This is a show set in Hell or Purgatory, and Eric is there
Come on, why the hell not?As a corollary to the above, Eric is in The Bad Place, in an early version of The Neighborhood.
- His constant excessive frustration suggests that he was chosen to be part of an early version of Michael's experiment, with Maria as his "soulmate". The fact that Eric's stress vein constantly strangles him isn't just stylistic— this is something Michael installed to "delete" the current Eric whenever the experiment is being reset. Ultimately, however, Michael decided it would be more efficient, and more interesting, to have people torture each other rather than to have one man be tortured by a surreal approximation of his life, and destroyed the experiment. Which, in a way, was good news for Eric, since it meant an end to his suffering.
