The Good Place Reference On Lucifer That Fans Love
While "Lucifer" and "The Good Place" are both fantasy television series that deal with demons and the afterlife, the two shows are vastly different from each other. "Lucifer" focuses on the Lord of Hell and demon Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis), who grows tired of Hell and decides to leave his throne and move to Los Angeles. He opens a nightclub and then begins working with the police to help them solve crimes. The show ran on Fox for three seasons and was canceled due to low ratings, and then was picked up by Netflix and ran for another three seasons.
NBC's "The Good Place" starts out with Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), a morally dubious woman who is welcomed into the Heaven-like community the Good Place after she dies. The Good Place is meant for humans who have lived righteous lives, and Eleanor seeks the help of her Good Place soulmate, Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper) to help her become a better person so she is worthy to stay.
Despite both series having little in common with each other, fans of "The Good Place" were delighted to discover a not-so-subtle nod to the show on "Lucifer."
Lucifer's heaven included a profanity filter
One aspect of "The Good Place" that becomes apparent immediately is that Eleanor Shellstrop loves to use profanity. Unfortunately in the Good Place, swearing is not allowed, and a "profanity filter" is in place to block words deemed inappropriate. Every time Eleanor attempts to swear, what comes out is fork, shirt, bench, here, ash, deck, or cork. In an obvious homage to "The Good Place," Season 5, Episode 16 of "Lucifer" has a scene in which he crashlands in heaven, and is found by Lee Garner (Jeremiah Birkett). After Lucifer begins talking about being saved by Lillith's ring, Garner responds, "I don't know what the fork any of that means, but you look like you could use a hand."
Fans of both shows that caught the nod were thrilled, with Redditor u/queendomchapter starting a thread about it. On the thread, u/HereComesTheLuna commented, "Lol, I've never seen more than a few scenes of this show but that reference doesn't seem very subtle to me." They added that the line was most likely thrown in as a nod to fans of "The Good Place." U/lavishloser also was excited, writing enthusiastically, "I caught this too!!!!! it was so clever and brilliant!!!!!!"
While the writers of "Lucifer" didn't need to include any acknowledgment of a show that aired on a completely different network, it was a cool move on their part, and many fans won't forget it.