Breaking Bad / Tropes M to R

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These are the tropes that knock:

• MacGyvering: Walt often uses his chemistry to solve practical problems.
  • Thermite made using the aluminum powder from an Etch-a-Sketch.
  • A makeshift battery made from sponges, bolts and brake pads was pure grade-A vintage MacGyvering.
  • A bomb mostly made from stuff he's got lying around.
  • Extracting ricin from castor beans.
  • Walt creates an electrical arc from live wires for a coffee pot to cut through a plastic handcuff keeping him attached to a radiator. It works, but not without a nasty burn on his wrist.
  • In "Felina," Walt constructs an automatic turret gun, using a garage door opening mechanism to sweep the gun back and forth and his car's remote key as a trigger switch.
• Machiavelli Was Wrong: Subverted by Gus. He doesn't believe in using fear as a motivator as Mike suggests. Unless he comes to see you as a dangerous liability who can only be controlled that way.
• Male Gaze: Don Eladio's pool party in "Salud" opens with a long tracking shot on a woman's bikini-clad butt.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: In Season 2, Jesse meets a low-key MPDG in the form of Jane, a tattoo artist with a serious drug history. She's considerably more subdued and less manic than most examples, and she encourages him to cut back on the drugs in addition to getting him to embrace art. Then she demonstrates the dark side of this trope when she backslides on her own sobriety, gets Jesse into harder drugs (and given that he started out as a methhead, that's saying something), and ultimately reveals herself (at least while using) to be greedy, manipulative, and self-destructive. Then she chokes on her own vomit thanks to Walt not intervening.
• Marijuana Is LSD:
  • After smoking methamphetamine, Jesse sees two men in white shirts who want to talk to him about Jesus as hulking, leather-clad thugs with machetes and hand grenades. Meth isn't a hallucinogen. It can cause paranoia and long periods of sleep deprivation, which in turn can cause hallucinations, but Jesse hadn't been up for that long. However, it could be interpreted as a visual representation of his paranoia.
  • When trying heroin for the first time, Jesse hallucinates floating off of the bed although this could again be a visual representation of what he's feeling.
• Marital Rape License: Used twice to show Walt's sense of entitlement.
  • In the first episode of season 2, flush with adrenaline much as he was in the pilot, he attempted to have his way with an unwilling Skyler, who fended him off.
  • In season 5, Skyler tells Walt that she "can't even keep [him] out of [her] bed," implying that he has effectively intimidated her into sex.
• Match Cut
  • In "Over", the sound of Walt's drilling cuts perfectly into the sound of Skyler vacuuming.
  • In "Kafkaesque," the episode opens with a Los Pollos Hermanos commercial extoling the signature fried chicken. It ends with a shot of pieces of fried chicken falling in front of a background, dissolving into Walter and Jesse doing a deal of Blue Sky at the superlab.
  • Three within a single montage in "Gliding Over All." Walt, sitting on a couch, leans forward to put down a drink at Hank's place — cut to Walt leaning back on another couch, in his meth-cooking suit. Skyler puts her coffee cup down on her desk at the car wash — cut to Lydia picking up her cup of tea. Saul pours himself a drink — cut to Walt pouring some liquid from a faucet.
  • In "Ozymandias", Walt slams his car door out in the desert — cut to Marie slamming her car door as she arrives at the car wash.
• Mathematician's Answer: This phone conversation from "Shotgun":
  Walt: Where's Jesse?
  Mike: He's with me.
  Jesse gets the phone
  Walt: Jesse, where are you?
  Jesse: I'm with Mike.
• Meaningful Echo: In Walt's Despair Event Horizon in "4 Days Out", he says that he deserves this. In "ABQ", while Jesse is suffering a DEH of his own following Jane's death, he says the same thing and refers back to its original use in the former episode, now knowing its meaning.
• Meaningful Look: On Gus's visits to Hector Salamanca in the nursing home, after telling him about the deaths of his friends and family and how he has no one left but Gus to take care of him, Gus tries several times to get Hector to look him square in the eyes, like he did when Hector killed Max. Hector is Defiant to the End, however, and the only time he looks directly at Gus is when he knows that Gus's plan to watch him slowly die helpless and alone has failed. His reaction changes from smug satisfaction to pure rage as he detonates the pipe bomb Walt attached to his wheelchair.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Walter White: 'Walter' means 'Ruler of the people'. Walt does say he's in the 'empire business'.
    • "Heisenberg", as in "Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle". Considering all the uncertainties surrounding Walter White and that persona, it's a good bet the writers had that in mind. Werner Heisenberg also worked for the Nazi nuclear weapon program during WWII^note Werner Heisenberg was very definitely not a Nazi and took the job at least partly because being in charge of the project to develop nuclear weapons seemed to him to be a really good way to ensure that the project didn't actually develop nuclear weapons and Walt works with a group of neo-Nazis in season 5. In Season 1 episode 6, "Crazy Handful of Nothin,'" when Walt meets Jesse's friends at a science museum to plan distribution, Heisenberg and nuclear bomb-related history are depicted in the background. Walt improvs the name when he confronts Tuco and is ready to blow everyone up with the mercury fulminate.
  • Skyler White: 'Skyler' derives from the Dutch surname 'Schuyler', meaning 'student' or 'scholar'. Skyler learns to be comfortable with crime from Walt, and eventually becomes a far better liar than him.
  • Walter White Junior: Doesn't have a name of his own, nor a characterization beyond loving breakfast.
    • Flynn: derives from 'O'Floin', meaning 'son of Floin', which itself derives from 'flann', meaning 'red'. So, perhaps, 'Son of one with blood on his hands'?
  • Hank Schrader: 'Hank' is a shortening of 'Henry', which means 'Ruler of his Home', possibly indicating his standing on the side of the law, as well as his high rank, and nicely contrasting Walter's 'ruler of the people'.
  • Jesse Pinkman: 'Jesse' means 'gift from God', perhaps highlighting his more virtuous nature.
  • Saul Goodman: 'Saul' means 'called for' or 'asked for'. Fits his role quite well.
    • Saul Goodman's name is pronounced like "'S all good, man!" This may be intentional on Saul's part, as he tells Walter that his real surname is McGill, and he changed it to something more Jewish-sounding to appeal to Albuquerque's criminal underclass.
    • Spinoff series Better Call Saul confirms that this was intentional on Saul's part.
  • From the title card, Bromine is "a fuming red-brown liquid at room temperature [and] corrosive and toxic" and Barium is used in X-Rays and turns fire green.
  • Beneke Fabricators, a company which we later learn is involved in large-scale tax fraud. Fabricators is the key word.
  • Gray Matter has two. One being named after a tissue that makes up part of the brain, the other being a combination of the founders' names; Elliot Schwartz and Walter White. "Schwartz" is German for "black", black + white = gray.
• Meaningful Rename: At the end of the series Skyler reverts to using her maiden name and Walt Jr re-adopts his nickname Flynn (having earlier ditched it when he sided with his father), a sign that both have cut Walt from their lives.
• MegaCorp: The German company Madrigal Electromotive, which owns Los Pollos Hermanos and the laundromat hiding the superlab.
  • Walt co-founded (then left) Grey Matter, which became a huge company worth $2 billion.
• Men Don't Cry: Exploited by Walt. He visits Hank at his office and pretends to become emotional, knowing that this will make Hank uncomfortable. Hank leaves, ostensibly to get some coffee but really to give Walt time to compose himself; this allows Walt to plant a bug so he can monitor Hank's investigation into Heisenberg. Walt later uses the exact same ploy when retrieving the bug.
• Meta Casting: Bryan Cranston's turn Playing Against Type works in his favor through the show, especially given he was previously best known as the goofy and lovable father Hal from Malcolm in the Middle.
• Mexican Standoff: In "To'hajiilee", between Hank and Gomez, and Uncle Jack's heavily tooled-up crew.
• Midair Collision: The Season 2 finale. One believes that it might be a reference to the crash of Aeromexico Flight 498, given that that plane was downed by a midair collision while in the hands of an air traffic controller named Walter White.
• Miranda Rights: Hank tells Walt his rights after he arrests Walt in "To'hajiilee". Walt's only response is calling Jesse a "coward".
• Mistaken for Badass: Jesse becomes feared after word spreads that he crushed Spooge's head with an ATM in retribution for Spooge robbing one of Jesse's dealers. In reality it was Spooge's lady that crushed his head, Jesse just happened to be nearby.
• Money Is Not Power: This trope is played with a lot. While illegal money can be useful sometimes, there are other times where it can't help in any way.
  • In Ozymandias, Walt tries to bribe Jack into sparing Hank from summary execution. Jack, knowing Hank won't keep his mouth shut, kills Hank anyways. As a final twist of the knife, Jack and his crew take Walt's barrels of money, only letting Walt keep one barrel out of a twisted sense of honor.
  • In Granite State, Walt being a fugitive from the law means he can't deposit or hide his money, nor send it to Skyler, without attracting the attention of the feds who will just take it from him. While Ed is honest enough to help Walt escape, he isn't honest enough that he won't try and keep Walt's money for himself. Walt Jr. is so disgusted with his father that he won't accept a dime from him. Walt is so isolated and lonely, he straight-up burns some of his money on a grill at one point - though he instantly regrets it, tries to extinguish the flames with his robe via smothering, then knocks it and himself into the pool to put the fire out.
  • In Felina, Walt does manage to get his family money, but he has to pretend that it came from Gretchen and Elliot, who he manipulates into helping him with the help of two crooks and a laser pointer. Also, Jack tries to bribe Walt into sparing him after his gang is gunned down, but Walt, who is already mortally wounded and doesn't care about money at this point, responds by simply shooting him dead.
• Monochrome Casting: Given that the most prominent Hispanic characters on the show (Gus, several of his dealers and subordinates, and almost all of the Cartel) are dead by the end of Season Four, the cast of Season Five consists exclusively of white Americans, with the sole exception of Gomez, who only appears in a handful of episodes. The primary antagonists even happen to be a neo-Nazi organization, which naturally precludes much racial diversity.
  • What's particularly egregious is that Steve, Andrea, and Brock are the only notable Latino characters who are not outright stated to come from a Latin American country. Albuquerque is a city where Latino Americans outnumber Anglo Americans by a slight margin, but the vast majority of the cast and many minor characters are white. Originally the show was supposed to take place in Riverside, California. But Riverside has nearly identical demographics to Albuquerque.
  • Victor is the only notable Native American character. The Native American population is about 5% and about 12% statewide.
  • On the flipside there are many African American minor characters in a city where only about 3% of the population is black and less than 2% statewide.
• Mood Whiplash: So, so much. The show goes from comedy to tragedy and back at the drop of a hat.
  • Probably the harshest example to date is in season 5's "Dead Freight"; it's mostly a pretty fun episode that sees the guys pulling off a brilliant train heist, for methylamine, conceived in such a way that no innocents have to be killed and they won't even know the train was robbed, the execution of it is one of the most intense, suspenseful moments in the show's history. Everything, just barely, goes off without a hitch, leaving the characters and the audience feeling relieved. Then they see that a young boy has been watching them for who knows how long. Newbie Todd calmly pulls out a gun and kills the kid without batting an eye.
• Money to Throw Away: Jesse, twice:
  • Filled with guilt after the murder of Gale, Jesse turns his house into a 24 hour drug-fuelled party to help distract himself. One of the things he does to keep the party going is throw handfuls of money for the drug addicts to scramble to gather.
  • Towards the end of the series, Jesse tries to randomly throw his money away out of his car window due to the remorse he feels about his actions that got him rich.
• Moral Event Horizon: In-universe, Skyler feels that Walt has crossed the line in "Ozymandias" when she thinks that Walt killed Hank despite his attempts to explain that he tried to save him.
• More Dakka: Jack and his Nazi buddies believe in this wholeheartedly. And it's how they die.
• Mortal Wound Reveal:
  • In the Season 4 finale, after Héctor sets off a bomb that obliterates his room and everything inside, Gus strangely steps out seemingly unharmed. After Gus casually adjusts his tie, the camera pans around to reveal he's missing a decent amount of his face and head, and then he promptly drops dead.
  • Walt fires several shots into Mike's car, which rolls to a stop; Walt finds it empty but tracks down Mike who, rather than fight back, reveals that he's bleeding out from a gunshot wound.
  • This is also how we discover the bullet wound which kills Heisenberg.
• Motivational Lie: In the season 4 finale: Walt convinces Jesse that Gus tried to poison a child with ricin to get Jesse on his side.
• Motive Decay: Done deliberately with Walt as part of the show's deconstruction of the Justified Criminal trope. Walter initially starts cooking meth upon being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, in hopes of securing his family's financial future. However, upon learning that his cancer is in remission, he doesn't stop cooking. No matter how many times he half-heartedly attempts to leave the business, he always returns sooner or later. Early in season five, he is made an offer to sell his raw materials for $5 million (well over six times the amount of money he had originally hoped to make) and leave the business scot-free, and refuses, explaining that he is in the "empire business". In the series finale, after five seasons of insisting that all of the horrific things he had done were in the interests of providing for his family, he finally confesses that he did them for himself, because he enjoyed being a villain and had a talent for it.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • The fly falling to the ground dead at Jesse's feet in slo-mo.
  • One of the extras on the Season 3 DVDs is titled "Pizza Of Destiny: Cranston's Greatest Throw" and starts with an In a World…-type trailer voice intoning the fate of one pizza to rise above mere food, slip the surly bonds of gravity and take to the air. It's about the scene where Walt throws a pizza on the roof.
  • In "Madrigal", the montage of Walt and Jesse looking for the ricin cigarette.
  • Gale's approach to making coffee.
• Mundane Utility: Gale devotes his genius level knowledge of chemistry to brew the perfect cup of coffee.
  Walt: [Takes a sip] Why the hell are we making meth?
• Murder by Inaction: Walt watches Jesse's girlfriend, Jane, choke to death on her own vomit (she'd shot up with heroin). Jane had earlier demanded Walt fork over some drug money and threatened to rat him out. Made worse in that Walt had inadvertently moved Jane on to her back when he tried to wake Jesse up, and thus indirectly caused her death as well as choosing not to prevent it.
• Must State If You're a Cop: Discussed and then subverted. An undercover cop manages to convince a meth dealer named Badger — who already suspects the buyer is a cop, and as such isn't admitting to being a dealer — that this law is "like, in the Constitution, or something." The cop then says directly that he's not a police officer, so Badger offers him meth and promptly gets arrested.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • When Walt realizes that he was responsible for the plane crash...
  • Tuco has this reaction when he realizes he's just killed one of his henchmen.
  • Walter has the reaction of this after shooting (and ultimately killing) Mike over a fit of rage just because Mike had told him off in a argument.
  • Jesse spends all of season 4 feeling this after murdering Gale.
  • Saul seems horrified when he learns Walt used him to help poison a kid.
• My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours: Hank gets into a legal debate with Old Joe, the junkyard owner while Hank is trying to break into the RV, which contains Walt, Jesse, and their meth lab. Hank says that the RV is a vehicle, so he can search it without a warrant. Old Joe counters that it is used as a residence, therefore it is protected from "unwarranted search and seizure" by the Constitution.
• Naked Apron: Walt wears a lab apron over his tighty whities in the pilot. He still gets confused for being a nudist, though.
• Naughty Narcs:
  • Downplayed. While the DEA overall is given a very positive portrayal, Hank is a bit of a Cowboy Cop who isn't averse to underhanded or illegal methods to catch suspects. Especially once he realizes that Walt is the real Heisenberg. The level of this betrayal wounds Hank so deeply that he goes off the deep end in his attempt to bust Walt, to such a degree that Hank single-handedly ruins any chances of making Walt pay for his crimes if the case ever actually went to court.
  • In one of his most deplorable acts, Walter invokes this when he sends Hank a "confession tape" that is nothing but a hurricane of lies framing Hank as a Lawman Gone Bad drug kingpin who used his connections in the DEA to start a criminal empire and threatened Walt into servitude.
• Neat Freak
  • Gus, who obsessively prioritizes keeping his clothes neat to inappropriate levels. The most ridiculous examples include carefully laying down a towel and organizing himself before vomiting up a lethal poison about to kill him in "Salud," and adjusting his tie after being caught in a bomb blast in "Face Off."
  • Walt has bouts of this when the pressure of his criminal double life gets to him, fixating on the rotten boards in his house in "Over" and a fly in the lab in "Fly".
  • Lydia, making her a comical Fish out of Water when examining Declan's filthy underground meth lab.
• Need a Hand, or a Handjob?: Inverted when Hank (mistakenly) thinks that Walter Jr. is smoking pot, thus taking him to observe a meth-addicted prostitute working out of a decrepit motel to demonstrate the dangers of drug use. The prostitute misunderstands the situation, and thinks that Hank is trying to arrange a sexual encounter between her and Walter Jr.
• Nemesis as Customer: In the pilot, Walter is pushed by his boss into washing a car despite it not being in his job description and is further humiliated when it turns out to belong to one of his obnoxious students, who immediately lords his position over him while his girlfriend excitedly gossips to her friends about their teacher's side job. It's one of the many things that leads Walt to hit his Rage Breaking Point and abruptly quit after he receives his cancer diagnosis.
• Nephewism: The various Salamanca family members are all cousins who are loyal to their only older male relative, their uncle Hector.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The first season takes place in late 2008 and aired in early 2008.
• Newscaster Cameo: Ashleigh Banfield in the third season and Charlie Rose in the fifth. The newscaster who reports on Gus' death at the end of the fourth, Antoinette Antonio, is a local morning radio host.
• New Old West: The series is very much a neo-Western, fitting its New Mexico setting, and features several of the archetypes and plot elements associated with the genre such as pistol duels, Mexican standoffs, the principled and tough sheriff, the dangerous bandito, deserts, small, isolated border towns, Indian reservations, and even a train robbery. The criminals in the show are essentially Western outlaws who use modern technology and make money through the modern-day drug trade. Gilligan cited Sergio Leone's Westerns as a reference for how he wanted the series to look. This is also apparent in the soundtrack. El Camino, the chronologically last Breaking Bad story, even has a quick draw duel with revolvers between outlaws as its climax, which Jesse promptly lampshades by calling it "classic Wild West."
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Another big element of the show. Most of Walt's actions have consequences he is unable to foresee in any way — like the plane crash or the Cousins eventually coming after Hank — and they often end up messing up the situation even more. One of the best examples of this is the season 5 premiere, where Walt takes a giant magnet to destroy Gus' laptop at a police evidence warehouse. In the ensuing chaos, a photo breaks, revealing bank accounts meant to silence everyone involved in the operation. Plus, the pull of the magnet tipping over their own truck.
  • Walt hiring Jack's neo-Nazis to murder Jesse results in Hank and Steve Gomez being killed and Jack taking most of Walt's money.
  • Jesse in "Granite State." While being forced to cook for Todd and Jack, there's a picture of Andrea and Brock taped on a wall in the lab, as if to say, "If you fuck up, they're dead." So naturally, when Jesse is caught trying to escape Jack's compound, he's promptly driven to Andrea's house to watch her execution.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Gus setting the twins and Hank against one another. While recovering from the resulting shootout, Hank takes an interest in the Gale Boetticher murder, connects him to Gus and starts investigating Gus' involvement in the meth business.
  • The catalyst behind the finale. Broken by Walt Jr.'s rejection of him and left to wait out his days until the cancer kills him, Walt calls the police and turns himself in, waiting at the bar for them to arrive. While waiting, he happens to see Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz being interviewed by Charlie Rose about his involvement in Gray Matter, with the two of them downplaying his role in the creation of their company. Having insulted Heisenberg's ego, this motivates Walt to return to New Mexico to tie up all of his loose ends, from getting Elliott and Gretchen to give the remainder of his money to his family upon Walt Jr.'s eighteenth birthday (under threat of death), to giving Skyler the legal means to escape the chokehold the DEA has her under via giving her the location of Hank and Steve's grave, to killing Jack and his gang for the theft of his money and the murder of his brother-in-law, to polishing off Lydia using the ricin he had prepared so long ago, to rescuing Jesse from slavery and setting up his eventual escape in "El Camino". Had Elliott and Gretchen not done that interview or insulted Walt one last time, he would have simply been arrested and then died quietly of cancer.
• Nice to the Waiter: Walt gives a $100 tip to the kind waitress in the season 5 premiere.
• Noble Bigot with a Badge: Hank, who despite having a fondness for making crude jokes at the expense of Hispanics, women, and poor people, turns out to be very much a good guy, in addition to his best friend being Hispanic and laughing off most of his jokes.
• Nobody Poops: Hank inadvertently discovers that Walt is Heisenberg whilst searching for something to read when he's using the Whites' toilet.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Tuco is very fond of this.
  • In season 3, Hank does this to Jesse.
  • In season 4, Mike does this to Walter.
  • Also in season 4, Jesse delivers a particularly brutal one to Walt.
  • In the season 5 episode "Confessions," Jesse gives one to Saul after he finds out that Walt poisoned Brock.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Something that happened on a 4th of July weekend at Gretchen's father's place precipitated Walt and Gretchen's falling out and Walt's departure from Gray Matter. There is the vague suggestion of a Love Triangle of some sorts, as a flashback scene shows Walt and Gretchen engaging in some heavy flirting, while in the main time frame of the story Gretchen is married to Elliott.
    • This incident was later explained by Vince Gilligan, saying that Walt felt inferior to Elliott and Gretchen (as both came from wealthy backgrounds), and left because of those feelings.
  • Walter also lost a job at Los Alamos for an unknown reason. In fact, the show never explains how a chemist of his talents wound up teaching high school chemistry.
  • Gus' history in Chile causes the cartel to spare him, even though they just killed his partner in front of him.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine:
  • Gus invites Walt to his house to cook dinner with him in one episode — which at the time seems harmless, but in retrospect...
  • A season later, Gus invites Jesse for dinner while Walt and Jesse are actively conspiring to kill him, and Gus is trying to manipulate Jesse into letting Walt be killed.
• No Pregger Sex: Lustily averted by Walt and Skyler in the first 2 seasons.
• Not Afraid of Hell: Walter relays this sentiment to Jesse in "Buyout", claiming that, even if all their bad deeds over the course of the series have earned them their spots in Hell, "...I'm not going to lie down until I get there."
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Starting with Season 2, the series became famous (and critically acclaimed) for this, breaking the status quo every few episodes, leaving it nearly completely unpredictable. However, its final eight episodes, especially "Ozymandias", stand out in particular, with every single one easily qualifying as a Wham Episode.
• "Not So Different" Remark: From their very first meeting Skyler has no problem letting Saul know she finds him contemptibly sleazy. In "Salud" he casually reminds her that her plan to get Ted Beneke to pay his debt to the IRS hinges entirely on the fact that she had an extramarital affair with him:

  Saul Goodman: "Let's just say you and I don't wear the same rose-colored glasses where Johnny Fabulous is concerned."

• Not The Illness That Killed Them:
  • During a period when Walt's cancer seemed to be going into remission, Ted states to Skyler that his father was able to overcome his cancer, but the disease utterly wrecked his body, and he ended up dying of the flu only a short time later.
  • Walt ultimately dies not from his cancer but from a gunshot wound sustained while shielding Jesse from his jerry-rigged turret gun in the final episode.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • After the CID catches on to Ted's book cooking, Skyler saves him from prison time by acting like a Dumb Blonde who hopelessly screwed up the company's ledgers completely by accident. Though he is still required to pay the back taxes, it prevents him from being charged with criminal fraud, and it also keeps the government from auditing Skyler's financials and catching Walt's drug income.
  • People that only know of Saul Goodman's public persona as a sleazy ambulance chaser tend to rather underestimate his competence in serious matters. Badger getting arrested and Jesse buying his house back are just two examples.
  • At one point Badger is setting up a drug drop with "Heisenberg", actually a willing fall guy, with Hank observing. It's going badly, so Walt drives in and blocks Hank's view, pretending to be completely oblivious when Hank explains what's going on and desperately tells him to move. He manages to stall for long enough for Jesse to set Badger straight and the bust proceeds as planned.
• Object-Tracking Shot / Epic Tracking Shot: After the plane crash in "ABQ", we see a long, 20-second OTS from the perspective of the pink teddy bear, heading straight for Walt's pool.
• Oblivious to His Own Description: In "Cat's In The Bag..." Skyler peruses Jesse's website and sees "MILFs" listed among his "general interests".
  Skyler: MILFs? What the hell is a MILF?
• The Obstructive Love Interest: Jane Margolis (played by Krysten Ritter) is this to Jesse — let's count the ways:
  • Getting Jesse addicted to heroin and thus making him useless as Walt's partner for a few episodes towards the end of Season 2.
  • Jane gets Jesse high on heroin during Season 2 Episode 11; as a result, Jesse misses the funeral for his murdered friend "Combo" and Walt has to deliver the meth himself (missing his own daughter's birth while doing so).
  • Due to Jesse being on heroin and thus useless to him, Walt keeps all the meth profits to himself, but when Jane finds out about this, she threatens Walt with exposure to the media if Walt does not hand over half the profits to Jesse (read: not to Jesse, but to Jane).
  • Jane's father Don catches her and Jesse doing heroin and is one step away from calling the cops to arrest them, before giving her one last chance.
  • Jane plans on using Jesse's meth money so that she can escape her father and Jesse can escape Walt by fleeing to New Zealand, but shares one last dose of heroin with Jesse, which gives her an expectable death of unconsciously choking on her own vomit. Waking up next to Jane's corpse the next day scars Jesse forever and means that Walt has to get him to rehab.
• Obstructive Vigilantism: Héctor Salamanca goes in to testify against Jesse, but he doesn't actually tell the cops anything.
• Obviously Evil: In case it wasn't clear whether you're supposed to root for them or not, the villains of season 5 are neo-Nazis. Yes, with swastika tattoos and everything. Mind you, they show little evidence of any white supremacist beliefs or behaviour, aside from their racial makeup.
• Occam's Razor: Invoked by Walt with his false confession pinning the bulk of his crimes on Hank; it is a much more plausible explanation that Hank, with his extensive knowledge of the drug trade, set up a meth empire than that Walt, a high school teacher with no criminal experience, did the same.
• Offscreen Crash: In I See You, Jesse is bored while waiting for Walt. Among other attempts at entertaining himself (like inflating his protective gear with an air hose), he rolls around on a computer chair, past the camera and offscreen, where there is a crash, an "ouch", and something small rolling back in the other direction.
• Offscreen Inertia: At a Q&A session at a public screening of the finale, Vince Gilligan joked that Huell is still sitting in that hotel room.
• Offstage Villainy: The show rarely explored the effects that Walt's meth cooking had on his average customer, save for one scene where Jesse and Mike break into a meth-house that is mostly Played for Laughs. Given how popular his "Blue Sky" meth is indicated to be, to the point that Walt's drug empire extended all the way to the Czech Republic with a cash flow in the tens of millions, it's easily in the thousands. Story-wise this is because Walt, who wants to keep his criminal career and private life separate, refuses to meet his customers, first using Jesse as his street dealer before making deals with organized crime groups when he decides to move into wholesale production. Presumably, if there were more emphasis on the number of lives that Walt ruined just by cooking alone, the audience would have turned against him long before he engages in his more direct, visible crimes in the later seasons.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Walt and Jesse when they discover that Krazy-8 wasn't killed by the phosphine gas.
  • Walt when he finds out that Jesse dissolved Emilio's body in a ceramic bathtub, and then again for both of them when the sloppy remains crash through the ceiling.
  • Gus noticing that Tio's bell isn't chiming properly, because the clapper's been replaced with a bomb that he's just triggered.
  • Quite literally when Walt remembers Gus had a CCTV camera in the superlab that he and Jesse previously destroyed, the same one that is now crawling with DEA agents.
  • Both literally and figuratively in "Gliding Over All" when Hank finally discovers that Walt is Heisenberg thanks to some light reading while on the toilet.
  • Hank and Marie in "Confessions" as they watch Walter's Thanatos Gambit Confession Cam tape implicate them in his crimes.
  • Lydia, when Walt informs her that he laced the Stevia that she always takes with her tea with ricin.
  • The famed "I am the one who knocks speech" has a subtle example of this. Skyler is panicking after she hears about Gale's murder and trying to get Walt to go to the police. Walt stands up and gives a very impassioned speech about how he is not in danger and is in fact a person to be feared. It's only at the end, after he delivers what has become his Signature Line, that he gets a quick look of uncertainty on his face, realizing he's pretty much given away to Skyler that he's the one responsible for Gale's death. Also at this point, Skyler is having a pretty big Oh, Crap! of her own at the strong implication that her husband is a murderer.
• On a Scale from One to Ten: After Hank is injured, his doctor uses this to help determine how much feeling he has in his legs.
• Once More, with Clarity: In-universe. Once Hank finds Gale's book in Walt's bathroom, he starts combing back through all the files related to the Heisenberg case going all the way back to Season One. Although circumstantial, all of it points to Walt being Heisenberg.
• One Degree of Separation:
  • Walt bumps into Jane's father at a bar and they get talking about the perils of fatherhood, completely unaware of their connection. In "Fly," Walt muses on how unlikely a coincidence it was; even more so given that the very same night, Walt would go on to watch Jane asphyxiate on her own vomit.
  • Jesse meets a woman at NA who turns out to be the sister of the kid who shot Combo.
  • Tortuga was a victim of the Cousins.
• One Dose Fits All: In "Salud", Gus proffers Don Eladio of the Mexican cartel a bottle of poisoned tequila, which he serves to Gus and his men, and also takes a shot himself (Gus has already taken an antidote to minimize the effects, and shortly afterwards makes himself sick). Sometime later, the Don and all of his men drop dead within a few seconds of each other, despite the differences in size between them (the man standing guard outside the bathroom when Gus is making himself sick is easily twice the size of the Don himself, for example).
• One-Steve Limit: Averted on several counts:
  • Gus' doctor in "Crawl Space" is apparently named Barry Goodman according to the credits, despite having no relation to Saul whatsoever. Since Saul (real name McGill) changed his name to Goodman to seem Jewish, this makes sense. Jews are thought to be good doctors as well as lawyers.
  • Saul's real name is James "Jimmy" McGill, and his professional Fall Guy is named James "Jimmy In-N-Out" Kilkelly.
  • In addition to the Victor who is Gus' enforcer, Victor is also the name of Walt's lung surgeon.
• The Oner:
  • In the final scene of the episode "Bug," Jesse begs Walt to teach him the full formula, going through a long, tortured explanation of how Gus wants him to teach it to the cartel in Mexico, all shot in one take. Quite an acting tour de force by Aaron Paul.
  • Also, the final shot of "Crawl Space."
  • When Jesse has his first shoot of heroin and is shown levitating off of his bed.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Averted. Injuries and healing times are depicted generally quite realistically on this show. Hank's road to recovery is unusually (but realistically) long and grueling; he's still limping in season five, and that's with the best physical therapy money can buy.
• Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers:
  • Gus tries to avert suspicion from himself in Season 4 by coming to answer questions from the DEA without a lawyer present.
  • Mike also waives his right to have an attorney present when questioned by Hank and Gomez in "Madrigal".
  • In "Buried", Hank's attempt to invoke this trope is what causes Skyler to realize he's more interested in catching Walt than protecting her.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Saul is saner than he looks. He laments that his clients are "immune to good advice" and has several I Warned You moments when his suggestions are ignored and calamity ensues. Not to mention some resentment at having to deal with the fallout:
    "You two wanna go stick your wangs in a hornets' nest, it's a free country. But how come I always gotta get sloppy seconds, huh?"
  • Walt thinks he's this, because he's the only one who hasn't forgotten the drug business is just that, a business.
  • Mike clearly thinks he is, always behaving rationally on the job and looking annoyed when people start going off the rails.
• Out of Focus: Used to create the twist ending in Season 4.
• Outside-Genre Foe: One of Walt's major advantages is that the career criminals he deals with expect him to act like a career criminal.
• Overt Rendezvous: Drug deals take place in public places, but for another reason in addition to secrecy: if negotiations go badly, people are less likely to shoot each other in public in broad daylight. Walt, in the first drug deal he participates in, sets it in an abandoned junkyard because that's where drug deals take place in the movies. He gets screwed.
• Pac Man Fever:
  • Averted in one episode. Jesse plays Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing with a girl in a realistic manner; i.e., no button-mashing.
  • And again when playing the two-player mode of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) of all things.
  • Averted again in Season 4 when Badger and Skinny Pete discuss differences in the zombies of Resident Evil, Call of Duty: World at War, and Left 4 Dead with actual references to the games' content. Skinny Pete mentions that Leon is the last man on earth.
  • Played straight in "Problem Dog", where Jesse is seen playing Rage (2011). He's playing the mobile version (an on-rails shooter version of the console game's Mutant Bash TV missions), with a light gun, on his TV.
• Parking Payback: In the season 1 episode "Cancer Man", Walt circles a parking lot in order to cash a check at the bank for his cancer treatment. When one finally becomes available, he is about to pull in to it when a red BMW with the license plate "KEN WINS" races into the spot before him. Walt rages indignantly, but the suit wearing driver ignores him completely while obnoxiously talking into his headset. When Walt finally finds a spot, he walks into the bank only to find "Ken" there, still loudly yakking on his phone, to the intense annoyance of everyone there. Later in the same episode, Walt sees the same car parked outside a gas station. He shoves a wet squeegee in between the battery terminals of the BMW and nonchalantly walks away while the car bursts into flames.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Do not make fun of Walter Jr. in front of his dad. The way that Walter Sr. put that Jerk Jock on his ass and delivered the poetic justice "having trouble walking?" line.
  • Walt does not take kindly to threats against his family. Gus threatened to kill his son and infant daughter. Two episodes later, he got half of his face blown off with a pipe bomb.
• Parodic Table of the Elements: The logo plays with the periodic-table boxes for Bromine (Br) and Barium (Ba). An element is also highlighted in each actor's name in the opening credits.
  • Incidentally, some episodes have the credit with "Ch" highlighted. No such element had that atomic symbol as of the time the show was in production. May be a backhanded reference to the methyl group, but the H should be capitalized.
• Parental Substitute: One of the darkest examples possible, to the point of possibly being a subversion. Due to his rocky relationship with his parents, Jesse Pinkman constantly seeks the approval of his former high school chemistry teacher and current partner in the meth business, Walter White. Walter does truly care for Jesse, as he always goes out of his way to protect him, but mixes this care with horrible psychological abuse, emotional blackmail, and manipulation.
• Parting-from-Consciousness Words: In the Season 2 finale "ABQ", as Walt is going under sedation for cancer surgery, Skyler asks him where his cell phone is. A groggy Walt mumbles "Which one?". This makes Skyler realize that Walt was lying about having a second cell phone, and leads her to unravel the whole tangled web of lies Walt's been telling her ever since he started cooking meth.
• A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: Jesse holds quite a few of these. In Season 4 he has a constant, increasingly out of control party at his house 24 hours a day because he can't stand being alone for even a few hours.
• Past Victim Showcase: Gus Fring likes to screw with Tio Salamanca's head, even going as far as personally delivering Don Eladio's Ojo de Dios pendant to him after killing him in "Salud".
• The Perfect Crime: The train heist to obtain more methylamine. The gang plans to steal methylamine from a tanker car in a train, while simultaneously replacing it with an equal weight of water. This results in the whole tanker car will be only slightly diluted; this will likely not even be noticed or, if it is, will be chalked up to a slightly weaker batch being shipped from China. Not only will the protagonists get away with it, nobody will even realize a crime has occurred. It almost works.
• Pet the Dog: Walt and his relationship with Jesse. Jesse has a few moments too.
  • Todd spares Walt's life, apologizes for his loss as genuinely as can be expected in the situation, and leaves him with one of his cash barrels. Granted, it is only eleven of Walt's hard-earned eighty million dollars, but Todd could simply ask his uncle to shoot Walt dead.
• The Pete Best: In-universe. Walt co-founded a multi-billion dollar chemical firm called Gray Matter, but early on had a falling out with his partners and sold his shares for a piddling sum of money. The full extent to which this eats away at him only becomes completely clear in Season 5.
• Physical Therapy Plot: Hank is grievously wounded by two assassins and briefly comatose; when he wakes up he needs rigorous physical therapy to relearn how to walk, a process that takes up almost two full seasons. At first Hank is very self-pitying and borderline verbally abusive to his wife Marie, but after becoming convinced the drug manufacturer "Heisenberg" is still at large, he applies himself harder to his therapy, eventually able to walk again (albeit with a limp he carries through the rest of the series).
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Despite being described as a white supremacist group, Jack and his gang don't actually say or do anything to suggest they hold such views, excluding at one point shooting down the idea of outsourcing a hit to another group with a mention of purity, and some vague comments about "savages" and political correctness.
• Playing Sick: Walt's fugue state, his excuse for being AWOL for several days when he and Jesse get stuck in the desert.
• Poisoned Drink Drop: Gus Fring poisons members of Don Eladio's cartel using spiked tequila. Eladio doesn't realize this until he drops his cigar, then sees one of his associates slump, drop and break his glass. Right afterwards, Eladio stumbles to a table and knocks over more tequila glasses before falling into the pool, dead.
• Police Are Useless: Occasionally law enforcement can be seen in the background while a crime is being committed.
  • Jesse talks a female gas station cashier into accepting meth as payment — with a police officer in line behind him.
  • Jesse is kidnapped by Gus' men and hustled into a moving van just as 2 officers walk by.
  • The Aryans pull a nasty and very successful home invasion on Skyler and Holly despite two DEA agents keeping the house under surveillance.
  • Considering the series as a whole, the enormous resources which the APD, the DEA and whatnot poured into shutting down Heisenberg and his associates accomplished very little because New Mexico's authorities are almost always at least one step behind the bad guys they're chasing. When they finally do manage to track Heisenberg down, it's primarily due to his own vanity/carelessness, combined with the stubbornness of one single DEA officer who's risking his career by continuing the hunt.
• Politically Correct Villain: Mike Ehrmantraut considers assassinating Lydia Rodart-Quayle after she puts a hit out on him and the employees from his boss's old operation he was protecting. He lets her live against his better judgment, only to arrive at a situation where (it appears) she tries to backstab him and his partners again. He acknowledges that if she weren't a woman he would have probably already killed her, then berates one of his partners for giving her a pass on the same grounds.
  Mike: And now you're being sexist. This woman deserves to die as much as any man I've ever met!
• Pooled Funds: In "Buried", two Mooks sent to fetch Walt's giant cube of cash take a moment to lie down on the money and relax before loading it into barrels.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • When Gonzo gets himself killed, the DEA raids Tuco's headquarters. Walt and Jesse incorrectly believe that Tuco is killing any witness to No Doze's murder, while Tuco believes that Gonzo disappeared and sold him out. As a result, Walt and Jesse make a plan to kill Tuco, while Tuco kidnaps Walt and Jesse and wants them to go to Mexico with him to cook Meth.
  • The only reason Mike dies in Season 5.
  • Marie warns Hank about this in Season 5 when he's investigating Walt solo, without telling the department. If the DEA catches up to Walt, Hank will look complicit; she doesn't point out that if Walt comes after Hank, he and Marie are the only ones who know his secret.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: Saul Goodman casually makes pop culture references in most of his dialogue.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Averted by Walt on a number of occasions. Hank is sure that Gale was Heisenberg, meaning all Heisenberg's crimes will be blamed on him, and Walt actually talks him out of it, convincing Hank that Gale may have just been an apprentice and the real Heisenberg could still be out there. Later, Walt passes up the chance to earn an easy risk free $5 million — more money than he originally wanted to make — for their leftover methylamine, because he wants to carry on making crystal meth, with all that risks that entails.
• Precision F-Strike: Occasionally used despite being blanked out for broadcast on basic cable.

  • Word of God states that they were only allowed one f-bomb per season (or half season), so each instance was placed specifically to fit this trope.

  • In the pilot, Walt delivers one to Bogdan when he quits the car wash: "Fuck you and your eyebrows!"
  • In "Crazy Handful of Nothin'", after Walt demonstrates his fulminated mercury is not meth: "ARE YOU FUCKIN' NUTS?!"
    • Early in the same episode: "Oh, come on, Jesus! Just grow some fucking balls!"
  • In "Peekaboo", Walt says "fuck you" to Gretchen.
  • "I.F.T": "I fucked Ted."
  • "Bug": "Get the fuck out of here and never come back."
  • "Face Off": "F-U-C-"
  • "Buyout": Like the above example, another shot at the DEA — Mike's dead drop that Gomez intercepts only to find it reads "FUCK YOU".
  • "Say My Name" "Shut the fuck up and let me die in peace."
  • "Ozymandias": My name is ASAC Schrader, and you can go fuck yourself.
  • "Granite State": "I'm not doing one more cook for you psycho fucks!"
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: A somewhat humorous example; in "Fly", Walt quips "Say goodnight" right as he's about to hit the fly...only for all of the lights in the superlab to go out when Jesse shuts off the main circuit breaker to the lab.
• Present-Day Past: There are few references to exactly when the show is supposed to be taking place (Walt's 2007 licence plate stickers), but the time frame is two years — the show kicks off with Walt's 50th birthday, and the last few episodes take place around his 52nd birthday. However, there are a few anachronisms that don't match this time frame in the later seasons, such as cars (Hank's 2011 Dodge Durango), props (Jesse owning LittleBigPlanet 2), and minor bits of dialogue (a reference to Osama Bin Laden's 2011 assassination). Word of God has admitted that some of these anachronisms are goofs.
  Vince Gilligan: In a perfect world, this show is somewhat timeless, and people will watch it and think of it as the present.
• Pretender Diss: Walter White aspires to be every bit the cunning, dignified drug lord as Gustavo Fring, not realizing that his own pride, stubbornness, and recklessness means he will never match up to Fring's legacy. Mike points this out after Walter kills Fring.
  Mike: Just because you shot Jesse James, that don't make you Jesse James.
• Pretty Little Head Shots: Averted; use a hollow point, and it gets messy. There's a messy one in "One Minute".
• Previously on…: Used to recap events seen in previous episodes, as well as give us brief events that are never seen in the show.
• Product Placement:
  • The game Rage (2011) is featured multiple times in season 4. At one point, there is a fight in Jesse's house, and in the scuffle Walter and Jesse crash into a shelf, causing its contents to spill and the box for Rage winds up on top of the pile.
    • Rage's product placement is particularly noteworthy due to the fact that the game hadn't yet been released. It's American release date was October 4th, 2011, meaning that only the Season 4 finale, "Face Off", was the only episode broadcast after it hit store shelves.
    • Jesse seems to be a Sonic the Hedgehog fan: other video games that Jesse plays include Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).
  • In "To'hajiilee", Walter visits Jesse's former girlfriend Andrea. To make small-talk, he awkwardly praises her son, Brock, for eating Froot Loops cereal.
  • Chrysler cars are prominently featured especially later in the show. Notable examples are Skyler's Jeep Grand Wagoneer, Hank's Jeep Commander, Mike's Chrysler New Yorker, and later in the series Walter trades in his iconic Pontiac Aztek for a Chrysler 300 and Walt Jr. received a PT Cruiser for his birthday only to later exchange it for a Dodge Challenger.
  • "Funyons are awesome!"
  • Denny's restaurant signs are prominently placed in the background, and Walt eats at one in the Cold Open for the Season 5 premiere.
  • Five-Hour Energy: sold at a money-laundering front business for a notorious meth kingpin near you!
  • Sony, everywhere. Often Vaio laptops are seen used by good characters such as Hank, and Gus uses a Samsung. I'm sure there's a couple of Bravias somewhere too. Considering Breaking Bad is affiliated with Sony Pictures, this is all a little uncanny. Averted with a couple of exceptions, such as a HP in season 5 and a Visio TV at Hank's in a clear shot.
  • Garmin. The tracking device on the methylamine barrel in a later season bears their logo, as does the navigator Walter uses to find the coordinates of the location he buries his money at.
• Pride:
  • Walt's cardinal sin. He insists on making his money illegally rather than swallowing his pride and accepting charity from an estranged former colleague. He also takes too much pride in his meth-cooking skill, to the point that he risks his own safety several times to ensure that Heisenberg's reputation as the best meth cook around remains untarnished and intact.
  • Hank is on the verge of accepting that Gale was Heisenberg when Walt, not wanting Gale to get the credit for his own work, actually convinces Hank that he may have just been a subordinate and Heisenberg could still be out there.
  • Pride ends up killing Jack and his men when Jack insists on disproving Walt's accusation that Jesse is his partner rather than his slave. This distraction allows Walt to recover the trigger to his remote machine gun.
  • Ultimately leads to Gus’ death as well. Despite being so careful and generally putting his pride aside he insists on being the one to kill Hector when he thinks he’s cooperating with the DEA. Tyrus clearly suspects something isn’t right and suggests he be the one to kill Hector, but Gus insists. It lures him right into Walt’s trap.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: The entire first four and a half seasons of the series are dedicated to Walter's journey from kindly high school teacher to ruthless drug lord. Showrunner Vince Gilligan states that his goal with Walter was to "turn Mr. Chips into Scarface."
• Psychopathic Manchild: Todd Ahlquist is in his mid-20s but behaves as he was in his early teens, particularly when he's trying to get Lydia to notice him. He's still a stone-cold killer who thinks nothing of shooting an innocent child dead or threatening Jesse's loved ones to ensure his compliance with the Neo-Nazis.
  • Tuco Salamanca, who has a Hair-Trigger Temper and has no empathy whatsoever - just don't say anything bad of his grandmother...
• Publicly Discussing the Secret: Walt and Gus have a conversation about their meth business in a hospital lobby crowded with DEA agents and other Law enforcement personnel.
• Punch-Clock Villain:
  • Mike, a loving grandfather and hitman for a meth kingpin. Don't make him beat you till your legs don't work.
  • Walt and Jesse become examples as clock-in and clock-out meth manufacturers for Gus, despite being comparatively moral people. It's lampshaded by Jesse. As they walk in to the industrial laundromat that houses their hidden meth lab, he sees the line of workers punching a clock and says, "I'm surprised he doesn't make us do that."
  • Gonzo. We don’t see much of him, but he seems pretty good natured and wants to at least give No Doze a proper burial since it seems “Christian.” Also when Walt and Jesse both seem shocked and feel they need to intervene during the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of No Doze he quickly shakes his head at them and makes sure they don’t get involved, but the look on his face seems to suggest he doesn’t want them to be next.
• Punny Name: Saul Goodman. A play on the phrase "S'all good, man."
• Put on the Bus: Saul Goodman, Walter White and eventually Jesse Pinkman. Ed's Best Quality Vacuum repair shop acts as the literal bus station as, for a fee, he will pick you up and set you up with a new life.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Walt's obsession with amassing wealth and controlling the drug trade, both of which he succesfully does, slowly disintegrates his family over the course of the show. This is brought to the fore with the flashes forward in the fifth season, showing how Walt's life is ruined and he's completely alone.
• The Quiet One: The Salamanca brothers barely ever speak, their favorite form of communication being a slow shared glance that gives a creepy impression of Twintuition.
• Radish Cure: In "Box Cutter," the season 4 premiere, when Victor reveals that he has learned how to make Walt's meth and is ready to replace him if need be, and Gus responds by violently killing Victor in front of Walter. Gus does this in reponse to Walt having killed Gale at the end of season 3, showing Walt that if he wants to gain personal security through murder and violence, that's exactly what he'll get.
• Rage Against the Reflection: Walt, after finding out he's in remission.
• Ramming Always Works: Hank only has a few seconds to react before he's about to be shot, so he just puts the SUV in reverse and rams the guy into another car. It works.
• Rapid-Fire "Shut Up!": In "Hazard Pay", Skyler is at her wits' end over Walt moving back into the house, so when Marie scolds her over her smoking habit, it proves to be the Rage Breaking Point that pushes her into a nervous breakdown:
  Skyler: Shut up.
  Marie: What? I'm sorry, please don't speak to me like that. I am simply saying that—
  Skyler: Will you shut up.
  Marie: Hey-
  Skyler: Shut. The hell. Up. [Shouting] Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
  Marie: Skyler- Please, stop- I'm-
  Skyler: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! [Begins to cry]
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • The 2007 writers' strike meant only eight episodes could be shot for season 1, instead of 15 or 16. This resulted in numerous changes to the show; most notably, Jesse (who was originally scripted to die at the end of the season) was kept around.
  • The house used as Jesse's house was sold during season two, so they made do with a set of the kitchen for a couple episodes (with the RV blocking the view out the window) before Jesse's parents kick him out. In the next season, they were able to use it again and Jesse moves back in.
  • Krazy-8 was going to be killed in the pilot, but was kept around for two more episodes just because everyone loved working with his actor, Maximino Arciniega, so much. Arciniega's name was eventually used as that of Gus' partner in meth production.
  • Tuco Salamanca was originally slated to be the Big Bad of Season 2, but his actor, Raymond Cruz, decided that the part had become too exhausting for him and asked for Tuco to be killed off. Cruz' ongoing contract as a cast member on The Closer very likely contributed to his decision.
• Real Stitches for Fake Snitches: Invoked by Walt and Hector as part of a Batman Gambit to get Gus into the open. Hector visits the DEA office in order to convince Gus that he is going to turn informant and needs to be eliminated (he actually just uses the opportunity to taunt the DEA). Because of the history between the two Gus goes to kill Hector personally, leaving himself open to Hector's Suicide Attack.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: Most of the Spanish dialogue gets this treatment.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Many people complained that Gus' death scene, in which he walks out of Héctor's room and straightens his tie with half his face blown off before falling over dead, was over-the-top. In truth, bombing victims do often survive briefly, and sometimes do weird things like calmly walk around looking for their own severed limbs, before they bleed to death. The body can behave strangely when it's in shock.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Jesse, after hospitalized by Hank's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, has something to say to Walt, who visited him.
    Jesse: Ever since I met you, everything I ever cared about is gone! Ruined, turned to shit, dead, ever since I hooked up with the great Heisenberg! I have never been more alone! I HAVE NOTHING! NO ONE! ALRIGHT, IT'S ALL GONE! GET IT? No, no, no, why...why would you get it? What do you even care, as long as you get what you want, right? You don't give a shit about me! You said I was no good. I'm nothing! Why would you want me, huh? You said my meth is inferior, right? Right? Hey! You said my cook was GARBAGE! Hey, screw you, man! Screw you!
  • A rather unexpected one by Saul's secretary, a background character who had barely said two words throughout the entire show:
    Saul's secretary: Your partner and you are in danger?! Whoop-di-freaking-do! Why do you think Saul is not here? And how is this news, exactly? The two of you being in danger?! After doing something idiotic! You are such a pain in my ass, you know that? You're the reason I got to go on unemployment for god knows how long. I was at least looking forward to getting out of here in the next half hour, but noooo!!! Now I got to wait around all day for a plate glass guy to fix this door!
  • Mike delivers a whirlwind one to Walt near the end of "Say My Name", complete with pointing out his Fatal Flaw. Walt takes it about as well as you would expect, and it seems to be what pushes him over the edge to shoot Mike.
    Mike: All of this falling apart is on you. We had a good thing, you stupid son of a bitch! We had Fring, we had a lab, we had everything we needed, and it all ran like clockwork. You could have shut your mouth, cooked, and made as much money as you ever needed! It was perfect, but no. You just had to blow it up. You, and your pride and your ego!
  • The speech Hank dishes to Walt at the end of "Blood Money" is nothing short of this.
    Hank: You killed ten witnesses to save your sorry ass. You bombed a nursing home. Heisenberg. Heisenberg! You lying, two-faced sack of shit!
  • Walter Junior to Skyler, after her banalities about the seat belt: "You're shittin' me, right? If all this is true and you knew about it, then — then you're as bad as him!"
  • Junior to Walt in "Granite State", when Walt tries to send him money:
    Junior: ...you killed Uncle Hank! YOU KILLED HIM! What you did to Mom, you asshole! You killed Uncle Hank-Just shut up! Just shut up! YOU KILLED UNCLE HANK! YOU KILLED HIM! What you did-just shut up! SHUT UP! Will you just-just leave us alone, you asshole! Why are you still alive?! Why don't you just-just die already?! JUST DIE!
• Reckless Gun Usage: Walt pretty much anytime he's carrying his .38 Snub. Specifically, he seems to have no concept of trigger discipline. Of course, this is justified because he is a stressed out chemistry teacher, rather than some bad ass gunslinger.
• Redemption Equals Death: Walt, after making amends with Jesse and Skyler, plans to end his life this way by letting the former shoot him. After he refuses, and noticing the bullet in his torso, Walt instead bleeds out and dies in the Neo-Nazi meth lab. It's not a perfect example, as he is noticeably unapologetic about his decisions throughout the series.
• Recycled Premise: Not exactly the same, but the starting premise of the show (mild-mannered middle-class suburbanite turns to drug dealing in order to support their family because of financial troubles and winds up out of their depth) is sufficiently similar to Weeds that Vince Gilligan admitted that he wouldn't have bothered to create the show had he been familiar with Weeds beforehand. Safe to say that Breaking Bad is a lot darker and grimmer than Weeds had ever gotten.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The show plays around with this. For starters, Jesse and Walt epitomize recklessness (youth) vs. calculation (experience). Hank and Walt similarly reflect this, mainly with the former's direct, almost obnoxious way of dealing with his family and job. However, Jesse plays Blue when dealing with his less smart cohorts Badger and Skinny Pete. Walt and Gus also flip this around: the first acts more out of emotion and concern for his family and (sometimes) Jesse. The latter, who has no emotional attachments the audience knows of (or at least living ones), conducts business the way only a cold-blooded monster would, taking extreme caution to keep his respectable businessman facade while not minding his underlings' (or anyone else's) deaths to keep his outfit operating.
• Red Herring:
  • Until the series finale, ricin has not been used to successfully kill a single person since it was introduced all the way back in season 2. It got a lot of false starts though.
  • It seems like Gus's identity will become a plot point:
    • When the DEA first looks into Gus Fring, Hank notes that they can't find anything at all about him before he emigrated from Chile to Mexico in 1986.
    • Later, Mike and Gus discuss the possibility of the feds finding out about Gus' background.
    • In a flash back, we see a cartel leader spare Gus's life because they "know who you are", but cautions him that he's not in Chile anymore. None of these allusions to Gus's past lead anywhere.
  • When Walt arranges for he and Jesse to discuss Brock's poisoning, Jesse sees a bald man in the distance who he thinks is a hitman. It's actually just a bystander.
  • In the openings to the season 2 episodes "737", "Down", "Over", and "ABQ", we see several moments that suggest violence against the Whites and Walt in general — someone in a hazmat fishing debris out of their pool, Walt's heavily damaged car, and a lingering shot on an evidence bag containing what appears to be Walt's glasses. We later find out that these shots are related to the Wayfarer 515 rather than any attack on Walt.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • After Jesse tries to donate his drug earnings to Mike's granddaughter, Walt attempts to dissuade him by insisting that Mike is "perfectly capable of taking care of his own granddaughter." Of course, Walt killed Mike and dissolved his body with hydrofluoric acid. Walt must know that Jesse can see through this, because he spends quite a while pleading for Jesse to believe him despite his well-deserved reputation for being a Consummate Liar.
  • Walt's "confession" he gives Hank, reframing everything he did as "Heisenberg" as being on Hank's orders. It's a very consummate form of blackmail.
  • Gus is a prominent pillar of the community and a friend to the local police and DEA. After the murder attempt on Hank, he even donates free chicken to all the officers in the hospital.
• Released to Elsewhere: After Walter kills Mike he lies to Jesse and tells him that Mike left town safely. Well, actually he didn't lie, when Jesse asked about Mike Walt said that he was "gone".
• Retirony: Inverted with Hank in season 3. Played straight with Mike in season 5.
• Revealing Cover-Up: After Gus' death, Walt, Mike, and Jesse fear that there may be evidence on his laptop that incriminates them. They eventually conceive and execute a scheme in which they activate a powerful electromagnet next to where the evidence is being held in order to wipe its hard drive. The magnet is powerful enough that it destroys the evidence room, breaking a picture frame from Gus' office and exposing evidence concealed inside that the authorities likely wouldn't have found otherwise. In a twist of irony, the laptop was too heavily encrypted to be of use to the DEA so the whole operation was unnecessary.
• Reverse Whodunnit: The entire show is this trope. Walt starts cooking meth in the very first episode and for the rest of the series has to evade the attention of the DEA, who are hunting the mysterious Heisenberg. In particular, his brother-in-law Hank, who is a DEA agent intrigued by the appearance of this new blue meth in the local drug scene.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • Getting greater insight into Walter's motivations can put scenes and conversations from earlier in the show, going all the way back to the pilot episode, into a whole new light. The same thing goes to any other scene, when you know the character's fate.
  • Better Call Saul provides all kinds of new tidbits about Saul, Mike, Tuco, Hector, and more. See all three Hindsight categories above for some of the biggest bonuses there.
  • A very subtle one in Season 4 "End Times". As Walt is sitting by his pool clearly realizing that his options are running out he starts spinning the gun which stops and points at him twice in a row. Then on the third spin it points at the Lilly of the Valley plant and Walt clearly starts thinking about something before the scene cuts away. It should be noted that there is nothing indicating that the plant is Lilly of the Valley and that only someone with lots of knowledge would be able to identify it and know that it's toxic.
• Riddle for the Ages: Who is Gustavo Fring? Beyond a few references to possibly being ex-Chilean military, none of his personal history or his reasons for fleeing his home country are ever revealed (and since his documents were forged, Gustavo Fring likely isn't even his real name). Even in Better Call Saul, nothing personal about him is revealed except for his sharing a childhood story with (an unconscious) Tio Salamanca.
• "Rise and Fall" Gangster Arc: The first four-and-a-half seasons depict Walter's rise from mild-mannered chemistry teacher to feared drug kingpin: by the end of the first half of season 5, Walter has amassed millions of dollars. The second half of season 5 depicts his undoing.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Gustavo's whole life since entering America seems to have been one long plan to position himself for revenge against the cartels. His final coup is quite impressive. He also visits Salamanca regularly to gloat about it.
• Robbing the Dead: After killing a Los Pollos Hermanos truck driver, Gaff and his crew of cartel buttonmen casually eat the driver's lunch while waiting for the remaining guards to suffocate on the carbon monoxide fumes they are pumping into the trailer. Punctuated with a very dark Pet the Dog moment where Gaff gives an associate the driver's sandwich from the lunchbox, settling for a simple apple for himself.
• Rule of Symbolism: To retroactively drive home how similar Walt and Gus are to each other, Gus' collapse upon Max's death and Walt's collapse upon Hank's death are framed in the exact same way.
• Running Gagged: Barrels of acid being used to dissolve dead bodies becomes more and more common as the series progresses and is shown in a more comedic way each time. Until they have to dissolve the motorbike and body of a young boy Todd murders. The dark joke most definitely stops being funny there and is only implied to be used on Mike later on.

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