Why The Time-Knife In The Good Place Was So Elusive

When Janet (D'Arcy Carden) catches a tiny version of Chidi careening through the IHOP and returns him to his seat, the philosophy professor is stunned. "I just saw a trillion different realities folding onto each other like thin sheets of metal forming a single blade," he says. Michael, unsurprised, quickly notes that this is called the Time-Knife and moves on. "Chidi Sees the Time-Knife" is the first — and last — time the Time-Knife is mentioned in the series, and it may cause some fans to wonder why audiences never see the infinite multiversal object on screen in "The Good Place."

In an episode of NBC's companion podcast "The Good Place: The Podcast," digital effects supervisor David Niednagel — whose last name was given to the Niednagel creature — mentions there were some 1,200 visual effects shots used throughout Season 3 (via Apple Podcasts). Visualizing the Time-Knife, which folds infinite realities, must have proved too much to work its way into the show's visual effect budget.

Joe Mande, who served as a producer and writer on the series, noted on the podcast that the Time-Knife was born out of a desire to play with "the theater of the mind." "What was [Chidi] experiencing when he was going in and out of the pancakes at that moment?" he notes in the podcast. It seems fans may never get to see the Time-Knife itself, but as Michael notes in the episode... "we've all seen the Time-Knife."