The best details and jokes you might have missed on 'The Good Place'
NBC
NBC comedy "The Good Place" is packed with fun Easter eggs, references, and background jokes that many people wouldn't catch upon first viewing.
The Good Place neighborhood number is tied to the Fibonacci sequence, and was shown on the horoscope Eleanor read the day she died.
Visual effects supervisor David Niednagel got a creature on the show named after him.
These details, and many more we've rounded up here, were revealed on the weekly episodes of "The Good Place: The Podcast."
"The Good Place" is a creative and detailed comedy series beloved by fans. So much so that NBC produced a weekly podcast show bringing us behind-the-scenes stories for every episode.
Thanks to the many interviews conducted by actor Marc Evan Jackson (who plays Sean on the show) with the cast, crew, and producers of "The Good Place," we've been able to catch tons of Easter eggs, references, and background jokes that most people likely missed on their first watch.
Keep reading for the best details from all four seasons of "The Good Place" that you might not have noticed.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for all four seasons of NBC's "The Good Place."
The portrait of Doug Forcett (the man who guessed the system of the afterlife) is a picture of a real-life comedy writer named Noah Garfinkle.
NBC
Noah Garfinkle is best friends with one of "The Good Place" writers, Joe Mande, which is how he wound up as the face of Doug Forcett.
"The description was 'a stoner in Canada in the '70s,' and Noah [Garfinkle]'s hair is absurd and floppy, and he looks like a Canadian stoner so I was like 'Yeah there you go,'" the show's creator Michael Schur said on "The Good Place: The Podcast."
Garfinkle is not an actor, but his face wound up in many scenes of the show thanks to Doug Forcett's portrait placement in Michael's office. Schur also said Ted Danson (who plays Michael) geeked out over Garfinkle when the writer came to visit the set one day, long after his picture had become famous within the show.
The Good Place neighborhood where the humans are placed was named after the Fibonacci sequence.
NBC
The neighborhood on "The Good Place" is officially known as "Neighborhood 12358W," and the numbers 12358 are part of the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence — a spiral-like mathematical formula commonly found in nature that many people believe has "mystical power."
Series creator Michael Schur called these numbers a "conspiracy theorist's dream" on "The Good Place: The Podcast," where he said he chose the numbers to make fans theorize over their meaning when in reality, they hint at nothing.
The Fibonacci sequence numbers appear again when Eleanor reads her Libra horoscope during a flashback to the day she died.
NBC
In a flashback to the day of her death, Eleanor reads horoscopes while waiting in line at the grocery store. The lucky numbers listed for Libra are 1, 23, and 58.
When put together, those numbers form the beginning of the same Good Place neighborhood code: 12358W.
We know Eleanor is reading the Libra entry because she mocks the tip given in that paragraph: "Live every day like it's your last" (an ironic piece of writing given that she's about to enter the afterlife).
The number 322, seen in many places throughout the fake Good Place neighborhood, is a reference to a Yale society.
NBC
The number 322 refers to Skull and Bones (also known as Order 322), a Yale secret society.
"It's so dumb," Schur said on the podcast. "One of the people who works on our show may or may not have been in [Skull and Bones], and may or may not have told us he was in it when you're not supposed to do that."
The characteristic blue and yellow colors of the Good Place are a nod to the University of Michigan's official colors.
NBC
The college is Schur's father's alma mater, and Michigan is the state in which Kristen Bell grew up.
The colors often appear in the show's costumes, such as Eleanor's button-ups and Jason's yellow monk robes, and Eleanor's house is yellow and blue. She also wears University of Michigan shirts throughout the first season.
Certain colors were forbidden in season one in order to keep the finale twist a secret.
Chris Haston/NBC
As costume director Kirston Mann noted on "The Good Place: The Podcast," she and Schur made the conscious choice not to include any saturated reds in season one so that no unconscious associations would be made with demons or hell. The big reveal on season one was that the human characters were secretly being tortured by demons in the Bad Place.
No one from the Bad Place is shown wearing green, either.
Eleanor's Good Place wardrobe is of a deliberately different style than her clothes on Earth, because they're meant to belong to "Real/Good Eleanor."
Colleen Hayes/NBC
According to Mann, Eleanor's clothes in the afterlife are meant to belong to the "real" Eleanor, explaining their difference from her wardrobe in flashbacks on Earth.
"The Eleanor that we see in Arizona is a little bit more of a party girl, and a little bit more of a wild dresser," she said on "The Good Place" podcast. "The closet that she inherited when she arrived at the Good Place was supposedly the good Eleanor's, so she ends up wearing flannel shirts, clogs, and jeans that don't belong to her."
In addition to the neighborhood's restaurants and the humans' soulmates, other things change whenever Michael reboots his neighborhood.
NBC
For instance, when the neighborhood is first rebooted in the season one finale, the clown paintings in Eleanor's house have been slightly rearranged. They continue to move every time we see her in a reboot.
Also, instead of the mural outside of Michael's office reading, "Welcome! Everything is fine," like it did throughout season one, in the second version of the neighborhood, the mural says, "Welcome! Everything is great!"
Kristen Bell's real-life partner, Dax Shepard, had a guest cameo as a demon as part of a running tradition on Michael Schur's shows.
NBC
Shepard plays a sleazy demon attending a party in the Bad Place, and tells Bell's character, Eleanor, "You got that good stank."
Having real-life spouses make cameo appearances is a long-running Mike Schur tradition.
Steve Carrell's wife, Nancy Carrell, played Michael Scott's realtor and short-time girlfriend, Carol, in "The Office," while Amy Poehler's former husband, Will Arnett, played quirky MRI technician Dave in "Parks and Recreation."
The show's costume designer, Kirston Mann, has said that Janet's unique style is based on outfits worn by female airline staffers in the 1970s.
Colleen Hayes/NBC
"When I was younger, I used to fly alone, and the stewardesses were like goddess creatures to me, they helped me," Mann said on "The Good Place: The Podcast." "And so I really saw her like that, as this person who lives in the sky."
This imagery is reinforced through Janet's (D'Arcy Carden) blouse, which is white and covered in blue clouds.
Mann chose the color purple to symbolize Janet's neutrality and sense of unity since it's a mix between the political associations of red and blue in the US.
Costume director Kirston Mann's inspiration for Bad Janet's clothing was Olivia Newton-John at the end of "Grease."
NBC/Paramount Pictures
While Good Janet is modeled after retro air hostesses, Mann used Sandy's (Olivia Newton-John) slinky, all-black outfit from the "Grease" musical number "You're the One That I Want" as inspiration for Bad Janet.
"She's a good girl dressing up as a bad girl," Mann explained on "The Good Place: The Podcast."
The "magic panda" that Jason mentions in season two, episode two is real, and pops up in multiple scenes.
NBC
On "Chapter Two: Dance Dance Resolution," the humans discover that they've gone to Mindy St. Claire's house in the Medium Place multiple times across Michael's reboots, and they've kept a log of all of their plans to upend him.
One idea from Jason (Manny Jacinto) simply reads: "Catch the magic panda, use her powers."
The magic panda later briefly appears as an Easter egg on season two, episode eight ("Leap to Faith") at the 12-minute, 16-second mark.
"[The panda] is teleporting around the scene, it's eating bamboo, and it's causing destruction," said the show's editor, Eric Kissack, on "The Good Place: The Podcast."
Visual effects supervisor David Niednagel began sprinkling magic pandas into the background of the show.
NBC
It appears again in season three, episode seven ("The Worst Possible Use of Free Will"), at the six-minute, 38-second mark.
The magic panda popped up one last time on season four, in the new version of the Bad Place.
NBC
The panda shows up when Vicky, the new leader of the Bad Place, is greeting both Good and Bad Place architects to the new system.
There's a reference to "The Office" character Michael Scott's "World's Best Boss" mug in season three, episode eight ("Janets").
NBC
When Janet and Michael visit the afterlife's accounting office, head accountant Neil (played by Stephen Merchant, who co-created both the American and British versions of "The Office") is holding a similar mug that says "Existence's Best Boss."
Schur also worked on "The Office" as a writer, producer, and actor.
All the essays and paper props featured in the show are fully created.
The Good Place/NBC
In a scene where Eleanor, Jason, and Tahani hand in philosophy essays to Chidi, their papers have actually been written out.
While you don't see these details in the episode, Tahani's was titled, "What I learned about moral philosophy from Claire Danes' father-in-law," while Jason's was written in three kinds of ink and titled, "By Jason Mendoza, age 27."
And while we only hear the beginning of Chidi's rap about philosopher Soren Kierkegaard in season two, episode six ("The Trolley Problem"), the lyrics were given to actor William Jackson Harper in their entirety.
On season three, when Jason was in one of Chidi's classes, his notepad said "The History of Phil + Sophie" instead of "philosophy."
NBC
Manny Jacinto (Jason) told Insider this was one of his favorite background jokes featured on the show and was so impressed when a fan on Twitter spotted it.
"The fact that this fan caught it was so cool to me because it's not even something we were putting on blast," Jacinto said. "It was just a little, little Easter egg."
There are several notable "Parks and Recreation" references on the show, including this magazine ad for Glyde.
NBC
In Eleanor's death-day flashback, the magazine she grabs shows an ad for Glyde — a perfume brand featured on "Parks and Recreation."
The ad on the back of Eleanor's favorite magazine, Celebrity Baby, is a perfume made by the fictional "Parks and Recreation" parfumier Dennis Feinstein (played by Jason Mantzoukas, who also plays Derek on "The Good Place" and Adrien Pimento on Schur's other show, "Brooklyn Nine-Nine").
The safe in which Jason Mendoza suffocated was a "Swanson" safe, referencing the character Ron Swanson.
NBC
While there's no evidence in "Parks and Recreation" that Ron Swanson ever owned a safe company, Jason attempting to breathe through a snorkel in a safe made by the "Swanson Safe Company" is a nod to Schur's other show.
Nick Offerman (who plays Ron) even voiced a fake Swanson Safe Company ad on an episode of "The Good Place: The Podcast," in which he said, "Do not lock yourself inside a Swanson safe with a snorkel thinking the snorkel will somehow let you breathe. It won't."
On another episode, the Bad Place demons are drinking Snake Juice, a liquor created by "Parks and Recreation" character Tom Haverford.
NBC
As far as we can tell, this fictional product placement was first spotted by a fan on Reddit. The demons were celebrating a heist by drinking Snake Juice, which was featured on season three of "Parks and Recreation."
Visual effects supervisor David Niednagel had a slug creature on the show named after him.
NBC
Whenever the writers needed some added visual effects (VFX), they would just nickname it "a Niednagel."
Then, on season three, a slug-like creature from another dimension drapes itself around Tahani's neck when they enter the Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes to meet the judge.
Michael calls the little critter the "neednoggle," a small ode to Niednagel that would sound like a random word to anyone watching who didn't know about the man behind the VFX.
Several of the writers and producers have appeared on the show as minor characters or extras, starting with Josh Siegal as Glen.
NBC
Glen was the Good Place resident/demon-in-disguise who falls into the neighborhood sinkhole. He comes back on later seasons when the protagonists encounter the Bad Place demons again.
Jen Statsky, writer and co-producer of "The Good Place," played the server working in the restaurant Jason and Pillboi tried to rob.
NBC
Statsky's character, Susan, is the one who calls the cops when Pillboi wheels the safe (containing the slowly dying Jason) into the restaurant in an attempt to rob it.
Joe Mande, another writer, is the voice of Todd, the Bad Place lava monster.
NBC
Mande's recurring character Todd shows up on the first season, and then again on season two when Eleanor and Chidi overhear a group of demons talking about Michael's failed experiment.
Megan Amram, yet another writer and producer of the show, plays a violinist.
NBC
Amram, who does play the violin in real life, is one of many writers for "The Good Place" who worked with Schur on past shows, including "Parks and Recreation."
There's an ad mimicking Tesla's "cybertruck" in Bad Janet's void.
NBC
This episode aired on January 9, 2020, just several weeks after Tesla's new "cybertruck" was debuted to divisive reactions (some reviewers called it "ugly as sin").
On "The Good Place: The Podcast," the writing team said this was a rather last-minute addition to the Bad Janet void. Other things in the void included a literal dumpster fire, and of course the computer perched at a standing desk.
Dave King plays Phil, the Bad Place demon who bails on the new system.
NBC
Phil was one of the Bad Place demons who chose not to work with Michael in the newly established system of torture for humans.
When we flashback to young Chidi's classroom in Senegal, there's a giraffe on the one chalkboard and French on the other.
NBC
The giraffe was likely the art department and props team giving a nod to the frequent mentions of giraffes on the show (almost always in reference to Tahani's height).
The French was one more way for the creative team to explain why Chidi told Eleanor on the pilot episode that he was speaking French, but then later on Earth speaks English. Both French and English were taught to him in school.
At the Good Place gala, there's a table of Lonely Gal Margarita Mix for One (the drink Eleanor bought the day she died).
NBC
When Team Cockroach arrives at the Good Place, a party is designed to perfectly suit their desires. You might not have noticed the small table showing the exact same brands of tequila and margarita mix that Eleanor bought on the day she died.
Eleanor's whole death was caused when a bottle of Lonely Gal Margarita Mix for One fell out of her shopping cart. But now it's here, with her and her friends, in the actual Good Place.
Also at the party, multiple guests were wearing "Dance Dance Resolution" shirts — a nod to Jason's former dance crew.
NBC
"Dance Dance Resolution" was also the title of the season two episode in which Michael realized he should team up with the humans only after Jason told him the storied history of his dance crew in Jacksonville.
For more behind-the-scenes stories and details from this NBC series, listen to the 50+ episodes of "The Good Place: The Podcast" here (or wherever you get your podcasts).
Read the original article on Insider
