Better Call Saul / Tropes A to E

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A

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Lalo manages to take a man's leg clean off with a single axe swing.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • Gus and Hector are both native Spanish speakers, and logically should be holding most of their conversations in Spanish, especially when talking with the people they're in business with for The Cartel (Nacho, Eladio, Bolsa, Lalo, etc). However, Giancarlo Esposito and Mark Margolis can't speak Spanish and get their Spanish lines phonetically, making their delivery extremely stilted. So, whenever there's a scene where Gus or Hector should logically be speaking Spanish, the writers can either have them speak Spanish, where it will be obvious to any fluent speaker that they can't really speak what is supposed to be their native language, or have them speaking English inexplicably. The show does both, depending on the situation, but both actors are otherwise excellent at playing their roles, so most will let it slide (by contrast, Tony Dalton and Michael Mando both speak fluent Spanish, so Lalo and Nacho speak the language far more often; Lalo in particular exclusively speaks Spanish when talking to Hector).
  • Every single character who also appeared in Breaking Bad (Jimmy, Mike, Tuco, Huell, Gus, Hector, Eladio, Bolsa, etc) is supposed to be anywhere from 5-8 years younger than they were when they appeared in Breaking Bad. In real life, the actors are all several years older. The show puts very little effort into hiding this discrepancy; at best some of the characters look about the same age and are old enough for it to be handwaved as them no longer visibly aging. Hector is the only one who really pulls it off, just because he spent all of Breaking Bad confined to a wheelchair. A couple of flashbacks even show Jimmy right around the time he started working in the mailroom in the early 90s, meaning he's supposed to be a good 20 years younger than he is in Omaha, and all the show does to try to sell this is give him a cheap wig. It's clear the showrunners aren't even trying to fool anyone, which is reasonable given that de-aging CGI would be expensive and would also invoke a distracting uncanny valley effect, and that makeup would likely not be effective either. The only other solution would be to recast the actors, which would be pretty much guaranteed to irritate the fanbase, so just looking the other way is the best solution.
  • ADX Montrose is based on one of the most human-rights-violating prisons in reality, ADX Florence. Prisoners there are kept in solitary confinement for twenty three hours, and patients with mental illness (which Jimmy would be classed as, with his PTSD and dissociation tendencies) have a high rate of suicide. But Jimmy needs to have some sort of peace, with regular visits from Kim and the hope of getting out early, so prisoners can move around, have recreational activities and Kim is able to sneak in as his lawyer.
  • Vince Gilligan discussed in the podcast for "Lantern" that Chuck's illness is less Shown Their Work for any particular ailment and more of a vicious cycle of wanting to be kinder to his brother, not being able to stop hurting him, and his body reacting to all this guilt and resentment with physical symptoms.
• Act of True Love:
  • In "Point and Shoot" Lalo orders Jimmy to visit Gus's house and shoot him dead, and to return with photographic evidence within one hour or he will kill Kim. Jimmy convinces him to send Kim instead, and gestures to her to get out of the apartment and to safety, and to let him take the risk of being shot by Lalo instead.
  • Later in the same episode, Kim stops at traffic lights next to a police vehicle. She considers reporting Lalo to the police, knowing this will ensure her safety, but may result in Jimmy's death. She decides to keep schtum and carry on with the order to shoot Gus, showing that she is prepared to kill to save Jimmy.
  • After feeling like she ruined everything with the Lalo Lie, and confessing her sins to Cheryl, the only non-truth Kim tells is that her ex might not be alive; she still doesn’t give Jimmy up, having to believe he’s still under there somewhere underneath the Saul and Gene of it all. When she thinks he’s given her up, she’s furious, but as the man she loves comes back, confessing his real feelings and damage over Chuck, she’s very proud of him.
• Actor Allusion:
  • A subtle one. Mike describes the corruption in his former precinct of the Philadelphia police department, in which everyone had to take a taste to avoid being suspected of informing, as being 'like killing Caesar, where everyone is guilty.' The character he is addressing this to is played by Kerry Condon, best known for playing Octavia of the Julii.
  • Another subtle one. After Hector asks Mike to alter his testimony against Tuco, saying "You're an ex-cop. They go easy on you.", Mike replies "So you're a psychic?" Mark Margolis played the role of the fortune teller Paul Cicero.
  • This isn't the first time Bob Odenkirk's been in a Deliberately Monochrome version of Nebraska.
  • This also isn't the first show that has featured both Bob Odenkirk and a plug for The Garden Weasel.
  • Jonathan Banks plays a character who works as a parking lot attendant, but this time he isn't dressed as a wizard.
  • The scene in "Five-O" where Mike buys a maxi-pad to bandage a bullet wound isn't the first time Jonathan Banks played a character buying feminine hygiene products.
  • Steven Ogg as a loudmouth, jackass career criminal with an inclination to be unhinged? Sounds like Trevor from GTA 5.
  • In "Plan and Execution", the initial exchange between Howard and Lalo ("Who are you?" "Me? Nobody") is an almost word-for-word quote of the opening lines of Nobody, which stars Bob Odenkirk.
• Aesop Amnesia: At the end of season 1, Jimmy tells Mike that he'll never let doing the "right thing" stop him again. At the end of season 3, he finds himself in a similar position with his scheme to turn the residents of Sandpiper on Irene, and ultimately sacrifices both his million dollar payday and his reputation in elder law to set things right.
• Affably Evil: Lalo is a merciless cartel gangster, but he's also very chipper and polite. When he arrives to take control of the Salamanca gang's collections away from Nacho, he does so by cheerfully introducing himself and serving him a home-made dinner, then smoothly sitting down in the lead position without any discussion of the matter.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Sure, Chuck repeatedly proved he was an asshole through and through, but the penultimate scene depicting his mental breakdown sort of causes you to pity him when he meets his demise.
• The Alleged Car: Jimmy's Suzuki Esteem leaves much to be desired, what with it sometimes having problems starting and the mismatched paint job on his right rear door (implying that the car probably got into an accident and the door had to be replaced, and Jimmy couldn't afford to have the door repainted). It's such a pile that he asks the skaters who try to scam him what kind of payment they were expecting from someone with a car like his.
  "The only way that entire car is worth $500 bucks is if there's a $300 hooker sittin' in it!"
• All for Nothing: Many plans, gambits, and motivations end up dismantled or leading to nowhere, usually as a result of the characters never anticipating whatever happens next. Hard Work Hardly Works, the philosophy that Jimmy and Kim eventually believe, may sometimes play a role in this. When looking at nearly every character's fate in Breaking Bad, this entire series is an examination of the trope, as even the few characters who are destined to survive this series are doomed to die in the original, with Jimmy himself already set to be left managing the Omaha Cinnabon.
  • Jimmy spends the entire show trying to go straight, scraping by as an honest defense attorney and trying to work his way up through legal means. As we know from the beginning, each and every one of these attempts is going to fail until he's left as the criminal lawyer Saul Goodman, dooming him to his fate in Omaha once Walter White enters his office. He ultimately ends the series spending the rest of his life in prison, with the only consolations being that the prisoners like him and he spared Kim from a similar fate, reconciling with her too.
  • Kim comes to see Mesa Verde and HHM as a Soul-Crushing Desk Job, and really enjoys doing pro-bono work, actually helping the little guy. When she gets a legit job offer to do just that in Santa Fe, she sabotages the opportunity because she wants to destroy Howard Hamlin even more. The results from that and the guilt she feels moves her to Florida as an Extreme Doormat for years, and while she makes steps to move back into legal aid (and gets back with Jimmy), she’s got a civil suit from Cheryl hanging over her head.
  • Chuck's attempt to ruin Jimmy's career ultimately costs him everyone and everything he values. His illness is publicly proven to be a mental one, he's forced out of HHM once he becomes a liability to them, and he eventually retreats into a delusion so strong that he burns his house down with himself inside. Within a year, a new HHM hire doesn't even recognize his picture. Even worse, Chuck's actions play a large role in turning Jimmy into Saul, and because of Jimmy's transformation, Howard crosses paths with Lalo Salamanca and is killed, crippling the law firm he spent years building from the ground up.
  • Howard Hamlin endures, in short order, personal bankruptcy, his law partner and dear friend committing suicide, his marriage deteriorating, Jimmy and Kim sabotaging him at every turn for the crime of offering him a job, and ultimately a scam from them so severe that it completely ruins his professional life. Despite vowing to come back from this, Howard gets killed by Lalo for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, rendering all of his struggles through the series null and void in less than a minute and leaving him remembered by his colleagues as a suicidal drug addict. Not only that, but the final gambit against Gus that Howard's death kicks off ultimately ends with Lalo dying as well, so even from a purely utilitarian perspective, Howard's death was as pointless as it could possibly be.
  • Lalo's main arc throughout the show is his attempt to prove that Gus Fring is working under the Cartel's nose and uncover proof of the superlab he's building. It's still several years before Walter White will work for Gus and eventually burn the lab down, all while the Cartel never learns about it, so Lalo's quest is obviously doomed from the beginning. In the end, he dies in Gus's superlab, having failed to inform the Cartel about it and with Gus's standing in the organization stronger than ever.
  • Nacho Varga's attempts to escape the criminal underworld all fail one way or the other, with the only option for him eventually being to commit suicide in the desert rather than be killed by the Salamancas. The only consolation is that Mike promises to look after his father, and he gets to at least spit in Hector's face one last time.
  • Gus spends years getting the superlab up and running, pouring countless amounts of money, manpower, and even several corpses into making sure it's operational, all for the sake of tearing down the Cartel and Hector Salamanca. In the end, he succeeds in all of his goals in this show, but he's still doomed to his eventual death at Walt and Hector's hands years later, while the lab he builds will be burned down once he's gone.
  • Throughout the show, we see even more of the effort that Mike put in to creating a solid nest egg for his granddaughter and daughter-in-law, all in the hopes of making up for indirectly getting his son Matt killed through his corruption. Going in, we already know that everything does will ultimately end up being for nothing; he's doomed to die in a field thanks to Walt's explosive temper, with his family never seeing the money he worked so hard to get for them.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Kim gets a thrill out of participating in Jimmy's cons, which is one of the reasons she sticks with him.
• All There in the Manual: Kim's full confession. It's her self loathing view of how show events went down (with a few insults directed at Chuck and Mike), and foreshadowing that her lawyer skills are still there, as it's a defence for Jimmy to use as well.
• The American Dream: Very, very much a cynical portrayal, given the show's recurring theme of Hard Work Hardly Works. Specifically it presents The American Dream as something which may once have been attainable but which is now dead. The show's wealthy and successful lawyers are all of an older generation and began practicing law at a time when that profession practically guaranteed a decent income and a comfortable life. For the generation of Jimmy, Kim and DA Bill Oakley, who all studied for the Bar much later, things are turning out to be much more of a struggle. The only exception is Howard Hamlin, whose success came from being born into wealth and privilege rather than hard work. Celebrity fan Barack Obama even described the show as an "examination of the dark side of The American Dream".
• Ambiguously Gay: Gus Fring's ambiguous sexual orientation continues from Breaking Bad, though one scene in the final season finally seems to address it and heavily implies that he's gay while still not overtly confirming it. He seems to make a pass at a sommelier, who may have been receptive, but then Gus abruptly leaves in low spirits. Peter Gould has since explicitly confirmed that Gus and Max were romantically involved, and that Gus is gay.
• Amicable Exes: Kim and Jimmy in season 1. While it is never stated explicity, it is very strongly implied that they were previously in a relationship and still have strong feelings for one another:
  • In "Uno" Jimmy takes a cigarette from Kim's lips and takes a couple of drags on it before replacing it. They are clearly both comfortable with this level of intimacy, and without words this scene establishes Kim and Jimmy as more than Just Friends.
  • They share numerous tender moments throught the season, such as Jimmy giving Kim a pedicure in "Alpine Shepherd Boy". He has no idea how to paint nails and makes a mess of it but Kim really doesn't mind.
  • They are also unusually protective of one another. This is Lampshaded by Howard in "Pimento", when Kim complains about HHM's refusal to hire Jimmy as an attorney:
    Howard Hamlin: "The partners have made a decision and the why is not your concern."
    Kim Wexler: "I think it is my concern."
    Howard Hamlin: "And why is that?"
    Kim Wexler: "Because he's my friend. And the way I see it, you're not treating him fairly."
    Howard Hamlin: "Did your friend send you in here to say that?"
  • In "RICO", a flashback shows Jimmy opening his bar exam results with Kim. When they learn he has passed, Kim is overjoyed and kisses him. This appears to confirm that they were indeed an item during their time working in the mailroom.
• Amoral Attorney:
  • A defining trope, as the show is about Jimmy's slide into becoming the crooked attorney known as Saul Goodman. The show reveals that it comes from a combination of bitterness for not getting the respect he believes he deserves and a recurring habit of cutting ethical corners.
  • Kim proves she's no saint when she is willing to expend a couple of junior associates' time and orchestrate a massive threat of a fictitious media circus to get the assistant district attorney to agree to a better plea bargain for Huell.
• Animal Metaphor: In "Chicanery", Jimmy buys a goldfish to use as a cover for his visits to Dr Caldera. In later episodes the goldfish often appears in the foreground of shots, usually when Jimmy is planning criminal activity, and it serves to indicate that Jimmy is up to no good.
• Animal Motifs: Lalo compares Jimmy to a cockroach, calling him "La Cucaracha". He means this as a compliment, expressing his confidence in Jimmy's survival instincts. Later, in "Plan and Execution", the sight of a cockroach scuttling past inspires him to pay a visit to Jimmy.
• Anonymous Public Phone Call:
  • Jimmy makes a call to the Kettlemans in "Nacho" to warn them of Nacho's designs on their (stolen) money. Unfortunately, it leads to the Kettlemans high-tailing it to the New Mexico hills with their kids. And the money.
  • Part of Mike's gambit to have Tuco arrested is to call the police on a payphone, anonymously report about an "old man" being attacked by some gangster, then approach and provoke Tuco into attacking him. He times it just right so that the police are on their way just before Tuco takes the first swings.
  • After Mike learns that a Good Samaritan was killed by Hector due to his actions and gets the intel he needs, he scours the desert to find the body. Once he does, he calls the police on a payphone to report it, claiming that he found it while he was illegally hunting for arrowheads in the area.
• Anti-Villain: Chuck McGill is a law-abiding lawyer who thinks it's dangerous for his con-man brother Jimmy (also a lawyer) to have a law degree. History says he's right, as Jimmy goes on to become the sleazebag Saul Goodman. However, Chuck's continual efforts to undermine Jimmy (who genuinely cares for him) throughout the series make him just as petty and vindictive as the murderers and drug dealers the show has, and they're a big part of the reason Jimmy is put on the path to becoming Saul in the first place.
• Any Last Words?: Lalo to Gus in "Point and Shoot". Cue "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Anyone Can Die: While there are a lot of deaths in this show, major character deaths are a lot fewer.
  • In season 1, Troy Hoffman, Carl Fenske, and Marco Pasternak.
  • In season 2, the good samaritan and Ximenez Lacerda.
  • In season 3, Chuck McGill.
  • In season 4, Arturo Colon, Fred Whalen at Travel Wire, and Werner Ziegler.
  • In season 5, everyone at Lalo's compound, bar Lalo.
  • In season 6, Nacho Varga, Howard Hamlin and Lalo Salamanca.
  • A Flashback at the start of the season 2 finale shows the death of Chuck and Jimmy's mother. While she is already known to have passed, this is part of a theme: so far every season finale has begun with a flashback and featured at least one character death.
• Arc Symbol:
  • Lanterns in Season 3. The whole season has left subtle clues foreshadowing Chuck's suicide, often by making the gas lantern take center stage:
  • "Witness": The lantern is prominently seen as Chuck and his private investigator wait inside the house for Jimmy to steal the confession tape, and Jimmy threatens to burn the house down when grilling Chuck on the location of a possible second tape.
  • "Sabrosito": Mike is hired by Jimmy and Kim to take photos of Chuck's house to present to Rebecca. One of these photos is of the lantern sitting atop a bunch of newspapers, which Jimmy takes special note of when they meet at the diner to make the exchange.
  • "Chicanery": Jimmy presents the photo during his bar hearing.
  • "Lantern": The childhood flashback at the beginning of the episode, where the camera zooms in on a lantern as Chuck reads to Jimmy. And all the lantern symbolism comes to fruition at the end of the episode when Chuck, broken and defeated, deliberately kicks over the lantern, burning down his house and killing himself.
  • Starting from "Chicanery", exit signs are a symbol of Chuck and how Jimmy/Gene's mental health is deteriorating like his brother's. In the finale, the camera focuses on the exit sign buzzing as Jimmy explains how Chuck was "brilliant but limited" in terms of emotions and being able to show his love.
• Arc Words:
  • "Dot your 'i's and cross your 't's." An expression meaning to spare no detail and make no mistakes.
  • "Wolves and Sheep" An expression heard throughout the show to establish a pecking order of people, a phrase that Jimmy took with him from childhood to adulthood.
  • That Man Is Dead. Jimmy tries to tell Chuck “slippin’ Jimmy is back in Cicero, dead and buried”, Jimmy’s whole plotline is the slow death of his soul to become Saul Goodman, he tells Kim (but gets pulled back) “Jimmy” is Chuck’s loser brother and “that name is burned”, over in Breaking Bad Saul tells Walt “the fun is over” and he’s nobody now, and in “Breaking Bad” the episode, it transitions from the open grave to Gene in bed, showing both death of Gene into Viktor, and how many times Jimmy has buried himself.
• Armor-Piercing Response: At the start of "Hero", Jimmy again tries to get the Kettlemans as clients, but is heartbroken when they tell him he's the kind of lawyer that guilty people hire.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Saul attempts to make small talk with Walter about Time Travel as they both await their new identities, Saul refuses to divulge anything about his past and names a failed Staged Pedestrian Accident as his greatest regret. Walter disgustedly asks: "So, you were always like this?" Saul's hopeful smile fades completely.
• Artistic License – Geography: Although set and filmed in Albuquerque, this is prone to happen:
  • Jimmy's search for the Kettleman family in "Nacho" begins with him hiking into the Sandia Mountains on the east side of Albuquerque, and he finds them on the Rio Grande floodplain in the west^note Trivia: the area where Jimmy finds the Kettlemans was actually filmed not too far from where Mike's death in Breaking Bad was filmed.. This would've required walking several thousand vertical feet down and across several miles of city neighborhoods and commercial districts.
  • What is depicted as the courthouse parking lot where Mike's "troll"-booth under the bridge is located at, is not actually for a courthouse. That's actually the Albuquerque Convention Center.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Mike Ehrmantraut tends to avoid this trope, but there have been a couple notable instances where he stored loaded rifles in his moving car pointing directly at the drivers' seat. Most of the time, however, he has the sense to point them to the side — which is about as safely as one could transport an illegal firearm.
• Artistic Title: The first five seasons feature ten unique title sequences — there is one per episode, and they are used in the same order for each season. Rather than featuring the characters, settings, and events of Better Call Saul, they are all snapshots of Saul Goodman's working life as it was in Breaking Bad. With their deliberate bad quality, tacky graphic effects and garish oversaturated colours they are also reminiscent of Saul Goodman's late night TV commercials from Breaking Bad.
  • As of the sixth and final season, the titles are now in black-and-white and far more corrupted and distorted. Also, for the last few episodes, those titles are cut short over the sounds of a cassette player and plain white text over a blue background is shown instead.
• Ascended Extra:
  • This show focuses on Jimmy, Mike, and later Gus, all of whom were members of the main cast in Breaking Bad that were not introduced in Season 1 of that show.
  • Stacey Ehrmantraut, Kaylee's mother and Mike's daughter-in-law, has a significantly more prominent role in this show after only appearing once in Breaking Bad, where she was only seen from a distance and played by an unknown actress.
  • Ignacio "Nacho" Varga starts out as one of Tuco's henchmen, after having nothing more than a brief mention in a throw-away line from Saul in his titular Breaking Bad episode. After a handful of appearances in Season 1, he then got more and more screen time and development in Season 2. By Season 3, he fully becomes a part of the main cast and develops his own subplot as he tries to get out from under Hector's thumb, only to then get caught in the middle of Gus' war with the Salamancas.
  • In Season 2, Kim becomes a more definitive tritagonist, with subplots revolving around her in addition to the ones revolving around Jimmy and Mike.
  • Krazy-8 only lasted about three episodes into Breaking Bad. As a Salamanca associate, he's had a much larger presence here in Better Call Saul, especially in season 5, where we see how he becomes a snitch for the DEA.
  • Gus' first two onscreen appearances are as one-scene wonders, but in "Sabrosito" he is officially established as a member of the main cast.
  • Lalo is introduced at the end of "Coushatta," after merely being another name Saul gives from the same dialogue that mentioned Nacho. While he only appears for a few scenes in the last two episodes of Season 4, it sets him up to be the main antagonist for Gus and Mike in Season 5, later dragging Jimmy and Kim into the game as well.
  • The Salamanca gang become a larger threat and presence than they were in Breaking Bad. Hector is Mike's antagonist for season 2, and Gus' and Nacho's antagonist for season 3. There's a brief lull in their activities in season 4 after Gus forces the Cousins to return south for massacring the Espinozas, until late in the season when Lalo comes along, and in season 5, becomes the first time a Salamanca got main credits billing.
• Assassin Outclassin': In season 5, Lalo kills all of the assassins sent by Fring to kill him using his wits and a secret escape tunnel.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Ken Wins, an abrasive and arrogant financial worker. In "Switch", Kim and Jimmy overhear him talking loudly on his phone and being excessively crass and vulgar, so they trick him into paying for an entire bottle of expensive tequila. Poor, poor thing.
  • Dale, the engineer conned by Kim and Jimmy in "Bali Ha'i". Immediately before he enters the bar and offers to buy Kim a drink, a shot from Kim's POV shows him kissing his wife goodbye. This tells us that Dale is a sleazebag who deserves what's coming to him.
  • In "Coushatta," Kim's reasons for pulling the whole sham show of support for Huell to force ADA Ericsen to agree to a lenient plea deal seems motivated by Ericsen's willingness to give Huell a disproportionate sentence for his crime.
• Author Appeal:
  • Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have expressed a… fondness for morally ambiguous, dominant women, and Kim/Jimmy have a happy fem-dom vibe with Kim being very complicated, and Betsy dominates Henpecked Husband Craig while being the brains of their criminality.
  • The insider podcast for "Hero" had Gilligan and Gould lightly tease Odenkirk for enjoying suffering and being happy for scenes whether he's either tied down or beat up. They reckon it's a raised catholic thing.
• Awful Truth: The primary twist of Season One is that Chuck is the one who has been actively sabotaging Jimmy's attempt to become a lawyer.
• Awful Wedded Life:
  • Season 6 introduces Howard's wife Cheryl. During a session with his therapist in "Hit and Run", it becomes apparent that they have been having problems with their marriage for some time. In "Axe and Grind" it is revealed that not only are they no longer sharing a bedroom, Howard is now sleeping in a guest room in an entirely separate wing of the house. When we see them interact the conversation confirms that they are Dead Sparks as they discuss whether it is appropriate for them to continue turning up to social functions as a couple. When Howard hands her a coffee featuring some latte art he has carefully designed to look like a peace sign, Cheryl unceremonously dumps it into her travel mug.
  • Chuck McGill and wife Rebecca Bois also seemed to have been pretty distant before their divorce. Rebecca doesn't laugh at Chuck's jokes (despite laughing at Jimmy's) and when they attempt a reconciliation, Chuck still doesn't feel able to confide in her about his electromagnetic hypersensitivity. It's never actually fully stated how the divorce came around, other than Chuck used Jimmy as an excuse to sabotage, at Rage Breaking Point Jimmy relates to her leaving, and while amiable exes, they barely spoke to each other before she finds out about his illness.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • We don't see Kim and Jimmy actually say "I love you" to one another until the 59th episode, but we know. In the previous episode we see that Kim was prepared to kill for Jimmy, and Jimmy was prepared to die for Kim.
  • Even all the baggage and animosity that Jimmy and Mike have with each other throughout the series—and Breaking Bad—the two are shown to have an understanding and respect for each other in spite of all those things.

B

• Back for the Finale: Bill Oakley, Suzanne Ericsen, Mike Ehrmantraut, Marie Schrader, Walter White and Chuck McGill.
• Back-Alley Doctor: Dr. Caldera is a veterinarian who also provides medical care for those who need treatment with no questions asked. He also serves as a middleman for those seeking less-than-legal employment.
• Backfire on the Witness Stand: Played with in "Chicanery," with Jimmy's bar hearing. Howard advises Chuck not to testify at the hearing, as they have enough evidence to get Jimmy's license revoked without it. Chuck insists on going anyway, both for his Control Freak tendencies and desire to end Jimmy's law career personally. It backfires in a breathtaking fashion when Jimmy tricks Chuck into an explosive Motive Rant on the stand that damages Chuck's credibility and ends up getting Jimmy briefly suspended instead of fully revoked.
• Bad People Abuse Animals:
  • Gus Fring tells a comatose Hector a story about how, growing up poor, he snared a coati that was eating the fruit from a tree he cultivated, and despite it having a broken leg that would have made killing it more merciful, kept it alive — just as he has decided to keep Hector alive and suffering rather than killing him.
  • In "Bad Choice Road" Lalo torments Kim and Jimmy's poor goldfish by tapping on the side of her tank. When Jimmy pleads with him "You shouldn't do that, it upsets the fish" he defiantly does it again.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The season 1-5 premieres all begin with a Deliberately Monochrome Cold Open showing Jimmy's life in exile as "Gene Takavic". The season 6 premiere appears to begin in the same fashion, with a sequence of monochrome neckties falling away from the camera. They are then joined by some more ties with a small splash of colour, then a series of increasingly colourful ties before it becomes apparent that we are not in Omaha, but in Saul's abandoned — and very colourful — home in Albuquerque.
  • After her "Fifi" lunch with Mesa Verde, Kim acts jumpy and distracted, and Jimmy assumes that it went badly. Then she grins and gives him a victory smooch and squees that it went great.
  • In season 6, Nacho is in deep trouble with the Salamancas and Howard is the target of a scheme by Jimmy and Kim to ruin his career. You'd expect Nacho to risk being killed by a Salamanca and Howard, like Chuck, to potentially be Driven to Suicide after his life is ruined. But no, it's Nacho who commits suicide and Howard who gets killed by Lalo Salamanca.
  • Kim and Jimmy marry in "JMM", both because they love each other, but also so he can tell her what he's getting up to without her having to testify against him. Everyone, including Jimmy, assumes he'll eventually fuck it up, but it turns out to be Kim keeping the secret from Jimmy that Lalo was alive, not even because she was protecting him but because she was having too much fun, something she sees as ruining everything.
• Baldness Angst: Jimmy suffers from a major case of this, and it doesn't help that he seems to be prone to Ominous Hair Loss as a reaction to stressful events. Jimmy is often seen fretting over his thinning hair and tries to disguise it with an extra wide side parting. By the time he is inhabiting the Saul Goodman persona he is sporting a full-on combover and using a vast quantity of hair loss treatments. He finally accepts his baldness once he is living as "Gene Takavic" and is forced to change his appearance, and he is eventually able to joke about it:

  "Guess how many pills I used to take to keep the hair on my head. Worked like a charm."

• Bathroom Search Excuse: A favoured tactic of Jimmy's, usually in combination with Too Much Information:
  • In "RICO", he is refused entry to Sandpiper Crossing and lies about having Irritable Bowel Syndrome so they will let him use the bathroom — where he uses the toilet paper to write a demand letter.
  • In "Wine and Roses", he pretends to have diverticulitis and asks to use the toilets — which happen to be in the locker room, where he plants a bag of suspicious-looking white powder in Howard's locker.
• Batman Gambit:
  • The billboard stunt in season 1 episode 4. Jimmy buys a billboard ad that plagiarizes the HHM branding. The court issues a cease-and-desist order to make him take it down. Jimmy then tries and fails to convince the local news stations to document the billboard taken down, so he hires a freelancing TV team. The worker who takes down the ad (actually a hired stooge) "accidentally" falls and then Jimmy plays hero in front of the camera. The HHM staff see through the façade instantly but know that taking any further action against Jimmy would gain him more publicity.
  • Mike pretends to get drunk and makes a vague accusation to the two cops who killed his son, then stumbles his way home. He is counting on the fact that the two cops would pick him up in their squad car (which he had broken into earlier and hid a spare gun) and take him to a secluded spot where they can kill him (or rather, where he can kill them).
  • Mike's gambit to throw Tuco in jail, which involves acting like a doddering old fool and not showing any fear after "accidentally" swiping Tuco's car in a Mexican restaurant parking lot. He also flashes some cash from his wallet while paying for his food, demonstrating to Tuco that he has the money to pay to get Tuco's car fixed. Tuco, being Tuco, takes the bait. He's actually genuinely impressed that Mike outsmarted him.
  • At the close of season two, Chuck seemingly retires and pretends to fall even deeper into his electromagnetic sensitivity delusion, hoping Jimmy's desire to look out for him and care for him will lead him to give a taped confession. It works.
  • The follow-up at the start of season 3 features Chuck using the taped confession to manipulate both Ernesto and his brother (almost) flawlessly. He knows the confession isn't likely to go anywhere in court, and knows he can't use it to get Mesa Verde back, but he also knows his brother would seek to get the tape if he knew it existed. All he needs is for Ernesto to "accidentally" hear the tape, tell his friend Jimmy what he heard, and wait for Jimmy to break in with witnesses to see it. The "almost" part stems from his failure to recognize that Jimmy had no interest in "sneaking in under cover of night" to get the tape. Jimmy is so angry he just kicks the door down and confronts Chuck directly.
  • Jimmy gets to turn the tables just a few episodes later when Chuck testifies during Jimmy's hearing before the bar association. Jimmy presses Chuck's buttons — namely his ex-wife Rebecca and his Pride over the issue of his mental illness — until Chuck loses it and launches into an unhinged Motive Rant that inadvertently lends credence to Jimmy's claims that his brother has it out for him. So Jimmy ends up getting hit with a one year suspension of his law license rather than the disbarment that Chuck had been seeking, while Chuck's illness is undeniably proven to be a mental disorder and his legal credibility is rendered stone dead.
  • Jimmy bests a trio of muggers by fleeing from them and running into a dead-end alley, counting on the fact that they will chase him into the alley. He's positioned two armed confederates to confront the muggers from behind once they arrive.
  • After Hector's smuggling method is ruined by Mike and Gus, Hector forces Gus to smuggle his crew's drugs as well. Gus planned this all along, and the success of his Los Pollos Hermanos smuggling methods leads the cartel to forbid all other methods of shipping drugs into the United States, severely weakening Hector's role in the cartel.
  • Jimmy and Kim's plan to gaslight Howard requires a lot of people to do as expected, including Briar Patching the Kettlemans.
  • Jimmy's plan to rob the department store requires the security guards to stick to the exact same schedule that Jimmy had determined in the week leading up to the robbery.
  • Jimmy gets Kim to appear in court by lying about her involvement in a murder, counting on her to show up in court so he could confess in front of her and show her he can be good.
• Batter Up!: Jimmy has two of his goons intimidate a trio of muggers by knocking down pinatas with baseball bats and threatening to do the same to the muggers.
• Bavarian Fire Drill:
  • When shooting his "Gimme Jimmy" commercial throughout a few late season 2 episodes, Jimmy is shown using this trope to engage in guerilla-style filming. This includes passing off an elderly masturbator as a phony World War II vet to scam their way onto an air force base and get footage of the guy standing in front of the "Fifi" B-29 Bomber, or shooting on a school playground and claiming to be filming a documentary about Rupert Holmes of "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" fame.
  • In his role as a security consultant for Madrigal Electromotive, which was supposed to be a no-show job solely to launder his money, Mike steals another worker's badge, walks right into the building, has multiple conversations with other employees, and takes advantage of every security weakness he can find. Once he's done, he takes the supervisors to task over everything that he was able to get away with:
    "I waltz through security with someone else's ID. Nobody gives me a second look. When the rightful owner shows up, there's no facility-wide badge check. I find access doors left unlocked or propped open, passwords written on Post-it notes. Warehouse workers are using pen and paper instead of electronic inventory devices, which leaves you wide open to pilfering. You got duplicate routing numbers on cargo, surveillance-camera blind spots on the north and the east side of the floor, inventory documents that are going into the trash instead of being shredded, not to mention loading equipment being driven at unsafe speeds and crews disregarding safety protocols."
  • Mike also pretends to be an Albuquerque police detective to smuggle a particular piece of evidence into the station tying a rival gangster to a murder. He badgers an intern to get the documents to the right desk, but never actually identifies himself. It helps that he used to be an actual cop in another state before he moved to New Mexico.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Vince Gilligan confirmed towards the end of the show that they knew at the start people were clamouring to see Saul Goodman, and intentionally made Jimmy likable enough, sympathetic enough and his Trauma Conga Line making it a slow death of himself, so the hope was to make the audience dread to see Saul take over.
• Beauty Inversion: After leaving Jimmy for a new life in Florida Kim begins wearing her hair in a darker colour that doesn't suit her, and an unflattering style which hides her face. She also ditches the smart suits, stilleto heels and perfect grooming for dowdy casual clothes, clumpy shoes and minimal make-up. She appears to be making a concerted effort to hide her beauty and avoid attracting attention.
• Being Good Sucks:
  • This hits Jimmy hard at the end of "Bingo," when he has to give up the money he invested in a new office in order to force the Kettlemans into taking the plea deal and save Kim from The Corn Field.
  • Jimmy gets hit again in "Lantern" when he has to admit to his fraud and sacrifice his payday from the Sandpiper settlement to let Irene reconcile with her friends.
• Beneath the Mask: Jimmy McGill is a struggling professional trying desperately to make ends meet and find his place in the world. It is very clear that he is under massive amounts of stress and battles daily to keep his cool in the face of financial hardship, daily struggles, and an uncertain future. A far cry away from the confident 'Saul Goodman' persona that in Breaking Bad will define him as a litigator. This part of Jimmy's character is Lampshaded in the key art for season 4.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Nacho Varga shoots himself rather than let the Cartel do it. This is partly to avoid being tortured to death, but also to deny them the satisfaction of killing him, hence Hector Salamanca's frustration as he futilely pumps bullets into Nacho's dead body.
• Big Bad:
  • Season 1: Chuck McGill has secretly been the one sabotaging Jimmy's career, resentfully believing him unworthy of being a lawyer due to his conman past.
  • Season 2: Chuck continues to oppose Jimmy's law career, going so far as to undermine Kim's relationship with Mesa Verde just because of her partnership with his brother. Hector Salamanca acts as the main villain of Mike and Nacho's subplot, threatening the former's family after he helps the latter get Tuco arrested and subsequently pushing Mike to plan an assassination on the gangster.
  • Season 3: Chuck embraces more immoral tactics in his obsessive efforts to get Jimmy disbarred, and when his plans ultimately only expose his own mental illness he tries to bring HHM down with him. Hector continues to act as the central antagonist of the cartel subplot as he tries to recruit Nacho's father for a new drug front, while Gus and Mike manipulate him into giving up more control over the smuggling business.
  • Season 4: Lalo Salamanca is introduced near the end of the season as the new head of the Salamanca family after Hector's stroke and begins investigating Gus, who has blackmailed Nacho into becoming his mole in the Salamanca's organization and begun construction of his secret meth superlab.
  • Season 5: Lalo continues to interfere with Gus' operations, using Jimmy to get Gus' street dealers arrested and later roping him into a dangerous job to retrieve bail money when he's eventually arrested himself.
  • Season 6A: Lalo fakes his death and goes on a one-man crusade against Gus after an assassination attempt, wrapping Jimmy and Kim into his efforts to expose the superlab to the Cartel and murdering Howard in the process.
  • Season 6B: Jimmy himself falls back into his conman ways after his grief from losing everything and everyone finally catches up to him while in hiding in Omaha, leaving behind any virtues he may have once held as his reckless exploits lead to him finally being arrested.
• Big Fancy House:
  • Saul give Kim a tour of one, in an effort to rebuild her confidence in their relationship after he begins practicing under the name Saul Goodman.
  • The opening of season 6 is set just after Saul flees to Omaha, and gives us a tour of Saul's house as his possessions are being cleared out. It is expensively and opulently furnished, but boy, it ain't classy.
  • Howard Hamlin's house is so big and fancy it has two separate wings. Where he and wife Cheryl are living two separate lives.
• Binge Montage:
  • Played with in "Marco". It's a classic binge sequence, but instead of drinking or drugs, Jimmy and Marco are pulling various scams.
  • In "50% Off", two junkies learn of Saul's promotional offer and take it as a free ride to go on a meth-addled, multi-day crime spree through the Land of Enchantment.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Season 3 as a whole marks a transition point since it's the first season with Gus and also the last season with Chuck as a main character.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Towards the end of the first season, it is revealed that Chuck has been pretending to be a supportive big brother to Jimmy while secretly harboring disgust for him and undermining his attempts to build a legal practice.
• Bittersweet Ending: Jimmy confesses to his crimes, which costs him his generous seven year sentence and means he will spend the rest of his life in prison—unless good behavior allows him release after an indefinite amount of time. However, in doing so he gets Kim off the hook for her role in Howard's murder, and finally accepts responsibility for both his role in the murders tied to Walter White and his brother's suicide, leaving him with a clear conscience and no longer paranoid and on the run. "Saul Goodman" is regarded as a local legend behind bars (so we know Jimmy will be okay), Jimmy and Kim reconcile over a cigarette after years apart, and Kim seems to have a new lease on life.
• Black Comedy:
  • Jimmy's three clients in the public defender case in the beginning broke into a morgue and had sex with a severed head.
  • Jimmy's back and forth with Tuco on deciding a punishment for the skateboarders who insulted his grandma.
  • To give an alibi for the secret hiding space Daniel has in his house, Jimmy shoos him out of the interrogation room, then spins a bogus story to the cops about Daniel keeping a private stash of videos of himself sitting in a pie while crying.
  • There's something to say about Mike's bonding, "make-work" project with Kaylee, where she unknowingly helps him build a spike strip to ambush one of Hector's trucks.
  • Jimmy goes into Los Pollos Hermanos and proves to be the most incompetent spy ever, easily tipping off Gus to Mike's presence.
  • Jimmy and Kim's lengthy scam to con ADA Ericsen into a no-prison time plea bargain for Huell, which involves faking letters of support from Huell's hometown and making up stories of Huell saving fictitious churchgoers from a fictitious fire at a fictitious church that doesn't exist.
  • Part of Jimmy's attempt to force Kevin Wachtell and Mesa Verde into a settlement is filming a series of ads where fake customers of Mesa Verde allege that the bank has ripped them off, given them black mold infections, and funded international terrorism.
• Blackmail:
  • Gustavo forces Nacho to be his mole inside the Salamanca family after saying he knows Nacho was responsible for Hector Salamanca's stroke.
  • Jimmy tries to extort a settlement out of Kevin Wachtell by pointing out that, among other things, Mesa Verde doesn't actually own the rights to the photo their logo is based on. He threatens to put an injunction on all uses of the Mesa Verde logo and sue them for 54 years of unpaid royalties to the photographer, threatening to tie the bank up in years of costly litigation. Kevin begrudgingly accepts Jimmy's offer afterwards.
  • In "Carrot and Stick," the Kettlemans realize that Jimmy's played them, so they try to pressure Jimmy into helping them out. As a result, Kim threatens to report their tax preparer fraud to the IRS and get them both sent to prison until they promise to drop the issue and reimburse all the people they ripped off.
  • After Jeff the cab driver recognizes Gene as Saul Goodman, Gene offers to get him in on "the game" and make some money from a mall heist. Gene gives Jeff and his friend Buddy very precise instructions, such as renting a truck from over state lines and specifying which merchandise to steal. Gene reveals afterwards that the whole thing was Betrayal Insurance—now that they're all implicated in multiple interstate crimes, Jeff and Buddy face decades in federal prison if they reveal Gene's identity.
• Blatant Lies:
  • It’s obvious from both his breakdown right after and just watching their interactions that Chuck chose the worst thing to try and push Jimmy away in “you’ve never meant that much to me”. But Jimmy takes it to heart anyway.
  • Lalo sets up a meeting between Jimmy and his cousins, promising that "they're good boys" and Saul will like them.
  • Jimmy tells Sipes in the fifth episode "I refuse to consider myself a victim". This coming from a guy who suppresses everything bad that happens to him until he can weaponize it.
  • Even while Chuck is alive, Jimmy keeps trying to say he doesn't care about his brother and won't go back there again. He always does, still really wants Chuck's love, doesn't know how to deal without him, and hopes they'll be okay (or what passes for "okay" in their books) even after all that.
  • Kim and Jimmy make assertions that getting married is just a legal arrangement, nothing more, but they’re delighted at their little wedding, and both of them take every opportunity they can to mention their new husband or wife. After she divorces him in self-loathing, she still lies to protect him, and his lying to the government about her involvement with Howard to get her to come to court helps get them back together.
• Blindfolded Trip:
  • Because no one can know about his secret basement under the laundromat, Gus doesn't recruit local labor. Instead, he works through Lydia to pick up outside contractors from Madrigal who do off-the-books illegal digging projects. And just to be on the safe side, Gus has even more measures placed to ensure that anyone who fails the job interview knows minimal details about the project. To elaborate, the candidate flies into Denver, Colorado, where they are directed to a car in the parking lot with a prepaid parking ticket, keys hidden in the wheel well, and a burner phone in the cupholder. The candidate is then guided by Mike over the phone to drive to a dropoff point on the side of a windy road in the Rocky Mountains near Idaho Springs. Once there, the candidate is to don a black hood from the trunk. After which, Mike and a driver show up, bundle the candidate into a van, and drive him hundreds of miles to the lab. They then do an analysis of the site and determine both the time and labor required, while Gus is discreetly observing him from the shadows. The candidate never sees Gus, instead only seeing Mike. If Gus rejects the candidate, he calls Mike to tell him as much, then the rejectee is re-bagged, put back in the van, and dumped back on the Colorado road where he left the car with a return plane ticket in their pocket.
  • Werner's crew are sorta subjected to this. No one can know of their existence, so Gus has bought a giant warehouse on the outskirts of Albuquerque in which there are two two-bedroom houses (a single bedroom for Werner, and three doubles shared among his six subordinates). Every evening, Mike and another driver pick them up in a laundry truck that's backed up to a loading dock, and they are driven in the truck to the laundromat, where they then do their work. Then repeat the process in the reverse to go back to their living quarters.
  • The episode “Breaking Bad” shows that series’ “Better Call Saul” from Saul’s perspective, so it opens on him in the back of the RV, tied up with tape and the hood over his head, smash-cutting to the credits after he’s forced to kneel in front of an open grave, the hood is taken off, and he’s screaming that it wasn’t him, it was Ignacio.
• Body Double: Gus and Lalo both have one. Lalo even went to the trouble to give his matching teeth.
• Book Ends:
  • In the first season, Jimmy's first and last scenes in the HHM parking garage feature the same dented trash can.
  • In Jimmy's first scene in the first season (after the Cold Open), he's in the bathroom practicing his speech for the jury. In his last scene of the first season, he's practicing introducing himself to a partner from Davis & Main.
  • Season 3 begins with Mike obsessively taking apart his car trying to find the hidden tracker, and ends with Chuck obsessively taking apart his house trying to find the hidden source of electrical current. It also begins with Chuck telling Jimmy that he was the one who read The Adventures of Mabel to him as a kid, and ends with a flashback showing Chuck doing just that.
  • Jimmy's first and last courtroom speeches are preceded by him whispering "it's showtime" to himself.
  • Both the first and final episodes feature a scene of Jimmy and Kim passing a cigarette back and forth.
  • Jimmy started out wistfully explaining to the twins that "Slippin' Jimmy" was loved by everyone. In prison, he genuinely is, even if they do all refer to him as Saul.
  • Jimmy wanted to be a lawyer and follow in Kim's footsteps because he wanted her and Chuck's love, and was scared she would think he was worthless like Chuck thought. In the finale, learning she confessed about Howard with no self justification and could be in trouble, he follows again to prove that she was right about him not being a write off, confessing to real feelings and bad he's done, along with getting his identity back.
• Boom, Headshot!:
  • Nacho kills himself by shooting himself in the head while giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the Salamancas.
  • Lalo kills Howard with a gunshot to the head at point-blank range.
• Boredom Montage: "Waterworks" shows us Kim's new life after leaving Jimmy and relocating to Florida. We see her at her job writing product descriptions for catalogues of sprinkler parts, having mundane conversations with colleagues and neighbours in the Florida suburbs, and going home to her new partner Glenn, where they have banal discussions of potato salad ingredients and mechanical sex where he calls out "yep".
• The Boxing Episode: Howard and Jimmy spar in "Black and Blue". Jimmy loses.
• Briar Patching:
  • While attempting to negotiate a refund for his malpractice insurance in "Expenses", Jimmy learns HHM use the same provider. He then makes an accidentally-on-purpose reveal about Chuck concealing his mental illness from them. When the clerk begins writing a note he begs her to stop writing and forget everything he just said, which has the effect of making her take his words even more seriously, just as he intended.
  • In season 6, Jimmy approaches the Kettlemans with a proposal to sue Howard Hamlin for representing them while in the grip of a serious cocaine addiction. They accept his proposal but tell him they're going to take it to a more respectable lawyer. Jimmy pleads with them not to... ensuring that this vicious and entirely false rumour gets spread among all of Howard's peers.
• Brick Joke: In "Granite State", as he was preparing to go into hiding, Saul cracked the best he could hope for under his new identity would be managing a Cinnabon in Omaha. That's precisely what he's wound up doing.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Mike raised his son, Matty, as a scrupulously honest cop in Philadelphia. When Matty's corrupt partner tried to bring him into something shady, Matty originally refused, and only went along with it when Mike reveals that he himself had been corrupt when he was on the force.
  • Jimmy idolizes Chuck both as a towering figure of the law and as the big brother who rescued him from prison and helped him turn his life around. The revelation that Chuck never respected him in turn, and was actually the one to block and sabotage all of Jimmy's attempts to join HHM and build his own law practice, is enough to get Jimmy to walk out on Chuck and give up all illusions to himself that he will ever be a "proper" lawyer.
  • Howard looks up to Chuck as his old friend and mentor, and repeatedly urges him to abandon his vendetta against Jimmy. Howard then gets a taste of just how vindictive Chuck can be when Howard encourages Chuck to retire and he responds by moving to sue his own law firm into insolvency. Howard puts himself into debt to buy Chuck out and essentially fire him.
  • Jimmy is an Insecure Love Interest to Kim, convinced that she's the more honest and morally pure of the two and that he's bad for her. In "Fun and Games" Jimmy tries to convince Kim that Howard's death was entirely Lalo's fault, before Kim confesses that she knew Lalo was alive, and didn't tell Jimmy because she suspected he would whisk her away and try to keep her safe while she was having too much fun scamming Howard. You can see the exact moment his heart breaks.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Played for laughs (if dark ones, considering their family issues). Couple Jimmy and Kim are fans of playing brother and sister Viktor and Giselle St Clair while still being all over each other, her calling him a brat, him agreeing that she’s hot, and she'll call him Viktor after having sex with him.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Jimmy's whole character. He will fall under some hard times and fall in with some bad people, but between this show and Breaking Bad, he's shown to be a very effective attorney.
  Jimmy: I just talked you down from a death sentence to six months probation. I'm the best lawyer ever...
• Burner Phones: With his law license suspended in Season 4, Jimmy takes a job at a mobile phone store, then realizes he can make a lot of money selling cheap prepaid cell phones to criminals and drug users for a markup. This sends him further and further into the criminal underworld, making dozens of criminal connections.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The dramatic irony in "Breaking Bad" is that Jesse and Walt never think twice about kidnapping a guy and threatening him with a desert grave, but it's the lynchpin for Jimmy/Saul, both before in experiences that make him dread the desert and become a Nervous Wreck over Lalo, and after in awakened trauma that makes him want a gloried distraction in the form of a meth maker.
• Butt-Monkey: Ken Wins, who will have his car blown up in Breaking Bad and gets conned by Jimmy and Kim into paying for a very expensive bottle of tequila.

C

• Cabin Fever: A genuine concern for the German construction crew building Gus' meth lab, who live for months on site and are not permitted to go outside for fear they will learn where they are. Werner gets hit hard by this, to the point that he escapes the compound to go see his wife, and forcing Gus to order his death after he is tricked into divulging details of the construction to Lalo.
• Cacophony Cover Up:
  • In "Sabrosito" Kim and Jimmy arrange for Mike to repair Chuck's door in place of the joiner he hired so that he can obtain photographic evidence of Chuck's mental illness. Mike uses the noise of an electric drill to mask the sound of his camera's flash.
  • In "Wiedersehen," Tyrus drives a semi truck over some metal plates at the exact same moment Werner's crew is blasting rock underground.
• Caffeine Failure: in "Fall", a bottle of No-Doz is seen in Kim's car shortly before she falls asleep at the wheel and drives into a boulder.
• Cain and Abel:
  • Jimmy and Chuck's relationship and rivalry is an underlying theme for the first three seasons. There are scenes alternating genuine concern for each other with scenes where one tries to sabotage the other. It's up to you to figure out which brother is which. This trope is arguably deconstructed over the course of the series, as no matter which brother is which they both end up sinking to deplorable lengths to try to break the other and it does nothing but further destroy both men.
  • While they’re not brothers, Gould has talked about how much Chuck really fucked Howard and Jimmy up, having them both as almost surrogate sons but pitting them against each other. Jimmy transfers all his brother issues onto Howard, and any offer of actual sympathy from the man gets him angrier, and it all leads up to Hamlin’s death (which is also down to Kim’s childhood trauma, seeing Howard as a stand-in for all the people who treated her family like crap).
• Call-Back:
  • The dented trash can that Jimmy kicked in "Uno" is shown in "Marco."
  • Jimmy makes a reference to wanting a cocobolo desk to Kim when considering buying a fancy new office in Season 1. Come Season 2, he asks if he can have his desk at Davis & Maine replaced with a cocobolo desk.
  • When Jimmy is trying to prove to Tuco that he really is a lawyer and not a federal agent, he tells Tuco to ask him anything about law, then after a second adds, "Just not contract law." In season 2, Jimmy nearly voids his contract with Davis and Main by resigning after less than a year, which would have caused them to take back the substantial bonus he was paid when he signed with them. He's only saved by his aide, Omar, pointing this out. Later, when Jimmy finally forces Cliff Main to fire him without cause, which would allow Jimmy to keep his bonus, Cliff angrily tells Jimmy that he's aware of what Jimmy was trying to do and snarks that Jimmy must have brushed up on his contract law.
  • In "Carrot and Stick" Jimmy mutters to himself "Wolves and sheep..." and when Kim replies "Huh" he dismisses this with "Nothing". This is a call-back to "Inflatable", where we see a grifter advise a young Jimmy that "There are wolves and sheep in this world, kid", except this time Jimmy seems to consider himself a sheep and Kim a wolf.
  • In the final season, Gus is called to Don Eladio's house and meets him in his backyard, where he manages to hide his impending treachery from his secret nemesis. After Eladio leaves, Gus stands by the pool and stares into it in the exact spot where his former partner and likely lover Max Arciniega was murdered on Eladio's orders, the inciting incident to Gus's planned revenge.
• Call-Forward: A given, since this is a prequel series. In fact, it has so many call forwards that it has its own page.
• Calling Shot Gun: Saul calls shotgun after Walt and Jesse fail to intimidate him in the desert, forcing Jesse to sit on the floor of the R.V.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Chuck, in "Nailed," outlines with (unknowingly) 100% accuracy how Jimmy doctored the Mesa Verde files, ostensibly trying to turn Kim against Jimmy. Kim knows that Chuck's right about the forgery, but he has produced no hard evidence to back it up other than his personal knowledge of things Jimmy did in the past, so to a normal person who doesn't know Jimmy, it just looks like Chuck is putting the blame for his mistakes on Jimmy.
    • This comes to bite Chuck during his breakdown under cross-examination in "Chicanery," when he again attacks Jimmy in court over the Mesa Verde files, as well as the billboard incident, the Chicago Sunroof, and his theft from their dad's store. Except this is an angry Motive Rant taking place right after Jimmy has proven Chuck's EHS is a delusion, so all of Chuck's claims make him come across as an unhinged paranoiac who thinks his brother is out to get him, which lends credence to Jimmy's (false) version of events and destroys Chuck's credibility as a witness and standing in the community as a lawyer.
  • In "Breaking Bad", it's revealed that Mike warned Saul against partnering with Walt, telling him that Walt had no idea what he was doing and would drag any potential partners down with him. Saul doesn't listen and agrees to take on Walt as a client. Had he listened, Mike wouldn't have been killed and Saul wouldn't have lost his law practice and been forced to go into hiding in Omaha.
• Cast Herd: The cast is usually split between the "legal" side (Kim, Howard, Chuck) and the "criminal" side (Mike, Nacho, Gus, Lalo), with Jimmy being involved in both. As the series goes on, Kim also becomes more involved in the criminal side, and the two words collide when Lalo kills Howard.
• Casual Kink: Jimmy and Kim's greatest hits include being way too horny playing siblings, her getting off on creating Saul Goodman, needing a Shower of Love after he roleplays as her and she roleplays as her boss, undoing all their work dressing each other by being turned on by their scam, and his slight pouting when he’s not allowed to feed her or keep cuffs on when she visits his prison, though they still have plenty of tension when she’s lighting his cigarette.
• Celebrity Paradox: Since Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are part of the same timeline, some paradoxes are the result of references to works here that feature someone who only shows up in Breaking Bad.
  • In "Amarillo," when screening a preview run of his (unauthorized) Davis & Main commercial for Kim, Jimmy sets up the scene by claiming that they're watching Murder, She Wrote, a show that has seen guest stars like Bryan Cranston (Walter White), Michael McKean (Chuck McGill), Patrick Fabian (Howard Hamlin), Raymond Cruz (Tuco Salamanca), Dennis Boutsikaris (Rick Schweikert), and Míriam Colón (Tuco's abuelita).
  • In "Rebecca," when seeing Mike's injuries at the booth, Jimmy comments, "I get it. First rule of Fight Club?" A bit part in Fight Club was played by Michael Shamus Wiles (Hank Schrader's boss ASAC George Merkert).
  • In "Lantern," Kim and Francesca visit a Blockbuster to rent DVDs while Kim is recovering from her car accident. Among the movies visible on the racks are Beverly Hills Ninja and A Knight's Tale. Ninja stars the late Chris Farley, Bob Odenkirk's collaborator at The Second City and Saturday Night Live, while Tale co-stars Laura Fraser, who plays Lydia.
• Central Theme:
  • Loss of Identity. It deconstructs the concept of "Saul Goodman" as exploring the Driving Question of "why did Saul Goodman wants to be Saul Goodman" (the answer being massive self loathing), Chuck defined himself on his job and spiralled when he couldn't do it anymore, and Kim had a slow implosion of who she was or wanted to be, ending up leaving as an Empty Shell.
  • Regrets, and what could have been. Every character makes a (mostly terrible) choice that sets them on the road to either doom or Breaking Bad, and not being able to actually cope with regret is what make both Kim and Jimmy self-destruct the way they do, and gaining that ability is what makes them better people and reconciled in the ending.
• Cerebus Callback: In their first scene together (Cobbler), Mike not knowing much Spanish with Manuel Varga was played for laughs. In the last (Fun and Games), it's played as condescending that he thinks Manuel doesn't know the word "justice".
• Cerebus Retcon:
  • In Breaking Bad, Skyler skeptically looking over Saul's degree from the University of American Samoa is Played for Laughs. Here, Chuck viciously throws it in Jimmy's face because it's implied to be a shady diploma mill, and he doesn't even remotely consider Jimmy to be a peer in law.
  • Saul's freak-out during Jesse and Walt's plan to scare him in Saul's introductory episode, "Better Call Saul", once you take the events of "Point and Shoot" into account (and everything leading up to it) as after getting Howard killed and trying to get Kim out, Lalo takes him hostage, assumes he conspired with Nacho with the assault on his compound, ties him up and gags him, and tells him to wait until he gets back. Lalo dies in that episode, but the writers confirmed that a part of Jimmy/Saul/Gene is always going to be helplessly waiting for him.
    Saul: Oh, thank God! Oh, Christ! Oh, I thought... [hyperventilating] What can I do for you, gentlemen?
  • Speaking of that episode, we have a line that takes on a whole other meaning thanks to this show:
    Saul: Conscience gets expensive, doesn't it?
  • In Breaking Bad, the Cousins' botched attempt on Hank ends with Marco dead and Leonel with his legs amputated. Mike is sent by Gus to the hospital to finish off Leonel. The revelation that the Cousins were used to threaten Mike's granddaughter makes Mike's killing of Leonel a lot more personal than Breaking Bad would suggest.
  • Walt and Jesse's triumphant destruction of the underground lab in Breaking Bad is a bit painful to watch now that the audience knows how many people struggled and died to get the operation running. Not to mention the body of poor Howard Hamlin buried just a few feet below them...
  • "Saul Goodman" himself, specifically his role as Plucky Comic Relief. In his intro episode, Saul openly tells Walt this isn’t his real name, and plays it for laughs that he’s just a front. The point of the show was to make the audience dread the day Jimmy becomes Saul, and the persona is gradually revealed to be a way for Jimmy to cover up his PTSD, self-loathing and grief.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul has a first season that heavily uses Black Comedy. But the tone of the show becomes darker as season 2 progresses. After Gus is introduced, episodes have about the same feel as the later seasons of Breaking Bad. According to the writers, season three was also the time they realized that in order for Saul Goodman to be a full-on persona, they needed to kill Jimmy. Very slowly.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In the very first episode, it is shown that, after having left Albuquerque at the end of Breaking Bad, Jimmy has kept a copy of his Saul Goodman's commercials in an old shoebox that he hides in his Omaha home. The camera briefly shows that the box contains other items, including a band-aid box and some photos. The shoebox or its known content makes an appeareance at least once in each season of the show. Bob Odenkirk and the writers of the show have confirmed that they are significant for the story.
  • In the same episode, Chuck refuses to cash out his share of his law firm because doing so would end up having it liquidated. Much later, Chuck weaponizes that very weakness of the firm against Howard.
  • A literal gun is planted in the underground lab in "Black and Blue" and fired in "Point and Shoot".
  • In the third-to-last episode of the series Gene teaches Marion how to search the internet for videos with the laptop that her son has gave her as a present. In the next episode she finds Saul Goodman's old commercials, discovering his true identity and reporting him to the police.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In the season 4 finale, when Lalo is busy combing the Travel Wire footage to find out where Mike is going to look for Werner, a customer walks up to the front door, where the sign is flipped to "CLOSED". Lalo points to the sign repeatedly to shoo the customer away. Half a season later, in "Wexler v. Goodman," Mike tracks down the customer, Lili Simmons, and jogs her memory about what she saw as part of a gambit to get Lalo arrested.
• Chemically-Induced Insanity: In "Plan and Execution" Kim and Jimmy spike Howard with a stimulant drug which temporarily causes his body temperature to rise and his pupils to dilate. His HHM colleagues become convinced he is under the influence of cocaine, and with the ensuing embarrassment they are forced to accept Schweikart and Cokely's less-than-optimal settlement.
• Chiaroscuro: Chuck has a psychosomatic allergy to electromagnetic fields, so he doesn't use any electricity in his house, and the only illumination comes from gas lamps and the sun through the windows. This results in every scene in Chuck's house having very Chiaroscuro shadowy lighting.
• Chronic Villainy: Maybe better called 'chronic con artistry', but even when Jimmy is trying to keep on the straight and narrow, he simply can't stop himself from breaking the rules and using ethically questionable behavior to advance his goals as an attorney. This holds true even when doing so threatens to destroy everything he's worked for, and even when he stands to gain little to nothing for his trouble.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Nacho's girlfriend Nikki makes one appearance in Season 4 and is subsequently replaced by the compulsive and childlike Jo in Season 5.
• Cliffhanger:
  • "Uno" ends with Jimmy being dragged into Tuco's grandmother's house at gunpoint by the man himself.
  • "Nacho" ends with Jimmy discovering the Kettleman's tent and, when trying to get them to come with him back to their house, a tug-of-war over a bag reveals the embezzled money.
  • "Alpine Shepherd Boy" ends with Mike's past catching up with him alongside a large number of cops.
  • "Nailed" ends with Chuck passing out and hitting his head on a counter.
  • "Klick" ends with Chuck revealing that he recorded Jimmy's entire forgery confession.
  • "Witness" ends with Jimmy falling for Chuck's Batman Gambit and putting himself on the hook for breaking into Chuck's house.
  • "Chicanery" ends with Chuck being provoked by Jimmy on cross-examination into blowing up on the stand with a Motive Rant that effectively discredits his testimony.
  • "Fall" ends with an overworked Kim falling asleep at the wheel and crashing her car.
  • "Lantern" ends with Nacho's plot against Hector seemingly succeeding and Chuck committing suicide.
  • "Breathe" ends with Gus abruptly killing Arturo, then blackmailing Nacho into working for him by revealing he's figured out Nacho's role in Hector's stroke.
  • "Plan and Execution" ends with Lalo killing Howard in Jimmy and Kim's apartment, planning to interrogate the two.
  • "Waterworks" ends with Marion figuring out Gene's real identity and calling the cops on him.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: Both Kim and Jimmy are prone to lighting up when stressed. This is despite the fact that the Saul of Breaking Bad is never seen smoking at all.
• Cliffhanger Copout: Jimmy decides to be Saul Goodman in two finales before it's essentially walked back. The choices do affect him, and the process is ultimately portrayed as a slow death of himself, but he still manages to hold onto his humanity and name until the final straw comes in thinking he’s ruined Kim, where he gives up completely.
• Closed Circle: The construction crew building Gus Fring's underground meth lab is not allowed to leave the site and their indoor accommodations, lest they learn where they are and one day tip someone off.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • The Kettlemans. Betsy in particular. Jimmy even uses this trope to describe her.
    Jimmy: All right, can we all just parachute down from Cloudcuckooland?!
  • Jimmy's clients after he performs the billboard stunt. First, he gets a guy who wants to secede from the country, who tries to pay Jimmy in his own money. Then he gets the guy with "Tony the Toilet Buddy."
  • Daniel Wormald, to a lesser extent. He's an IT guy at a pharmaceutical company, who also is a baseball card collector and a drug dealer.
• Color Motif: In general characters on the side of the law tend to wear cool colours while lawbreakers wear warm colours. Kim, Chuck and Howard are most commonly seen in blue, while Nacho, Lalo, Gus and Hector tend to go for shades of red and yellow. As a character who flits between both sides of the law, Jimmy's choices of outfit reflect his shifts in morality. In the first season he is most often seen in neutral shades of brown, while working at Davis and Main he tends to wear more conservative suits in shades of blue, and he wears warmer colours while pulling scams. As time passes and he develops the Saul Goodman persona his outfits become more colourful, he is often seen wearing clashing mixtures of warm and cool colours. The show's color palette is summed up in one handy image here◊.
  • The combined palette of red and yellow is very common across people associated with the drug trade, such as the paint jobs on Daniel Wormald's Hot Wheels on steroids and Jimmy's Suzuki Esteem, or the logo of Los Pollos Hermanos. It continues on a trend from Breaking Bad where yellow was primarily associated with meth (Walt and Jesse's lab coats, Gus' clothes, etc), and also associated with caution.
  • Green is used to show Jimmy in con mode, when the Saul persona is running things at full speed, whether Jimmy is using the name or not.
  • As she gets worse, Kim goes from blue as her main colour to shades of red. Season 6A also has her in more clashing outfits because she's openly enabling Jimmy Becoming the Mask.
• Color Wash: As with Breaking Bad, a yellow filter is used for scenes set in Mexico.
• Comically Missing the Point: Jimmy, when trying to push Tuco away from inflicting Disproportionate Retribution on the two skaters, quotes the Code of Hammurabi, specifically the "Eye for an Eye" line. Tuco, being Tuco, misinterprets this as Jimmy saying he should cut out their eyes.
• Coming of Age Story: In its own tragic way. Kim and Jimmy are stuck in their pasts, Jimmy that nine year old who reacted petty in a response to not being believed or loved enough, and Kim having to forgo her own childhood to look after her mother. In the end, they both stop acting out and torturing themselves, and are able to grow up and be better while still having fun.
• Competence Porn: Watching ex-cop, cleaner and hitman Mike Ehrmantraut's various elaborate criminal schemes (both aiding Gus Fring's drug empire and interfering with The Cartel) is one of the main attractions of the series. Emphasized by his interactions with other criminals throughout the series, who are often hotheaded, reckless, or complete idiots.
• Confess in Confidence: Kim takes a dollar from Jimmy so that they have confidentiality when she learns about Chuck's tape, a trick Jimmy will later use with Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.
• Conspicuous Consumption: In a Flash Forward we see Saul Goodman's lavish mansion, which includes an actual golden toilet.
• Consummate Liar: This being a show about lawyers, there are plenty. Pretty much all of the lawyer characters qualify, but especially Jimmy, who is a prodigiously-skilled bullshitter even by the standards of lawyers and conmen.
• Content Warning: "Rock and a Hard Place" opens with a warning that the episode contains a suicide. This also serves as an Interface Spoiler, as the only character this could've possibly applied to at that point in the timeline was Nacho.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Saul admitted to Walter (disguised as Badger's uncle) that he was "a fellow potato eater" with the last name of McGill, with "Saul Goodman" as a professional name. The first season hammers it in how this story is all about Jimmy McGill, with "Saul" as an alias being a twinkle in "Slippin' Jimmy's" eye.
  • In a flashback in "RICO", Jimmy proudly presents his results from the Bar, thanks to his online education from the University of American Samoa, whose diploma had been skeptically gleamed at by Skyler.
• Continuity Overlap: The post-Breaking Bad flash forwards run parallel with the events of El Camino. The events of that film are eventually acknowledged in Season Six and have some impact on Jimmy's fugitive-era status quo (as with Jesse Pinkman having evaded the authorities, they've turned all their attention towards Jimmy and have located and seized all his previously hidden ill-gotten gains).
• Continuity Snarl: Mike's granddaughter Kaylee is shown to still be around the same age she was in Breaking Bad, despite the fact that this series takes place seven to eight years beforehand. By this logic, Kaylee should be much younger here.
• Contrived Clumsiness: A favoured tactic of Mike:
  • In "Five-O" Jimmy deliberately spills coffee on a police officer to distract him as Mike steals his notebook.
  • In "Gloves Off" Mike deliberately drives into and damages Tuco's parked car in order to goad its owner into assaulting him in front of police. It works.
• Contrived Coincidence: Grandma Salamanca owns a very similar-looking car to Mrs. Kettleman, and happens to be driving along the same stretch of road at just the moment the two skaters are planning to scam Mrs. Kettleman with a Staged Pedestrian Accident.
• Cool Car: Several examples, including Nacho's 1973 AMC Javelin AMX, Lalo's 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Howard's Jaguar XJ8 (in classic British racing green, naturally) and the Cousin's Porsche Cayenne. They often appear in stark contrast with Jimmy's battered Suzuki Esteem.
  • Among the lawyer characters German cars are used to denote high social and professional status. DA Bill Oakley is impressed at Davis & Main issuing Jimmy with a German-made company car (a 2003 Mercedes-Benz C 240) and in season 5 Everett Acker resents Mesa Verde's lawyers offering him a paltry settlement after having the nerve to show up at his home in their expensive German imports:
    Everett Acker (to Kim): "You're just like all the rest of 'em, comin' out here in your fancy suit, bringin' your minions with you, drivin' them black, shiny German cars."
  • And then, naturally, during her Schweikart & Cockley days, Kim was driving an Audi A8.
• Correspondence Course: Just as was implied in Breaking Bad, this show confirms that Saul's law degree was from a correspondence course. Chuck dismisses him as "not a real lawyer" for this reason.
• The Corrupter: Kim and Jimmy at their worst is like a snake eating itself, continually egging each other on. During their temporary break-up, he's convinced he ruined her life, and she thinks that the Lalo Lie broke him into becoming Saul.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Gus Fring runs a drug smuggling operation using Los Pollos Hermanos as a front, with Lydia Rodarte-Quayle and Madrigal Electromotive providing additional backing for resources. Although Gus is a rare Benevolent Boss version to his employees.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: What drives Mike to stop taking half-measures is being told by Nacho that Hector's crew killed a witness who stumbled upon his truck heist, leading Mike to realize that he should have killed the driver. So after Gus subtly suggests that he hit another one of Hector's trucks, Mike carries out a plan that not only cripples Hector's operation, but also avoids innocent bloodshed.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Mike in most situations which call for it. This often puts him in contrast with Jimmy, Pryce and others who are forced to rely on his grit and experience.
  • The underground lab isn't Gus's first time working on secret projects beneath the streets of ABQ: his house has an escape tunnel.
  • Lalo Salamanca has a body double who unknowingly had dental work to match his own, in case he ever needs to fake his death.
• Create Your Own Villain: Chuck works to undermine Jimmy's law career because he believes that his lack of moral fiber will make him a danger to society as a lawyer, but this betrayal only deepens Jimmy's desire to succeed at any cost and may have prevented any possibility of him finding the right track.
• Criminal Procedural: Jimmy's stories are of the Con Man variety while Mike's evolve from Outsider to Organized Crime as the series progresses, much like Breaking Bad.
• Crocodile Tears: Jimmy has an emotional breakdown when he learns his malpractice insurance rates will be increasing as the result of his license being suspended. It's actually an act so he can "accidentally" reveal Chuck's illness to the insurance company to get revenge on his brother.
• Crooked Contractor: Mike poses as a door repairman so he can collect photos of Chuck's unsafe living conditions. However, he assures Jimmy he also did a perfectly adequate job repairing the door.
• Cross-Referenced Titles: The progressively darker "Something Beautiful", "Something Stupid" and "Something Unforgivable" across the fourth and fifth seasons; all can be taken as Double Meaning Titles, but in all cases one of the meanings references the status of Jimmy and Kim's relationship.
• Crossing the Desert: Mike and Saul in "Bagman".
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In "Pimento", Mike easily disarms a potential bodyguard and knocks him out with a hit to the throat, looting him of all his guns afterwards and throwing them into a trash can.
• Cycle of Revenge: After Nacho's death, Mike attempts to comfort his father by promising to get justice against the Salamancas. Manuel notes that gangsters will always seek revenge against each other, and instead moves on and accepts that his son is gone. Probably a wise move, since Fring's operation and the Salamancas are both Doomed by Canon for this exact reason.
  Manuel: What you talk about is not justice. What you talk of is revenge. It never ends.

D

• Damned by Faint Praise:
  • In the flashback for "Rico", Jimmy already looks rather crestfallen when Chuck is evasive about being proud of him, and whether or not he'll get hired, but takes what he can get and hopes anyway.
  • In "Fifi", Chuck meets with Mesa Verde to supposedly vouch for Kim and damns Kim with faint praise, ultimately convincing Kevin to return to HHM.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • "Five-O" is exclusively about Mike and why he left Philadelphia for Albuquerque. Jimmy only appears in one long scene.
  • "Bali H'ai" gives a lot more focus to Mike and Kim.
  • "Chicanery" is devoted to the tension between Jimmy and Chuck with the hearing on whether Jimmy is allowed to practice law, culminating in Chuck's hate sink, motive rant testimony. Neither Mike or Nacho make an appearance, the former's lack of presence is noticeable, as Mike was in every prior episode.
  • The first half of "Sabrosito" focuses exclusively on Gus and Hector. Jimmy doesn't appear until more than halfway through the episode, and it ties in with the threads of the first half thanks to his time in the episode starting with him and Kim hiring Mike to go into Chuck's house posing as a repairman to take photos.
  • "Winner" sees Mike's half of the story revolve around his manhunt for Werner.
  • The first half of "Waterworks" centres around Kim's (very miserable) existence in Florida and what she's been doing with herself in the Breaking Bad/Gene-era timeline.
• Dead Man Honking: Happens non-fatally in "Nailed". Mike lays down an improvised spike strip made from a garden hose to ambush one of Hector Salamanca's couriers. When the courier's truck hits the strip, he loses control and swerves off the road into a ditch, with the suddenness of the stop causing him to hit his head on the steering wheel and sound the horn.
• Death by Irony: Marco dies in a similar fashion to one of his and Jimmy’s scams, in which he pretends to be passed out and the mark contributes to getting himself an actually fake Rolex watch. He really does have a heart attack in the same alleyway, and Jimmy is left desperately trying to revive him.
• Death Glare:
  • Starting out the meeting out in "Amarillo", Jimmy stares daggers at Chuck until Howard has to bring him back to reality.
  • In "Rock and Hard Place", Hector gives a seething but impotent one at Nacho after the latter confesses to not only collaborating with Alvarez, but enginerring Lalo's death and being responsible for Hector's stroke that left him in hospice care. For Nacho's part, he gives an even greater one to everyone in the area as he boasts about his supposed role in the killings.
• Death Seeker:
  • In "The Guy For This" Mike, still traumatised by having to kill his friend Werner Ziegler, gets drunk at a bar and taunts a gang of would-be muggers before painfully injuring one of them. In "Namaste" he gets drunk again and walks along the same stretch of road despite knowing the gang may be lying in wait to exact revenge. This time when they do appear he offers little resistance as they start to beat him up, and he loses consciousness before waking at an unfamiliar location with his injuries neatly bandaged. Mike later learns that Gus was having him tailed and intervened to save him from his self-destructive behaviour.
  • In "Bagman" Jimmy asks Mike some ominous questions about what is spurring him on to survive. As Mike talks about wanting to provide for his family, Jimmy becomes more and more hopeless and at one point lies down, seemingly to await the sweet release of death.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Of the typical Amoral Attorney or Hitman with a Heart. The show establishes that for a person like Jimmy or Mike, the process of becoming a sleazy ambulance chaser or a professional hitman is long and full of painful leaps and sacrifices that ultimately leave them as shells of their former selves.
  • It also deconstructs Cain and Abel. Jimmy McGill (the future "Saul Goodman") and his older brother Chuck McGill are two brothers who alternate between showing genuine concern for each other and attempting to sabotage each other. Because Jimmy is the protagonist, initially it seems like Chuck is supposed to be the "bad brother" and The Resenter, but over the course of the series it becomes clear that both McGills are quite prone to petty jealousy, underhanded schemes, and their criticisms of each other are not unfounded. In the end, it's Chuck who dies in a house fire that he himself started, with the implication that his last fight with his brother caused a relapse of Chuck's mental illness. And while they're not brothers, Gould name-dropped the trope for Jimmy and Howard, Chuck's "surrogate sons". Jimmy is unabashedly the "Cain" this time, and Howard is indirectly killed because of him and Kim, but mostly because he never realised Chuck treated Howard as badly as he did him.
• Deconstructed Trope: Then Let Me Be Evil. It's depicted as pathetic (if understandable) on Jimmy's part to play the role his brother assumed/wanted him to, he constantly sabotages the good opportunities in his life because he feels like there's no point in trying, and he wants so bad for everything to be easy, putting the pressure on Chuck and Kim to just tell him how to act. Kim does the same, destroying her life and everyone else's because she’s sick of being seen as Beneath Notice, and they lead pathetic existences in Nebraska and Florida for a while before they both finally decide to make actual amends.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Episodes set after the conclusion of Breaking Bad are in black and white to help keep the audience clear on the timeline and to convey the unhappy state of Jimmy's and later Kim's life.
• Delicious Distraction: Jimmy (as Gene) delivers Cinnabon to the security guards to keep them from looking at the mall security cameras during his caper for a precious few minutes.
• Despair Event Horizon: Chuck can handle his divorce from Rebecca and his falling out with Jimmy. For a while he even gets a handle on his electromagnetic hypersensitivity, making small but positive steps to overcome it. Losing his livelihood however pushes him over the edge. His enforced retirement from HHM causes him to relapse and lose all hope of curing his condition, driving him to suicide.
• Destroy the Security Camera: When Werner escapes the warehouse he and his workers are required to stay in, Mike finds a laser pointer on the ground outside and deduces Werner used it to fry several security cameras to cover his tracks.
• Destructive Romance: Although their affection for each other is genuine, Kim and Jimmy indulge and enable the other's worst tendencies. Initially, they bond over the relatively harmless act of scamming an obnoxious investor out of a bottle of expensive tequila. But as time goes on and their relationship deepens, they collaborate to commit increasingly elaborate (and illegal) acts of fraud. Their most ambitious plot — to destroy Howard Hamlin's reputation — culminates in both of them inadvertently becoming accessories to Howard's murder.
• Deus Angst Machina: Thomas Schnauz discussed on a writer's panel that they kept piling on terrible things that would break Jimmy’s brain and make him Saul, but always felt like it was not quite enough, and they pushed and pushed until the break-up (or more accurately, Kim revealing she’d known about Lalo) was the last straw.
• Devil in Plain Sight:
  • How Chuck sees Jimmy. Naturally his attempts to expose him fall on deaf ears, most notably in "Chicanery" when his courtroom rant about Jimmy just makes him look crazy.
  • Howard initially gives Jimmy the benefit of the doubt but comes to see him this way after the events of season 5. He also struggles to expose Jimmy's true nature to Kim:
    Kim Wexler: Howard, I know Jimmy, and you're wrong.
    Howard Hamlin: You know who really knew Jimmy? *beat* Chuck.
• Died in Ignorance: Howard's is an especially tragic case. His life and image were actively and maliciously being destroyed by Saul and Kim for fun. He managed to deduce that they were doing this to him, and goes to their apartment to confront them. He is shot in the head by Lalo mid-sentence, without ever knowing what he was doing there or what Saul and Kim had gotten themselves into. Yet, despite everything they did to him, at the end Howard still tries to defuse the situation and protect Saul and Kim. An inversion also occurs: Howard dies knowing who ruined his life, but the façade is kept up by Saul and Kim even after his death, deciding to frame his death as a suicide. Due to them, everyone remembers him not as a great lawyer and friend, but as a drug addict and sex maniac. This is only broken by Kim much later when she tells Howard's estranged wife the truth of what happened.
• Digital De-Aging: This being a prequel, it is used extensively to make several characters look younger than they did in Breaking Bad. For the most part it is subtle, but it is much more noticeable in the show's flashbacks — to Jimmy's time in Cicero, the time Kim and Jimmy worked in the HHM mailroom, etc.
• Dirty Cop: Mike reveals that everyone in his old precinct was a dirty cop. Including himself, since he knew not going along with what everyone else is doing meant you'd be killed just in case you were thinking of squealing on everyone. He managed to convince his son to go along with things too, breaking a pedestal in the process. Unfortunately his son hesitated just a little bit too much before accepting some dirty money and was "shot by a junkie" during a drug bust.
• Dirty Old Man:
  • For his commercial shoot with Fifi the B-29 bomber, Jimmy recruits "Fudge" Talbot, an elderly client who he defended for public masturbation, and passes him off as a World War II vet, allowing him and his camera crew to get around the fact they don't have a shooting permit.
  • Hector deliberately flicks a water cup in "Something Stupid" so that he can leer at the nurse when she bends over to pick up the cup. Thanks to video cameras recording him at all hours, Gus sees this as evidence that Hector is cognizant enough to be taken off Dr. Bruckner's care.
• Disposing of a Body: Mike and his crew sneak Howard out of Kim's apartment inside a fridge, then bury him beneath the foundations of the underground lab along with Lalo.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Tuco has several ideas for punishing the skateboarders who insulted his grandmother, most of which involve torture, murder, or chopping limbs off. Jimmy has to talk him into just breaking one of their legs each.
• Dissonant Serenity: Lalo is capable of performing brutal acts of murder with a genuine smile on his face and a spring in his step, uncaring of the carnage he leaves behind. This is most noticeable with his murder of Howard Hamlin, whom he nonchalantly shoots in the head without even looking before gently shushing the witnesses like a parent scolding a toddler, smiling again, and merely saying "Let's talk".
• Distant Prologue: The first episodes of each season start with a flashforward to after the end of Breaking Bad, with Jimmy in his new identity as lowly Cinnabon manager "Gene," living a pretty dull and miserable life.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Jimmy attempts it in "Hero", not wanting to take a bribe but would be happy to take a retainer, and tries to get the Kettlemans to have him as their lawyer again. Betsy crushes him with "you're the kind of lawyer guilty people hire", and he takes the bribe anyway.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In "Inflatable", Jimmy's offer of being business partners and Kim's offer of sharing a space as solo practitioners are played as both of them anxiously proposing, neither of them certain what the other will say.
  Jimmy: I don’t know what to say.
  Kim: Say yes.
  • In a Black Comedy example, Gene collapses from a panic attack, and the white cream he was holding splatters on his face.
• Don't Tell Mama:
  • Tuco keeps his criminal activities secret from his grandmother (sending her upstairs before he beats the skateboarders unconscious, or hiding his gun behind his back when she comes down while he's interrogating Jimmy). However, she continually reminds Tuco to use club soda to clean the blood stain on her rug that Tuco claims is salsa. Anyone who knows a thing about club soda will tell you that it does nothing for salsa stains, but it's very effective at removing blood stains. This means either she is aware of his criminal activities but pretends not to be, or her carpet gets "salsa" stains so often she really does think that's how you clean them up.
  • Nacho's father is aware that Nacho used to run with the Salamanca's, but he seems to think that Nacho has left that life behind. Nacho in turn goes to some lengths to keep his continued criminal activities a secret from his father, and even works a day job in his autobody shop. His father is crushed when he learns that Nacho is involved with the Salamanca's again.
• Doomed by Canon:
  • Probably easier to list characters who don't fall into this trope. Jimmy, Mike, Gus, Hector, Domingo, Tuco, The Cousins, No-doze, Gonzo, Hank, Gomez, Victor, Tyrus, Lydia, Schuler - all doomed to death or a ruined life, even though they'll survive this series.
  • No matter how much Jimmy tries to do the right thing and be a decent man, we know that by Breaking Bad he'll be a thoroughly Amoral Attorney who will jump at the chance to work with drug dealers. In fact, the tension of the show lies in trying to find out when, how, and why Jimmy loses his way. When it's time for the sequel part of the show, after getting worse and suicidal Sanity Slippage, he's finally able to prove to Kim and himself that he's not just doomed.
  • Jimmy's brother Chuck, Chuck's law partner Howard, and Jimmy's girlfriend/partner Kim aren't around by the time Walt meets Saul, suggesting something bad happens to all of them. Chuck commits suicide at the end of Season 3, while Howard is killed by Lalo in "Plan and Execution". Kim is still alive and reconnected with Jimmy, though she has a civil suit hanging over her head.
  • Nacho Varga, despite being a major player in the Salamanca-Fring battle, is nowhere to be seen in Breaking Bad outside of a vague reference from Saul's first appearance. It's thus no surprise when he dies in "Rock and Hard Place", especially when everyone else left in the conflict is guaranteed to survive.
  • Anybody named Salamanca is clearly doomed to be dead before Breaking Bad season 4, since Gus says to Hector in BrBa 4x11 that the Salamanca blood line will die with him. Ultimately, the only person from this series that this statement dooms is Lalo, as he's the only new Salamanca that doesn't appear in the original show. While season five pulls a fake out when he fakes his death at the hands of Gus's assassins, he ultimately resurfaces in season six, meaning that as soon as Gus and Mike learn he's alive again, he's been doomed once more; once he enters the Superlab in "Point and Shoot", his fate is set in stone.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Plan and Execution" refers to Jimmy and Kim's plan to discredit Howard being executed. It also refers to Howard himself being executed by Lalo at the end of the episode.
• Downer Beginning: The show begins with a black-and-white flash forward that shows what's become of Jimmy (now Gene) after Breaking Bad. Each season picks up on the storyline as Gene begins to suspect that his past is catching up to him.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Jimmy lays out his plans to tailor his renewed legal practice to the lowlifes he used to sell burner phones to, and even plans to offer 50% off for non-violent offenses. When Kim questions what this sort of practice will say about him as a person, Jimmy assumes she is implying the 50% off deal makes him look desperate and sees no issues with the rest of the plan as a whole.
  • In “Fun and Games”, when Mike is trying to console Nacho’s father Manuel by telling him that there will be justice for Salamancas soon, Manuel repeats the word “justice”. At first, Mike thinks he doesn’t know what the word means in English and unsuccessfully attempts to translate it to Spanish, but in actuality Manuel was just repeating Mike’s phrasing in a scornful manner to show disapproval. Manuel then openly points out that what Mike calls “justice” is actually “revenge”, and that Mike is no better than Salamancas for resorting to the same Pay Evil unto Evil reasoning.
    Mike: "There’ll be justice."
    Manuel: "Justice?"
    Mike: "I’m sorry, my Spanish. Ju… ju-ditzia… justice."
    Manuel: (exasperated sigh) "What you talk about is no justice. What you talk of is revenge."
• Dramatic Irony:
  • In a far cry from criminal lawyer Saul Goodman, Jimmy actually gets upset when people assume he’s the kind of lawyer guilty people hire, still sore about being told that even in season four.
  • After Marco's death, his mom gives Jimmy his pinkie ring, the one Jimmy will be wearing for the rest of the series and Breaking Bad. Jimmy isn't sure about it, saying he's not a big ring guy.
  • Rebecca is completely Locked Out of the Loop, and aside from not knowing the emotional abuse her ex has given his brother, claims Chuck has a mental illness excuse while Jimmy has none. Jimmy, as the audience knows, is the guy going through a long Identity Breakdown.
  • Jimmy wants so badly to be his own man, but even beyond the fractured identity and the self loathing and the Saul/Gene of it all, Gordon Smith confirmed in the “Fall” commentary that Jimmy’ll steal things from everywhere and everyone, and repurpose them for his own use.
  • A part of Jimmy thinks Chuck’s death was a Spiteful Suicide, to tell Jimmy the "truth" that he never mattered to him and then kill himself so Jimmy has to live with that forever. The audience knows that cruelty actually sparked My God, What Have I Done? and the final relapse.
  • In "Winner", Jimmy makes an impassioned projecting (if slightly Never My Fault) speech to Christy about going far higher than anyone, and that she'll keep winning while they hate her. As we see in the sequel show, he's operating out of a low level strip mall, debasing himself on a consistent basis trying to pretend he has no morals, and will be alone and pathetic for a long time. He might be seeing this future anyway, as not soon after he breaks down crying in his car because his brother abandoned him and there's no point in having any hope.
  • In "Winner", thinking he’s won and can just bury any feeling in "Saul Goodman", Jimmy brags to Kim that it was all about Chuck. He's right, just not in the way he thinks he is, as Chuck (and Kim) have and will stay in his head rent-free. When he's completely Lost in Character as Saul, Chuck was the push and losing Kim was like falling off a cliff, giving up on his identity.
  • When Jimmy has PTSD from his desert experiences, he asks Mike when this will be over for him, and tells Kim he never wants to talk about it again. With the knowledge of Breaking Bad, the audience knows he’ll never be over it, just burying it down.
  • "Saul Gone" has a flashback pre-series (most likely at while before "Uno") where Jimmy isn't worried about money compared to complaining in the pilot he was going under for a third time, Chuck doesn't understand why his brother is taking care of him in contrast to expecting it, and Chuck is the one to try and reach out, while Jimmy assumes he's just going to be lectured and so rebuffs.
  • The other flashback with Walt and Saul in "Saul Gone" is a Perspective Flip to "Granite State", and so the audience knows that Walt's "so you were always like this" Armor-Piercing Response is wrong, as he has no clue Saul is lying about regrets and doesn't know his history or how much he's changed. The Saul mask breaks, and Jimmy's face falls from hopeful to looking like he's going to cry.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Chuck, in the Season 3 finale, lights his house on fire while still inside.
  • Nacho chooses this over a staged death, deciding to defiantly die by his own terms.
• Driving Question: "What problem does becoming Saul Goodman solve?" Apparently, trauma, self loathing and heartbreak.
• Dysfunctional Family: The Wexlers. Word of god is that Kim's father was a Con Man in and out of her life, stole gifts and they lived in a trailer park looked down on by everyone. Kim’s mother was an alcoholic shoplifter who could play nice in public but demeaned and guilt-tripped Kim in private while having no idea that you shouldn't drive drunk with your daughter in the car, and Kim grew up to be a pathologically self-reliant Control Freak with a god complex and self worth issues, and very rarely wants to talk or think about her past.
• Dying Curse: Just before taking his own life, Nacho vents his hatred towards the Salamancas in a long speech where he reveals his role in "killing" Lalo and crippling Hector, making it clear he hopes they all suffer terrible ends before he kills himself to both escape any torture and die on his own terms. His words hold heavy symbolic weight; in three years, everyone present at that confrontation will die incredibly violent deaths in comparison to Nacho's peaceful fate, while Mike, who's watching from a distance and didn't want Nacho to die, will also die but in a far more peaceful manner.

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: The roles of Chuck and Howard were still being fleshed out during the first season. As they were new characters to the series and not brought over from Breaking Bad, the writers were unsure where to go with them. Early on, Chuck came off as a more kind, wise, caring figure and Howard more sinister and mean. "Pimento" flips these around once Chuck is revealed as the one who blocked Jimmy from entering HHM, with Chuck then becoming the viciously petty antagonist and Howard becoming Jimmy's foil who actually comes to like him.
• Early Personality Signs: In "Inflatable" a flashback shows a young Jimmy Stealing from the Till while working at his parents' convenience store. Chuck occasionally recalls other examples, such as Jimmy making and selling fake IDs for his classmates at school. Chuck himself is shown as a teenager getting annoyed at a five year old for not completely trusting him.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: For a given value of "happy". Jimmy may be effectively sentenced for life, but now he is clean, has a very high chance of getting out early, found peace with his true self, and got reconnected with Kim.
• Elder Abuse:
  • A major story arc in the first season is Jimmy's investigation of Sandpiper Crossing's fleecing its elderly residents through deceptive billing practices. He ultimately launches a class action lawsuit on their behalf for $20 million.
  • Jimmy turns around and engages in some elder abuse of his own two seasons later, when he pressures Irene into settling the Sandpiper lawsuit by turning her friends against her. He feels bad afterwards and conspires to reverse the scheme and repair Irene's friendships by confessing on a hot mike, even though this means the settlement will be reversed and he won't get a payday as soon as he needs it.
• Elevator Failure: Engineered by Jimmy to get some one on one time with the assistant D.A. and power through his backlog of clients.
• Embarrassing Cover Up: The cops see Daniel's burgled house and flashy Hummer and correctly deduce that he's a drug dealer, but Jimmy covers it up with a very ridiculous explanation; the money and burglary came from a disgruntled patron who paid Daniel to make fetish videos of him sitting in pie while crying.
• Embarrassingly Painful Sunburn:
  • In "Bad Choice Road" Jimmy speaks with Lalo after delivering his $7 million in bail money and securing his release. Lalo can see he is badly sunburned from his ordeal in the desert and, with a grin, tells him "You did good!" while slapping him on the back.
  • Later that episode Jimmy insists on attending court despite obviously being traumatised by his misadventure in the desert. He suffers a rare defeat in what seemed like an easily winnable case- and at the hands of DA Bill Oakley, who goes on to taunt him for "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory". Jimmy's severe sunburn hardly makes for a veneer of dignity.
• Engineered Public Confession:
  • At the end of Season 2, Chuck tricks Jimmy into confessing to tampering the Mesa Verde documents by pretending to quit HHM over shame about his error with Mesa Verde, then recording Jimmy's admission that he was responsible.
  • To counter this at his disciplinary hearing, Jimmy goads Chuck into a Motive Rant.
• Ensemble Cast: While the first four episodes focused on Jimmy, "Alpine Shepherd Boy" started to expand with Kim's history, Howard's feelings towards Chuck, Chuck's mental illness and Mike leaving the booth to start his own plotline. This grew to Four Lines, All Waiting, with Gus and the Cartel, and in multiple episodes, Jimmy might just have a scene or two.
• Establishing Series Moment: In the Flash Forward commercials that Gene watches his old self in, Saul is as we know him: loud, hammy and bragging. Five minutes later, Jimmy McGill is shown, more hair, brown oversized suit, late for court because he’s anxiously rehearsing a big speech in the bathroom. This doesn’t just show that he has a long way to go to becoming the other guy, but the confidence mask/band-aid that Saul provides will become very important to the whole show.
• "Eureka!" Moment: A villainous example. Lalo realizes that Jimmy and Kim should be his next target in "Plan and Execution" after witnessing a cockroach on a pipe, having previously likened Jimmy to a cockroach in "Bagman".
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas:
  • Tuco seems more annoyed by the skaters calling his grandmother a "biznatch" than he is about Jimmy trying to scam her. He also takes tremendous care to protect her from even knowing about his criminal activities (although, as noted elsewhere, it is implied that she does know about what he really does for a living).
  • Nacho takes offense when he thinks Mike is threatening his family. He also loves his father enough to try to kill Hector Salamanca to protect him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Jimmy's identity theft partner Buddy refuses to finish their scam when he learns their victim has been diagnosed with cancer.
• Everybody Owns a Ford: The Salamancas really value their antique General Motors cars. Hector drives a 1960 Chevrolet Impala, Tuco drives a 1970 Pontiac Tempest, Arturo drives a 1969 Oldsmobile 442, and Lalo drives a 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
  • Played straight than subverted with Nacho, who drives a 1992 Chevrolet Express work van in the earlier seasons but then is seen driving an AMC AMX in the fourth and fifth season. The fact that he drives an AMC instead of a GM car can possibly symbolize that he is not really on the Salamancas' side.
  • The newer blood in the cartel, including the Cousins and Gus' crew, drive in much more modern and sleeker GM SUVs like Cadillac Escallades, Chevy Suburbans, and GMC Denalis.
  • Jimmy doesn't own a Ford, and his choice of car is a mystery to Lalo:
    Lalo Salamanca: What do you drive?
    Jimmy McGill: An Esteem.
    Lalo Salamanca: A what?
    Jimmy McGill: A Suzuki Esteem. [Beat] It's an import.
  • After his Esteem is wrecked in a gunfight, Jimmy rents a Ford Taurus for himself and Kim to drive. Kim isn't impressed, and persuades him to swap it for his iconic Cadillac Sedan de Ville because the Cadillac is a much flashier car more befitting the image of Saul's office as a "cathedral of justice".
    Kim Wexler: So, Saul Goodman drives a brown Ford Taurus?
    Jimmy McGill: Detroit calls that taupe, I believe.
    Kim Wexler: Don't you think Saul Goodman would drive something with a little more... flair?
• Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: Part of Jimmy's plan to get sacked from Davis and Main.
• Evil Feels Good:
  • Kim really enjoys participating in Jimmy's schemes, which puts her at war with her conscience but keeps her sticking around Jimmy even at his lowest points.
  • Mike is put in a good enough mood from robbing one of Hector's trucks of $250,000 that he buys a round of drinks at a bar and is even flirty with a waitress. Though it's short lived when he learns that a bystander got killed by Hector as a result of his actions.
• Evil Is Petty: In "Sabrosito" Jimmy is ordered to pay Chuck damages of $321 to cover the cost of repairing his door. Chuck insists on adding $2.98 for the cost of the cassette tape Jimmy also damaged.
• Exact Words: Howard presents the decision not to recruit Jimmy as "The partners have decided." Chuck being one of those partners ruling against Jimmy (and so is Howard.)
• Evil Lawyer Joke:
  • In the cold open of "Rebecca" Jimmy goes to dinner with Chuck and his then-wife Rebecca. He informs them that he's heard "maybe a hundred" lawyer jokes since starting work at HHM, and proceeds to reel off a string of them. Chuck is embarrassed at his brother's behaviour but this quickly fades to anger when he sees Rebecca actually finds it charming- and then she even joins in with a lawyer joke of her own:
  Rebecca Bois: What do lawyers and sperm have in common? 1 in 3 million...
  Rebecca Bois and Jimmy McGill: ...have a chance of becoming a human being!
  • In "Breathe" Jimmy attends a job interview and skims over the small matter of his disbarment. He uses a lawyer joke to convince the interviewer reading his resume that he quit the law over moral concerns:
  Mr. Neff: Says here you were a lawyer up until not that long ago. What changed?
  Jimmy McGill: Well, you know why God made snakes before he made lawyers? He needed the practice.
• Evil Power Vacuum: "Breaking Bad" reveals that after Saul Goodman fled Albuquerque, Bill Oakley quit working as a public prosecutor and established a private practice as an ambulance-chasing attorney. As well as filling the gap in the market vacated by Saul he even takes up the advertising space with his similarly tacky bus bench ads.
• Evolving Credits: The quality of the video in the title sequence degrades noticeably as the seasons go on, with the video developing scratches and other artifacts like those seen on degrading VHS tapes; by Season 6, there's no colour left and they're even interrupted by test patterns and bluescreens. This is a nod to Gene Takavic watching his collection of Saul Goodman TV commercials on VHS, and the quality degrading with repeated viewings, just as the memories of his Glory Days are also fading (as well as a parallel for the moral degradation of the characters in the 2002-04 timeline).
• Expository Hairstyle Change:
  • In "Fun and Games" the last scene before the Time Skip shows the back of Jimmy's head as we hear Kim packing her bags, having just broken up with him. The scene then cuts to a shot of Saul Goodman waking up in his big tacky mansion some years later, also filmed from the back of his head, and showing that he now has a considerable bald patch, and the character's trademark combover. This serves to announce that we are now in the era of Saul Goodman, heading towards the Breaking Bad timeline. The jump cut shows the passage of time, the way that stress has taken a toll on Jimmy's looks, and that Jimmy is now inhabiting the "Saul Goodman" persona 24/7.
  • In "Waterworks" we see Kim's new life after leaving Jimmy. She has lost the trademark blonde Tomboyish Ponytail and wears her now-darkened hair loose and layered with a fringe.

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