: In life, Hypatia was a brilliant mathematician and astronomer, proto-feminist icon and integral member of the school of Neoplatonism. After over a thousand years of being in the Good Place, she can't even remember what math is.
  • Walking Spoiler: It's hard to say anything about her personality or role in the story without spoiling the huge twist in the episode that introduces her.

The Medium Place

    Mindy 

Mindy St. Claire

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tgp_mindy.png
"Oh. Yeah. I mean, I was just, I was just kidding, it was just a joke. I mean, who would want to do cocaine right now?"

Portrayed by: Maribeth Monroe

"Thanks for giving a crap about me. I don't really give a crap about myself, so it's nice someone does."

A cocaine-abusing lawyer who practiced during the 80s, Mindy generally lived a selfish life. However, one single good action she committed right before her death made her the only person known to have ever been genuinely judged a "medium" person, resulting in her getting her own afterlife outside both the Good and Bad Places.


  • Accidental Hero:
    • After her death, her sister found out about her plan to create a charity organization and used her withdrawal money to create the organization in Mindy's name that went on to help people all over the world.
    • Eleanor gets the idea to use the Medium Place and Derek to conduct the second experiment. Mindy lets them use her backyard but declines getting involved.
  • Ambiguously Bi: She tried to trick Chidi and Eleanor into having a threesome with her multiple times. Whether she was genuinely into them or just really bored is up in the air. Later, she gleefully accepts Derek as being her sex robot.
  • Amoral Attorney: Fully admits to being one of these while alive. Her only concerns were winning cases and doing as much cocaine as she could get her hands on. She didn't care about anyone else and would happily screw over anyone that got in her way.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: A highly stereotypical hard-partying, cocaine-abusing '80s shark lawyer.
  • Broke the Rating Scale: She is apparently the one person in history for whom the points system broke down completely because the Good and Bad Places couldn't agree on whether she should get credit for things done in her name after her death. She also managed to defy the structural problems with the point system to begin with: because she couldn't actually follow through with or abandon her charity plan, the points she would have lost thanks to all the costs that come with every action never counted. Only her actual pure intentions and supposed follow-through got counted and debated.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: Eternal mediocrity might suck but it certainly beats the tortures of the Bad Place.
  • Cool Big Sis: Apparently was cool enough to her sister, who started the charity she wanted to found in her name.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Mindy is a pretty sarcastic person.
    Eleanor: (leaving the Medium Place, taking the recording Mindy made of her and Chidi having sex) I am taking this with me.
    Mindy: (in the most deadpan tone of voice ever, while reading a People magazine) Oh, no. It's my only copy. Don't.
  • Depraved Bisexual: She drove Chidi and Eleanor out when they took refuge at her place by trying to get them to have a threesome with her and is revealed to possess a lot of kinky sex toys.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending:
    • After a long time spent in a horribly dull and solitary afterlife, and then having to repeatedly deal with Team Cockroach as they keep showing up with no memories of their previous visits, she finally gets Derek as a willing sexbot along with a ton of cocaine.
    • After another eternity in a dull afterlife (except with Derek who she's grown annoyed with) she agrees to go through the afterlife tests and one day enter the Good Place.
    • Moreso in "Whenever You're Ready", Eleanor convinces her after countless Jeremy Bearimys to go through the Good Place trials and leave eternal mediocrity behind.
  • Evil Lawyer Joke: She was set perfectly for the Bad Place until her last act swung things off balance, and she was a lawyer in life.
  • Fetishized Abuser: To Derek. They would have sex and she would "reboot" him, sometimes because she was annoyed, and sometimes because she was bored.
  • Go Mad from the Isolation: Zigzagged. On the one hand, she's surprisingly well together for someone who's spent thirty years alone in a drab and dull afterlife largely because she doesn't mind it that much, but it's clear she's bored out of her mind and would really love to have some cocaine again.
  • The Hedonist: Mindy is obsessed with cocaine and sexual gratification and she's rather shameless about it.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: Zig-zagged. She died right after she decided to turn her life around and do some good in the world. However, the one good thing she did manage to do before she died led to a whole bunch of good stuff being done in her name, just enough to get her spared from the Bad Place.
  • Home Nudist: When Eleanor, Jason, and Janet first meet Mindy in the Medium Place, she is completely tending her garden, and hurriedly dives behind some sunflowers and uses them as cover. She explains later that she often walks around naked due to not having seen another person since her death thirty years ago.
  • It Amused Me: Derek mentions she rebooted him numerous times, essentially killing him, sometimes because she was bored, or wanted him to go away, or just 'cuz.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: More like a heart of very tarnished bronze, but she's not all bad. Despite being rude, selfish, and perverted, she's genuinely rooting for Chidi and Eleanor to get together, and she actually did try to make a genuine effort to change her ways and start a charity even if she came up with the latter when high. It was just bad luck that she died before she could. And even then, her plan actually worked, as her sister used Mindy's savings and plans to start a relief aid charity that's helped countless people.
  • Lady in a Power Suit: Befitting her previous status as a 1980s shark lawyer.
  • Loners Are Freaks: Quite casually admits that despite having spent decades in eternal mediocrity with no one else around, she's got no desire for company, beyond a mention of trying to trick Eleanor and Chidi into a threesome with her at least once.
  • Lovable Sex Maniac: She openly talks about masturbating, secretly videotaped Eleanor and Chidi having sex so she could watch it later, and enjoys having Derek do coke off her butt.
    Mindy: (talking about Eleanor's repeated trips to the Medium Place) I mean, sometimes you go back because you feel bad your friends don't know what you know. Sometimes you go back because you walk in on me while I'm masturbating, and sometimes you go back because I walk in on you while I'm masturbating.
  • Mundane Afterlife: Literally. While avoiding the actual Bad Place thanks to all the good things done in her name after her death, she was such a terrible person that she's instead sentenced to eternal mediocrity as a compromise.
  • Naked People Are Funny: Embraced casual nudity after being sent to the Medium Place since she wasn't going to be seeing anyone else around (or wasn't meant to, anyway). Thus she's baring it all when Eleanor, Jason and Janet first meet her which freaks everyone out including herself as she really wasn't expecting guests anytime soon.
  • Personalized Afterlife: Since she was the one person in all of existence to genuinely be judged a "Medium Person", she got this, but it's set up to be as mediocre as possible.
    • She's provided with her favorite beer, but it will always be warm.
    • She was allowed to list her music preferences, but she was given a jukebox stocked with selections from the bottom of her list so it only plays The Eagles (live bootlegs only) and William Shatner spoken-word poetry.
    • She gets books to read, but her library has nothing but Anne Rice vampire novels, which all have water stains. And which she cannibalized to make porno.
    • The only movies she has are Cannonball Run II and... The Making of Cannonball Run IInote .
  • Pet the Dog: She's kinder to Eleanor than to the other Soul Squad members, even showing Eleanor a video of her and Chidi confessing their love to each other after Eleanor's memories had been wiped.
  • Real After All: The first season finale's Twist Ending laid some doubt over whether she was a demon playing a part or not, until Michael confirms in "Team Cockroach" that she is actually real and was never meant to be a part of the experiment.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Mindy was a cocaine addict and a pretty nasty person in her earthly life. However, one day, she had a drug-fueled epiphany on how she could help people and actually tried to follow up on it by withdrawing all her money in order to form a charity. Right after that, she died in an accident. She then crossed into Death Equals Redemption since her sister found out what Mindy's plan was and was so inspired by it that she actually founded the charity in Mindy's name and helped millions of people. If she stayed alive, Mindy would have likely failed in her plan and backslid back into being a bad person. By dying when she did, she accidentally accomplished a lot of good (and avoided being painfully tortured in the Bad Place). She also got the closest to entering the Good Place of any human in over five centuries.
  • Seen It All: Unlike the four mains, she retains her memories of all their visits so that when we catch back up with her, she's gotten quite annoyed at having to go through every variation of their dynamics.
  • Shadow Archetype: She basically represents Eleanor before she met the other Team Cockroach/Soul Squad humans and Took a Level in Kindness. Eleanor even lampshades this in the final episode.
  • Spanner in the Works: For Team Cockroach. As Michael reveals with irritation, Mindy is real, and the Bad Place technically speaking cannot enter the Medium Place unless they get extradition papers from the Judge. If any of Team Cockroach had chosen to stay there, with Janet, they would have literally been out of the Bad Place. As Mindy explains in reboot 802, usually Team Cockroach would return either because her masturbation disturbed them or Michael would hold whoever was left behind hostage.
    • Mindy also serves as one for the points system itself. During one particularly powerful cocaine bender, she had a startlingly clear vision of how to create a charity that would help millions of people around the world, and withdrew all of her considerable savings to fund it—only to immediately be killed in a bizarre accident. However, her sister found the plans she drew up for the charity and used the cash to create it in her honor. As a result, Mindy can't be judged according to the current afterlife criteria: she was largely a horrible person and doesn't get any credit for the charity's good deeds, but she also escaped the negative repercussions of anything the charity does because she wasn't actually responsible for any of its harmful actions (chopping down trees for lumber and using airplanes to deliver goods, for example, would cost points because of environmental impact). As a result, the Good and Bad Places had to create an entirely separate afterlife just for her, exposing the flaws in both of their ratings scales.
  • Take a Third Option: The Good and Bad Places couldn't agree on whether she should get credit for the charitable foundation set up in her name, so the Medium Place was created just for her.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: We first saw her lounging naked in a rather messy garden. By the time of "Dance Dance Resolution," she's dressed up nicely on a regular basis, is polite to Eleanor despite all the mind-wipes, and says she's rooting for her.
  • Undiscriminating Addict: Mindy died with a cocaine habit, and has spent all of her years in the afterlife pining for it. At one point, she pleads with the main characters to bring her "something I can snort. Eye shadow, crushed up baby aspirin, cocaine...".

    Derek 

Derek Hoffstetler

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tgp_derek.png
"Good-Bob! I hope we same place again very now."

Portrayed by: Jason Mantzoukas

The result of Janet making a new person of her own to help her get over Jason.


  • Actor Allusion: Derek introduces himself as a private investigator at one point. This wound up being the job of Jason Mantzoukas's character on another Michael Schur-created show, Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Played for Laughs. As he's Janet's first attempt at making a sentient being, Derek has many glitches. Even after going through the modifications that came with being rebooted multiple times, he's still a pretty loopy and wacky scatterbrain.
    Janet: His brain is wrong.
  • Almighty Idiot: He has all of Janet's powers, but lacks the necessary intelligence to properly use them. Oddly enough, this makes him the perfect Janet for Mindy's Medium Place, as he's just useful enough to be frustrating.
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: By the time Eleanor visits Mindy in the Grand Finale, Mindy has rebooted Derek over 150 million times, causing Derek to become an omnipresent being at one with the universe, looking more like a miniature supernova space cloud than a person.
    Derek: Derek is now one singular point in space, and yet Derek can also contains space itself. The nexus of Derek is without dimension. The moment of Derek's creation and the eventual heat-death of the universe are now inexorably the same.
    Mindy: Ugh, you are so annoying! (reboots him again)
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: He has wind chimes instead of a penis. They jingle when he's happy, apparently.
    Shawn: Where are the humans? And who is Derek?
    Derek: Me is Derek! Those are my wind chimes! (jingling sound) Oh, oh, oh! My wind chimes like you!
  • Bizarre Taste in Food: He is often seen with a martini glass in his hand filled with things like olives, raw onions and Scrabble tiles.
  • Born as an Adult: He was created by Janet to be her rebound boyfriend, so he was "born" as an adult man.
  • The Bus Came Back: Returns in "Chidi Sees the Time-Knife", having become more articulate and urbane, thanks to Mindy rebooting him several times.
  • Butt-Monkey: He was a manic dimwit that was created for a couple of days, where he was put in a trunk and told to sleep forever. Then he was sent to service an amoral woman that keeps rebooting him for fun. When his creator returns and is in a relationship with another guy, said guy kills Derek! The dude can't catch a break.
  • Celestial Body: By the end of the series, Mindy has rebooted him 150 million times, transforming him into a giant floating head made of stars and surrounded by a miniature spiral galaxy with floating Derek heads in martini glasses orbiting around him (which have even smaller martini glasses orbiting around them).
  • Child Supplants Parent: While Jason is not Derek's father, Derek describes Janet as his "mommy girlfriend" (because she created him) and he wants nothing more than to get rid of Jason so he can have her.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: Just as you'd expect from someone's first attempt at creating life, he's even loopier than a newly rebooted Janet. Even after all his reboots, there's still some goofiness in him, like not quite managing to create martinis properly and struggling with his Pokémon Speak habit.
  • Cloud Cuckoolanguage: His command of language is a little off. He replaces random words with his own name and his attempt to say "goodbye" is "Goodbob. I hope we same place again very now." Even after being rebooted hundreds of times and becoming more refined, after Jason kills him, his first words are, "Attention, I have been Dereked! Attention, murder has been me!"
  • Crazy Jealous Guy: By early Season 4, he's so jealous of Jason that him being even slightly close to Janet makes Derek viciously threaten him. He scares Jason so much that Jason ends up killing him first.
  • Did You Think I Can't Feel?: It's downplayed and Played for Laughs, but Derek, at several points, expresses displeasure at how others treat him. He's annoyed that Janet created him as a rebound guy and made his penis a wind-chime, is a little hurt that Mindy shut him down repeatedly (a process that is shown to be very painful) simply to amuse herself, and is jealous that Jason is still Janet's number one priority. Just because he's an imperfect creation of a living being doesn't mean that he is apathetic.
  • Distaff Counterpart: He seems to be the closest thing to a male Janet to exist. He is able to conjure things and appear anywhere in the neighborhood and Janet's void at will, he can operate the train that allows passage throughout the Afterlife and he has his own killing plunger (though it's haphazardly constructed) that makes him a little more efficient every time it's used on him (which isn't saying much, as he's still a ditz) and an "Attention, I have been murdered!" video that plays just like with Janet.
    Derek's Murder Video: Attention, I have been Dereked! Attention, murder has been me!
  • Dumbass No More: Was a major Cloud Cuckoo Lander in his first appearance, but after Mindy rebooting him millions of times, he becomes more sophisticated and eloquent, although still fairly kooky and awkward. Derek is also more self-aware and questions the purpose of his existence.
  • Gag Penis: He has a wind chime rather than genitalia. The audience doesn't get to see it but they do get to hear it. On his return in Season 3, due to the multiple reboots, it's apparently become more like an actual penis.
  • Jerkass to One: Derek is friendly to most people, but only hostile towards Jason since he perceives him as a rival for Janet's love.
  • Large Ham: Jason Mantzoukas has a knack for unstable and energetic goofballs such as Derek.
  • On the Rebound: Invoked. He was specifically created to be a rebound boyfriend for Janet. Ironically the roles reverse when he expresses affection for her again while she has resumed her relationship with Jason.
  • Parental Incest: Janet and Derek both acknowledge he is technically her child, whom she created for the purposes of being a rebound guy.
  • Pokémon Speak: He's capable of the occasional semi-coherent statement, but usually just shouts variations of "Derek!", especially after being powered down. On his return, he's gotten somewhat better about this.
  • Reality Warper: Like Janet, he can summon objects out of thin air. When he's stuck saying "Jason" repeatedly, he produces a sign that says, "Help, I can't stop saying 'Jason'".
  • Sex Bot: Is given to Mindy at the end of "Leap to Faith" as a sex companion. By the time he reappears in "Chidi Sees the Time Knife", he "almost" has a full-grown penis after being rebooted thousands of times.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Martinis. He's seen sipping a martini when it's revealed he's been getting smarter through reboots. At first, he is seen drinking a regular martini, but later his glasses become filled with more ridiculous things, such as olives, a raw onion, a lemon, and even Scrabble pieces. His ascended, cosmic form is orbited by martini glasses containing copies of his head.
  • Wrong Context Magic: A Janet shouldn't be able to create a fully sentient person, but Janet creating Derek was only possible because of how advanced she got after Michael rebooted her hundreds of times.
  • You Are in Command Now: Due to being an imperfect android, when he has to run the fake neighborhood in Janet's stead, he's put in charge of the fake humans and finds himself overwhelmed with the responsibility. To rise to the task, he reboots himself to run it better until Janet returns from the Bad Place.

The Bad Place

    In General 
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Having come into existence for the sole purpose of managing the Bad Place since the beginning of time, the demons' one and only purpose is to torture humans that the system has labeled "bad" in as efficient a way as possible. They also have a tendency to backstab each other as long as it doesn't interfere with work. Given that months of Chidi's philosophy class and interactions with Team Cockroach had changed Michael into the sweetheart he is now, it seems to be more of a case of "Nurture over Nature", or else it would not have happened so quickly.
  • Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Aside from work, their sense of taste seems to follow this as well. Hangovers are their favorite part of getting wasted, they like their popcorn burnt, they wear Axe Body-spray with scents that smell like how watching the Transformers Film Series makes you feel and they have deliberately awful taste in music.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: They may look human, but it's just a suit. Demons seem to come in a variety of forms, Michael's true-form being a giant fire-squid and there are a few lava monsters here and there too. They are immortal beings who seem to subsist on human suffering, but they are capable of eating practically anything. They can snort the concept of time like it was cocaine, they find an almost masochistic enjoyment out of being tortured as they do the torturing (though there seems to be a difference between being "tortured" and being "punished"), and their tastes (from their taste in art to food) side in-favor of objectively bad things, ranging from low-quality to physically toxic by human standards. The closest thing to death for them is "retirement" (where their essence is scooped out and all of their molecules are inserted into the center of a different sun), and if their bodies are discombobulated in any way, they regenerate by going through the different stages of the demon life-cycle - larva, slug-monster, spooky little girl, teenage boy, giant ball of tongues, social media CEO and full-grown demon - over the course of a few months.
  • Born-Again Immortality: Demons can't die; if their body is destroyed, the resulting goo just goes through the demonic life-cycle again from the beginning. Michael says this takes a few months, though with Jeremy Bearimy involved, who knows if that means anything.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: They work for a place literally called "the Bad Place." They not only know they're insufferable and sadistic, but are proud of it and actively make it their goal to be even more insufferable and sadistic.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: 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 have had them have 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.
  • Eating Optional: In The Selection, it is clarified that they subsist off of the pain and suffering they inflict. They are able to eat and drink normally, though, their tastes ranging from similar to humans to enjoying the gross, inedible and unappetizing.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Based on what we've seen, their true forms are all horrific monsters, ranging from a humanoid lava monster to a giant slug with gaping, toothy mouths.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: They always assume the worst of everyone and fail to consider the possibility that the Team Cockroach/Soul Squad humans won't fall for their attempts to divide them or otherwise get them to do bad things.
  • Evil Is Petty: Most of the demons are incredibly immature, and seem to enjoy Toilet Humour and generally being annoying as much as they do actually torturing people.
  • Fantastic Racism: As a rule, they hate all humans for being humans, subscribing strongly to Humans Are Insects. Their distaste for humans is so strong that they consider Michael a Category Traitor for trying to help Eleanor and the rest.
  • Heaven's Devils: Their hatred for Angels in the Good Place is framed as an Interservice Rivalry, and while Demons aren't above Loophole Abuse or just flat-out ignoring certain rules, at the end of the day they adhere to the same Celestial Bureaucracy as their good counterparts.
  • Heel–Face Turn: They eventually agree to a system that ensures everyone will eventually make it into the Good Place. Specifically, while working alongside a Good Place architect, they create an uncomfortable scenario that targets a person's flaws that they learn and improve from. After several thousand Bearimies working with that, even Shawn is making an attempt to not sound evil.
  • Human Disguise: Like every other eternal being in the afterlife, almost all of the demons are seen in human forms. Michael claims that they are given human bodies at random as to better understand how to torture humans.
  • Jerkass: The demons of the Bad Place aren't just evil, they're also just incredibly obnoxious and awful to be around and are very proud of that fact.
  • N-Word Privileges: Michael claims that "demons" is an inaccurate and offensive word to call them, but said-demons refer to themselves and each other as demons all the time, so either they consider it okay if they say it to each other, or Michael is trying to make them feel bad.
  • Offscreen Villainy: Their methods of torture are described immensely, but (besides the main four in Michael's neighborhood) no demon is ever actually shown torturing a human in the afterlife.
  • Our Demons Are Different: They keep the setting's equivalent of Hell running, but like the rest of the afterlife, it is treated more as a business or government bureaucracy, with the center looking like a bank and the torturers as employee specialists.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: Played with. They make plenty of racist and misogynistic comments, but the extent to which they sincerely believe these principles (they're beyond human form after all) or are just trying to be as awful as possible with bigotry being an easy way to do that is debatable (at one point, Shawn has to be reminded to be misogynistic). Their disgust with humans suggests the latter, however, as part of their justification for believing that humans are bad is humanity's bigotry and prejudice, not to mention how several demons see themselves as an important part of the Celestial Bureaucracy precisely because they punish humans who exhibit these flaws.
  • Sharp-Dressed Man: Most of the male demons wear suits and similar formal attire.
  • Stealth Mentor: Post-finale, this becomes their role under the revised afterlife system. Rather than physically torture humans for all eternity their new job is to challenge a person's personal faults with the express purpose of helping that person rise above them and eventually enter the Good Place.
  • Your Mom: The Bad Place demons love using "your mom" as an insult. The sign outside the entrance says "You are now entering the Bad Place. Population: Your mom."
    Michael: Bad Janet, where is the nearest café?
    Bad Janet: Oh, um, that's a good question. It's up your mom's butt, you fat dink.

    Shawn 

Shawn

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shawn_2.jpg
"I'm Shawn. You are very scared of me."
Portrayed by: Marc Evan Jackson

"Well, I was going to try to get the humans back by going through the proper channels, but then I remembered, I'm a naughty bitch."

Michael's boss, Shawn initially poses as the immortal all-knowing judge of the Universe before being revealed as a high-ranking official in the Bad Place. He was the one who approved Michael's experimental neighborhood but also believes that Michael will fail in the second attempt after the reboot. Shawn makes it clear that Michael's failure in this regard will result in Michael's retirement, and that only one more chance will be given. Shawn later buys Michael's report of the second experiment being a success and promotes him to oversee an entire universe of neighborhoods, but when the truth is discovered he becomes set on punishing Michael and the humans.


  • Arch-Enemy: Eventually he settles into this with Michael, whom he feels personally betrayed by and seems to target moreso than the humans.
  • Bad Boss: He's actually surprisingly supportive of his demonic underlings at times, but it also doesn't take much to incur his considerable wrath and punishment for failure is brutal... and creative.
    • He makes it clear to Michael that he'll be "retired" if his experiment fails. He never believed in it in the first place, and one gets the impression he only approved it out of morbid curiosity. However, he does involve himself directly in an attempt to help Michael, even improvising when Eleanor correctly deduces the reality of her situation. When the experiment appears to work, Shawn is overjoyed and sincerely congratulates Michael. He even agrees to a send-off party as a reward for everyone having done such a good job of torturing people.
    • After being humiliated by Team Cockroach, he embraces this trope throughout Season 3, trapping all of his subordinates in cocoons for no other reason than just to be a prick. At one point he cocoons Todd for saying something supportive.
  • Big Bad: Of Seasons 2 through 4, and essentially for the whole show. He's the higher-up at the Bad Place whom everyone reports to and everyone wants to avoid his deadpan wrath. Much of Season 2 revolves around trying to avoid his attention, in Season 3 he's actively hunting Team Cockroach and in Season 4 he's a direct enemy. That said, he has mentioned that he reports to a High Council, which he is hoping got earn a spot on.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: He covers himself in a human-sized cocoon whenever he detects emotions in his vicinity. It's later revealed that emotion is not the cause, it's just one of his many demonic powers and seems to be a personal favorite.
  • Blood Is the New Black: Not proper blood, but he gets sprayed twice in rapid succession with demon goo when Michael blows Rufus and Vicky up with the not-lie detector in "Employee of the Bearimy". He's considerably annoyed.
  • The Bully: He is frequently described as such, with much of his cruelty and Bad Boss tendencies comparable to a schoolyard bully dishing threats of wedgies and noogies. And like bullies, he does this for attention and love of conflict, something Michael takes advantage of in "You've Changed, Man" by having him admit to liking being his nemesis when Michael concedes defeat.
  • The Comically Serious: On par for the course, given he's played by Marc Evan Jackson. Even when the truth is out about him and Michael, he remains almost comically put-together and calm. He even manages to put himself inside of a cocoon and talk about "living in goo" with a straight face. He also texts using emojis.
    Michael: You're really happy?
    Shawn: (deadpan) Can't you tell? I'm basically squealing like a birthday girl.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Very deadpan. Since every word out of his mouth while masquerading as a goo-dwelling judge of eternity is a filthy lie, it means every serious remark is an inside joke on his part.
  • The Determinator: In Season 3, he's determined to ruin Michael's experiment and claim the four humans' souls into the Bad Place, and during the Fake Good Place experiment repeat, he does everything in his power to find a way to undermine it, if not outright sabotage it. This means messing with the rules of the universe and risking getting severely punished at the hands of the Judge.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: At one point, he mentions a High Council that makes it seem as if he isn't the supreme authority in the Bad Place. That High Council hasn't been mentioned since and Shawn is treated by everyone as the highest-ranking demon and supreme authority in the Bad Place.
  • Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: It's his Fatal Flaw. Even when there is a simple solution to getting Michael and the humans back, he always defaults to the "fun" shortcut, according to Trevor. If he had gotten extradition papers from the Judge, she would have told him the humans never left the Bad Place and saved him the humiliation of entering the Medium Place and finding Mindy and Derek, while allowing him to set up a trap for Michael. When the humans are given a second chance on Earth, Shawn could have told Gen that Michael was cheating. Instead, he sent Trevor to mess with the Soul Squad. Trevor and Michael got busted, with the former getting banished into the void. It goes on until Season 4, where Gen threatens to severely punish Shawn if he keeps trying to sabotage the experiment. He still can't stop.
    • Justified later: He's bored out of his mind after centuries of repetitive torture. Antagonizing Michael and Team Cockroach is the most fun he's had in millennia.
  • Didn't See That Coming: In the first season finale, he's genuinely bowled over when Eleanor figures out they're in the Bad Place. In the Season 2 finale, he's stunned when realizing that Michael betrayed them to save four humans.
  • The Dreaded: Initially subverted; Michael appears very fearful of Shawn when he's in his High Judge guise before it's revealed that they're in on it together, but this is then double-subverted as Michael really is terrified of him, since Shawn is threatening to subject him to an And I Must Scream fate if he fails again. As more is revealed of the Bad Place, it becomes clear that all his underlings fear him to a certain degree. The only one who doesn't fear him is Gen, who outranks him (and everyone else) in authority and power. Still, she's noticeably less flippant toward him compared to her behavior with everyone else and he, in turn, doesn't fear her as much as everyone else other than Jeff the Doorman.
  • "Eureka!" Moment: Has one for how to make sure the new neighborhood experiment fails in a series of digital shorts showcasing how the demons selected the four new humans for the neighborhood. After being presented numerous horrible candidates by his demons, he storms out and tells them that they'd better have a good candidate before he gets back, or it's punishment for all of them. Glenn then comes to his office and attempts to defend themselves, mentioning how thousands of humans die every day, Chidi's ex Simone for one... and this is when Shawn realizes what he has to do to ensure Michael's failure: pick humans that will make the original four miserable and unable to properly carry out their duties!
  • Even Evil Has Standards: He thinks that Michael's experiment is a terrible idea, but believes that it should succeed or fail on its own merits. When Michael accuses of Vicky of attempting to sabotage it, he calls her out for poor form and cocoons her as punishment. This gets subverted in Season 4, as he tries to sabotage the new neighborhood just because he wants to see Michael fail.
  • Evil Is Petty: Shawn's slightly more high-minded than the likes of Trevor when it comes to evil, largely due to his rank and the stoic way he carries himself. However, he's just as tremendously petty as any other demon and gets plenty of opportunities to prove it:
    • Upon realizing the extent of Michael's treachery, Shawn decides to lock him up in a room with a subscription to The New Yorker. The magazines will never be read, but they'll just keep coming and pile up as a niggle at the back of Michael's mind as an unmet obligation.
    • It's very heavily implied, if not outright stated that Shawn knew the whole time that the points system was broken and gleefully enabled it because it gave the Bad Place a near-infinite supply of new humans to torture, and part of the reason why he's so determined to sabotage Team Cockroach is that their activities pose a major threat to this status quo that he's kept going for the past five centuries.
    • When Michael starts up the new Good Place experiment, Shawn has Vicky disguise herself as Michael, declaring that she'll torture the humans disguised as him, should the experiment fail. And he steals one of Michael's sarcastic suggestions and claims it was his idea.
      Michael: Why don't you at least switch it up once in a while? Try using teeth-flatteners and bees with penises.
      Shawn: (discreetly writing it down) First of all, that's stupid.
    • In "The Funeral to End All Funerals", Shawn would rather rub Michael's failures in his face and let Gen carry out her plan to reboot Earth and the afterlife rather than admit he was wrong, pull an Enemy Mine and convince her to find another solution to the broken point system.
    • In "You've Changed, Man", Shawn would rather drag Michael and the Soul Squad down with him than admit defeat and celebrates the end of human existence by going to the Fake Neighborhood to smash glass ornaments and pee in a fountain.
  • Fatal Flaw: His arrogance and love of petty cruelty. He simply can't resist gloating to the team that they won't be able to stop him and he will get all of them, even Doug. This clues them into figuring the problem is with the system and make the necessary changes.
  • Feet-First Introduction: The first shot we see of him is his black shoes and judges robes before we pan up to the rest of his body.
  • Foil: After learning about Shawn's motivation in Season 4, he is essentially Michael if the latter grabbed hold of the belief that humans are always evil and not capable of any change at all, and the point system isn't flawed, thus defending it and damning billions of humans for no reason.
  • Good Feels Good: Not that he would ever admit it, but he likes the new system a lot better.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: He doesn't show up until the final episodes of Season 1, but Michael's attempts to impress him are the instigating factor into the show's initial premise. Once Michael's made his Heel–Face Turn, Shawn becomes the biggest threat to the humans.
  • Guardian of the Multiverse: Shawn is introduced in the guise of a high adjudicator of all conflicts involving both the Good Place and the Bad, as well as being the highest possible authority. It's then revealed that he's really only the overseer of the Bad Place, and thus akin to The Devil.
  • Good Old Ways: Ironic trope-ame aside, he's an old-school guy. Shawn believes in torturing condemned souls the old fashioned way — physically — and the whole point of approving Michael's experiment was to prove the old ways are the best. Subverted in "You've Changed, Man" when he admits that the reason why he allowed Michael to run his experiment and antagonized Team Cockroach was that old-fashioned torture became boring after millennia of repetition.
  • Hazy-Feel Turn: While he eventually concedes with Michael and Team Cockroach's proposal to revise the afterlife, he refuses to admit it and continues to antagonize them in a limited capacity. When Eleanor offers to Michael the idea of living as a human, she brings up the real possibility that by the time he dies a natural death, Shawn could have enacted a coup and returned the system to its original, incredibly flawed model.
  • Hidden Depths: Is apparently a Zendaya fan.
  • Hidden Villain: In the season 1 finale, where it was assured there weren't any bad guys!
  • It Amused Me: His given reason for cocooning an underling who'd done nothing wrong? "I'm a demon. It's fun." Later, in "You've Changed, Man", he admits that the reason why he antagonized Team Cockroach was because the thrill of chasing them and trying to beat them excited him in a way that old-fashioned torture used to.
  • It's Personal: He initially viewed Eleanor, Tahani, Chidi and Jason as just another batch of souls to torment. Then they formed Team Cockroach with Michael and Janet, escaping his clutches and humiliating him in the process. As a result, he's become obsessed with re-capturing them.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: He's correct that Michael's plan is doomed to eventually fall apart because humans are too unpredictable.
  • Jerkass to One: While Shawn is normally a dick to everyone on principle, he is particularly mean to Glenn, routinely telling him to shut up and consistently getting his hatred to him across.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • The Soul Squad had already accepted that they had lost their chance to enter the Good Place by default, and the four humans were going to spend the rest of their lives helping other people get into the Good Place. Shawn could have waited a couple of decades to retrieve their souls. Instead, he created an illegal portal to Earth and took an army of demons to fetch them in a matter of months. This action leads to him and his army facing the Judge to explain their actions, who decides to call a truce with the Soul Squad and talk to them in the IHop. And this action, in turn, earned a stay on the Soul Squad's fate, where they end up in the Medium Place running the experiment again.
    • Befitting a Smug Snake, he indulges in some Evil Gloating, telling Michael he's confident that the main four's friends and family will all end up in the Bad Place, even though he shouldn't know that in advance, which spurs Michael into visiting the accountants' office. Michael discovers that nobody has gotten into the Good Place for the last 521 years, but the Accountants don't care because they believe their system is infallible, which inspires Michael to fix it himself.
    • His attempts to ambush Team Cockroach and take them to the Bad Place lead to Janet being shoved partway through a portal and regaining her powers. And to a lesser extent, he could have taken the humans to the Bad Place after cornering them in the bar, but he wanted to wait for Michael and Janet to reappear so he could gloat to Michael and capture him as well.
    • In Season 4, his plan to mess with the Soul Squad and ensure the experiment's failure by sending in people they hate backfires for the most part. "Linda" is quickly discovered to be a disguised demon, Jason uncovers that Janet was replaced with a Bad Janet, and Tahani decides not to fall for the bait and makes peace with her harasser John, who has a Heel Realization and admits he harassed Tahani out of jealousy for her extravagant lifestyle. Brent didn't completely get better, but even he turned out to be capable of redemption (even if it did take pushing him to the near breaking point).
    • When Jason saves the day and Michael, by uncovering Bad Janet as mentioned above, he is filled with enough courage and rage to go down to the bad place to rescue Janet, and when they do Bad Janet's goo-pen (which was given by a panicked Bad Janet due to Glenn's arrival) is incredibly useful as is the obliviousness of the Demon-Con attendees.
  • Non-Action Big Bad: He's one of the top demons shown in The Bad Place with countless minions at his command. He has to rely upon them pretty heavily, as despite his cocooning skills, he's not that good a fighter - both times he's in a brawl, Janet handles him fairly effortlessly.
  • Not Me This Time: When Michael finds out that no human has made it into the good place in over 500 years, he assumes that Shawn hacked the system. It turns out, Shawn didn't do anything, human life just got too complex on its own.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He seems to have been the only being to see the fundamentally flawed point-system for what it truly was and did nothing about it. While the rest of his kind believes that they are Necessarily Evil to maintain the moral balance of the universe, all Shawn cares about is having more souls the torment, making a mockery of the Bad Place's very reason for being.
  • Pet the Dog: In Season 4, he sincerely compliments his demon underlings... in a very Bad Place way, of course. It's almost touching when he smiles proudly down at his Girl Friday.
    Shawn: And Val. Who's a bigger skidmark than Val?
    Val: Maybe your mom.
    Shawn: (laughs) Classic!
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: Shawn has it both ways. He understands perfectly well that racism, sexism and whatnot are objectively bad and even points to the existence of slavery as one of the reasons why humans don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. At the same time, he enjoys all things evil, which means he likes watching men call women crazy, and chose the form of a middle-aged white man specifically to avoid consequences for his actions.
    "I took the form of a 45-year-old white man for a reason. I can only fail up."
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: By demon standards at least, he started out as one. When Eleanor's Heel–Face Turn in reboot one threatened the experiment, he posed as the Judge to torture the four humans. Sure, he threatened Michael with retirement should this idea fail, but his reasoning was that humans wouldn't torture each other because of Everyone Has Standards, even in hell. Which ends up being right because in all the reboots, except for a handful where Michael was drunk or careless, the humans figured out they were in the Bad Place. On seeing that the experiment succeeded, he rewarded Michael with a promotion, Michael's employees with a party, and the Museum of Human Torture with four new animatronics. By Season Three, this no longer applies; he is a fully-fledged Bad Boss after Michael's defection and escape.
  • Riddle for the Ages: We'll probably never find out how he evaded the Judge's wrath for creating an illegal portal to Earth and defying her orders to not mess with the Soul Squad's experiment. Mind that she threw Trevor into the void for annoying her and was preparing to condemn Michael and Janet back to the Bad Place for interfering with the timeline. Then again, he is the equivalent to the Devil, and while she may be more powerful than him, there's a good chance he's got enough Vetinari Job Security that she's reluctant to get rid of him.
  • Running Gag: Glenn saying or doing anything in front of him and him responding "Shut up, Glenn."
  • Sadist: He's the show's equivalent to Satan after all, so this is hardly a surprise. He even gets a kick from the misery of his fellow demons by the third season.
  • Satanic Archetype: He's the closest thing to a "Satan" in the series. While it is implied at one point that there is a Bad Place Committee that he answers to, they are never seen. Every other demon in the series answers to him (including Michael), and when Gen decides to have the Bad Place weigh in on the discovery that they need to reform the point system, she summons him to represent the Bad Place.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: He adopts this mindset near the end of Season 2, where he starts using his abilities in any way he can to capture the humans, even if it's against the rules.
  • Smug Snake: No matter how many times Michael and the others outwit him, he seems to think he's still more clever and can always come out on top.
  • Special Person, Normal Name: He's an extraordinarily powerful being named Shawn. Tahani regards this as strange.
  • The Stoic: He's deadpan and emotionless almost the entire time, and it's no act. After his true nature is revealed, he's as stiffly deadpan as ever.
  • Tom the Dark Lord: "This is the Almighty Judge on High of All Beings Living and Dead for All Eternity. My name's Shawn."
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: While always a complete jerk to the humans, he is relatively polite to his fellow demons in the first two seasons, hearing out any idea they may have regardless of whether he likes it or not, and even rewards Michael with a promotion and a party for the other demons for the alleged success of the fake Good Place neighborhood. In the third season, when the humans have escaped to earth, he becomes an impatient and condescending jerk to the other demons, to the point where he cocoons them just for his own amusement.
  • Tranquil Fury: Even as he becomes increasingly more enraged the more Team Cockroach is able to outwit him, he never shows more beyond a jaw clench and a Death Glare.
  • Troll: When it's revealed he is not the Judge and actually Michael's boss, his treatment of Eleanor and Jason's apparent mixups comes off as this. Despite his stoic nature, he did enjoy torturing the four humans.
  • Verbal Tic: He tells Glenn "Shut up, Glenn" so frequently that at times it comes off as more of an instinctual response to Glenn saying anything than a legitimate desire for him to shut up. In the finale, he gets frustrated and mutters "Shut up, Glenn" when Glenn isn't even in the room.
  • Victory Is Boring: When Judge Gen is minutes away from rebooting earth and Michael admits there's no more plans left, Shawn admits victory itself is not interesting. The thrill he wants is sabotaging Michael's plans.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Team Cockroach's escape has not put him in the best of moods. He's turned into a full-scale Bad Boss who cocoons his underlings for spurious reasons, doesn't care about the universal rules that previously bound him and is clearly enraged.
  • Villain Has a Point:
    • He was initially against the Fake Good Place experiment because he claims even in the depths of the Bad Place humans will not torture each other consciously. Michael finds out to his bewilderment that this is true; the minute the humans figure out they're in the Bad Place, they team up against him.
    • When the Judge consults him for how human life is complicated and how to reform the afterlife, he makes it a point that there are bad people like Nazis, and that Michael doesn't even know how the Soul Squad did in terms of morality points. It says something that Chidi stands up and admits that Shawn is right.
  • Villain Protagonist: He's the main character of The Selection which revolves around him and his demons trying to pick out bad candidates for Micheal's experiment.
  • Villain Respect: Despite himself, he is impressed when Michael sneaks into the Bad Place with Jason in "Employee of the Bearimy" so as to rescue Janet, despite knowing what the penalty would be for both of them.
  • Visual Pun: On the original meaning of the word "satan", which is "opponent". Shawn will oppose your ideas, and he needs no reason, nor is he afraid to look foolish for it.
  • Walking Spoiler: It's difficult to talk about Shawn post Season 1 without noting that he's not the Almighty Judge of Everything, but the head of the Bad Place and the Big Bad.
  • Wanting Is Better Than Having: He wants to take Soul Squad humans to torture them himself and retire Michael. When they offer to surrender themselves to the Bad Place in exchange for him helping save humanity, he considers it but finds their current suffering more interesting. Michael gets him to admit that he actually liked the challenge of chasing after rogue humans and demons due to being bored with the repetition of regular torture.
  • While Rome Burns: When Judge Gen decides to hit the reset button on reality and the afterlife, rather than try to stop her, Shawn appears quite content to just sit by and snark at the Soul Squad about how all their efforts to fix the status-quo have completely backfired in the most colossal way imaginable.

    Trevor 

Trevor

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goodplacetrevor.png
"So we'll just roll on out, and you can get back to, uh, putting rainbows up your butt or whatever you do here."
Portrayed by: Adam Scott

"This is the 3:18 to the Bad Place, making thousands of stops for literally no reason. Now, you'll notice it's very hot in here, and it will get one degree hotter every time you think about how hot it is. Oops! You just thought about it."

An architect of The Bad Place, he arrives in The Good Place after Eleanor reveals that she was admitted by mistake and belongs in The Bad Place.


  • Actually Pretty Funny: A meta example seen in the Season 1 Bloopers - After Jameela Jamil (Tahani's actress) goes off on a swearing tirade, he actually awards her Good Place points because one of the crew members kids was on set and heard everything.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Michael and Janet are horrified when the Judge sends Trevor flying off aimlessly to the void merely for interrupting her. They hated him, but they never wished him to suffer that fate.
  • Asshole Victim: His fate would be horrifying had he not been such a colossal dickhead.
  • The Bus Came Back: He comes back in Season 3 where Shawn sends him to Earth to ruin Michael's experiment by negating the Character Development of the main four and thus send them back to the Bad Place.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Knows full well he is a horrible, obnoxious and unpleasant person and is very proud of it.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: In Season 1, it is implied that Trevor rules a section of the Bad Place, possessing massive amounts of power and an entire posse of other lesser cosmic beings under his control. It's not clear what his actual rank and role are; he apparently answers to Shawn, who trusts him enough to assign him a secret mission on Earth.
  • Dirty Coward: His arrogance disappears when in front of Gen at which point he tries desperately to take her side. Gen just flings him into the void.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Being a demon, he believes in the worst of everyone and becomes shocked if they don't sink to some new low. He also badly underestimates the growth the main four underwent and thinks he will be able to turn them against each other with no effort.
  • Evil Is Petty: His literal job is to torture people both psychologically and physically for all eternity. In Michael's neighborhood, where physical torture is not on the agenda, he seems to settle for just being an asshole in smaller ways, such as by sending wine back without even looking at it, making all manner of sexist remarks, and clipping his toenails at a dinner table.
  • Fatal Flaw: His inability to shut up when it counts because he can't resist trolling people and flaunting his general unpleasantness. The Judge sends him into the void for interrupting her What the Hell, Hero? speech against Michael, and because she found him annoying.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: Trevor is, in fact, still flying through the Void Between the Worlds where Gen banished him as of the end of the series — in every subsequent scene taking place in the Doorman's void, Trevor is visible in the distance, flying through the blackness while faintly screaming. Hilariously, Michael Schur claims no one seems to have noticed this until he revealed it in an interview.
  • Hate Sink: He has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever and spends every single moment he's onscreen being annoying, petty, evil, and generally a rude douche-bag in every way he can. Considering he's a demon who Michael considers to be an exemplary member of the Bad Place, this is something he strives to be on purpose.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: Being a demon, he assumes the worst of everyone. He was expecting Jason to take advantage of a drunk Tahani and is visibly surprised that he did no such thing.
  • Jerkass: He's needlessly rude to everyone around him, including Michael. A lot of his actions are mean-spirited trolling, and he goes out of his way to inconvenience and insult anyone near him.
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
    • Eleanor has no retort when he points out that the supposedly "good" Eleanor had a worse life than she did and still became a good person. He also nearly convinces her to willingly come to the Bad Place by saying she might be happier in a place where she doesn't have to lie about being a saint.
    • Michael freezes when Trevor accurately points out that Michael can't follow him to the psychological study with the four humans because he already showed up as four different people to them and the ruse would fall apart immediately.
  • Not an Act: Season 3 reveals that his derision for Michael, a fellow demon, was very real. He has the exact same attitude and Michael is still someone who will fall for Schmuck Bait. Obviously, Trevor provides the bait.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: The majority of Trevor's onscreen villainy falls under low key trolling and generally being an all-out jerk. One has to assume, however, that his job normally involves actually torturing people, not to mention that he's sent to Earth to personally ensure the damnation of the four humans in Season 3 (though thankfully, he's removed from the picture quickly).
  • Pet the Dog:
    • He's a bit more civil to his fellow demons than to everyone else in The Good Place. And he participates in drinking shots with Eleanor while trash-talking her.
    • While posing as a human, he accidentally does some good, such as bringing everyone lemon bars and paying for their dinner at the restaurant. Granted, he told Janet (who was disguised as their waitress) that she wouldn't be getting a large tip.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: In Season 1, he hits on Eleanor despite her obvious disinterest and says demeaning things about women in general. In Season 3, he annoys the study group with a mocking, stereotypical Jamaican accent.
  • Sharp-Dressed Man: In contrast to Michael's softer, tweedier look, Trevor always wears a smart black suit with a tie, causing him to resemble a business executive.
  • Smug Snake: All the time but especially in Season 3. He seems to imagine he'll effortlessly manipulate the group into undoing all their positive development and they will be powerless to resist his charms. Instead, they stay much the same and dismiss him as annoying.
  • Troll: His brand of evil and bullying is basically just trolling taken to an illogical and dickish extreme.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: He isn't seen or mentioned again after Gen flings him into the void and not even other Bad Place demons seem concerned about the loss of one of their head demons.

    Bad Janet 

Bad Janet

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bad_janet.jpg
"What's up, fork nuts?"
Portrayed by: D'Arcy Carden

"What up, ding-dongs?"

The Bad Place's version of Janet, who is just as cruel and careless as her creators.


  • Be as Unhelpful as Possible: Bad Janet's typical M.O., in contrast with Good Janet. Any requests made to her that aren't flat-out refused are begrudgingly accompanied by a sour attitude, insults, and/or lots of farting.
  • Big Damn Heroes: In "The Funeral to End All Funerals", not only does the advanced and newly reformed Bad Janet show up to help the Soul Squad stop Gen from rebooting existence, but so do several other Bad Janets.
  • Bizarre Taste in Food: "You've Changed, Man" implies she likes eating mayonnaise straight from the jar.
  • Captain Crash: One of the functions of a Janet is driving the trains, yet Bad Janet is purposefully terrible at it, doing stuff like texting, driving quickly and recklessly, and conjuring trash cans on the tracks solely so she can crash into them.
  • Catchphrase Insult: She's fond of calling people "fat dinks" and "ding-dongs".
  • Character Development: In Season 4, a single Bad Janet is able to successfully replace and impersonate Good Janet, even doing helpful Janet things without melting, thanks to Shawn rebooting her millions of times. 40 million times, to be precise.
    • Taken further in "The Funeral to End All Funerals" where said advanced Bad Janet made a Heel–Face Turn after reading Michael and Janet's manifesto and provides aid to Team Cockroach by rallying an army of Janets to stall the Judge while the humans find a way to save existence from being erased and rebooted.
  • Character Tics: Whenever she's summoned, she always appears behind or to the side of someone so they have to turn around to see her.
  • A Dog Named "Dog": She's the bad variant of Janet, and is usually specifically addressed as "Bad Janet."
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Played straight in season 2, where a pre-experiment flashback shows that a standard Bad Janet will literally melt if asked to be helpful and polite for more than 10 seconds. Averted in season 4, where Shawn upgrades a Bad Janet (through millions of reboots) and makes her capable of impersonating Good Janet for months. However, this also renders upgraded Bad Janet susceptible to Michael's arguments; after reading his report, she sides with him and against the Judge and the Bad Place.
  • Evil Counterpart: To Janet, quite literally. She's even named Bad Janet, and is as mean-spirited and unhelpful as Good Janet is polite and helpful. And now that she's been rebooted more times than our Janet, this Bad Janet may be the most sophisticated and powerful of her kind to have ever existed, a title previously held by our Janet.
  • Gasshole: She farts a lot, usually as a way of ending a conversation, or just to be annoying.
  • Gone Horribly Right: In Season 4, Shaun repeatedly reboots a Bad Janet to produce one capable of pretending to be a Good Janet. Unfortunately for him, this also results in a Bad Janet capable of actually being good.
  • Grew Beyond Their Programming: One Bad Janet has done this due to being rebooted so many times that she was actually able to pose as a Good Janet to fool Michael and the Soul Squad. And she's later developed so much more sentience and free will compared to her sisters to the point that she pulls a Heel–Face Turn and aids the Soul Squad.
  • Heel–Face Turn: In "The Funeral to End All Funerals", Bad Janet defects from the Bad Place and aligns herself with Team Cockroach. She reveals that Michael's efforts to reform her broke through, and that she read his and Good Janet's manifesto (albeit on the toilet while using some of the pages as toilet paper). While she still believes a lot of humans are still bad, she concedes that the system by which they're judged is broken and that's not their fault.
  • Hellbent For Leather: Appears wearing a leather jacket and tight black clothes, unlike the Good Janet who dresses similarly to a flight attendant.
  • I'm Melting!: Michael had to use an actual Good Janet for his fake Good Place experiment, because when he asked a Bad Janet to act like one, she started to catch on fire and melt. Until Shawn reboots a Bad Janet 40 million times to give her the ability to impersonate a Good Janet without melting.
  • Inventional Wisdom: Tahani even asks what the purpose is of a Janet whose only function is to be constantly rude. It's probably another part of the Bad Place torture.
  • Jerkass: Seemingly designed to be as big a one as possible.
    Bad Janet: (over the Bad Place train's PA system) All trains today are delayed by three hours, just like they are every day. All passengers: You all suck, and you're ugly. Again, you all suck, and you are ugly.
  • Kick the Dog: She broke up with Jason while posing as our Janet to torture him.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Every Bad Janet wears the same outfit: a black leather jacket, black leather leggings and heeled boots.
  • Logic Bomb: Apparently, trying to be a helpful Janet will cause her to melt. Shawn got around this by rebooting a Bad Janet 40 million times so that she can fake being helpful.
  • Mad Libs Catch Phrase: She usually opens conversations with, "What up, [insert insult here]?"
  • Now What?: For one Bad Janet, Michael has given her a choice: she can either go back to the Bad Place with or without the updated manifesto, or travel through the cosmos. Since Janets count as luggage for portals, she can go anywhere to explore her place in life and purpose as a rebooted, sentient Troll Janet..
  • Phoneaholic Teenager: While certainly not a teenager, Bad Janet's fixation with her phone is clearly meant to evoke this stereotype and is one glaringly negative character trait. She's is always on it and only tears herself away from it when doing something cruel.
  • Reformed, but Not Tamed: Bad Janet rejects the Bad Place and decides to help the Soul Squad... in her own way. She remains rude, makes inappropriate comments, and overall thinks humanity sucks, even though it is worth saving.
    Michael: You read what I wrote and it got through to you?
    Bad Janet: Yeah, but I also used the pages to wipe my butt, so don't pop a stiffy just yet.
  • Toilet Humour: She doesn't have to poop, but she does so anyway, just because.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Implied in "You've Changed, Man". When Janet and Gen enter Bad Janet's void, a large number of open mayonnaise jars can be seen next to her computer.
  • Trash of the Titans: Bad Janet's void is filled with random junk, including an oil rig, a toilet, a pile of wood and metal scraps, several crates of dynamite, a burning pile of trash bags, a billboard for Pirates of the Caribbean, and a literal dumpster fire, with the "I'm A Gummy Bear" song constantly playing in the background.
  • Troll: Her seemingly only purpose is to be rude to people who ask her questions.
  • Undying Loyalty: Good Janet's Undying Loyalty is justified in that she's good. Bad Janet, on the other hand, doesn't have any extrinsic reason to follow Shawn's orders to sabotage the fake Good Place, especially since being rebooted more times than our Janet and Derek combined would logically lead one to conclude that she would gain sentience the way our Janet did.
  • Villainous Friendship: Bizarrely, she seems to genuinely get along with the Bad Place crew, despite being as mean to them as she is to everyone else. Of course, they like meanness.
  • Villains Never Lie: Played With; when Bad Janet is busted by Jason, she claims the real Janet is marbleized but still alive in the Bad Place. Jason believes her enough to prepare to return to the Bad Place willingly with Michael in tow, not even considering that Bad Janet could be lying. Fortunately she was telling the truth, and our Janet confirms she was right that Blake Bortles is no longer with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Michael pre-Heel–Face Turn caused one to explode to explain to Shawn why he needed a real Good Place Janet. Later on, he apologizes to another Bad Janet before marbelizing her. Shawn later realizes that having a Bad Janet is impractical and reprograms one... by rebooting her 40 million times so that she can learn how to pretend to be good. As Our Janet has shown, rebooting is very painful for the Janet in question because she has to relearn knowledge all at once.
  • You Shall Not Pass!: Bad Janet and all the other Janets hide Gen's remote control in their voids to prevent her from rebooting the Earth, buying the Soul Squad time to think of an alternative to the Good/Bad Place system and save everyone.

    Vicky 

Vicky Sengupta

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/vicky_5.jpg
"Yeah, I have some questions about my new character."
Portrayed by: Tiya Sircar, Ted Danson (while wearing the Michael suit)

"I am a Ferrari, okay? And you don't keep a Ferarri in the garage."

Originally introduced as the Eleanor Shellstrop (aka "Real Eleanor") who was supposed to go to The Good Place, but was mistakenly sent to The Bad Place, Vicky is actually an inhabitant of the Bad Place with a love of the limelight.


  • Ascended Extra: In Season 2, despite being Demoted to Extra In-Universe. She becomes a more prominent character as she attempts to be The Starscream and get control of the neighborhood from Michael and run things her own way to get the recognition and promotion from Shawn.
  • Asshole Victim: Given that she's one of the meanest and self-centered demon characters on the show and the fact that she actually tried to take the bracelets off of Janet to have revenge on Michael doesn't make her too sympathetic when she's cocooned after being framed by Michael for doing so. And later in Season 4, her gleefully taking on the job of disguising herself as Michael to torture the Soul Squad humans and rubbing it into Janet's face makes her getting exploded into a mess of demon goo by the real Michael pretty satisfying to watch.
  • Attention Whore: Her real personality. She's obsessed with having as large a role as possible.
  • Bad "Bad Acting": Despite all her boasting about her acting skills, she isn't particularly convincing when pretending to seize control of the revised afterlife system from Michael. However, while she is completely lacking in the self-awareness necessary to be a good actor, at the end of the series she does have the insight necessary to be a good Architect in the new system and to teach other demons how to become the same.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: She manages to blackmail Michael into submission, and becomes the "mayor" of the Neighborhood in Attempt #802. However, she isn't as good at it as she thinks she is, not nearly as clever as Michael and is unable to realize when Michael is playing her, since he partnered with the humans against her behind her back. She also very easily falls for Michael's Paranoia Gambit and gets herself cocooned by Shawn and sent away, essentially making her no longer a problem.
  • Classically-Trained Extra: Ends up as this from Attempt #2 onwards, much to her fury.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: She initially stands out as being the only demon who actually likes Michael's experiment and being an actor. This seems like an inconsequential gag because she's unceremoniously Put on a Bus in season 2 and is reduced to a Butt-Monkey throughout season 3, but come the finale, she is the only demon genuinely interested in the new afterlife system based on Michael's original experiment, and thus the only one who can teach it to the others and get the system off the ground.
  • Commuting on a Bus: After Michael frames her, she's unceremoniously cocooned and stays that way for the rest of season 2 and the first half of season 3. She gets un-cocooned in "The Worst Possible Use of Free Will" as Shawn's test subject for an illegal portal to Earth to check if entrants will explode. She gets Doored during "Don't Let The Good Life Pass You By", but returns at the end of "Chidi Sees the Time-Knife"... now using a Michael skin-suit. She properly reappears in "Employee of the Bearimy" but she gets blown up before the end of the episode. Then she returns for good in her default form in "Mondays, Am I Right?"
  • Complexity Addiction: Her original idea for pretending to oust Michael and take his place in running the revised afterlife test included escalating the fake argument into a West Side Story-style dance battle.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Her favorite kind of cover story.
    • As "Real Eleanor", she was apparently left in a fish tank at an orphanage, then when she was Happily Adopted, her parents died when she was four. She gradually made her way to the US where she learned English from watching Seinfeld, worked her way through law school, and that got her all set up for a life of hardship while doing good.
    • As "Denise", she claims that she has a limp from a trapeze accident.
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • In-Universe in Season 2, where during the numerous reboots, she is quite upset that she no longer plays an important role in torturing the main four and has been reduced to a background player.
    • Played straight in Season 3, where she only has one episode where she's prominently featured in, and two that she has cameos in.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Her plan to run the neighborhood doesn't take into account that, if she goes to Shawn with the files that Michael has been repeating the experiment time after time, she is also admitting to have gone along with Michael's plans and even controlled it for a while, essentially making herself an accomplice.
  • Disney Death: As a demon, getting blown up into goo by the fake lie detector is just temporary. True to form, she's fine in "Mondays, Am I Right?"
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: She becomes the head of the new afterlife trials training system when Michael realizes that she's the only one the demons will listen to and understands, and cedes authority to her. While Vicky isn't a nice person, she got the spotlight she finally wanted.
  • Evil Counterpart: The actual Vicky is one to Tahani; whereas Tahani's need for praise comes from a place of deep pain and need to prove to herself she's a good person, Vicky is just vain and completely uncaring for people other than herself.
  • Flanderization: In season one, Vicky acted as Real Eleanor because she was basically required to do so. In season two onward, her brief gig morphs into a full-out obsession with acting.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Shows signs of jealousy whenever someone else gets an important role that lets them torture Chidi.
  • Hazy-Feel Turn: In "Mondays, Am I Right?" she agrees to cooperate with the Soul Squad in running the revised afterlife test, but only because Michael admits her skill with it and puts her in charge of the whole operation.
  • Hidden Depths: Somewhere along the line, and unlike practically all the other demons, Vicky figured out what the Soul Squad also figured out and implemented in the new afterlife: that trying to scare people with chainsaw bears wasn't nearly as unnerving and difficult to handle as scaring people with their own inadequacies. This makes her the perfect Bad Place architect of the new afterlife.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Her need to be the center of attention and being nowhere near as intelligent as she thinks she is make her predictable. Thus, Michael is easily able to play her like a fiddle during "Leap to Faith".
  • Iron Butt Monkey: She's been cocooned, used as a portal guinea pig, knocked out, and turned to goo. Vicky always picks herself up and puts herself together, sometimes literally.
  • It's All About Me: After blackmailing Michael to give her control of the neighborhood, she positions herself to be the center of attention and ends up taking on roles that would normally be split between Eleanor and Tahani.
  • Jerkass: Even for a demon devoted to torturing people, Vicky is a pretty unpleasant person. Shawn even calls her out on it.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: She was able to rally a mutiny against Michael by aptly pointing out that he was rebooting so many times that everyone was forgetting their parts and lines, and he wasn't listening to his coworkers. It says something that Michael was forced to concede almost immediately.
  • Large Ham: Vicky wants to be seen and believes the best way to do so is by chewing the scenery. In "Everything Is Great!" she's so unhappy with her minor role that she decides she wants a limp, and in "Dance Dance Resolution" she mentions having practiced an Australian accent that she complains she never got to use.
  • Method Acting: In-Universe, she prides herself on her ability to impersonate others in the Bad Place's schemes. When she impersonates Michael in "Employee of the Bearimy", she complains that she's not fully "getting" him, and when he actually shows up, she mistakes him for an understudy.
  • Nice Character, Mean Actor: In-universe example. All the Bad Place demons are, but Vicky is the focus; her roles are all sweet-natured Good Placers, in reality, she's a completely amoral torturer whose only love is for her craft.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Her blackmailing of Michael regarding the in-depth details of all his reboots and subsequent failures catalyzed Michael's Heel–Face Turn.
  • "Pop!" Goes the Human: She meets the same fate as Glenn and Rufus in "Employee of the Bearimy".
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives one to Michael in "Employee of the Bearimy", telling him that deep down he's still a demon inclined to do evil. Michael blows her up before she can finish.
  • Sadist: Even by demon standards, she really enjoys torturing Chidi and breaking his heart.
  • Serious Business: She takes her role very seriously.
  • Snakes Are Sinister: Her true demon form is a terrifying acid snake.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Despite having a big role in Attempt #1, Vicky isn't nearly as crucial to Michael's plan as she'd like to think she is. Nor is she as talented an actress as she thinks she is — once she takes over and starts writing her own material, it's hard to imagine Team Cockroach would've bought it for long, even without Michael cluing them in.
  • Smug Snake: She does possess some cunning and skills in manipulation, but she's really not as smooth or intelligent as she thinks she is. For bonus points, a later episode reveals that underneath the skin suit she's literally an 'acid snake'.
  • The Starscream: As of Attempt #802, she's so tired of being thrown poor roles and Michael's constant do-overs she openly blackmails him into giving her better roles.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: After being Demoted to Extra, cocooned, and blown up, she finally gets the power and acclaim she always wanted.

As "Real Eleanor"

"I don't mean to be a bother, but could I possibly get some water and whatever food doesn't turn to spiders in your mouth?"

  • Character Shilling: Everybody comments on how sweet, accomplished, inspirational, and all-around amazing she is, even Trevor. This turns out to be part of the scheme to make our Eleanor feel even worse about herself by comparison.
  • Chekhov M.I.A.: As the other Eleanor Shellstrop whose identity was mixed up with the protagonist Eleanor, she appears in "Most Improved Player", having been sent to The Bad Place. Turns out to be a lie, as there was never another Eleanor Shellstrop.
  • Crusading Lawyer: "Real Eleanor" supposedly spent most of her life fighting for human rights in the original iteration.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: To truly ridiculous extremes. "Real Eleanor's" tragic backstory and her ever-so-heroically rising above it would not be out of place in a bad fanfiction. But, as we find out at the end of Season 1, none of it ever happened, and the whole thing was cooked up specifically to make Eleanor feel guilty and insecure about her own moral shortcomings. We later find out that giving these sorts of backstories to her characters is a habit of Vicky's... whether it's relevant to the situation at hand or not.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The first hint that she's a fake is that she's a Bangladeshi woman with a completely Westernized name, though she explains it away as being adopted by a Western couple, and that she managed to get a visa to the United States despite her lack of education and having to learn English from Seinfeld. Even Tahani's parents didn't assimilate that much to the point of changing their names; it's implied they used their wealthy connections to immigrate and assimilate. Astute viewers may catch that on the rewatch. This is also a pretty big clue as to her tendencies towards Complexity Addiction and overly-elaborate backstories; she could have easily just stopped at the "adopted by a Western couple" part, or just claimed to be mixed-race.
    • Michael and Trevor comment on the Contrived Coincidence that two women with the same name happened to be in the same grocery store and they die at the same time when Michael in the pilot implied that Fake Eleanor had died alone and no one had rescued her. It turns out the coincidence is too contrived.
  • Good Counterpart: The character of "Real Eleanor" wasn't just designed to be one for Eleanor, but for Tahani as well. "Real Eleanor" got into The Good Place by doing much for the cause of good but unlike Tahani, it's all from a place of strength and heart rather than partially from insecurity. Additionally, she was supposed to set another appealing but unattainable standard for Tahani to compare herself to in the love triangle (now love square) for Chidi's affections.
  • Irony: "Real Eleanor" was actually a fake the whole time.
  • Learnt English from Watching Television: "Real Eleanor" learnt how to speak English by watching Seinfeld. She seems to have picked up saying "yadda, yadda, yadda" from doing so.
  • Morality Pet: Zig-Zagged with Trevor. He did allegedly torture her in the Bad Place and didn't care that it was the wrong Eleanor. Trevor also praises the "Real Eleanor" for rising above hardship such as being orphaned twice. The reason for the inconsistency becomes clearer when they were in on the act together, and Trevor was messing with "fake" Eleanor.
  • Nice Girl: While everyone is a somewhat nice person in The Good Place, the other Eleanor Shellstrop really sticks out. She was dedicated to helping the less fortunate when she was alive, she openly encourages Eleanor (the one we've come to know) in her efforts to be a better person and stay in the Good Place, and she doesn't seem at all bothered that she was subjected to horrific tortures on Eleanor's account. Furthermore, the reason that the whole mix-up happened in the first place was because she was trying to save the more selfish Eleanor, a complete stranger, from dying in a car accident and they were both killed at the same time. Then subverted: it's all an act played by Bad Placer Vicky.
  • Parody Sue: A ridiculously kind and pure All-Loving Hero who has heroically overcome a Dark and Troubled Past (which obviously includes a tragic Parental Abandonment) and has spent her whole life trying to help others. In fact, she's not a real person but just a character played by Vicky to make Eleanor feel bad about herself.
  • Tough Act to Follow: Is one In-Universe for her actress Vicky, who complains that she truly "got" Real Eleanor as opposed to her other characters.
  • Walking Spoiler: Twice over! Both her existence in Season 1 as "Real Eleanor" and her true identity as a demon.
  • Wham Line: Michael calling her "Vicky" at the end of Season 1 reveals that she was not real.

    Todd 

Toddrick Hemple

Portrayed by: Joe Mande

A lava monster from The Bad Place.


  • Affably Evil: Like most of the Bad Placers we meet, while he may be evil, he also tends to work decently well with his coworkers. When he politely reminds his coworkers that they're not supposed to smoke, he gets a snarky reminder that he should be in his human suit (which he finds itchy). At one point, he cheerily brings donuts for the rest of the demons on his team and compliments his boss's demonic efforts.
  • The Bus Came Back: He reappears briefly in "Employee of the Bearimy".
  • Card-Carrying Villain: He's a lava demon from the Bad Place.
  • Streaking: When he gets a chance to shed his human suit at a drunk demon party, he promptly does this.

    Val 

Val

Portrayed by: Jama Williamson

A more experienced colleague of Michael's who works at Bad Place Headquarters. Her exact role is not known, though she appears to be an assistant to Shawn.


  • Affably Evil: She might be no less sadistic than her co-workers, but she's a cheerful person and gets along well with Michael.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: She came incredibly close to marbelizing Janet, only being stopped thanks to Jason's aim.
  • Does Not Like Spam: Hates it when the office antimatter coffee is flavored with French vanilla.
    Val: Regular antimatter's fine, why flavor it?
  • The Dragon: To Shawn, as his Number Two.
  • Fearless Fool: She probably should be more afraid of Shawn then she is. Upon seeing that he's been exercising his Bad Boss tendencies, she playfully scolds him only to get cocooned herself.
  • Female Misogynist: Parodied in typical Bad Place fashion. When Bambadjan repeats her idea and admits he wasn't listening because she's a woman, she nods approvingly.
  • Girl Friday: To Shawn, as his faithful assistant.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: Offsets her pleasant personality.

    Glenn 

Glenn Martrempf

Portrayed by: Josh Siegal
A Bad Place torturer and resident of Neighborhood 12358W. Glenn is obnoxiously camp and cheerful even after being revealed as a demon, and tends to be the subject of comic mistreatment.
  • Affably Evil: He's polite and kind to his fellow demons, even if they aren't kind back to him.
  • Back for the Finale: He's back in "Whenever You're Ready", having reformed himself after being reduced to goo.
  • Beard of Evil: Bearded, and despite his cheery demeanor, he's mercilessly evil.
  • Butt-Monkey: Things generally don't go so well for Glenn. He falls into the sinkhole, he's ranked lower than Tahani on the rankings, and is the first person cocooned by an irate Shawn, who seems to hate him for no discernible reason. And then he gets exploded into goo.
  • Celestial Bureaucracy: Glenn ranks somewhere around or above Michael's level in the real Bad Place, being seen attending Michael's presentation, and is later part of Shawn's crew.
  • A Day in the Limelight: He's the mysterious hooded figure who reaches the neighborhood in "Tinker Tailor Demon Spy", and the gang interrogates him about his claim of Michael really being an impersonator.
  • Defector from Decadence: When he comes to tell the gang about Vicki's apparent replacement of Michael, he claims to have defected because he was fed up with Shawn's abuse. He's blown up by Bad Janet's vaporizing gun before anyone can confirm whether he was telling the truth or it was just another of the Bad Place's mind games, but the fact that Shawn, in the next episode, doesn't know where he was and saw nothing odd about him supposedly reappearing with undercover!Michael while disguised as Jason heavily implies he was telling the truth. The web-exclusive mini-episodes "The Selection" shows that he had been uncomfortable with Shawn's plan to cheat the test of the system, because he believed that it should be fixed if it was actually broken.
  • Disney Death: When he gets blown up into goo, Michael assures he'll be able to reform himself in a few months' time by going through all the stages of demon evolution as usual. He even shows some sentience as a vat of goo, "responding" (via bubbles) to Bad Janet's insults.
  • The Dog Bites Back: He comes from the Bad Place to warn them that Michael may have been replaced, and he says he's tired of seeing himself and his fellow demons abused for no reason. The others understandably suspect it's another trick, and when it turns out Janet was kidnapped and impersonated, Michael brings Glenn's essence along to the Bad Place for assistance.
  • Easily Forgiven: For most of the series he appears to have no grudge against anyone, not even Michael, for how he's used and mistreated. In Season 4, however, he claims to be defecting from the Bad Place in part because of Shawn's cruelty to him.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: He has reservations against using humans the original four have personal connections to because it feels like cheating. What's more, he is concerned that Shawn is taking out his need for vengeance on all the demons that are working for him. Also, he objected to torturing humans who did not deserve it; in the web-exclusive mini-episodes "The Selection", he expressed discomfort with Shawn's plan to cheat the test of the existing system because he believed that the system should be fixed if it really was broken.
  • Good Old Ways: Come Reboot no. 802, Glenn starts complaining about the Fake Good Place.
    Glenn: If the flying bears ain't broke, don't fix them.
    • Subverted later when he is the only Bad Place worker who is uncomfortable with cheating a test of the existing system, believing that it should be changed if it is really broken.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Genuinely wanted to help the Soul Squad bust Michael (as he thought it was Vicky sabotaging Michael, not being aware of Bad Janet impersonating her Good counterpart) due to the realization that maybe not all humans deserve eternal torture due to not being inherently evil. By the time he returns in the finale, he is pretty happy in his new role of reforming humans.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence: Not properly killed thanks to Disney Death, but Janet's not-lie detector blows him up before he can finish telling his true name.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Non-bloody example: Janet's demon lie detector makes him explode into blue goo, which gets spattered over the protagonists and the rest of Mindy's living room.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: His Heel–Face Turn is also partially motivated to get back at Shawn due to belittling him in front of the other Demons.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: His warning the Soul Squad about possible replacement nearly led to Michael turning himself to goo to prove he's trustworthy. Glenn also got turned into goo thanks to the lie detector.
  • Phrase Catcher: Shawn tends to respond to Glenn with a notably un-stoic "Shut up, Glenn!"
  • "Pop!" Goes the Human: Courtesy of the not-lie detector.
  • Skewed Priorities: When Eleanor causes a massive sinkhole, which Glenn falls into, Michael assures him they'll save his bowl of soup for him, with the acknowledgment that this probably isn't his biggest concern at that moment. Glenn admits it was "up there".
  • Spanner in the Works: Disrupted Shawn's schemes when he accidentally revealed the Bad Place did impersonate Janet with his actions, albeit after nearly getting Michael turned into goo by accusing him of being Vicky.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: Offhand, he mentions that Shawn doesn't have to be putting this much effort into capturing four humans when they have billions to torture and they could wait for the quartet to die of natural causes. Shawn in retaliation cocoons him.
  • Token Good Teammate: While he does torture people in the afterlife, he sincerely believes that they deserve it. The mini-episode series "The Selection" shows that he is uncomfortable with the idea of cheating in a test of the system (because he wants it fixed if it really is broken) and he eventually sneaks off to The Medium Place during the test to warn Team Cockroach of Shawn's planned treachery.
  • The Un-Reveal: Apparently Glenn is only an alias, and his real name begins with "Snakes Pour Forth From His Anus", but we never hear the eventual full extent of it due to the fake lie detector Bad Janet made blowing him up mid-sentence.

    Chris 

Chris Baker

Portrayed By: Luke Guldan
Another Bad Place demon, he appears as a fitness-obsessed, handsome but not very bright young man. In the short-lived first reboot he poses as Eleanor's soulmate.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Michael has a tendency to talk down Chris as an idiot, except the man reminds us he's a physical torturer for a reason. He comes very close to dragging Chidi and Eleanor back into the Bad Place using sheer force. In Season 4, he poses as one of the new neighborhood's humans and comes very close to fooling the Soul Squad.
  • Brainless Beauty: He's easy on the eyes but obviously not very bright; his solution to Eleanor posing any questions is to strip and claim he's going to the gym, because that was what Michael suggested he do. He becomes more dangerous in Season 4 when he's able to pose as a human from Norway, but even then he proves himself utterly incompetent by losing patience and revealing himself. All he had to do was ask for a peppermint from time to time. And then it's revealed it was only a smokescreen for another of the Bad Place's schemes.
  • Character Tic: His gym obsession. In fact, the first thing foreshadowing that "Linda" isn't really a human is when she asks is if there's a fitness centre in the neighbourhood.
  • Fitness Nut: He's obsessed with going to the gym, and he exploits this by stripping and running off to the gym whenever Eleanor asks him questions he'd rather not answer.
  • It's Personal: Implied when he goes straight for Chidi and Eleanor by default; he grabs Chidi, who thwarted reboot two and the masquerade, and tries to drag him to the Bad Place.
  • Literal-Minded: When Michael was coaching him about how to come up with excuses to get away from Eleanor, he suggested "Say something like 'I'm going to the gym.'" Chris took this advice literally and used that as his only excuse—even in the middle of the night or during a party.
  • Mr. Fanservice: Courtesy of being a Brainless Beauty Walking Shirtless Scene.
  • Near-Villain Victory: Chris went straight for Chidi in the bar fight and dragged him over the counter, toward the portal. Eleanor was trying to save Chidi by holding onto him, but Chris has the strength advantage. If not for Tahani, she and Chidi would literally have been Dragged Off to Hell.
  • Shirtless Scene: He takes every opportunity he can to take his top off and announce that he's going to the gym. When he's revealed as the demon under the Linda suit in Season 4, as he takes off the suit his shirt comes off with it.
  • Torture Technician: He mentions that his previous Bad Place job involved twisting people until they snapped in half.
  • You Have Failed Me: It's initially implied that he was retired for his failure at posing as one of the four humans for the new neighborhood, given that Shawn told him, "You won't be anything when you get back here." Subverted with the revelation that his botched impersonation, including being discovered, was just a smokescreen for another impersonation.

    Other Residents 
Portrayed By: Paulina Bugembe (Angelique), Bambadjan Bamba (Bambadjan), Amy Okuda (Jessica/Gayle), Hayden Szeto (Luang), Susan Park (Pevita), Marques Ray (Tomas/Quinston)

The rest of the 318 residents of Neighborhood 12358W, who are all affected by Eleanor's presence. They're actually all torturers used by Michael in his "experiment".


  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: With bitchiness and sheepiness varying on the individual, but they all pretend to be good people while actually being workers from the Bad Place who enjoy making people's afterlives miserable.
  • Clark Kenting: Averted; they don't even bother with disguises on Earth because They Look Just Like Everyone Else!. Eleanor only identifies them as demons thanks to the memories that Michael gave her.
  • Crusading Lawyer: Bambadjan claims he spent his life fighting first for women's rights, then gay rights.
  • Deus ex machina: Parodied. In the Season 1 finale, Bambadjan turns up with a solution to help everyone, but by that time, Eleanor has already figured out they're in the Bad Place and recognizes it as another deception.
  • Demoted to Extra: They only appear in one episode for Season 3, due to the majority of it taking place on Earth.
  • The Ditz: Chuck. On hearing Michael use the expression "bit off more than we could chew", he becomes obsessed with the idea of biting the humans, which sticks with him through the reboots.
  • Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Bad Place doesn't seem to care about the demons' human masquerades, as the neighborhood has plenty of people of color and at least one gay couple. Seeing behind the masquerade just adds depth to this egalitarian attitude as it reveals that the demons generally appreciate misogyny and racism for their pure evilness, even if their particular human suits make them targets for discrimination.
  • Everyone Is a Tomato: Turns out that, instead of being human Parody Sues, they're all demons!
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The problem with pretending to be good people is that they tend to do good during their torture. In one case, they accidentally settle an argument between Eleanor and Chidi by holding a marriage counselor session, where Eleanor gets a Jerkass Realization about how she's treating her "soulmate" and vows to give him more space.
  • One Head Taller: Tahani stands much taller than her "soulmate" Tomas in Attempt 2, which irks her. Invoked, of course.
  • Parody Sue: Everyone in the neighborhood is exaggeratedly perfect and inhumanly selfless and heroic — because they're all pretending to be, so the exaggeration is intentional.
  • Perpetual Smiler: Bambadjan, at least when he's acting, always has a serene smile on his face. May sometimes cross over into Stepford Smiler, since the smile stays fixed in place even when he's being dismissed, told off, or treated rudely by others.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: While the villains enjoy torturing humans, they make it clear their priority is to not invite Shawn's wrath. Shawn will torture them in turn when angry, even when they do exactly what he wants.
  • Pyromaniac: Luang gets distracted from watching Jason in Attempt 2 because Tahani starts a fire. Because he used to set people on fire in the actual Bad Place.
  • Recurring Extra: Some, such as Pevita, Glenn, and Jessica, appear semi-frequently in neighborhood shots.
  • Sadist: Not quite to the extent of some of the more prominent demons, such as Vicky or Trevor, but they do seem to enjoy getting a kick out of bringing trouble to "Team Cockroach".
  • Square Race, Round Class: A lot of humor in the second season comes from the fact that hellish torture demons aren't particularly good at anything besides torture, and often have trouble with being convincing actors.
  • The Starscream: Quinston and Chuck serve as Vicky's chief underlings when she turns on Michael.
  • Villainous Friendship: They all seem to get along just fine — and are often united by their exasperation with Michael.

The Accounting Office

    Neutral Janet 

Neutral Janet

Portrayed by: D'Arcy Carden
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/neutraljanet.PNG

"End of conversation."

The Accounting Office's Janet who works at the reception. As the place is meant to be impartial, unlike the Good Place and Bad Place, this Janet is devoid of any emotion and personality.


  • Big Damn Heroes: In "The Funeral to End All Funerals", the Neutral Janets join their Good and Bad (and Disco) sisters to help forestall the Judge's attempt to restart existence with a clean slate to buy the Soul Squad time to find an alternative solution to the points system.
  • Black Sheep: Is apparently considered the "blank sheep" out of all the Janets, due to how mundane she is compared to the Nice Girl Good Janet, the Jerkass Bad Janet and Fun Personified Disco Janet.
  • Emotionless Girl: Well, not a girl. But Neutral Janet looks like a human woman and has no emotions or personality, making her come off as this.
  • Literal-Minded: When asked if she has any Last Words before getting marbleized, she replies as such:
    "These are my last words. End of words."
  • Machine Monotone: She's one of the series' numerous Janets, the afterlife's user interface. Unlike Good and Bad Janet (who are perkily upbeat and sarcastically disaffected, respectively), Neutral Janet speaks in a complete monotone, making her more robotic and rather creepy.
  • The Stoic: She shows no emotion whatsoever.
    Good Janet: She's sort of the black sheep of the Janet world. Or blank sheep, I guess.
  • Verbal Tic: Ends her sentences with "end of conversation".

    Neil 

Neil

Portrayed by: Stephen Merchant
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goodplace_neil.PNG

"Can I just say, I really depreciate you coming. Huh? A little bit of accounting humor."

The cheerful Head Accountant in the afterlife, responsible for people getting into the Good and Bad Places. Neil is oblivious to the thought of any error or subterfuge in the system.


  • Actor Allusion: He is briefly seen holding an "Existence's Best Bost" mug.
  • Hypocrite: Praises the "cold logic" of the system while dismissing Michael's points that no one getting into the Good Place for over five hundred years is a major logical failing in itself.
  • Large and in Charge: He's the Head Accountant, and he's played by 6'7" Stephen Merchant. Even Michael looks short in comparison.
  • Lawful Stupid: Whoa, the system can't be corrupt, it's entirely randomized and neutral. So what if no one has gotten into the Good Place for five hundred and twenty one years?
  • Lost Food Grievance: Neil is horrified when Michael ruins his piece of cake.
  • Mr. Exposition: He's the one to provide the background for how the entire points system operates.
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat: Naturally, as one of the firmest believers in the afterlife system, he refuses to do absolutely anything to interrupt the process.
  • Obliviously Evil: Neil's a very chipper guy for someone who's been sending billions of people to damnation for five hundred years. He's also not very helpful in regards to his employee Matt, reacting for his request to kill himself for his terrible job as though it was just a dry office-joke.
  • Pointy-Haired Boss: While he is an affable man, his faith in the system he helps run has made him completely blind to the obvious flaws in that system. He also reacts to Matt's request for suicide as if it was just an office joke between acquaintances.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: When Team Cockroach rematerialize in the middle of the accounting office, he immediately hits the alarm, but shows no actual malice toward the four, retaining his cheerful attitude and even offering them cake.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Zigzagged. While he explains the accounting office's functions and answers all of Michael's questions with no obligation, such as how the points are scored exactly, how many points does Doug Forcett have, how many people have gotten into the Good Place this year, etc., he isn't the slightest bit interested in doing anything when Michael points out the very serious issue of nobody earning enough points to get into the Good Place, and casually dismisses them so he can go eat some cake. With that said, later on he gives permission for Matt to later transfer to the Medium Place experiment to measure the points totals of the new humans.
  • Skewed Priorities: Is far more concerned with getting himself a corner piece of a coworker's birthday cake than with the fact that no human has been able to reach the Good Place in over five centuries.

    Matt 

Matt

Portrayed by: Brad Morris
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/matttheaccountant.png

"I'm still waiting on a response to the request I filed for immediate suicide."

An Accountant in charge of analyzing humanity's new Weird Sex Things.


  • And I Must Scream: He frequently asks for permission to commit suicide because of how horrible his job is, only for it to be denied every time. The fact that his boss reacts to his pain with zero emotional investment probably does not help his mood.
  • Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Matt winds up with a stack of 700 new Weird Sex Thing files over the course of a single second.
    Neil: Oh yeah. Burning Man just started. Buckle-up, Matty. Gonna be a long week.
  • Jade-Colored Glasses: When Michael requests a paper-clip to marbleize Janet, Matt immediately asks what he plans to use it for in an apprehensive tone, presuming it to be some weird sex thing.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Zigzagged. Neil allows him to transfer to monitor the points totals of the new four humans in the new Medium Place experiment. This is undoubtedly better than analyzing all of humans' weird sex things, but he has to stand inside of an obelisk in Mindy's house. Mindy also doesn't want him there.

Other characters

    Disco Janet 

Disco Janet

Portrayed by: D'Arcy Carden

"What it is, what it is!"

An outdated model of Janet who shows up briefly in The Funeral to End All Funerals.


  • Big Damn Heroes: She arrives as part of the Janet army recruited to stop the Judge from erasing all humanity.
  • Brick Joke: She was cited in passing by Michael in "A Girl From Arizona, Part 1", before finally appearing seven episodes later.
  • Fun Personified: Michael describes her as this.
  • Gratuitous Disco Sequence: Naturally. Curly hair, bell bottoms, sparkly attire, a small dance on roller skates - she ticks all the boxes. The inside of her void is a giant dancefloor and when she's marbleized, she's turned into a tiny disco ball.
  • Large Ham: When she appears as part of the Janet army who come together to stop Gen, she shows up dancing on roller skates. Per Michael, she was retired because she was "a lot".
  • Rollerblade Good: She wears a pair, the four-wheeled kind used for dancing and performing.

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