Characters / Breaking Bad: Walter White

Main Character Index | Better Call Saul
Walt's Family (Walter White), Heisenberg's Empire (Saul Goodman), DEA and Police, Juarez Cartel, Los Pollos Hermanos, Madrigal Electromotive, Aryan Brotherhood, Other Criminals, Other Civilians

Walter Hartwell White / "Heisenberg"

Portrayed By: Bryan Cranston

Appearances: Breaking Bad | Better Call Saul^note Flashbacks only | El Camino^note Flashback only

"A guy opens his door and gets shot, and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!"

"Doctor, my wife is seven months pregnant with a baby we didn't intend. My fifteen-year-old son has cerebral palsy. I am an extremely overqualified high school chemistry teacher. When I can work, I make $43,700 per year. I have watched all of my colleagues and friends surpass me in every way imaginable. And within eighteen months, I will be dead. And you ask why I ran?"

Walter White is a highly intelligent yet underachieving high school chemistry teacher living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer on his fiftieth birthday, Walt begins to worry about what will happen to his family with his death now imminent and the treatments to keep him alive being very expensive.

After learning about how much money lies in the drug trade, Walt partners up with an old student of his who has become a drug dealer, Jesse Pinkman, to manufacture and sell crystal meth. Due to Walt's skill with chemistry and dedication to perfection, the meth he cooks is astonishingly pure and potent - and due to an alternative chemical process he uses to create it, it has a distinct blue coloration. "Blue Sky" catches the attention of dealers who want a piece of such high-quality product, and also the DEA who want to find out where it's coming from.

Walt adopts the moniker "Heisenberg" as an alias as he immerses himself in the drug trade and works his way up to the international level, becoming a famous and feared drug kingpin who leaves a trail of money, bodies, and meth behind him.

A-B

• Abusive Parents:
  • Usually averted, but one time, in a combination of bitterness and alcohol, Walt forced his son to down a bottle of tequila until he vomited his lungs out, solely out of spite (it's implied in that scene that he was annoyed by his son looking up to his "badass" uncle Hank and Walt just wanted to prove his masculinity). He even had a smug, shit-eating grin on his face as Walt Jr. retched in the pool in front of dozens. This is one of the early moments when Walt shows his dark side.
  • Played straight when it comes to surrogate son Jesse. He's the closest thing to a father figure in Jesse's life and unlike his real parents, he actually cares for him (and saved his life several times). This doesn't stop him from being horribly abusive to Jesse, as he constantly belittles him and manipulates him.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Walter gets seriously overconfident whenever he succeeds. Done away with at the end of season 4, when he kills Gus and his pride is reinforced permanently. Mike finds out fatally what happens when one insults his pride.
• Affably Evil: Zig-Zagged. It's sometimes hard to tell to what extent he actually cares about people and to what extent he's just playing them, especially when the balance changes from moment to moment (although with a general trajectory of "less affable" as the seasons go on). As early as the first season he can become downright abusive when he's crossed or frustrated and blaming his problems on others, while by the final season he's very short on Pet the Dog moments that don't include some selfish ulterior motive.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • Stalling for time in the Season 3 finale.
  • Walt later genuinely begs for Hank's life in "Ozymandias", to little effect. What's notable is that Hank refuses to grovel.
• Alas, Poor Villain: By the end of the series, Walt is reduced to being The Atoner desperately trying to make up as best as he can for all the mistakes he made over the show. This leads to him eventually saving Jesse at the cost of his own life.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Many times throughout the series, probably the worst and stupidest was convincing Hank that Gale wasn't Heisenberg.
• All for Nothing:
  • In "Buyout", Walt refuses to sell his share of the methylamine and exit the meth trade for 5 million dollars, the reason being that if he sells out, he'll miss out on the tens of millions he could earn with the methylamine. Walt ultimately exits the trade after earning 80 million dollars, but in "Ozymandias", Jack Welker takes 70 million dollars of Walt's money and Walt never gets it back, leaving him with only twice of what he would have made had sold the methylamine, and even then, it gets reduced down even farther when Walt can only get it to his family by forcing Gretchen and Elliott to set up a trust fund for his children. And less you think an extra 4.5 million would make it worth, Jack also kills Walt's beloved brother-in-law Hank, irrevocably tearing apart the family Walt claimed to want the best for. Had Walt taken the deal, he still would have earned five times what his family needed and Hank would still be alive.
  • Almost everything bad that happens in the series is due to Walt not being satisfied with Jesse's small-time operation and wishing to partner up with a major distributor. Had he listened to Jesse's suggestion and never got tangled up in the cartel, he would still have made more than his goal ^note He wanted $737,000. His share from the drug operation was $1,300 a day, which would have netted him $949,000 in two years, more than enough to pay for his cancer treatment and leave behind for his family. Also, that is assuming the sale of his drug never improves, which it's bound to do eventually and allows the duo to expand their operation without having to go through all the trauma, for both himself and those around him.
• All Take and No Give:
  • Zig Zagged with Jesse being the giver and Walt being the taker. While Walt does share their profits with Jesse and fights back at any suggestion at killing Jesse until season 5, it clear that he doesn't see Jesse as a true equal as he'll frequently not tell Jesse what's going on, insult him, dismiss his problems, lie to his face, and gaslight him while expecting Jesse to do everything he says.
  • Played completely straight with Saul Goodman with Walt yet again being the taker. Yes, Walt is paying Saul a percentage, but that is mostly so Saul has an incentive other than not getting caught. In truth, their relationship is almost completely one-sided for the majority of the series, with Saul being forced to cater to every last one of Walt's demands (even going out of his way to protect Walt in some cases) while risking his own life in the process. In return, Walt never shows any concern for Saul's safety and with the exception of "Crawl Space," never thanks Saul for any of his risk, even going so far as to threaten Saul when the latter wants to break ties with Walt.
• The Alleged Car:
  • Walt has a decidedly un-Kingpin-like taste in transportation, beginning with a bland 2004 Pontiac Aztek SUV that's painted in a very dull green, and a perpetually cracked windshield. Of all the cars he chooses to carjack in "Felina", he picks an old Volvo with the exact same paint scheme.
  • The RV was a busted-up piece of junk as well, at one point a malfunctioning mechanism nearly gets both Walt and Jesse killed in the desert. In Season 5, Walt and Jesse even reminisce about this, wondering why they didn't use their tons of drug money to just buy a newer and better RV.
• Alliterative Name: In a famous scene, after reading Gale's notebook, Hank asks Walt who could Gale be referring to when he writes "W.W." and jokingly says "Woodrow Wilson? Willy Wonka? Walter White?"
• Always Second Best: Walt's attempt in Season 5 to take over the now-deceased Gus Fring's meth empire to far less success. Mike is quick to frequently remind Walt how poor of a successor he is to Gus.
  Mike: Just because you shot Jesse James, don't make you Jesse James.
• AM/FM Characterization: Classic Rock. The show's music supervisor decided that Walt's musical tastes are stuck in The '70s, as he's a fan of Boz Scaggs and Steely Dan. In "Caballo Sin Nombre", he sings along to "Horse With No Name" by America, because he thinks it's a cool song even if no one else does.
• Ambiguously Evil: There's no doubt that Walt isn't a moral person — he cooks crystal meth with no concern about the lives that his drugs will destroy. However, his reasons for going down that path are understandable (he is in a terrible financial condition and he is dying of cancer), and the real question is whether his intentions are noble or not. Early on, it's clear he wants his family to have a stable financial future after he dies, but as time goes on it becomes more apparent that part of the reason why he's making drugs is to get revenge on the society that treated him like dirt for years. His questionable morality serves as a crux for the plot of the story. In the end, he claims that he was really doing everything for himself, though he at least tries to redeem himself in the last episode. However, he is still completely unapologetic about his sins and makes it quite clear he would do it all over again if given the chance.
• And Then What?: He gets this from Skyler after he makes more money cooking meth than they could ever spend in 10 lifetimes, nor could she safely launder without attracting unwanted attention.
• Animal Motifs: Walter is repeatedly associated with roaches, even sneaking into homes under cover of fumigation in order to continue cooking meth in season 5. Just keep an eye on how often he's sitting in front of posters codifying various species of roach and other vermin.
• Anti-Hero: Deconstructed and Subverted. He starts out as something of this status, and then goes through several scales of grey as the seasons come and go, with his actions becoming less and less excusable, and his true motive becoming more and more questionable. When exactly he crosses the line into Villain Protagonist is very much up to the viewer. He returns to something of this status in "Felina".
• Anti-Villain: Well-Intentioned Extremist with a side of Health Care Motivation, before Character Development turns him into more of a Noble Demon, especially in season 5's second half when he turns against Jesse and Hank. He initially tries to reason with Jesse, and when it proves futile he makes the painful decision to have him killed albeit quickly and painlessly. As for Hank, Walt would rather surrender himself than even consider killing his brother-in-law.
• Apathetic Teacher: At best. Walt cares very little about the lazy and spoiled students in his class and doesn't think twice about casually failing one. As the series goes on he sees teaching more and more as a soul-sucking day job.
• Apologetic Attacker:
  • Walt breaks down crying and apologizing over and over after being forced to kill Krazy-8.
  • Later in season 5, after fatally shooting Mike, when he realizes he could've just gotten the information he wanted elsewhere.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • He becomes a minor one to the Salamanca Family after he "betrays" Tuco. Gus only dissuades Leonel & Marco Salamanca (aka The Cousins) from killing Walt by offering to let them kill Hank instead.
  • Gus Fring is one to him, though it's more intense on Walt's end. At first, Walt is perfectly happy to work for Gus, but they have a falling out over Walt protecting Jesse and having Gale murdered. Afterward, Gus makes it clear that he'd happily kill Walt when it becomes an option. Gus even goes as far as to turn Jesse against Walt and then cut Walt out of the business when he has Jesse's loyalty, only letting Walt live as a favor to Jesse. When Saul warns the DEA of Gus' hit on Hank on Walt's orders, one or the other has to go.
  • Hank views Heisenberg as his "white whale", single-mindedly focused on the hunt for him above everything else, to the point of contemplating retiring when he temporarily believed him to be dead. When Hank learns that Walt was Heisenberg all along, it becomes very personal and very important for him to be the one who brings Walt in.
  • Jack Welker becomes perhaps Walt's most hated enemy of all after he kills Hank and steals roughly 87 percent of Walt's millions. Walt hates him so much that he is willing to die to kill Jack.
• Armor-Piercing Response: This happens several times in Season 5 and momentarily snap Walter out of his pride and make him recognize what he has done.
  • Invoked by Skyler twice in Season 5, first during a fight in "Fifty-One", Skyler lists ways she can make the kids stay away from Walt. While Walt rebuffs them (in his Heisenberg voice), she declares that she will do everything until Walt dies of cancer. Later, and successfully, Skyler finally is able to get Walter out of the meth business by showing him the money he's made and demanding to know "How big does this pile have to be?" Walter finally does retire after this.
  • Having run away from the police, Walter calls Walter Jr. offering to send him his money. Flynn refuses and declares he wants Walter dead. A heartbroken and guilt-stricken Walter calls the police, but then he sees his former business partner on TV.
  • A lesser example, but when he gloats that he's in the "empire business", Jesse wearily points out that an empire based on cooking meth and getting people hooked on it isn't really that much to be proud of, no matter how good the meth is.
• Asshole Victim: In-Universe. When Hank has found out the truth about Walter and beats him up while angrily confronting him about it, Walter tells Hank that his cancer is back, to which Hank merely responds:
  Hank: Good. Rot, you son of a bitch.
• The Atoner: An extremely dark version in "Felina". He doesn't show a whole lot of remorse for anything he's put his family and Jesse through, and still resorts to unscrupulous methods to do something that at least resembles atonement, such as threatening Elliot and Gretchen into sending money to Skyler.
• Badass Boast:
  • "Stay out of my territory."
  • "I am not in danger, Skyler. I AM the danger. A guy opens the door and gets shot, you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!"
  • "I won."
  • "I'm in the empire business."
  • "I'm the cook. I'm the man who killed Gus Fring. Say my name."
  • "If you don't know who I am, then maybe your best course would be to tread lightly."
  • "Elliott, if we're gonna go that way, you'll need a bigger knife."
• Badass Bookworm: He's an extremely well-read and educated man, which serves to make him even more dangerous and capable. He's not a strong fighter but his dastardly plans speak for themselves.
• Badass on Paper: While Walt does accomplish much throughout his tenure as a drug kingpin, he leaves too many loose ends in his personal life, and his lack of long-term criminal connections means he quickly loses control of the drug cartel he acquired after Gus Fring's death, which forces him to work with Jack's gang, who are even harder to control. Ultimately, Walt lacks the cold, expansive, ruthless efficiency that Gus possessed to hold onto his 'empire'. Somewhat subverted by the fact that this Non-Action Big Bad cooks meth so effectively and was able to outsmart and kill almost every single drug lord or mercenary boss who opposed him could be considered badass in an Indy Ploy fashion.
• Bad Liar: Walt is toe-curlingly awful at lying; mostly because he cannot merely tell a simple story and just stick to it, but is downright compelled to make up an elaborate and complicated tale that paints himself in the best possible light. And to Walt Jr. after "Ozymandias". Eventually he's even this to Jesse after Blood Money.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: When Walt sees Skyler for the last time and he starts to say "everything I have done..." she thinks he's about to repeat his usual justification for his crimes. Instead, he finally admits that he mostly did it for himself.
• Bald Head of Toughness: In the sixth episode of the series, Walter's hair starts falling out from chemotherapy. He shaves it all off later on in the episode right before Taking a Level In Badass by adopting the hardened, ruthless drug kingpin persona he names "Heisenberg", who he'd slowly morph into over the course of the show. Lampshaded by his son who reacts to seeing his dad's new look with "Badass, Dad!"
• Bald of Evil: Walter shaving his head coincides with him adopting the ruthless Heisenberg persona, after which he has no qualms, threatening, extorting, and murdering to maintain his power. Notably, when he grows it back for "Granite State" and "Felina", he's become The Atoner.
• Baldness Means Sickness: Invoked and zig-zagged. When Walt begins losing his hair from chemotherapy, he shaves his head and invokes the typical image of a bald cancer patient. However, in the criminal circles he enters, his baldness comes off as more intimidating. Even once he goes into remission, he keeps his head shaved more out of habit, and as a sign his Heisenberg persona is becoming his main personality. Ironically, after his remission ends later in the show he has fully regrown his hair and keeps it that way until he finally dies (and not from the cancer).
• Batman Gambit:
  • His victory against Gus hinges on Gus being so bent on revenge that he would want to kill Hector himself. It works. He later uses it to wipe out the Nazis and Lydia, seeing Lydia as a Creature of Habit and exploiting Jack's hatred of snitches and Pride against them.
  • He's also the victim of one in "To'hajiilee". Jesse fools Walt into thinking he has found his barrels of money in the desert and is burning it. Panic-stricken, Walt leads Jesse and Hank straight to it. Just for good measure, Jesse also goads him into admitting to the many crimes he has committed, all recorded by Hank.
• Beard of Evil: Or at least Beard of Anti-Heroics, which Walt grows once his actions become less and less excusable. Eventually, it's just a Beard of Evil.
• Beard of Sorrow: He grows one during his self-imposed exile up in New Hampsire. Considering he's lost his family for good, and is hiding out in what amounts to being a barely livable shack with no connection to the outside world, it's not wonder Walter's beard became so coarse and unkempt.
• Because I'm Good At It:
  • In "Felina", he finally admits to Skyler that this is why he went on cooking.
  • In the final scene of the show, Walt takes a rather nostalgic-feeling stroll through the Aryans' meth lab before dying of blood loss from his bullet wound. Badfinger's "Baby Blue" starts playing as background music, with the lyrics implying that he is dying next to his true love, which isn't his family or even his money, but his blue meth, his creation that he is so proud of because there is no one better than him.
• Becoming the Mask:
  • Walt invents "Heisenberg", his criminal alter ego, as both a convenient pseudonym and a coping mechanism. As time goes on and his behavior becomes more flagrantly amoral, Heisenberg slowly becomes his true nature. Or perhaps it always was and Walter White was the mask.
    Walter: I am not in danger, Skyler. I AM the danger. A guy opens the door and gets shot, you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!.
  • This is emphasized in Season 5 when he starts wearing Heisenberg's iconic pork pie hat in everyday life. And when Declan identifies him as Heisenberg, to which he responds, "You're goddamn right."
• Being Evil Sucks: Walt struggles with lying to Skyler when he first starts making drugs, particularly going into Season 3 when his wife asks for a divorce for all the lies he told, as well as finding out he's manufacturing meth. His guilt almost drives him to walk away from the drug trade. Over time, though, he gets over it.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Walt's refusal to take responsibility for his actions borders on downright delusional. Despite the numerous chances he gets to get out of the business yet still provide for his family that he doesn't take, he genuinely believes that cooking meth and putting his family in danger is the only way to ensure their future. This even goes into his backstory with Grey Matter - despite admitting to Jesse that he walked away voluntarily, he tells both Saul and Gretchen that they cut him out and profited from his research, despite having no reason to lie to Saul and Gretchen already knowing the full story; Gretchen even angrily asks if that's genuinely how he views the events because they're so skewed from how it actually happened.
  • Vince Gilligan even says that the writers consider self-deception to be Walter White's greatest talent. Which is what makes it all the more shocking when, in the final episode, Walt finally admits that he committed all the crimes he did over the series to make himself feel important and powerful, and not, as he had always previously insisted, for the good of his family.
    We always say in the writers’ room, if Walter White has a true superpower, it’s not his knowledge of chemistry or his intellect, it’s his ability to lie to himself. He is the world’s greatest liar. He could lie to the pope. He could lie to Mother Teresa. He certainly could lie to his family, and he can lie to himself, and he can make these lies stick. He can make himself believe, in the face of all contrary evidence, that he is still a good man.
• Beneath Notice: In Season 1, Hank is able to trace a stolen gas mask to Walt's inventory, but it never crosses his mind that it was Walt who stole it because he knows him personally and thinks him too meek to be capable of that. Instead, he keeps investigating under the assumption that it was Walt's students who stole it and never seriously questions him.
• Berserk Button: Attacking his Pride in any way is probably the most dangerous thing you can do, as Mike found out. In "Granite State", the Schwartzes bring Walt back from the very edge of the Despair Event Horizon from thousands of miles away simply by unintentionally smashing down hard on his Berserk Button regarding his role in Gray Matter.
• Best Served Cold:
  • He finally receives a recompense of sorts from Gray Matter by blackmailing them into establishing a trust fund for his children.
    Walter: Cheer up, beautiful people. This is where you get to make it right.
  • In "Felina", he finally kills the Nazis, months after they killed Hank, stole Walt's money, and enslaved Jesse in "Ozymandias".
• Better Living Through Evil: He earned barely over $40K a year in his legal job as a high school chem teacher. As a meth lord, 80 million in less than a year.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Applies in the early seasons before the "nice" goes out the window. He was a meek, unimpressive man before cancer. Now, people prefer not to cross him.
• Big Bad: In Season 5. For the first half and most of the second half, he's Hank's main target after he discovers that he is Heisenberg.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Lydia and Jack Welker during Season 5 as a whole, all of them being at different hierarchical levels, but neither of them having any subservience or loyalty to each other. All three are key players in the meth empire after Gus' demise, and fittingly, all three die on the same day alongside the remains of Heisemberg's legacy.
• Big Bad Friend: "Heisenberg" is Hank's personal nemesis, but Walter is his close friend and brother-in-law. Walt occasionally uses his position in Hank's life to fish for info and keep tabs on what the DEA knows.
• Big Bad Slippage: His entire character arc in the storyline is this. As someone who has one of the longest, most complex Face-Heel Turns ever put on television, he happens to be Hank's main target after he discovers that he is Heisenberg.
• Big Bad Wannabe: For most of the series, Walter is not as threatening or powerful as he thinks he is, being beaten by more experienced villains like the Juarez Cartel, Gus, and Mike. He bumbles through the process and lands on his feet through cunning, dumb luck and his partner Jesse but he doesn't inspire the level of intimidation and respect he likes to think he does.
• Birthday Beginning: The first episode begins on Walt's 50th, and it's also the last normal day of his life (he is diagnosed with cancer the next day). His 51st and 52nd birthdays are significant too: on 51, Skyler turns on him for good, even to the point of wishing death on him, and on his 52nd birthday, he returns to Albuquerque to die.
• Blackmail:
  • Walter blackmails Jesse to begin working with him in the first episode, having witnessed Jesse leaving a crime scene. Later, Walter emotionally blackmails Jesse into murdering Gale in cold blood, to save his own skin, having previously saved Jesse from being killed.
  • Pulls a nasty example in "Confessions", where he makes a "confession tape" confessing to all of his crimes, while saying that his brother-in-law, Hank, was behind everything, using his DEA knowledge to become the meth kingpin and threatening him and his family to get him to do what he wants. He does it as a warning to Hank to get off his back.
• Blatant Lies: Unavoidable, really, considering the path he goes down. He actually starts out pretty good at it, but as time goes on and the lies begin to stack he begins to get worse at it.
• Blessed with Suck: How he views his cancer going into remission since it robs him of a convenient excuse for his awful deeds and a convenient escape from their repercussions.
• Bloody Handprint: In the ending to the series, after Walt leans on a tank to steady himself, it leaves behind a bloody "w" on the tank of meth.
• The Bore: His life before his life of crime. You can really see this when he has conversations with old friends at Gretchen's party or any time he talks to Hank in the first season.
• Born Lucky: Invoked by Jesse, when he mentions just how successful Walter has been in the meth business to Hank and Gomez.
  Jesse: Look — look, you two guys are just... guys, okay? Mr. White... he's the devil. You know, he is— he is smarter than you, he is luckier than you. Whatever— Whatever you think is supposed to happen— I'm telling you, the exact reverse opposite of that is gonna happen, okay?
• Break His Heart to Save Him: His phone call at the end of "Ozymandias". Knowing that the police are listening, he calls Skyler and portrays himself as a psychotic abuser who terrorized her into complicity in his crimes from the get-go so she won't be prosecuted for willingly aiding him and so Marie and Walt Jr. won't shun her. He's playing it up hard and you can see the moment Skyler realizes this.
• Break the Haughty: Over the course of the final season: Walt is now the drug kingpin of New Mexico, but things start going downhill from there. Jesse and Mike leave the business, Hank finally figures out who "Heisenberg" really is, Hank apprehends him soon after, Hank is shot and killed by Walt's neo-Nazi "friends", and Walt's family becomes fearful of him, thus causing him to go into exile across the country alone...until the season finale, at least.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Progressively for Jesse over the course of his descent into villainy, culminating in the revelation of his true evil in "Confessions".
  • Hank and Marie do not react well when they discover Walt is Heisenberg.
  • Becomes one for Walter Jr. when he finds out who and what his father is. He even legally changed his name to Flynn after the events of "Ozymandias" because he's ashamed to share that name.
• Brought Down to Badass: Walt is at his most lethal when backed into a corner and stripped of his assets, manpower, weapons, and even physical strength. During his absence from New Mexico, his infamy has grown to such an extent that a few crank calls from teenagers (or possibly Badger and Skinny Pete) tie up the entire Albuquerque PD. Throw in a couple of laser pointers for good measure and voilà: Instant hit squad! ("Felina")
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: To Gus in Season 3, and Jesse and Tuco before that: His behavior is erratic and he sometimes threatens to stop working if he doesn't get what he wants, but the meth he cooks is so pure that his bosses are willing to accommodate him. Walter White loves to weaponize this trope. However, it eventually backfires when Gus tires of Walt's antics (cumulating in the deaths of two of his street dealers) and tries to have him killed when his would've-been replacement Gale Boetticher was good enough to cook his formula. In response, Walt orders Gale's execution through Jesse, forcing Gus to keep them for the time being. Then he tries to train up Jesse to become Walt's replacement, which leads to Walt assassinating Gus with a pipe bomb.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: After listening to Hank wax lyrical about what a genius Gale was and how he could've helped humanity if he'd only wanted to, Walt offers his "humble" opinion that Gale's notes looked more like rote copying than his own work.

C-E

• The Cameo: Has a ~5 minute flashback scene in El Camino. Also appears in Better Call Saul in the episode, "Breaking Bad", and in the series finale.
• Cannot Kill Their Loved Ones: Even at his most evil, the one moral line he will not cross is killing a member of his own family. When Hank discovers he is Heisenberg, he angrily turns down Saul's suggestion of sending Hank to Belize, and when Hank has Walt cornered, Walt cancels The Cavalry and willingly surrenders without a fight (unfortunately, said cavalry had other ideas...).
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Forces this on Gus after he murders Gale, since he and Jesse were the only ones who still knew how to make the blue meth for him. Gus initially accepts but then resorts to pulling Jesse away from Walt to keep him as his cook while disposing of the latter, and by "Crawl Space", Walt knows for sure this won't work on Gus.
• Can't Spit It Out: He seems completely incapable of expressing the kinship he feels for Jesse, even though he goes batshit every time he's in danger. This bites him in the ass in Bug, since his constant belittling of Jesse (who is still disturbed by Gale's death and finds some satisfaction in working with Mike) finally pushes Jesse over the edge. And boy, was the biting long overdue. He gets somewhat better in season 5, but only because he figures out that appealing to his need for approval is the best way to manipulate Jesse.
• Can't Take Criticism: It goes hand in hand with his massive ego. In Say My Name, he goes berserk when Mike calls him out on that ego for messing up the criminal empire he inherited from Gus.
• Car Fu: After realizing that there is no way Jesse and two of Gus' child-murdering drug dealers can solve things amicably, he ensures the former's survival and runs the two dealers over with his car at the end of season 3, killing one of them and crippling the other. This completely destroys his business relationship with Gus.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • He deduces everything Gus tries to do with Jesse in season 4, but he fails to convince Pinkman himself. Ironically, when Jesse finally believes him about one of Gus' schemes, Walt is actually the culprit.
  • Walt really didn't murder Hank, but by then he has alienated his loved ones so much that not even Skyler and Walt Jr believe him. In Better Call Saul, he is considered Hank and Gomez’s murderer, posthumously being blamed for one crime he didn’t commit.
• Character Development: One of the main themes in Breaking Bad. He basically starts off from a meek, socially awkward put upon chemistry teacher who also works at a car wash to a more assertive, abusive patriarch. And the rest is history.
• The Chessmaster: Zigzagged, as he's a rather clever schemer and tactician but he often struggles to think ahead, which is what eventually dooms him. He finally became one in "Face Off" and "Felina".
• Chronic Villainy: No matter how many times he's in danger, he would go back to his meth business just because he can. He gives up his drug business after "Gliding Over All", only for Hank discover that he is Heisenberg, forcing him to go back into his criminal ways.
• Clandestine Chemist: A Trope Codifier. Walt is a brilliant chemist, but after leaving a company that became successful without him and working as a chemistry teacher to make ends meet, he doesn't get to use his full potential. Until he enters the meth business.
• Confess to a Lesser Crime:
  • When Skyler confronts him about his odd behavior, he tells her he's buying pot from Jesse.
  • In "Seven Thirty-Seven", he confesses to changing the TV channel when Hector attempts to accuse Walter of poisoning Tuco's food.
  • In early season 4, to explain his newfound wealth and erratic behavior, he tells Hank and Marie he got into underground gambling.
  • Also in "Salud" to Walt Jr. — to explain his injuries, he lies that he's back into gambling.
• Consummate Liar: Walter lies to everyone, including himself.
• Control Freak: Another trait of Walt's that is both a great strength and a great flaw. His perfectionism makes his product the best on the market, but his love of control leads him increasingly to act like a Manipulative Bastard, not just to protect himself, but to change the behavior of those close to him whenever it doesn't suit him.
• Cooldown Hug: Gives one to Jesse when the latter vents over how Walt is unable to be truthful about his motives for getting him to leave town.
• The Corrupter: Both in a Downplayed intentional fashion and in an unintentional fashion. While Jesse was already in the meth business, Walt coerces and manipulates him into doing things that he would never have considered doing beforehand. Unintentionally, Walt's influence has a similar effect on everyone around him. One of the writers noted, "Walt has corrupted everyone."
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot:
  • Invoked in Fly, in which Walt tries to pinpoint the exact moment where, if he'd just died, his family would have had enough money to live comfortably and wouldn't have been in danger because of his involvement in the drug trade.
  • In season 5, Mike refuses to tell Walt the names of his nine guys in prison (because Walt would try to kill them to prevent them from talking). Infuriated, Walt shoots Mike, fatally wounding him. When he sees the dying Mike, Walt realizes he could have just gone to Lydia for the list of names.
  • The entire show is this trope for Walt. His money problems and lack of professional success are due entirely to his own ego and miserliness- he once had a promising career in Gray Matter and his work even co-earned him a Nobel Prize, but he threw it all away because he couldn't stand the fact that his then-girlfriend came from money as he wanted to be an entirely self-made man, and for the self-same reason he turns Gray Matter down later both when they offer him a well-paid job out of genuine respect for his talents and contribution to the company, or at least to cover his medical expenses, and even then it is implied that they would have helped him out at numerous points in the show if he had only asked for it. His entire criminal career, and all of the death and destruction that goes with it, is based on the incredibly petty motive that he doesn't like handouts.
  • In the final episode of Better Call Saul, a flashback shows Saul telling Walt that, if he had explained the situation with Grey Matter earlier, Walt could have used his legal expertise to earn him the money legally (which would also have gotten back at his ex). Of course, Saul doesn't know that Walt left the company of his own volition, and Walt makes it clear he would never have gone to Saul for help if he had taken that avenue.
• Cruel to Be Kind: In "Ozymandias", during the phone call that Walter knows is bugged, he begins to belittle and insult Skyler while at the same time making it look like Skyler had nothing to do with his activities at all. Initially confused at his words, she eventually catches on that he is trying to get her off the hook for all of his activities and that the act is for the DEA. He also makes it sound like he killed Hank, even though he didn't, if only so that Marie can know that her husband is dead and get some semblance of closure.
• Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Despite his insistence that his crimes are for the sake of his family, it's clear especially by season 5 that Walt relishes the fear and respect he can command as Heisenberg, successfully intimidating Declan into working with him and accruing eighty million dollars (far more than his family could ever hope to spend) without realizing by making and selling his meth just because he can.
• Dare to Be Badass: To Jesse. Or, well, Dare to Appear Badass, anyway. "Jesse, look at me. You are a blowfish."
• Dark Secret:
  • While he didn't directly kill Jane, he can never tell his partner Jesse that he intentionally let her die. Until he tells Jesse as he's carted off to Aryan doom...
  • As of the Season 4 finale, he can also never tell Jesse (or anybody for that matter) that he was the one who poisoned Brock. Until Jesse figures it out....
  • And as of Season 5, he can also never tell Jesse that he murdered Mike. However, this was actually more of an Open Secret since both Jesse and Lydia figured out that Walt murdered Mike, despite Walt's denial.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sometimes to excess, especially to Jesse, "Smoking marijuana, eating Cheetos, and masturbating do not constitute plans in my book."
  • He's very sarcastic when listening to Skyler's story in Season 4 too. "Where is the, "I slept with my boss bullet point?".
• Death Equals Redemption:
  • Dies from a stray 7.62mm round from his rigged M60 to his right lung while saving Jesse from Jack and his gang's clutches.
• Death Glare: Surprisingly, a master of this. Just see his expression near the end of "Over", to Saul in "Bullet Points", to Bogdan in "Cornered" or to Jesse in "Ozymandias".
• Death Seeker: After he kills Jack and his gang in "Felina", he tells Jesse that he wants Jesse to kill him. By this time, he's not only dying from cancer but also has a fatal bullet wound.
• Death Wail: His reaction to Hank getting killed is so agonized that it's inaudible.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Of the Anti-Hero: At face value, Walt aims for a noble goal through sketchy means (getting enough money for his family before he dies); however, his untapped ego, his inability to think beyond a certain point and his rage ensure he's willing to go the extra mile in every aspect of the journey: Be the best at what he does? Obsessive, arrogant, and demeaning toward any subordinate he has. Rebellious? His tantrums and lash-outs have the maturity of a 15-year-old, the intensity of 3 suns, and the deadliness of a lunatic. Well-meaning? Up to a point, but it's hard when your line of work encourages you to be as heartless as possible. Counterculture? Crystal meth manufacturing is more of an illegal predatory business like the rest, even if it's more honest about it. Dangerous? Any trait he has, he can turn into a weapon in the blink of an eye. So watch out for the cold look behind the glasses. Strong? As much as a geeky chemist can be, which is not much considering he can strike with just the right elements with no fingers moved. Torn between good and evil in him? Both are part of the same person, who can and will ignore any kind of guilt as long as he can think he's doing the right thing. Not so heroic now, huh?
  • Of the Butt-Monkey: Walt views himself as an undeserving punching bag whose fate was decided the moment he turned his back on greatness, so he rationalizes his actions as a back-biting response. While he indeed has endured a lot of bad luck (past and present), casting himself as one ignores the fact that much of his misfortunes were his own fault caused by his arrogance and pride.
  • Of the Diabolical Mastermind: He only has the confidence to pull off his audacious plans because he feels he has nothing else to live for. Once his justifications and the sword over his shoulder are removed, it only becomes a matter of time before his guarded dark side starts overtaking his personality.
    Marie: That arrogant asshole thinks he's a criminal mastermind but he's not.
  • Of the Justified Criminal: Walter's actions have far-reaching consequences since he can only plan so far and his justifications get weaker and more self-serving as time goes on, to the point where Skyler balks at his "bullshit rationales". It's indicated as early as season 1 when Walt scoffs at the idea of his former colleagues solving all of his financial and intellectual problems on the grounds of "charity".
  • Of the Insufferable Genius: Make no mistake, Walt is brilliant... at chemistry, engineering, and Indy Ploy schemes. At everything else, he's totally inept. He has no social skills, no sense of patience, limited combat abilities, and absolutely zero desire to get along with anyone on his road to becoming kingpin. While Walt is brilliant, he is a huge liability to Gus's operation, and the two of them clash multiple times. If Walt could rein in his ego he and Gus would probably be unstoppable, but since Walt wants to be the one on top, he ends up causing a huge amount of problems for the cast. Furthermore, he's one of those people who clearly believes that the very specialised subject that they happen to be brilliant at is the only one that actually matters — meaning that he refuses to take any suggestions from anyone else, even (or especially) if they happen to be better than him at something.
• Determined Expression: While waiting for the police to arrive and arrest him, he sees a TV interview of Eliott discrediting his contribution to Gray Matter; this sparks his final move for the finale.
• Died Happily Ever After: With his family taken care of and his enemies killed off, he strolls through a meth lab before falling dead.
• Died on Their Birthday: He dies on his 52nd birthday from a bullet wound he got shielding Jesse from his jerry-rigged turret gun.
• Dies Wide Open: In "Felina", after passing away from blood loss, his eyes are gazing at the ceiling, with a faint look of satisfaction.
• Dirty Coward: Zig-Zagged - Although he's willing to storm into Tuco's lair and threaten to blow it up with the rest of his fulminated mercury, his cowardice is one of his glaring flaws when it leads to him poisoning a child. He even sends an old lady into the house to test if Gus' mooks are in there and then tries to have Jesse killed by proxy, leading to Hank's death. It may be fairer to say that Walt is an extreme pragmatist. If there is no easy way to do something, he will do it the hard way like defying Tuco, taunting Mike in the Season 3 finale, or staring his brother-in-law in the face. However, if there is a cowardly alternative, he will do it no question asked.
  • He fakes being one in the Season 3 finale by ostensibly selling out Jesse, when really he is getting Jesse ready to kill Gale and then smugly reciting Gale's address to Mike.
• Disc-One Final Boss: For Season 5, he's the Big Bad of his own story until "Ozymandias" when his brother-in-law is murdered, most of his money is stolen, and he's outed to the public, which forces him to go on the run.
• Dissonant Serenity: His demeanor through the last episode, "Felina". Of note is the scene of Walt setting up his machine gun rig, humming the lyrics to a Marty Robbins ear worm as he does it.
• Disguised Hostage Gambit: Walt pulls a really nasty inverted one on Hank. When Hank shows no signs of letting up on his pursuit of Walt, Walt shoots a "confession" video in which he fingers Hank as Heisenberg, claims to have been forced to work as Hank's unwitting chemist, and claims that Hank is trying to engineer his death. In one fell swoop, Walt effectively neutralizes Hank's potential credibility if he were to arrest him.
• Disowned Parent: After learning that his father is a drug lord, Walt Jr. tells him that he never wants to see him again, and legally changes his name to Flynn so that he'll no longer be associated with him.
• Ditzy Genius: Criminal version. Walter is way out of his depth in navigating the underworld business, and Krazy-8 even says that this line of business does not suit him. Walter's ego and pride doesn't help either, and ultimately he's just an exceptional cook and scientist with a good network - a network that can easily turn on him because they know he's powerless. That being said, every so often he pops out an insane scheme that works, and actually takes down a powerful underworld figure like Gus Fring. Throughout the show, the conflicts with the kingpins make clear that although Walt is a brilliant chemist, engineer, manipulator, and short term tactician, he's consistently naive about how the criminal underworld works compared to experienced criminals like Mike and often makes stupid strategic mistakes such as attacking Ted's office or trying to off Mike's guys or leaving Gale's Walt Whitman book. Hank marvels at how Heisenberg is smart enough to use homemade thermite to break into a chemical warehouse but stupid enough not to roll the barrel to his getaway car.
  Hank: You're the smartest guy I ever met, and yet you're still too stupid to see. He made up his mind ten minutes ago.
• The Dog Bites Back: Walt's default position should anybody back him into a corner, strip him of agency, threaten him from what they think is a relatively safe position of authority, or manage to exert control for a time: he attacks when he gets an opportunity to and has been wound up enough. The series basically shows his bite getting better, more ferocious, and more on a hair trigger as he goes along. He goes from a Chihuahua to a toy poodle to a German Shepard to a mastiff... so beware the bite.
• Domestic Abuse: He's a nasty husband to Skyler in Season 5, he psychologically abuses her when she tries to send the kids to Hank and Marie's and it's implied he rapes her, given her chilling line, "I can't even get you out of my bed".
• The Don: Subverted. Once he gets into the habit of manufacturing crystal meth, this is what Walter aspires to be. Unfortunately for him, he lacks Gus' people skills and patience to be a proper mob boss.
• Do Not Go Gentle: His early motivation, when he learns he's got cancer, is to die on his own terms. He attempts it by initially refusing treatment and going into the meth business to provide for his family. This is partially because he saw his father die as a weak shell, struck down by his illness. In "Felina", he dies from blood loss after being shot in the side by the M60 he rigs in the trunk of his car which he uses to kill Jack and his Aryan Brotherhood gang.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Walt is so obsessed with the idea of becoming a Self-Made Man all on his own intellect that he is furious about any ideas that he might be falling short of something, and treats offers of help, charity, and even sympathy from others as personal insults. He refuses the offer to pay his medical expenses from two of his old colleagues. He also becomes quite angry when his son sets up a website to raise money for his surgery, only relenting when Saul persuades him to use it to launder his drug money.
  Gretchen: I feel so sorry for you, Walt.
  Walt: [brimming with fury] ...Fuck you.
• Doom Magnet: By series end, Walter's actions have led to worsening the lives of virtually every major and most minor characters in the series, if not killing them outright.
• Doting Parent: For all his flaws, Walt truly does love his children.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Between seasons 3 and 4, he is Gustavo Fring's chief meth cook. While Gus has his conflicts with The Juarez Cartel, Walter clearly doesn't mind, and later plans to dismantle his business when the conflict between him and Gus begins to solidify.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Walt spends all of Season 4 trying to convince Jesse of what Gus is up to no avail. When Jesse finally does believe him, it's when Walt is lying to him.
  • Hank's death, one of the few things that Walt is genuinely not responsible for (in fact, he tried his damndest to prevent it), is the thing that finally breaks his relationship with his wife and son.
• The Dreaded: By Season 5, he is feared by anyone who knows him as Heisenberg.
  Walt: Now, say my name.
  Declan: [beat] [quietly] [You're] Heisenberg.
  Walt: You're goddamn right.
• Drunk with Power: After offing Gus, Walt considers himself invincible. He even tells Mike his plan with the magnets worked, "Because I say so".
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: It's true that Walt gets no formal respect from his school, his pupils, or Hank and Marie, his brother- and sister-in-law. However, deconstructed by Skyler, who he constantly accuses of not respecting him, to which she usually replies that no, she doesn't, because he's a drug dealer who has put her and their children's lives in danger many times.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: He's still seething over selling his stock in Grey Matter for a paltry five grand. The final straw is a Coincidental Broadcast in a roadside bar in New Hampshire: Gretchen and Elliott appearing on national news to trash Walter's contribution to the company.
• Dying Alone: Ultimately dies of blood loss without any of his friends or family.
• Dying as Yourself: His greatest goal. Ultimately, he loses everyone that he ever loved, but he does regain some concept of who he was just minutes before he was about to die.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Walt is mortally wounded by a stray bullet fired from his M60 gun turret, killing everyone in the Nazi compound except for Jack, Jesse, Todd, and himself. Walt, seemingly unfazed by his injury, advances on Jack and executes him.
  • Not only that, but Walt spends the last day of his life guaranteeing a future for his family, making amends with Skyler, saving Jesse from his enslavement and manages to die on his own terms rather than succumbing to his cancer.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Or your Bittersweet Ending, anyway. Walt dies, but his family is taken care of. Jesse is free but likely to be emotionally damaged for life. And Walt's beloved meth empire dies with him.
• Enraged by Idiocy: In the early days, he was prone to extensive ranting at Jesse's screw-ups.
• Et Tu, Brute?: The only thing he can say, while being arrested by Hank, is one word to Jesse.
  Walt: Coward.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Even when they have an Awful Wedded Life, Skyler still loves him, and both Jesse and Saul desperately crave his affection. Who is the lucky one out of those two is really up for debate, as he's possessive over Jesse but Jesse internalizes how worthless he is, while Saul is jealous of the attention Jesse gets but logically knows (and remembers) how horrible the dynamic is.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • About the only thing that keeps Walter from turning into an irredeemable monster is that even at his worst, he still cares for his family, and he comes to see Jesse as a surrogate son in a twisted sort of way. He refuses to kill Hank and Jesse when it's suggested to him, even though killing them would be the simplest solution for him. While he is eventually pushed to order Jesse's murder, he orders it fast and painless and only does so after Jesse makes a threat that Walt believes is against his family. Finally and most powerfully, in "Ozymandias", he begs Jack to spare Hank, offering Jack all of his 80 million dollars just to let Hank go.
  • Probably the shining example of this is in "Felina." In his last act of charity before tying off every loose end and shutting down the Albuquerque meth empire for good, he forces his old colleagues from Grey Matter to give the almost 10 million dollars he has left to his son in an irrevocable trust fund on his 18th birthday with the hope that he'll use it to support his family after his own fate is resolved.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Zig-zagged/subverted: At the beginning, Walt shows genuine disgust at the actions of criminals like Tuco, and is horrified by his brutal, senseless murder of No-Doze. As the series goes on, Walt seems to abandon his standards while still claiming, outwardly to have standards against physically hurting people who aren't part of the criminal underworld. Increasingly, his actions contradict this slightly, or at least indicate that he's in denial.
    • While he is very careful to note that he didn't kill Brock and knew exactly how much poison to give him to ensure that he did not die, he still shows a remarkable lack of guilt for doing what he did, and doesn't seem to feel uncomfortable around Brock at all following the incident. He also doesn't seem to show much genuine disgust for children getting hurt and/or killed, whether it's by Gus and his men, or by Todd, although he claims out loud that he is disgusted.
    • The shift seems to happen during/after Jane's death; at first, Walt is panicked and wants to help. However, as he stops himself, he seems to be oddly serene about her death. The ensuing plane crash causes him to feel some guilt, but he focuses almost immediately on trying to justify and move on from the emotions, and not on acknowledging the horror.
    • He manages to actually say "sorry" to Mike for killing him, but is mainly sorry because he realized he could have gotten the information another way, not because the killing was unjustified either way and he left Kaylee without a grandfather. He is also unable to admit what he did to Mike to anyone but Saul, and when he lies through his teeth to Jesse about what happened, seems to be convincing himself.
  • In spite of all this, Walt seems to genuinely shift and bring his standards back to more human ones following Hank's death. Walt didn't kill him, but he is arguably responsible for his death, and in the moment when someone from his family was physically harmed, he finally realizes the material results of his actions. Throughout the next three episodes, he finally drops the pretence and is more honest with himself and others.
    • Despite how unfathomable his hatred of Jesse becomes by the finale, he still can't bring himself to let him die when he sees just how horribly Jack and his gang have been treating him, so he tackles Jesse to the ground and takes a bullet instead.
  • In a flashback in Better Call Saul, he's noticeably put off when Saul claims his biggest regret was injuring his leg during a scam. Walt had just admitted his own biggest regret (leaving Grey Matter before it took off) and sees Saul's (false) claim as proof that Saul has always been the manipulative jerk he is now.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He is completely baffled by Jesse's desire to leave the meth business after the death of Drew Sharp.
• Evil Feels Good: It's initially Downplayed, as the thrill of his near-death experiences makes him more active in bed, but having to (or choosing to) murder people does not give him any satisfaction. After Season 4, he fully plays this straight once he has the monopoly over the business, as evidenced by his smug smile when he's informed the murders of Gus' men have been carried out, though he refuses to admit it out loud to anyone close to him. He eventually confesses this to Skyler in "Felina", at which point he had nothing left to lose and wanted to go out with no secrets.
• Evil Genius: As increasingly amoral and ruthless as Walt becomes, one aspect of his personality that cannot be refuted is his brilliant mind. He isn't just a skilled chemist, he's also a cunning plotter, a shrewd personal manipulator, and has skill in engineering by way of tinkering with hardware to create some cobbled-together gadgets if needed. The only thing that continuously gets in his way is his cripplingly massive ego.
• Evil Is Hammy: He deliberately invokes this in his phone call with Skyler in "Ozymandias". Knowing that the police are listening to their conversation, Walt puts on a harsher tone when talking to Skyler in order to make her look like an innocent victim of a dangerous husband to the police so she can get off the hook.
  • Played straight in his "I am the one who knocks" speech.
• Evil Is Petty: Blaming Jesse for Hank's death, Walt tells Jesse that he watched Jane die. At this point, Walt had already handed Pinkman over to Jack's gang to be executed as payback for his former partner siding against him, so telling him the truth about Jane served no other purpose but for Walt to twist the knife further. invoked Vince Gilligan actually said that he considers this the worst thing that Walter does on the show, as it is the one thing that he does that is actually sadistic in nature.
• Evil Wears Black: As Walt descends into Heisenberg he starts wearing black more often. For example, the infamous "Stay out of my territory" and "Say My Name" scenes have Walt wearing a black outfit.
• Ex-Big Bad: After Jack kills Hank, takes most of his money, and he's ousted to the public, he ceases to be much of any threat.
• Expy:
  • Much of his character is loosely based on Tony Soprano from The Sopranos. According to both Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston: without Tony Soprano, there would be no Walter White.
  • invoked Vince Gilligan has described his goal with Walter White as turning Mr. Chips into Scarface.

F-I

• Face–Heel Turn: The main focus of the storyline and one of the longest, most complex, and most meticulous in television history, from put-upon Everyman to Anti-Villain to Villain Protagonist to Big Bad.
• Face Death with Dignity: Walt's final moments on the show have him see that he has been wounded and simply walk calmly to the meth lab and die quietly as the police close in on the place.
• Fainting:
  • While carrying some food down to Krazy-8, showing just how badly the cancer is crippling him.
  • Walter passes out when Hank is murdered by Jack.
• Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: At the start of the story, Walter is teaching high school chemistry, well below the pay grade of someone with a STEM master's degree from Caltech.^note Albuquerque also has atypically low pay for teachers by the standards of major cities. Nearby El Paso, with a similar median household income and similar costs of living, has a median salary of $68,000 for high school teachers; in Albuquerque, it's $48,500. Though benefits are still good. On top of that, he has a second job at a car wash. It's obvious the Whites are struggling financially even before Walt's cancer diagnosis.
• Fan Disservice: Walt sometimes strips down to his tighty whities in order to cook (usually in the first season) or for other reasons, but neither for comedy nor to look pretty.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Pride. Walt has lived his life feeling unappreciated and unnoticed in spite of his brilliance and skill, and through cooking meth and becoming Heisenberg, he attains the validation he's always wanted — he becomes rich, powerful, feared, and got there on his own terms. This is why he becomes so attached to the business because he's achieved something he can be proud of and that gives him power over others. Even before he became a drug dealer, Walt often lashed out when he thought someone is hurting his ego, particularly if he thought they were pitying him. It's also repeatedly shown that Walt's ego causes him to make disastrous decisions, either because he's too arrogant to see problems that may arise from his choice or because he's unwilling to do something (or let others do something) that wounds his pride. Greed manifests as a secondary flaw the deeper he gets into the business. He initially claims he's in the business to make money to provide for his family after he dies, but that point comes and goes and Walt keeps cooking, becoming a multi-millionaire before he's finally convinced to stop.
  • An interesting one- denial, or a lack of responsibility. Walt keeps trying to break into the criminal underworld, but while his chemistry knowledge and product are amazing, his actual foresight and longterm planning is nonexistent. Whenever Jesse runs into a reasonable snag in their operation (needing a distributor to deal more meth, finding it difficult to legally acquire the chemicals needed for P2P meth creation), Walt blames him and calls him an idiot. This is despite the fact that Walt is Jesse's partner by his own admission and thus shares some of the responsibility for keeping the operation up and going. He wants absolutely nothing to do with the grittier sides of the operation and keeps foisting all the responsibility of being caught onto Jesse. This takes a much darker turn in Season 5, where the absence of Gus allows Walter to fill his place in the Albuquerque underworld and run his own empire... which completely falls apart as a result of his actions.
• Faux Affably Evil: Becomes this in Season 5, especially when talking to Skyler. He affects a caring facade, but it's only to try to get her to feel more comfortable and cooperative with his criminal enterprises. Even his lines meant to sound loving sound more like a kidnapper trying to induce Stockholm Syndrome.
• Feels No Pain: He once tore an IV out of his arm and scorched his wrist charred black without so much as a flinch, possibly done to emphasize how much of his humanity he's lost that he doesn't even feel pain anymore.
• Fired Teacher: Happens to him about halfway through the show's run after he makes a pass at the principal. Soon after, he goes to work for Gus.
• Foot-Dragging Divorcee: After Skyler finds out Walt is up to drug crimes at the end of season 2, she kicks him out of the house and tries to push him into signing divorce papers, while Walt insists that he's still happily married to the point of sneaking back into the house. When Walt finally does cave and signs the papers, it's Skyler herself who starts to have second thoughts, and they start to reconcile as Skyler comes up with a gambling story so Walt can use his drug money to pay for Hank's physiotherapy treatments.
• For Science!: He enjoys the chemistry of top-notch meth cooking almost as much (if not just as much, or even more) as the power, money, and criminal thrill that comes with it.
• Foil: Walt shares some traits and differences with each of his rivals throughout the series:
  • Like Tuco, both have a Berserk Button that goes off whenever someone affects their ego. Whilst Tuco wasn't too bright and an aggressive, violent hothead, Walter White is a lower-middle class educated Evil Genius and a (mostly) Non-Action Big Bad.
  • Like Gus Fring, both are criminals that hide in plain sight, ostensibly focused on the "professional" side of drug dealing. Whilst Fring is more pragmatic and a better strategist, Walt is more self-involved and far less adept at working with others, but is a better tactician with superior technical skills to boot.
  • Like Mike, Walt is motivated — at least initially on Walt's side — to get money to ensure the financial stability of their loved ones. Mike does a much better job at remaining Beneath Notice than Walt, but Walt ultimately achieves his monetary goals and gets the money towards his children.
  • Like Hank, both have little regard when it comes to exploiting Jesse for their own ends. The difference being Hank will always view Jesse as a scumbag drug dealer/addict whilst Walt performed a Heroic Sacrifice for Jesse in the end.
  • Like Lydia, both are Properly Paranoid, anal retentive criminals who believe Murder Is the Best Solution to cover their asses. Whilst Lydia always remains a nervous Dirty Coward, Walter White gets bolder and colder as the seasons progess.
  • Like Saul, he carries out business under an assumed name and an alter-ego. Both characters are also highly intelligent and talented, but terrible self-saboteurs who were struggling as a result of their poor life choices, and were then only able to find success by illegal means. Saul has more moral boundaries than Walt but lacks the spine to stand up for himself, whilst Walter White is more dominating and controlling.
• For the Evulz: Beyond his urge for power and money, some acts committed by Walt are very unnecessary:
  • In "Over", where he forces Walt Jr. to drink tequila until he vomits. While this is far less horrible than many of the others, it has the distinction of being the first time he did something sadistic for no conceivable rational reason, but just because he could. Furthermore, this stands out for his serious drive for malice, egomania, and a desire to be dominant.
  • He finally admits to Skyler in the last episode that he did all those awful things as Heisenberg for himself and because he liked it, not because he wanted to protect the family.
    Skyler: If I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family...
    Walt: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive.
• Freudian Excuse: He's reluctant about chemotherapy and insistent on dying on his own terms because of his father's death from Huntington's Disease. In addition, his mother seems to have been a very unpleasant person who he has little to no contact with. It's lightly touched on by the show, but growing up without very much love may be a big reason why Walter turns out the way he does. More recently, his falling-out with Gretchen and Elliott is also a huge contributing factor to many of his evil deeds; because he's had to live with the shame of knowing that he missed his chance at wealth and respect for decades, he'll do almost anything to feel important.
• Freudian Trio: Interestingly enough, Walt himself over the course of the series embodies all three aspects of the trio. In seasons 1 to 4, before the killing of Gus Fring, Walt played the Superego to Jesse's and Saul's Id and Ego respectively. Afterward, Walt's pride and arrogance are taken up to a new level, which turns him into the Id of the new trio with Jesse and Mike being the Ego and Superego. All of this culminates when Walt goes into exile after being exposed as Heisenberg after Hank and Gomez are killed by Jack's gang, a now humbled Walt now acts as the balanced Ego in contrast with Todd/Jack and Lydia, who fills the Id and the Superego.
• Friendship Favoritism: Throughout the series, Walt tries to keep Jesse around, often against his better interests: he convinces Gus to hire Jesse as his lab assistant, even though Gus is not enthusiastic about hiring an addict; and he runs over two dealers under Gus' employ to save Jesse from getting killed by them, causing Gus to see him as a liability. Later, after Gus dies and Walt becomes the new drug kingpin of New Mexico, he tries to convince Jesse to reconsider leaving the business after Drew Sharp's death (while doing next to nothing to try to change Mike's mind about leaving), then tries to argue against having Jesse killed after Skyler realizes he tried to burn their house down. Hank catches onto this and tries to exploit Walt's favoritism for Jesse to his advantage.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Pretty much the whole point of the show is to display his transition from naive, pushover high school science teacher to ruthless, murderous meth manufacturer.
  • Inverted after the events in "Ozymandias" where he loses everything - his empire, his money, and his family's love. He is forced to leave the state under a fake ID and live alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere for half a year.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: Walter White agonizes over whether or not to kill Krazy-8 in the first season, drawing up a literal "pros and cons" list. Soon enough, he gets more comfortable with murder and his body count continues to climb, culminating in ordering the deaths of ten people on the mere possibility that one might rat him out with no hesitation.
• The Gambling Addict: The cover-up story that Skyler makes for Walt's earnings in the drug business.
• Gilded Cage: The Extractor takes him, along with Saul, out of the city when the DEA starts to close in. Saul is deposited in Nebraska (to his obvious displeasure), while Walt is unceremoniously stuffed inside an empty gas tanker and driven to a desolate ranch in New Hampshire. The Extractor pitches it as a retirement retreat, advising Walt to use his solitude to contemplate things. Walt seems to have taken his advice, as he is more open to Skyler when he turns up again in "Felina".
• Go Out with a Smile: In "Felina", after setting up his kids' future, killing the Neo-Nazi group, and freeing Jesse, Walt dies in a meth lab with a content smile on his face.
• Good with Numbers: In addition to his chemistry expertise, he's shown to be a good mental calculator, as he calculated most of the numbers to his deals within his head and with no calculator.
• Graceful Loser: Attempted in "To'hajiilee". After discovering he'd been Out-Gambitted by Hank and Jesse, Walt is faced with the choice of calling in The Cavalry to bail him out or surrender. Not being able to bring himself to order the deaths of his brother-in-law and surrogate son (who wasn't out to kill him after all), he chooses the latter. Unfortunately for him, the backup he calls off arrives anyway.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He posthumously becomes this in the post-BB era, particularly in the final episodes of Better Call Saul due to the entire circumstance of that era being because of Walt's actions. As Saul was forced to leave the life of crime in Albuquerque when his and Heisenberg's crimes became known to the public. Saul is eventually caught by the police and tries to make himself look like a victim of Walter White to get a shorter sentence before he ultimately admits to having willingly helped him build his empire, which gives him 86 years in prison.
• Green-Eyed Monster: He is jealous and possessive over a variety of things: his wife, his son, his meth formula, and, subtly, Jesse. He goes crazy when Skyler has an affair. He cruelly "punishes" Walt Jr. by forcing him to drink tequila after he sees him and Hank bonding in front of him. He attacks and insults Jesse whenever he tries to cook meth or imitate his formula on his own. Finally, he poisons a child just to win Jesse's favor back from Gus, not as an equal, but always a subordinate. And he hints at this by suggesting that Victor was killed for "flying too close to the sun." He's also clearly angry and jealous when he sees the close and healthier bond that Jesse has with Mike.
• Guile Hero: Walt isn't much of a physical threat, so whenever he is put in danger he has to use his intelligence and knowledge to either come up with a tactic or trap using his skills in chemistry and engineering. But he learns that to make a smart move you sometimes have to cross some moral boundaries.
• Gut Feeling: Just like Gus, he becomes able to pick up cues that a situation could be off from subtle odd behaviors in others. He ends up checking his car for a tracking device when Skyler mentions that Hank has been sick with a "stomach bug."
• Handicapped Badass: Walt has a tendency to lose the physical fights he gets himself in, but for a middle-aged man dying from cancer, he's able to throw down surprisingly well and gives pretty good showings. He gives Jesse a nasty kick to the face and he throws him around a few times before ultimately receiving a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Veers between this and Tranquil Fury on a whim. Early on, Walt's angry outbursts were restricted to restrained shows of force and only occasional shouting matches with Jesse. But as the series progresses, his quickness to anger is only matched by his ego's sensitivity, as shown by his arguments with Mike. Notably, he returns to having a much colder temper in "Felina", where he has become the Atoner.
• Happily Married: Subverted. While he and Skyler clearly had some good times and a fair amount of affection for one another and put on a happy face to their friends, it's clear in the pilot that there's a fair amount of emotional distance between them even before Walt's deception caused a permanent wedge in their relationship. It's implied that their marriage has become largely sexless, if the fact that she considers a half-hearted handjob that she can't be bothered to break her eyes away from her laptop to perform a "birthday present" is any indication.
• Hated by All: Achieves this at the end of "Ozymandias", after Skyler attacks him with a knife, thinking he killed Hank (which he was indirectly responsible for), Flynn calls the cops on him, and he flees with Holly. After that, the entire world learns who he is, he becomes the most wanted man in America, and when he returns home after his exile in New Hampshire, his mere presence is enough to scare the living shit out of anyone who recognizes him. Even his infant daughter Holly is much closer to her mother than him, which is what prompts him to turn her over to the authorities to get her back home and use Saul's identity eraser. His deliberately psychotic-sounding tapped phone conversation with Skyler certainly didn't help him either. By the end of "Felina", the only characters who have even the slightest amount of respect for him are Skyler (for finally admitting to her that he did it all for himself), and Jesse (for freeing him from Todd and Jack, and eliminating Lydia to fully free him from the meth business).
• Hate Sink: Finally becomes this for the majority of Season 5 after fully embracing his Heisenberg persona. He proceeds to Kick the Dog several times per episode, loses any semblance of whatever good intentions he used to have, and behaves like even more of a smug, manipulative, and abusive asshole than before. It gets to the point that the characters around him start to actively plot against him, viewing him as callous and narcissistic. Subverted in the final two episodes of the series, he becomes a dark version of The Atoner.
• Heel Realization:
  • In "Salud" after his fight with Jesse. A tearjerking one, to boot. Until it gets thrown out of the window in "Crawl Space".
  • Seems to finally get the message in "Ozymandias" when baby Holly's first words are "mama". It dawns on him that no matter how hard he bullshits himself into believing that he's doing it for family, it's no longer possible to convince them.
  • And finally, after lying relentlessly to himself as well as his family, pretending that everything that he did he did for his family, he finally acknowledges the truth in "Felina". It's downplayed though, since he never really seems to acknowledge that he's a bad person.
    Walt: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive.
• He's Back!: Walt is on the verge of a Despair Event Horizon following a phone call to his son during his exile, but after he phones the DEA to give himself up, Walt spies Elliott and Gretchen on the Charlie Rose show, he is reminded of unfinished business. The following episode opens with Walt immediately stealing a sedan and speeding back to Albuquerque.
• Heroic BSoD: In the last scene of "Crawl Space", Walt is caught between tears of despair and manic laughter at his predicament.
• Heroic Sacrifice: While going to Uncle Jack's compound to kill him and his gang for murdering Hank and Gomez, he makes a split-second decision to tackle Jesse to the ground so he isn't shot by the M60 turret in his trunk, getting hit in the side in the process. He bleeds to death shortly after Jesse finally escapes.
• The Hero Dies: His fate in the final episode. Although the machine gun in his car mows down the neo-Nazis, he is hit as well and dies soon afterward. However, he was likely going to die soon regardless.
• Hidden Villain: To Hank, who always sees Walt as the milquetoast, mediocre brother-in-law he's know for years. Even though that's a series of circumstantial evidence through the series that implicates Walt, Hank never makes the connection until he finds the copy of Leaves of Grass in Walt's bathroom from Gale and finally starts to put all the pieces together.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Many of Walt's problems and all of his failures in his life stem from his tendency to sabotage himself due to his pride. He blew up his chance to become rich and respected legally by leaving Grey Matter just because he had an inferiority complex about Gretchen and her family's wealth, later refuses legal ways to fund his cancer treatment, and convinces Hank that Gale couldn't have been Heisenberg all because he can't stand the idea of relying on others' generosity or letting others taking credit for his work.
• Honor Before Reason: A rare example that is portrayed as unambiguously negative, a matter of pride more than honor. He refuses to accept money from former friends, despite the fact that it would solve all his problems because he is still bitter about their success with a company he left. This is given as the first evidence of Walt's petty, selfish nature and shows just how prideful he is.
  • A more positive example would be Walt's relationship with Jesse. Despite the benefits of allowing Jesse to be killed, Walt goes out of his way several times to save him even though it endangers him. Ultimately, it indirectly leads to the deaths of Hank and Gomez as well as Walt's own demise when he shields Jesse from the bullets.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: He briefly becomes the biggest meth distributor in the US, but it's quickly undermined by his lack of criminal experience and Hank finding out the truth. After the events of "Ozymandias", he has completely alienated himself from his family and Jesse, Jack has stolen almost all his money and legacy, and he spends half a year in isolation to avoid a nationwide man-hunt.
• Humiliation Conga: In the pilot, he teaches chemistry to apathetic high schoolers, works a menial job in which he is disrespected, forced to stay late on his birthday, and mocked by his students, his brother-in-law casually (and likely unintentionally) belittles him, and his wife can't even be bothered to take her eyes away from her laptop while giving him a half-hearted handjob as a "birthday present". Happy birthday, Walt.
• Hypocrite:
  • Showcased by his "I am the one who knocks" boast to Skyler and the "motivational" speech to a fellow cancer patient. Season 4 is pretty much Walt in denial until the finale.
  • His overall treatment of Jesse can also be considered this when you consider that Walt's entire motivation for being Heisenberg is that he feels entitled to respect that he, in his mind, did not receive.
  • Halfway through season 3 he tells Jesse to not complain that he is getting a million and a half to cook meth just because the guy above him is making even more. By the last season, Walt himself is making more money than he could ever spend and has no intention of holding back.
  • He leaves Skyler alone at home throughout the first couple of seasons, on some truly flimsy excuses, and expects her to be happy with this despite his clear bullshitting. When she starts retaliating by doing the same thing to him, he loses his mind and sees it as her punishing him.
  • Walt resents being forced to pay hush money to Mike's guys and angrily describes it as "blackmail" even though he never has a problem with blackmailing Jesse to do his bidding and is later okay with using blackmail as a tactic to save his ass from Hank.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: Walt left Gray Matter, the multi-billion dollar company he helped found, on less than amicable terms, selling his stock for $5000. Making up for the money he lost this way is a secondary motivation for the entire series. By Season 5, this goal becomes his primary motivation to keep cooking despite having more than enough money laundered to provide for his family.
• I Did What I Had to Do: No matter how terrible his actions get or the lows he sinks to, Walt always finds some way to rationalize it as being for the greater good. He even wanted to have a calm discussion with Jesse, once he found out, about how necessary it was to poison Brock.
• Idiot Ball:
  • His reaction to being told that $7000 (his life savings) isn't enough to buy an RV? Tell Jesse to just negotiate the price and leave him alone with the money. It never occurs to him that Jesse could just take the money and spend it on himself, which is exactly what happens. Fortunately (or unfortunately, in hindsight) for both of them, Jesse just so happens to have a friend who can snatch a free RV for him once the money is spent.
  • Walt's paranoia over Gus murdering him causes him to pick it up in "Thirty-Eight Snub". First, he just drives up to Gus' house with the intention of killing him and is shocked to receive a phone call from Tyrus telling him to go home. Later he tries to goad Mike into helping him kill Gus, his employer, and doesn't really offer Mike anything in return, receiving a beatdown from Mike for his troubles.
  • He picks up another one when he gets drunk and lets his pride do the talking when he convinces Hank that Gale couldn't have been Heisenberg.
  • Although the biggest example of him picking this up is him not getting rid of Gale's "Leaves of Grass" and keeping it in places where anyone can access it, leading to Hank finding it in the bathroom and connecting the pieces together, eventually resulting in his downfall.
• If I Can't Have You…: A rare platonic version. Walter convinces Jesse to break up with Andrea, mostly to assuage Walter's guilt for poisoning Brock, and perhaps because he doesn't want Jesse happy when Walter is not.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • Judging by his behavior at the very end of "Face Off". Completely outsmarting the most powerful drug dealer in the whole state can have that effect on you.
  • Both played straight and subverted in season 5. Walt is immediately remorseful after killing Mike, but he quickly begins to justify it as a necessary action to Todd and makes no effort to even acknowledge what he did, let alone apologize, when Jesse and Saul catch on to him. However, when Skyler later confronts him about all the money he's made through his drug empire (which is more than they'll ever be able to safely launder, let alone spend), Walt actually does take her words to heart and leaves the drug business... only being dragged back in due to Hank discovering his secret and Jesse turning against him.
• I Just Want to Be Special: After spending decades as a high school teacher, a low-paying job well below his skill level, and stewing in bitterness and resentment over losing his chance at wealth and respect, Walt is only too happy to take the chance to be feared and important with it becoming clear that's his main goal, rather than money.
• Important Haircut: Shaves his head as a sign of his acceptance of cancer and part of his new criminal persona. "Badass, Dad!"
• Incurable Cough of Death: ZigZagged; Walt develops lung cancer at the start of the show and his first symptom is a cough. He becomes a drug dealer to make money fast for his family before he dies. In the episode where he starts coughing badly and even spitting up blood, he assumes he has little time left, kicking off a rather dark take on Like You Were Dying. It turns out it's just a reaction he's having to the medication, and the blood is from a slight tear due to all the coughing—he's actually in remission. In the final season, his cancer comes back and he starts coughing again.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: It can be argued that his problematic ego and Jumping Off the Slippery Slope are really this. Heisenberg is a persona he very eagerly lets consume him because he believes his true self to be a completely worthless loser.
• Informed Attribute: Word of God states that Walter is a sociopath, but he displays way too much empathy for that to be the case. Most notably, even at his worst, it takes a lot for Walt to even consider killing Jesse. Then there's his breakdown upon witnessing Hank's death.
• Informed Kindness: From the jump, even before his crimes begin in earnest or start to escalate, characters tend to refer to Water White as a nice and decent person. However, if you pay attention, even before the crime really begins, Walt isn't so much sweet and decent as he is quiet and soft-spoken. In fact, it seems like more people, including his own immediate family, think Walter is "nice" because he's actually a pushover who lets people say and do what they want and takes it in good humor – just look at how he reacts to Hank's casual ribbing. As the series advances, he goes downhill from there, both retroactively as we discover his backstory, and by Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• Insignia Ripoff Ritual: While avoiding the authorities in New Hampshire. Walt, the destitute king, chafes at having to pay $50,000 for supplies he could pick up himself in town. Defying the instructions of the extractor, he dons Heisenberg's trademark hat and saunters toward the compound gate... only to suffer a coughing fit and turn back, defeated. The last time we see Heisenberg's hat, it's adorning a mounted deer.
• Insufferable Genius:
  • He treats Jesse's effort to cook with utter contempt and believes only he can make his product. Though he later admits Jesse is just as good, it is part of his scheme to get him back and avoid suing Hank.
  • In a flashback during "Saul Gone", Walt launches into a long, angry rant about the scientific impossibility of time travel when Saul asks what he would do with a time machine. While it's true Walter was likely stressed and depressed about his life being permanently ruined, Saul was clearly just raising a light-hearted thought exercise to lead into a conversation about regret, and Walt couldn't even let Saul have that without first lording his superior intellect.
• Irony: At the beginning of the series, Walt rejects Gretchen and Elliot's offer because he didn't want to depend on their "charity". At the end of the series, the only way Walt can get his remaining drug money to his family without them rejecting it and/or without law enforcement confiscating it is to coerce Gretchen and Elliot into using it to open a trust fund for Flynn that he'll receive on his 18th birthday so it'll look like the money came from one of their acts of charity.
• It Gets Easier: He becomes much bolder after killing Krazy-8, which only escalates with every crime: throughout the series, his schemes get riskier and he gets more carefree about killing, till in one scene he is able to causally sip coffee while several men are being brutally murdered in prison under his orders. It culminates with the killing of Mike, the first truly pointless crime Walt commits.
• It's All About Me:
  • It's indicated as early as in season 1, when he turns down a high-paying job with an offer of having his medical bills covered because of his refusal to work for a company he left before it was big, essentially putting his own pride before his family.
  • When Walt Jr. sets up a website to accept donations for his treatment, Saul points out that it's an excellent opportunity to launder Walt's drug money. Walt is incensed, comparing it to panhandling, and constantly holds the website in contempt purely because the money isn't seen as coming from him.
  • It kicks in full time in season 4, to the point where Walt speaks this exact line out loud, which eventually leads to a conflict with Jesse.
  • In "Felina", he admits to Skyler that this was his main motivation for cooking meth, as he was good at it and enjoyed it. This marks one of the only times the admission of this trope has ever been portrayed sympathetically, as he is finally being honest with both his wife and, just as importantly, himself.
• Ivy League for Everyone: He has a master's degree from the California Institute of Technology. This trope is actually deconstructed. While another show might just throw out that a character studied at Caltech or another Ivy equivalent to mark them as intelligent regardless of how they act or what their actual job is, in Walter's case, the fact that he graduated from such a prestigious institution and did such great work only to end up as a secondary school teacher is nothing less than maddening. Not to mention humiliating.

J-O

• Jaded Washout: Walt's promising career was thwarted when he missed the chance to participate in a Nobel Prize-winning project. His life and embitterment went downhill from there.
• Jekyll & Hyde: The difference between Walter White and Heisenberg is pretty much night and day and the entire theme of the series is Walt turning into Heisenberg. Though it is played with, since the longer the series goes on the clearer it becomes that despite appearances, Heisenberg was always part of Walt, he was just a part that had no opportunity to assert itself (which, in a way, is actually closer to the original story, which makes it clear that Hyde is simply a way for Jekyll to indulge in his own darker impulses rather than an actual separate being).
• Jerkass: He's rude and dismissive to everyone (mostly Jesse) except his family, and then in later seasons pretty much only his children are spared from his swollen ego and bitterness. Marie rather accurately calls him "an arrogant asshole" in Felina (though ironically, this is after he has attained a slight level of humility and introspection into how awful a person he is).
• Jerkass Has a Point: Late in season 2, Walter refuses to give Jesse his share of the cut after completing a massive deal. Walt's primary motivation is likely greed and manipulation, keeping Jesse dependent on him, but it's true that Jesse has a massive drug addiction. That same addiction almost screws Walt from completing the very same deal. Furthermore, despite Jesse's role in the partnership nominally being the salesman, Walt had to complete the entire deal himself because Jesse was distracted with getting strung out. Walt even makes a point of saying that if he gets clean, he can get his share.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • He seems to have always had an ego problem and some informed kindness, but he still worked two jobs to support his family, and his son talks very fondly of how he used to be.
  • For how low he has sunken, he still cares for his family and tries to be a good family man to them. After he has fallen, he still ensures his family gets the remainder of his wealth, and helps Skyler avoid prosecution for no other reason than that he didn't think she deserved to be dragged into this mess. He also finally admits his criminal actions were entirely self-serving.
  • In a very dark sense, he is this to Jesse. For all of his constant belittlement, manipulation, and abusive behavior toward Jesse, Walt does genuinely care about him. Several times throughout the series, Walt saves Jesse's life despite being a dick to him not too long before. Even after Jesse almost burns down his house, Walt tries his best to resolve the situation without harming Jesse. When he realizes he has no choice but to kill Jesse, Walt is visibly heartbroken.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: To almost everyone else, he certainly wouldn't think so, but while he tries to deceive himself into thinking he only has good intentions, he subverts them at every turn by using those intentions to manipulate others, especially Jesse and his own family. By the end, he's clearly proud of the legacy he's carved out for himself, affectionately leaving a bloody handprint on the chemistry equipment in Jack's meth lab before he bleeds out.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: His whole arc. His first murder, of Krazy-8, leaves him in Broken Tears and he's visibly devastated (and even then, it was mostly done out of self-defense). By the end of Season 3... not so much.
• Kansas City Shuffle: He has a tendency to lie in an obvious way, and when called on it, Confess to a Lesser Crime, as seen with his "gambling addiction" or when Walt Jr. wants to know why his clothes smell like gasoline.
• Karma Houdini: Zig-Zagged. Walter definitely got a lot of well-deserved Laser-Guided Karma, with his family rejecting him and his reputation ruined, and eventually dying alone surrounded by his beloved Blue Sky meth. But he definitely escapes formal justice, and the script even puts it plainly:
  "They're too late. He got away."
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Before Season 5B, he suffers consequences but no real punishment for his crimes. But after Hank attempts to arrest him, it goes all downhill. His son finds out about his crimes and soon after, his family wants nothing to do with him and he is forced to retreat to a cabin in the middle of nowhere for six months to hide from law enforcement. He finally returns to Albuquerque in the finale to set things right, and dies on his own terms after securing his family's future and taking down Jack's gang.
• Karmic Nod: Implied. While Walt never verbally admits it, the first line of Badfinger's Baby Blue (which plays as Walt bleeds to death from a gunshot wound) is "Guess I got what I deserved", indicating that Walt knows deep down that he had it coming.
• Karmic Shunning: When his actions come to light, and his brother-in-law is murdered trying to turn him in, the entire family turns on Walt and effectively disowns him.
• Kick the Dog:
  • His belittling Jesse's intelligence throughout the show.
  • Coercing Walt Jr. into drinking alcohol until he pukes, as a petty gesture towards Hank.
  • When Walt is worried that there may be hitmen in his house who want to kill him, he manipulates an elderly neighbor into going inside so he can know if he is in danger, knowing full well that they could end up dead because of him.
  • His twisted psychological abuse of Skyler in Season 5.
  • Saul tries to cut ties with him twice. Both times, Walt responds by attempting to coerce him into continuing under the threat of physical violence.
  • His clumsy, cowardly killing of Mike, who was no immediate threat to Walt, when Walt could have gotten the information he wanted from Lydia anyway.
  • His last scene in Better Call Saul is set during "Granite State", and he uses his ex-lawyer as an emotional punching bag. Even though he's unaware he's repeating the worst parts of Jimmy's relationship with Chuck, he still tries to demean the guy as much as possible.
• Kick the Morality Pet:
  • Oh, so many times to Jesse:
    • In "Down", Walt is so wrapped up in his drama with Skyler that he ignores Jesse's plight and degrades him. More specifically, Jesse is evicted from his house, none of his friends can take him in, his money and his bike get stolen, he falls into a porta-potty, and is forced to sleep in and later steal the RV. When Jesse comes to Walt's house with the RV at the very end of his rope, Walt becomes even more vicious in verbal abuse to Jesse until Jesse finally snaps, knocks Walt to the ground and almost strangles him to death. When Jesse backs off, Walt finally realizes he pushed Jesse too far and coughs up half of their remain money to Jesse.
    • In "Mandala", when Jesse's friend Combo is murdered, Walt straight-up asks Jesse which one was Combo. Jesse is predictably not amused. Walt shows no concern when Jesse is clearly spiraling for the rest of the episode.
    • In "Phoenix", Walt hangs up on Jesse when Jesse is panicking about his house being broken into and the blue meth being stolen. When Jesse confronts when he realizes that Walt was the one who did all that and left him panicking all day, Walt blames solely Jesse on missing his daughter's birth.
    • In "Green Light", Walt dismissed the meth Jesse cooked all by himself (which he looks very proud of) as garbage, as well as angrily telling Jesse that Gus won't work with a junky like him. In "One Minute", Walt admits that Jesse's meth is as good as his, so Walt only said that to hurt Jesse for cooking his recipe without him.
    • In "Say My Name", when Jesse tells him that he wants out of the meth business, Walt tries to get him to stay. When Jesse insists on leaving, Walt starts belittling him by essentially telling him that he has nothing else of value in his life outside of cooking meth and proclaiming that nobody outside of the business cares for his well-being. Walt then proceeds to twist the knife even further by attempting to use Jesse's murder of Gale in order to convince him that he's just as morally bankrupt as he is.
    • In "Ozymandias", just before Jack's crew takes Jesse to interrogate him on what he told Hank and Gomez, Walt tells Jesse that he let Jane die, just to spite him.
  • After finding out his cancer is in remission, Walt goads Walter Jr. into drinking tequila shots until he vomits. It's hardly the worst thing he does in the series, but it is the first time he does something cruel for no other reason besides petty spite.
• Lack of Empathy: By the final season, if you're not part of his family or Jesse, he really doesn't give a damn what happens to you. Exemplified in a scene where, after telling Jesse how broken up he is about the shooting of Drew Sharp, he immediately starts whistling a joyful tune, coincidentally "The Lily of the Valley".
• Large Ham: He's usually a subtle character but there are moments where Cranston is allowed to devour any scenery, even in the middle of nowhere.
  Walter: HELLFIRE RAINED DOWN ON MY HOUSE WHERE MY CHILDREN SLEEP! THERE WERE BODY PARTS IN MY YARD!
• Laughing Mad: At the end of "Crawl Space", when Walt goes into the eponymous part of the house to find his stash of money to get his family new identities, only to discover Skyler gave most of it to pay Ted's back taxes. Walt can only cackle as there's now no escape from the threat of death from him and his family by Gus.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Finally catches up with Walt in the season 5 mid-season break. He's done with the business, there are no loose ends, he has more money than he can spend in 10 lifetimes, and he smooths out things with Jesse and his family. He's out. And then, Hank realizes that he's Heisenberg. Bonus points for him finding out from a book given to Walt from Gale, the "innocent" man he forced Jesse to kill.
  • In "Confessions" Jesse finally comes to realize that Walt poisoned Brock and is having no more of his manipulation, vowing to take him down.
  • The entirety of "Ozymandias". Walter directly endangers a family member, getting Hank killed. He loses most of the money he earned to feed his ego and protect his family. He destroys the last ounce of trust his family had for him and gets into a physical altercation with Skyler and Walt Jr. He realizes that he's been deceiving himself about his motivations all along. And to cap it all off, he embraces the Heisenberg persona fully, so he can protect Skyler from being complicit in his crimes.
• The Last Dance: With his life in shambles and having little time left due to his cancer returning, Walt spends the entirety of "Felina" enacting his most devious scheme yet and enacting revenge on his enemies.
• Legacy Seeker: As the show progresses and Walt's darker side creeps into view, it becomes clear that he's deeply embittered over past failures and disappointments, at one point regarding his descent into crime as the first meaningful thing he ever did with his life; as such, even once he has more than enough money to keep his family afloat for decades, he chooses to continue his career as Heisenberg in order to leave behind a legend in the criminal underworld.
• Leitmotif: "The Long Walk Alone" (Heisenberg's Theme), which often plays when he is in full Heisenberg mode.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Walter's brain seems to work best when he is in mortal danger. Practically every brilliant gambit he comes up with is created when (sometimes literally) looking into the barrel of a gun.
• Like a Son to Me: Jesse. Walter admits this to several people in 5B when it becomes apparent that Jesse is a risk to him and he may have to kill Jesse. Hank even mentions to Jesse that Walter cares for Jesse in a twisted way.
• Lonely at the Top: In the mid-5th season finale, Walter reaches this point when he successfully makes more money than his family could ever spend in 10 lifetimes and has lost the emotional support of all his loved ones. This and the news of his cancer returning help him decide to quit his empire.
• Loss of Inhibitions: Instead of turning Walt evil, the cancer diagnosis can be seen as the point where the fear of social and legal consequences slowly stops holding him back, emboldening Walt to pursue the success he believes he's owed, lashing out against those who wronged him in increasingly brutal ways and driving him further into the world of crime with each step.
• Love Makes You Evil: Walt claims he does what he does out of love for his family, which is partly true. Of course, he also has more egocentric motivations. As time goes on, the ego outweighs the love more and more.
• MacGyvering: He does this from time to time to get out of trouble, like mixing the right chemicals to escape Krazy-8 and Emilio Koyama. Jumpstarting a car with sponges. Or the bell-activated pipe bomb that kills both Hector and Gus. And an automated M-60 turret made with a garage door opener and car keys.
• Mad Scientist: Walter White may arguably be an example of this trope in a realistic show outside the science fiction genre. He's a genius scientist skilled in chemistry and engineering, but due to a long list of personal insecurities, he thinks the best way to use his talents and expertise is by exploiting them for organized crime; such as by making toxic and deadly drugs, or building improvised weapons to kill anyone who gets in his way. Walt's Blue Sky meth is even like a Frankenstein's Monster of sorts; it quickly spirals out of his control and leads to sorrow and demise for himself and anyone close to him.
• Major Injury Underreaction: In the final confrontation with the neo-nazis, Walt is shot through the chest by his own contraption which ultimately claims his life. He shows no signs of pain or discomfort as he calmly talks to Jesse one last time and walks over to the meth lab to admire it before he finally succumbs to his injury, dropping dead.
• Manchild: Normally he's capable of putting up a mature front, but he's stubborn and refuses to take a hint when things start to go south, starts acting like a petulant child and throws a tantrum when he gets mad and he decided to lead a criminal meth empire out of spite and a need to prove himself.
• Manipulative Bastard: Grows into one more and more of the course of the series. Seen most clearly with Jesse; Walt plays on Jesse's need for approval more than once to keep him on Walt's side. But he also manipulates criminals he runs into by promising them he can make more money for them and he mostly lies and plays the victim for his family among other ways.
• Manly Tears: During his phone call to Skyler in "Ozymandias", he manages to keep up the monstrous persona he's putting on for the police even though he is absolutely bawling his eyes out the entire time over having to exaggerate his abusiveness to his wife.
• Marital Rape License: In Season 2, he returns from an extremely traumatic event caused by Tuco and attempts to sexually assault his wife.
• Meaningful Name:
  • His name was chosen to be deliberately bland and uninteresting to emphasize his everyman nature. As the series goes on, it reflects his increasingly unforgivable actions.
  • Werner Heisenberg, a theoretical physicist turned Nazi weapons scientist who died of cancer, also may have been a basis for Walt. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is also symbolically in play — the more certain Walter is of what he thinks needs to be done, the more unpredictable he becomes.
• The Millstone:
  • Unusually so for a main character, but examining Walt's actions throughout the series shows this to be true. There are dozens of times when Walt takes a bad situation and makes it worse through a combination of ego and greed. The first (and best) example of this is turning down Gretchen and Elliot's offer to return to their employ. This would have not only gotten Walt out of his cancer situation and set him up with a job he rightfully deserves out of the kindness of one of his oldest friends, but also would have stopped him from needing to deal meth at all. Walt declines, and drags his family down with him.
  • Walt is also this to Gus's operation. On one hand, sure, he can cook some good crystal meth in an efficient and clean manner, and he gets along well enough with Gale. On the other, he keeps Jesse involved despite being a huge liability, and him killing two of Gus's dealers to protect Jesse directly results in Gus plotting to have both of them murdered. In season 4, it eventually gets to the point where Gus realizes Walter is bigger liability than Jesse- all the latter really wants is a place to belong and some respect, which Gus and Mike are more than happy to provide. Walter, meanwhile, is constantly scheming to undermine Gus at every turn, which proves to be detrimental to his very careful Los Pollos Hermanos operation. Walter's schemes eventually get to be too much, and so Gus spends most of Season 4 looking for ways to get rid of Walter at all costs.
• Mistaken for Gay: Played for Laughs. Jesse briefly questions if he's gay in the pilot episode because he insists on making meth in his underwear. If he still had any lingering thoughts about this, however, they likely vanished the next episode where he met Skyler who gave him the scare of his life as he was disposing of Emilio's corpse.
• Money for Nothing: A major plot point in the late fifth season is that Walt's insane wealth is pretty much worthless to him. He can't launder it enough to get it in his bank account without tipping off the police, and even if he could freely spend it, he has so much money that whatever things he needed to be paid for are a fraction of his income. The result is him sitting on millions of dollars that he can't use for anything.
• Moral Myopia: Any threats against him or his family are unforgivable. His murder of people who are either relatively innocent (Gale) or whom he deliberately screwed over (the nine prisoners whom Walt denied security payments owed by Gus and Mike) are glossed over.
• Morality Pet: Walt is this to Todd; while usually not blinking at murder, Todd respects Walt and goes out of his way to keep him (relatively) safe.
• More than Just a Teacher: Works as a chemistry teacher while secretly running a meth empire.
• Motivational Lie: Uses one to try to get Jesse on his side in the season 4 finale, telling him that Gus was the one who poisoned Brock.
• Motive Decay: An intentional and interesting case of this. Walt constantly tells himself that he's doing what he does to provide for his family, and on a certain level, he may be right. However, as the series goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that his decision to cook is as much motivated by the desire to feed his ego as it is for helping his family. In season 5's Buyout, he tells Jesse that the meth business is all he has left and he's only concerned with having as big a piece of that pie as possible.
  Walter: You asked me earlier if we were in the meth business or the money business. Neither. I'm in the empire business.
• Murder by Inaction: After moving Jane after a heroin injection, he watches her choke to death on her own vomit.
• Murder Makes You Crazy:
  • After personally killing Krazy-8, there is a brief period where Walt becomes paranoid and mishears others' sentences when talking to him as if they know what he has done.
  • As of season 5, creator Vince Gilligan has stated, "The new Walt lives in a power vacuum created by the death of Gus Fring."
• Must Make Amends: The main drive of Felina is Walt's last-ditch effort to fix the damage he caused to his family. He first launders the remainder of his drug money into a corporate-sponsored trust for Flynn, then discloses the location of Hank's body to Skyler, giving her enough leverage to escape RICO's grasp. Finally, Walt wipes out Lydia and her drug ring and leads the police to their superlab, ending the threat posed to his family forever.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Averted for most of the series, as Walt is really good at rationalizing his crimes and ignoring the consequences of his actions. But when something gets really bad, he gets hit hard with this.
  • He finally begins realizing his mistakes near the end of season 5 part one after killing Mike and acquiring way more money than can be safely laundered or even spent.
  • Goes through one in "Ozymandias" when his kidnapped daughter's first word is "Mama".
  • A very subtle, non-verbal example occurs in "Felina", when he realizes exactly how much torture Todd and Jack have put Jesse through. Prior to that moment, Walt had every intention of killing his former partner. When he sees that Pinkman has been turned into a slave, however, Walt's face expresses visible regret over the fact that he handed him over to them. His last act of compassion is tackling Jesse to the ground to shield him from the death trap he created for Jack's gang.
• My Greatest Failure: Selling his stock in Gray Matter early on for just five thousand dollars, when it would go on to be a billion-dollar company by the time of the main story. Walt admits he checks to stock price every day, likely to remind himself of what he missed out on.
• Narcissist: Self-absorbed attitude, manipulation of others, especially Jesse, excessive need for attention and to be admired, incredibly arrogant and haughty, envious of others' success, Lack of Empathy, even when doing tasks like bombing a nursing home or poisoning a child. Walter ticks most, if not all, of the boxes, especially in the later seasons.
• Never Hurt an Innocent:
  • He originally declares this to Jesse in the beginning. Unfortunately, desperate situations lead to the semi-subversion of this trope at the end of Season 3 with Gale.
  • While Walt does become very callous and reprehensible, he never directly kills anyone who isn't part of the criminal underworld. However, he does hurt people outside of the underworld (and puts them in situations where their lives are in direct danger), such as his poisoning of Brock.
• Never My Fault: Walt's main failing other than his ego is his tendency to rationalize his actions and find excuses for himself:
  • During the season 3 premiere, he refuses to take any responsibility for his role in the mid-air collision.
  • For most of Season 4, he insists that he's the Only Sane Man and Gus is out to get him for no good reason. Never mind that he killed Gus' dealers, then ordered Jesse to kill Gale so Gus couldn't kill them.
  • You'd think it was inverted when he admits his fault and guilt in driving Jesse too far when trying to get him to kill Gus with the bug and everything. Yes-no: he admits his mistake, alright... to the wrong person (his uninvolved son). He can only admit guilt under specific circumstances. And, only in a way that doesn't step on that Pride of his. He very quickly goes back to Justifyville, Denial.
  • A bit more of a subtle example, but his selling out of Jesse to Jack's crew and telling him the truth about Jane can easily be interpreted as Walt blaming him for Hank's death.
  • Subverted after his attempted kidnapping of Holly in "Ozymandias", when Walt makes a phone call to Skyler (which he knows is being intercepted by police) and seemingly blames her for everything that has led to his downfall. But what Walt is really doing is making himself look like an abusive spouse so that the extent of Skyler's complicity won't be uncovered and so she won't be shunned by the remaining family.
  • Even his backstory with his falling out with Grey Matter. As Walt reveals in Season 5, he walked away from the company on his own accord (according to invokedWord of God, a visit with Gretchen's rich family triggered his inferiority complex and ego, prompting him to just bug out entirely), but throughout the show, he constantly claims to be a victim who was frozen out of his own research, saying that he was cut out and Elliot and Gretchen made millions off his work. He even tells this version of the story to Gretchen, who knows for a fact it's bullshit, and to Saul, who he has no reason to lie to.
  • In Season 5 he brings Jesse to dinner with Skyler in an effort to guilt him into staying in the business, telling Jesse that Skyler now wants him dead and he has nothing to live for, ignoring that it was his own actions that turned Skyler against him.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Almost everything he does ends up making the situation worse, including the sole fact he went into the meth business. One of the best examples is taking out Gus' laptop in such a way that it reveals a clue that is more valuable to the DEA and actually manages to affect people's lives.
  • Perhaps Walt's most severe and devastating incident yet happens when he thinks Jesse is about to have him killed and summons Jack's white power gang for backup. He tries to call them off when he sees that Jesse is with Hank and Gomez. Jack's gang ignores the order, shows up after Walt's arrest, and proceeds to gun down Gomez and execute Hank to Walt's limitless anguish.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: By Season 5, Walt has definitely taken on the status of Villain Protagonist, he has more than a few incidents of this, some intentional, and some not.
  • Intentional cases include managing to exonerate Skyler via a phone call where he takes the blame for his crimes, succeeding in securing a trust fund for Walter Jr. so he might have a happier future than Walt or Skyler's, and while he initially kidnapped Holly to spite his family for turning on him, he ultimately leverages said kidnapping as part of his aforementioned gambit to exonerate Skyler and returns her of his own volition.
  • Ultimately, thanks to Walt's involvement in the drug trade, four crime syndicates (Tuco's gang, Gus and Madrigal, Don Eladio's cartel, and Jack's gang) are either eliminated or greatly diminished. With his own death, nobody else will ever make or distribute Blue Sky (at least in its original form) again.
• No Sense of Humor: Walt doesn't really seem to have much of a sense of humor in general. While this is in part because the events he becomes involved in aren't exactly a barrel of laughs, to begin with, even discounting this he tends to come off as quite stiff, awkward, charmless, and incapable of relaxing and joking. However, in keeping with his increasingly out-of-control sense of pride and ego, he particularly resents being made the butt of the joke himself and can be seen visibly rankling when people like Hank make little digs at his expense, even if they're well-intentioned. Perhaps fittingly, most of the funny moments throughout the series involving him tend to revolve around him being The Comically Serious rather than him making actual jokes.
• Nominal Hero: Walter is far from being a model human being, but the drug distributors he deals with are usually worse than he is. However, by season 5, this trope no longer applies, seeing as how Walter has become just as ruthless as anyone else in the business and remains in it solely for his ego.
• Noodle Incident: Whatever happened at Gretchen's parents' house that led Walt to break up with her and leave Grey Matter.
  • Vince Gilligan stated that Walt left Gretchen and Gray Matter because he felt inferior to her and her wealthy family, thus confirming that his ego and pride were the reasons why.
  • There's a secondary, less-alluded to incident in Walt's past that is essentially the reason he moved from research and full-time chemistry to teaching. It is stated on several instances that Walter had at least one laboratory job between Grey Matter and becoming a teacher; he was working at a lab when he met Skyler and was also at a lab when they purchased their first home on Negro Arroyo, when Skyler was pregnant with Walter Jr. It's never stated when or why Walter left chemistry to go into teaching, but one would have to assume – especially considering the younger Walt seemed to see his earning potential as having a high ceiling in the real estate scene – that Walt took a big pay cut to go into teaching, therefore, it would have had to be something dramatic.
• Non-Action Big Bad: In Season 5, upon finally taking the Big Bad slot. While Walt is quite a badass at this point, it's entirely due to his intelligence and cunning. Physically he's still an out-of-shape older man with no combat experience suffering from lung cancer and relies on his subordinates for muscle. Even Jesse, a short-string bean, can beat him in a fight. It is implied however that he would have beaten up Ted Beneke for sleeping with his wife.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: Despite his seemingly weak body, he inexplicably survives for an extra six months past his doctor's original estimation (18 months) even though his cancer was very aggressive by this point and he was getting second-rate treatment. He also stays alive and is able to move around for an impressive few minutes after being shot by his own machine gun.
• Not Me This Time: He truly didn't kill Hank, but by that point, his son and wife have absolutely no respect for him anymore and refuse to believe anything he says.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: By the time of the series finale, Jack's crew and Lydia completely underestimate Walter because he looks like a wreck and has no money left. They forget that he also has nothing else to lose and his mind is as sharp as ever.
• Not So Omniscient After All: A lot. Especially visible in Season 3, where the fact that he is hunted by the Twins and that Gus is playing a much more elaborate game than just selling meth completely flies over his head. Although he deduces it very quickly after events.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Originally having turned to cook crystal meth to pay his hospital bills and provide some extra money for his family should he die, his motivations increasingly turn to serve his own ego and hunger for power. In the finale, he finally admits to Skyler that cooking meth was something he did for himself, and his family was always just an excuse.
• Not The Illness That Killed Them: His death in the final episode isn't from cancer, but from a gunshot wound he sustained shielding Jesse from the machine gun turret he set up to kill the Neo-Nazis.
• One-Man Army: He single-handedly kills the entire Neo-Nazi gang using a remotely activated machine gun (with the exception of Todd). A rare example where the One Man Army has no real combat skills. By the end of the series, Walt has directly killed (or mortally wounded) 17 dangerous criminals,^note Emilio Koyama (via locking him in a trailer and gassing it), Krazy-8 (via strangulation), two of Gus' dealers (via Car Fu/Boom, Headshot!), Gus Fring, Hector Salamanca, Tyrus (all via a bomb), two of Gus' guards, Mike (via shooting him with his own gun that he stole beforehand) six neo-Nazis including Kenny (via the aforementioned machine gun trap), Lydia (via poison), and finally Jack (via Coup de Grâce. but always through either a plan or with the element of surprise.
• Only Sane Man: He invokes this often enough, as it's what he loves to convince himself he is. And/or try to convince others he is in comparison, as well. However, it's actually inverted when you notice just how ill-considered, skewed and short-sighted many of his ideas are at the root.
• Out-Gambitted: By Hank, Gomez, and Jesse by luring him into a false sense of desperation. The three of them succeed in outsmarting Walter through his worries of his own money getting burnt, and it lures the latter into going in the desert, allowing them to expose the location of Walter's real money. Unfortunately, this ends up becoming a Pyrrhic Victory on their part when Jack Welker and his gang show up and murder Hank and Steve, while taking Jesse prisoner.

P-S

• Papa Wolf:
  • A trio of bullies quickly find out it's a bad idea to make fun of Walt Jr's cerebral palsy in the pilot.
  • Despite his frequent belittlement and manipulation of Jesse, Walt tends to get very angry if his protege is subjected to any serious harm, or is manipulated by someone other than him.
• Paper Tiger: The public believes Walt to be a criminal mastermind in control of a vast empire. In reality, he's just a very good cook and occasionally fine schemer with some good connections. The neo-nazis, who are supposed to be his henchmen, have no problem stealing from him once they realize how powerless he really is. By the end of Season 5, he has been reduced to pulling cheap tricks and giving empty threats to intimidate others into doing what he wants.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • His early victims, such as the boys picking on his son or the obnoxious man in the bank, keep him from seeming too bad.
  • He tells Jesse to let Tuco bleed out and die of blood loss. Ruthless move for sure, but Tuco is the man who kidnapped Walt and tried to force him to abandon his family.
  • He kills the Rival Dealers, who had just recently murdered Andrea's little brother in cold blood, by running one over with his car and shooting the other in the head.
  • In "Felina", he finally avenges Hank's death by killing Jack. He also poisons Lydia with ricin.
• The Pete Best: In-universe. Walt left Gray Matter and sold his share for a pittance before it became a multi-billion dollar company. It's a major source of Walt's pent-up bitterness.
• The Peter Principle: Walt is at his best as a criminal when he's doing low-level work: when he's cooking, or planning a small-scale scheme. His daring, ruthlessness and coldly self-centered nature made him a truly dangerous person who managed to topple Gus' entire empire. However, when he becomes a drug lord himself and tries to match that empire, all the flaws of his style come to the fore. His perfectionism and attitude problems make it impossible for him to manage people, causing his old allies to desert him and him to hook up with unsavory customers. His short-sightedness means that he accumulates lots of money while failing to expand the operation much or launder it effectively, all the while utilizing "allies" who are much harder to control than he expects, and then he abruptly retires without regard for the potential fallout. His refusal to share his secrets means that he becomes a valuable target after he attempts to retire. The result of all of this is that his empire, which is described as the largest meth empire in US history, gets taken from him with minimal resistance, and he's soon able to completely dismantle it in a single night.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He leaves a hundred dollar tip to the kind waitress Lucy.
  • His interactions with baby Holly - the only person in the entire series that he can't, and doesn't attempt to, manipulate - are the only consistently genuine ones he has.
  • There is seriously no love lost between Walter and Hector Salamanca, but Walt does give him a chance to back out of their plan to frag Gus Fring.
  • During his "confession" tape he uses to blackmail Hank (the whole version of which is available on DVD releases), he manages to never mention Jesse once. He also changes the story to leave Skyler out of it, claiming that she only found out about his crimes after the fact and was never involved herself.
  • The scene in El Camino that shows Walt encouraging Jesse to leave his life of crime and pursue college.
  • At the end of "Gliding over All", Walt realizes he'd like to end things on amicable terms with Jesse and decides to give him his 5 million dollars, which he had previously withheld from him.
  • In "One Minute", Walt offers Jesse an equal partnership with the motive of getting him to drop the charges against Hank. He was arguably partly responsible for putting Hank in the position, to begin with, but he still did take action to save his career when he didn't have to.
  • In "Fifty-One", Walt sells his Pontiac Aztek to his mechanic at a drastically reduced rate of $50^note "Insurance company shelled out $1900 for the parts alone." after the man mentioned how much he liked it.
  • After Gus threatens to kill Hank, Walt begs Saul to warn the DEA about the hit, feeling that Hank doesn't deserve to die because of the issues between them. Also, he actually thanks Saul when he agrees, which is the closest he ever gets to treating his lawyer with the slightest bit of respect or appreciation.
  • In "A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal" Walter tries to defuse the tension between Tuco and one of his henchmen by suggesting that he should "just relax". This seems to just agitate Tuco even more, however, who after a short pause proceeds to beat said henchman to death and then some.
• Playing Sick: His "fugue state" in season 2 that he uses as an alibi to cover up his and Jesse's time as Tuco's captives.
• Poison Is Evil: His use of poison at the end of Season 4 is generally seen as the point where he crossed the line from Anti-Hero/Anti-Villain to full Villain Protagonist. Making it even worse is the fact that the person he poisoned was the eight-year-old Brock.
• Posthumous Character: Even after dying in the Neo-Nazi meth lab, Walter's actions as Heisenberg still hang over the world into 2010 and onwards. Notably, both Jesse and Jimmy/Saul have to deal with hiding out from the authorities who want to catch both of them due to being known associates of Heisenberg. Jimmy in particular alludes to Walter's actions many times during the final few episodes of Better Call Saul.
• Poor Man's Substitute: invoked One of the major themes of Season 5 is Walt's attempt to assume the position of the now-deceased Gus Fring. Ironically, he finds himself making even less money than he did when he was working as Gus' chef. His ego leads to everything crumbling around him.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Averted, and serves to deconstruct his Even Evil Has Loved Ones attitude toward Jesse. True, his refusal to kill Jesse at various points does give Walt a humanizing side, but the fact remains that many times in the earlier seasons, Jesse is The Millstone which causes trouble for Walt. The most poignant part is when Jesse, incensed at the street dealers who killed Tomas, is going to kill them and face Gus' retaliation, thus necessitating Walt to bail him out. It's from thereon that Walt's relationship with Fring starts to unravel and things go downhill.
• Prepare to Die: Walt gives a good one to Tuco when he snaps at Walt and Jesse.
  Walt: We tried to poison you. We tried to poison you because you're an insane, degenerate piece of filth and you deserve to die.
• Pride: Hands down, this is Walt's biggest Fatal Flaw, leading him to screw things up for himself repeatedly and take the hard road for the sake of preserving his fragile ego. It's the reason why he started cooking meth in the first place - he could've easily been bailed out by taking up Elliot and Gretchen's offer, but he views the act as "charity" and refuses to accept their help. Similarly, he chafes at Saul's suggestion to launder his drug money through Junior's "Save Walter White" charity website or disguise the money as an inheritance he received from a distant relative. He even talks Hank out of believing that Gale is Heisenberg because he refuses to let another man take credit for his work, even though Hank was getting ready to close the investigation. After he kills Gus, Walt's pride reaches insatiable levels and he becomes convinced he can do no wrong, believing himself to be an untouchable criminal mastermind that no one will ever stop. Mike makes the mistake of insulting his pride and gets murdered by an angry Walt for it. Even during the confession video he makes to frame Hank, touches of Walt's pride can still be seen; he makes a point that Hank sought him out to be his chemist, believing him to be smart enough to make the best possible meth, and he still takes credit for building the bomb that killed Gus (while claiming it was under duress, of course). This flaw is also what leads to his undoing, since Jesse exploits it by tricking him into admitting to all of his crimes over the phone while Hank and Gomez are listening.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Creator Vince Gilligan describes the show as "What happens when Mr. Chips becomes Scarface." Gradually, Walter's civilian life dies and the Heisenberg alter ego takes over.
• Properly Paranoid: In Season 4. When he speculates that Gus may have set up a failed stickup as a Batman Gambit so that Jesse would foil it and "prove himself" to Gus and Mike, he sounds insane. He's also absolutely correct.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Despite being a very intelligent and resourceful criminal, Walt is still extremely selfish, petty, stubborn, vindictive, hotheaded, and possesses a huge ego larger than Jupiter. He's basically an overgrown high-school nerd who watched a few too many gangster movies, and it becomes obvious that he chose a life of crime for two main reasons: feeling insecure about his own perceived lack of masculinity, and especially to spite everyone who ever angered him in any way.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Walt manages to build that nest egg for Walter Jr. and Holly before his death, but his actions have led to his brother-in-law's death, his family losing their house and his remaining family disowning him. Moreover, his family will never know it was his money, instead, they'll think it was an act of charity from Walt's resented former business partners, the very thing he refused to accept back in season 1. He barely manages to keep his wife out of jail for her role as an accomplice in laundering his money, and he has to do that by making himself out as an abusive spouse who forced Skyler into it. And while his family was cleared of any criminal charges, they've been forever scarred and remembered for his crimes.
• The Quiet One: Walt starts out as a man of few words and even fewer actions but subverts this later on when he becomes comfortable with his new lifestyle, and his Pride starts making him talk way too much.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gets quite a few from various characters through the series:
  • Gus explains the reason why he initially refuses to do business with Walt, not knowing how right he is.
    I don't think we're alike at all, Mr. White. You are not a cautious man at all. Your partner was late, and he was high. ...You have poor judgment. I can't work with someone with poor judgment.
  • After Hank beats the crap out of Jesse, Jesse (temporarily) rejects Walt's offer to get in on work for Gus and tears Walt a new for what disaster his life has become.
    I'm not turning down the money, I am turning down you! You get it?! I want NOTHING to do with you! 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!
  • One from Mike, and it doesn't end so well for him.
    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! You just had to be the man! If you'd done your job, known your place, we'd all be fine right now!
  • From Hank:
    It was you! All along it was you! <List of Transgressions> Heisenberg! Heisenberg! You lying, two-faced sack of shit!
  • The most devastating one has to be from Walt Jr./Flynn when Walter tries to give him the money after Hank's death:
    ...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!
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Only a few times but when Walt's deep into his Heisenberg persona he's worn a red shirt with a black outfit.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The logical, experienced blue to Jesse's emotional and young red. He then swaps roles with the more cold and calculating Gus Fring.
• Redemption Equals Death: Somewhat in "Felina". Just before dying, despite still being completely unapologetic about the decisions he's made throughout the series, it's clear that Walt at least feels some guilt over the unintended consequences and has regained at least some of his lost humanity.
• Revenge: While he started out insisting that he wanted as little trouble as possible, his actions have always shown him to be extremely vindictive when wronged. From attacking some teens who were mocking his son to setting Ken Wins's car on fire to his lack of hesitation in going after Tuco when he found out that he had hurt Jesse to his reaction when he found out that one of Jesse's dealers had been ripped off (despite Jesse insisting it wasn't a big deal), Walt's always gone out of his way to hit back at people who have messed with him, regardless of the offense or risk.
• Ring on a Necklace: In the penultimate episode, Walt's cancer has ravaged his body so much that his fingers become too emaciated for him to wear his wedding ring. As a result, he puts it on a piece of string so he can wear it around his neck.
• "Rise and Fall" Gangster Arc: Most of Breaking Bad is centered around how Walter begins to rise as the feared drug lord and killer known as Heisenberg. It's not until Season 5B that we begin to see the "fall" aspect, but oh boy, does he fall hard.
• Sadist: In "Ozymandias", Walt takes the incredibly pointless step of telling Jesse he watched Jane die, even after he's already being captured to be executed by the Nazis. It's the only one of his many heinous acts that can truly be considered a pointless act of sadism - appropriately, Walt takes a disturbing amount of glee in the act - and Vince Gilligan considers it his most evil deed as a result.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • In Crawl Space after finding out that his wife gave most of their money to Ted to pay for taxes when he desperately needed it to disappear them all after Gus threatened to murder his entire family if he tried to stop him from killing Hank. Many viewers say that Walter never came out of the crawl space, only Heisenberg.
  • In the opening to Live Free or Die, he is completely out of it and can barely form a coherent sentence anymore.
• Sarcastic Confession: To Hank, twice - first in the season 3 premiere, the second time when Hank stumbles on Gale Boetticher's notes, with a dedication to a "W.W.". It bites him in the ass in "Gliding Over All".
• Say My Name: "You're Heisenberg." "You're goddamn right."
• Science Hero: Think if MacGyver turned evil. In the first season alone, he uses his chemistry know-how to cook incredibly pure crystal meth, kill two drug dealers with phosphine gas, blow up an annoying yuppie's car, and intimidate hardened criminals with exploding fulminated mercury and melt through a solid metal lock with thermite.
  Tuco: What was that stuff?
  Heisenberg: Fulminated mercury... a little tweak of chemistry.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: One interpretation of his character is that Heisenberg was always a part of Walter White. Walt most likely has always been a prideful person, but merely on rather harmless levels. Heisenberg represents, among other things, Walt's pride that perhaps was always inside him. It isn't until he begins to cook meth and starts to enjoy the thrill of being a criminal that Walt's pride is taken to destructive levels.
• Secret Identity: His Heisenberg persona that he uses to sell meth. Eventually, it becomes his true persona.
• Secret-Identity Identity: The running theme of the show is where the Heisenberg persona he came up was really a mask or his true face all along.
• Secretly Wealthy: He can't spend any of the millions he made off Blue Sky lest he draw suspicion from the feds so he's tried various methods of hiding his cash such as having Skyler launder it through a car wash, renting an entire storage unit to hide it and ultimately burying it in barrels underground in a vast desert that you can only locate by GPS coordinates.
• Self-Serving Memory: In "Peekaboo" he implicitly compares himself to Tracy Hall, the chemist who invented synthetic diamonds for General Electric but was screwed out of millions of dollars by them... except, it is revealed in the same episode that while he feels this is what happened to him with Grey Matter, in reality, he walked away from the company after breaking up with Gretchen, and worst of all he broke up with her because he didn't want to marry into money. The truth is that he is solely responsible for all of the money problems he ever faces in the show purely because of his ego.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man:
  • Manly Man to Jesse's Sensitive Guy. Walt's cold and calculating personality contrasts with Jesse's compassion, empathy, and uninhibited vulnerability.
  • Sensitive Guy to Hank Schrader's Manly Man, at first. Hank is brash, crude, and boisterous, an avid sports fan and gun enthusiast, and his work as a DEA agent often puts him in danger. Walt is a mild-mannered and milquetoast high school chemistry teacher, much more of an intellectual and something of a dork. As the show progresses, however, they both shift around the spectrum: Hank reveals an increasing amount of emotional problems and insecurities, as well as some nerdy interests, while Walter becomes increasingly cold, ruthless, and dangerous.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Envy, Greed, and especially Pride.
  • Envy: Walt is clearly annoyed at his son's hero worship of Hank, and is utterly resentful and bitter towards Gretchen and Elliott over their success with Gray Matter.
  • Greed: As far back as the beginning, Walt has a tendency to bite off more than he can chew. When he can't make as much meth as he had initially agreed on with Tuco, he still tries to get him to pay the original price as a retainer, despite knowing full well how risky it is to piss off Tuco. Even when the meth business is going smoothly, he always insists to Jesse that they could be making more. This is used by Jesse and Hank to corner him in "To'hajiilee".
    • Averted in "Kafkaesque" when he is perfectly content with his $1.5 million deal with Gus, and it is Jesse who believes that he isn't being paid enough.
    • Subverted in "Felina", when Jack's promises to return Walt's money do nothing to keep Walt from killing him, even as he claims Walt could never find it on his own.
    • Once he fills the void killing Gus Fring and Fring's wiping out of his rival cartel leaves in the drug manufacturing trade, Walt basically has a monopoly on the meth trade in the southeastern United States and becomes fabulously wealthy. Despite it being more than anyone could ever want (and more than he could ever realistically spend), he keeps all his millions locked up in a storage locker and just keeps going, seemingly just wanting more and more money for the sake of it, in addition to the boost being a kingpin gives to his now-massive ego.
  • Pride: The prospect of claiming that his meth profits are a gift, inheritance, or randomly found money is so abhorrent that he pays 20% of his profits to Saul and slowly launders the remainder. In Season 4, he talks Hank out of believing that Gale was Heisenberg because he can't stand the idea of another cook being credited with his precious Blue Sky creation. In Season 5, he all but outright admits that his ego and the boost it gets from cooking meth are why he stays in the meth business. In "Granite State", seeing Elliott and Gretchen appearing on television and making him an Un-person in Gray Matter's history is what drives him to go back to Albuquerque rather than turn himself in. Finally, in "Felina", part of Walt's partial redemption involves letting go of his pride, using Gretchen and Elliott to make sure that his children receive all the remaining millions he has left to him even at the cost of letting them think the money is from the generosity of his hated ex-business partners rather than through his work. He also finally admits, both to himself and to Skyler, that his meth cooking was always much more about him than the family.
• Signature Headgear: Whenever Heisenberg wants to feel particularly powerful, he puts on a sleek black hat.
• Shouldn't You Stop Stealing?: As early as the first season, Walt forsakes an opportunity to cover his cancer treatment legitimately and get a well-paying job simply because he feels he was offered the job out of pity. And eventually, both Skyler and Jesse call him out on this, as he doesn't stop selling meth even after making more money than his family can safely launder (let alone spend) in a lifetime. In "Gliding Over All", Walt finally listens to Skyler and plans to leave the meth business for good, only for Hank to discover his secret soon afterwords.
• Shout-Out: A visual one. Before losing his hair, Walt's facial features make him look a lot like Ned Flanders, putting further emphasis on the whole Protagonist Journey to Villain thing.
• Sinister Whistling: Jesse is distraught over a TV news broadcast about the disappearance of Drew Sharp, the boy that Todd killed. Walt tells him that he feels guilty about the incident as well, but after the conversation is over, he starts to whistle light-heartedly, implying that he doesn't feel any remorse over the murder.
• Sliding Scale of Unavoidable vs. Unforgivable: Most would agree poisoning Brock in Season 4 shows his actions to be on the unforgivable side, if not that then when he kept cooking after achieving his monetary goals.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Granted, the reputation he has as "Heisenberg" doesn't make him just a "small name"; however, Walt has a frequent tendency to assume that he's in control of everything when he clearly isn't. His speech to Skyler in "Cornered" is probably the best example of this.
• Smart People Play Chess: During Walter's first day at Gus' laundry, he plays chess with Gale.
• Smug Snake: When his Heisenberg persona comes into play, Walt likes to think of himself as threatening and intimidating, but in reality, it's just his massive ego. Much like other fictional high-functioning smug snakes, Walt can be very smart and cunning, but his pathetic Freak Outs, childish tantrums, extreme arrogance, and overconfidence can and do cost him the sympathy of many, as well as potential victory. All these attributes prevent him from qualifying as a invokedMagnificent Bastard. His dastardly schemes are very successful but they require as much luck as they do brains. Marie described him very accurately:
  Marie: [to Skyler] That arrogant asshole thinks he's some criminal mastermind, but he's not.
• Split Personality: At first, Heisenberg seems like nothing more than a moniker to use while engaging in his criminal activities and to hide his real identity, but as Tuco and many others find out firsthand, Heisenberg isn't as meek as Walt/his physical appearance suggests. There are several moments throughout the series where Walt's entire body language, demeanor, and even his voice radically change (I am the danger, Stay out of my territory, and very noticeable in "Full Measure", where Walt seems genuinely panicked and afraid until Heisenberg emerges and regains control of the situation,) to the point it's pretty easy to tell the difference between mild-mannered, family man Walt, and the ruthless drug kingpin Heisenberg. At least until Walt winds up Becoming the Mask.
  • At the beginning of the series finale, Walt seems to actively communicate with his alternate identity (though it could very easily be him talking to the car he got in) begging "Just get me home, and I'll do the rest." Right after he says this, a police car drives by, the lights of the siren illuminating half his face and noticeably, deliberately ending the shot with his face illuminated in red. Heisenberg even makes a vague "waking up" motion as he surfaces for the final time to take care of his and Walt's unfinished business.
• Spotting the Thread: Early in Season 1, he is torn about killing Krazy 8, because it would be his first murder in cold blood (Emilio's death was mostly self-defense), and it's a line he'd rather not cross. Krazy 8 has him legitimately interested in letting him go, but then he decides to piece together the shards of the shattered plate he'd cleaned up and notices the missing piece.
• Start My Own: After killing Gus, he aims to start his own meth empire. He even outright states he'll manage his operation just as well as Gus. He doesn't.
• Stronger Than They Look: For an older man with cancer, he can throw Jesse around like a rag doll.
• Suicide by Cop: In the first episode, it's strongly implied that Walter's plan when he thinks he's going to be cornered by police is to open fire on them so they'll kill him. This should give a few implications about his personality from the outset.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • His confrontation with the show's Final Boss, Uncle Jack's Aryan Brotherhood. No matter how good he's proved at manipulating people, he couldn't do anything to stop Jack's crew from executing Hank and taking over his eighty million for themselves. They have guns and he doesn't.
  • Walt does the things he does because he comes to enjoy them and enjoys how important being good at them makes him feel. It's this lack of pragmatism that proves his downfall, as his Pride and his Greed are taken to their logical conclusions.
• Sympathetic Murderer: When Walt is tasked with killing Krazy-8, he agonizes over whether or not to go through with it, mostly motivated by the danger showing mercy could pose to him and his family. He only does the deed after he finds out Krazy-8 hid a piece of the broken place to use as a weapon which he attacks Walt with. When it's over, Walt can only weep and mutter "I'm Sorry" over and over. His later killings? Not so much.

T-Y

• Taking the Bullet: Unwilling to let Jesse get caught in the path of the gun turret, Walt tackles him to the floor and pretends to beat him up. With the Nazis now distracted by the scuffle, Walt secretly activates the smart key to his Buick, unleashing a hail of bullets and shielding Jesse with his own body.
• Taking the Heat: After Walter flees his home, he calls back while the Whites are under police surveillance to feed a story that he was solely responsible and forced Skyler to his will so she won't be persecuted as an accomplice.
• Taking You with Me: He kills the entire Neo-Nazi gang with an improvised turret gun, and is fatally wounded himself in the process.
• Terminally-Ill Criminal: Deconstructed. Walt learns he has terminal lung cancer and chooses to manufacture crystal meth to leave enough money to support his family, reasoning he will be dead before he can be investigated or face any legal repercussions. His plan spirals out of control into murder and chaos almost immediately, and becomes even more complicated when a treatment he was talked into actually puts him in remission... and ironically makes it more likely he'll be caught. In the end, Walt dies via his own stray bullet instead of from cancer.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: In reaction to Hank's death and his family leaving him in "Ozymandias", Walt submerges himself in the Heisenberg persona, barking out threats and gloating over the deaths he's caused. Not necessarily because he takes pleasure in it, but because he wants to distance Skyler from being linked to his crimes. Most telling is that during the whole scene, despite his harsh tone, he is weeping profusely.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Walter White is a bald, middle-aged white man living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a state where multiple men (including some other main characters) match that exact description. Tellingly, it takes Hank a very long time to finally figure out who Heisenberg really is as a result, even when the answer is right under his nose.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich:
  • He orders a pizza and tries to have a family dinner with Skyler. When Skyler refuses, Walt throws the pizza on the roof out of anger.
  • On his 52nd birthday, he orders breakfast at Denny's but leaves without eating any after purchasing an M60 from Lawson.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Deconstructed in the 1st to 3rd season. In season 1, an emotional Walt kills a drug dealer because letting him free after the previous events that transpired would mean the certain death of him and his family. Trying to keep this moral trope proves difficult in the 2nd season when Badger, a dealer of Walt and Jesse, becomes a liability, and paying off the right people becomes impractical in their line of business and expensive, at least at the time. In the 3rd season, despite his claim to Jesse that they aren't murderers regarding the issue with the two rival drug dealers, Walter has Gale murdered in order to secure his and Jesse's survival. By Season 5, he has absolutely no problems with it anymore unless it's family.
• Thrill Seeker: The real reason, deep down, that Walt decided to start cooking and distributing meth was because he was sick to death of languishing in unappreciated mediocrity and failure for fifty years, and wanted to actually put his brain to the test. To be challenged, to be hunted, to be feared, to be respected, even at the risk of his life and the lives of his family, it made him feel important and powerful for the first time in his life. It's only after Walt becomes the biggest drug kingpin in the country and eliminated anyone who could threaten him does he retire, since it started feeling like a 9 to 5 job. Only in the last episode does he admit to Skyler that it was never about the money, he became a criminal because it made him feel alive.
• Took a Level in Badass: What the title of the series refers to, though he doesn't really make it all the way there until the end of Season 4 when he outsmarts Gus. However, it's also a Deconstruction as, the more badass he gets, the more humanity he loses.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Oh boy. The longer the series goes on, he becomes increasingly more volatile and cruel, but after killing Gus, there's barely any humanity left in Walt except when it comes to his family (and even that's limited).
• Too Clever by Half: Walt's ingenuity often screws him up, since he is terrible at predicting consequences, mostly due to his excessive pride and superiority complex. The way he sees it, any solution to a problem that he comes up is the best there is, so he blows a gasket whenever he faces any pushback or criticism, no matter how justified or constructive it might be. The magnet ploy is the best example; it sets in motion much of the drama and complication of season 5.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Although their relationship is more complex than simple "friendship" and the traffic on the highway is by no means solely one way, he's this very specifically to Jesse as he does start outright manipulating him from the beginning to get what he wants, ending up undermining most of Jesse's outside relationships in a bid to both maintain control and keep his loyalty. However, he does this kind of thing not only to Jesse. Just look at the lives of the people he's touched, be they "friends", "enemies" or "family"....
• Tragic Hero: A textbook example to the point that he has been widely compared to many of Shakespeare's characters. Walt is a genius-level chemist (restricted to a job far below his skill level), a loving father, and an all-around good person at the start of the series. Diagnosed with lung cancer, his own pride drives him to refuse handouts from anyone else and deal with the issue on his own terms. As time goes on, his decisions drive him further down a dark path, draining him of any morality. By the time he realizes just how far he's fallen, the only things left for him to do are humble himself and make amends before dying.
• Tragic Keepsake: Walt has a tendency to remember his important kills through gifts and adopting mannerisms:
  • He cuts off the crust from his bread in memory of Krazy-8.
  • He keeps an eye that came off the teddy bear from the plane crash in "ABQ". It represented his morality and his regrets about what he was doing.
  • He keeps a book from Gale, which ends up screwing him over.
  • Some of Gus' cleanliness seems to have rubbed on him; for example, he puts a towel on the floor before kneeling down to vomit, just as Gus did.
    • His handling of Lydia in the car wash directly mirrors his talk with Gus about Hank's bug at Los Pollos Hermanos.
    • Additionally, his grieving pose in "Ozymandias" (lying face-first on the ground, beaten and humiliated) mirrors that of Gus when Max was killed.
  • After killing Mike, he starts to drink alcohol the same way.
  • And he tells Lydia that she needs to learn to "take yes for an answer", just as Mike told him.
  • Though he didn't kill Hank, Walt feels responsible for it, and thus orders his whiskey in the same way Hank did.
• Tragic Villain: At first he is forced into his life of crime as his only way to care for his family. As the series progresses however he starts choosing evil and caring only about himself.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • A masterful example can be seen at the beginning of "Felina". He keeps his poker face on after breaking into Elliott and Gretchen's house, which probably greatly contributes to their panic.
    Walter: I really like your new house.
  • Another moment can be seen with his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Jack, as, despite his betrayal and murder of Hank, he never raises his voice and stays coldly calculating throughout the entire ordeal.
• Troubled Abuser: Walter White uncovers absolutely terrible parts of his personality as time goes on, terrifies everyone, sexually assaults Skyler, manipulates his son into hating his mother, treats Saul like a slave (not too dissimilar in how it reminds Saul of his equally troubled/abusive brother), and ruins any slight hint of Jesse's self-worth or self-esteem while being possessive and controlling like Jesse is a mix of his wife and son, but he knows full well he should have died earlier than he did, his pride and belief he has to be the man providing for his family traps him, and he has terminal cancer to contend with.
• True Companions: As unfathomable the hate they gradually had for each other, he and Jesse were this at the end, evidenced by Walt shielding Jesse from his machine gun trap and letting him go. The little nod they both give each other before Jesse leaves is about everything they needed and could say.
• Ultimate Job Security: As the only person who can keep a horrendously expensive drug operation profitable, Walt (and Jesse) have nearly unlimited leverage over Gus. He manages to keep his job after not only murdering three other employees but also plotting to do the same to his boss. It's only when Walt unwittingly trains his own replacement that Gus manages to fire him.
• The Unapologetic: By the time of the final episode, even after admitting that his intentions weren't as noble as he tried to claim, he still never apologizes to Skyler or Jesse for everything he put them through.
• Underestimating Badassery: His enemies have a tendency to underestimate how dangerous Walt really can be when he has to. This usually gives him an advantage to plot against them.
  • He also seems to deliberately invoke this in "Felina", as his appearance and cough make him seem anything but dangerous, to make Lydia and Jack plot to have him killed because they think he has nothing to protect himself with. They forget that he also has nothing left to lose.
• The Unfettered: After living afraid for 50 years, as Walt himself puts it, he starts to become this soon after "Heisenberg" arises, being capable of nearly anything to achieve his goals: from lying, abusing, and manipulating the people closest to him into doing his bidding to threatening, poisoning or murdering anyone who stands in his way. Though there is at least one line he will never cross: he won't (physically) hurt family, no matter what it costs him, and has a bit of a breakdown when his actions accidentally result in the death of Hank.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Rejecting the offer from Gretchen and Elliot was ungrateful and it was an Establishing Character Moment that showed Walt to be driven by selfishness and bitterness, not simply a desire to take care of his family.
  • When his son establishes an online donation website to pay for his cancer treatment, Walt does not take it well due to his ego and is even resistant to Saul's suggestion of using it to launder his drug money.
  • Saul has his own issues, wanting money and his brother's version of love again, it doesn't change the fact that Walt repeatedly dismisses him as a "two-bit lawyer", even though Saul has been consistently and insanely useful to Walt throughout the series. Walter literally thanks the guy once in the whole show.
• Unluckily Lucky: Walt avoids numerous misfortunes by sheer luck as well as his skills: Hank never comes close to suspecting him as Heisenberg (until Walt's own mistake did him in), his disappearance at the hands of Tuco is treated as a fugue state, he avoids getting stranded in the desert by making a battery, he barely avoids getting killed by the Cousins due to getting Fring's call, he ultimately gets his assassination called off by Gus redirecting them towards Hank, he gets himself and Jesse saved because Jesse happened to be closer to Gale, Gus only fires him instead of killing him in the desert because of Jesse, as well as he just happened to be growing Lily of the Valley at his house when Gus and his men decided to target Hank and his family, enabling him to turn the tables. All of these events end up screwing him slowly one-by-one, by the end of which he has nearly destroyed his peaceful life as well as his morality, leading to Skyler and Jesse detesting his very presence.
  • Jesse also lampshades the "luck" bit when trying to convince Hank and Gomez not to pursue him, as they ultimately decide to strike first by luring Walt with his money. Even that ends up backfiring against them, as Walt, pissed off at Jesse, sics the Neo-Nazis after him (while not realizing that he has allied with Hank and Gomez) and while the trio do successfully arrest him, he is immediately bailed out by Jack as they kill Hank and Gomez (the outcome Walt least wanted to happen), resulting in his family completely turning against him and his identity getting exposed.
• Un-person: On the verge of becoming one in "Granite State": his legal identity is erased, his character as a father and husband is denied, his contribution as a scientist in Gray Matter is discredited, and his reputation as the legendary Heisenberg is steadily diminished as his signature blue meth remains on the market despite his disappearance. This is what drives his actions in the finale. The tagline of the final season says it best: Remember My Name.
• The Unreveal: Why Walt has to work as a teacher at the start of the show is never addressed. He's shown having multiple lab jobs after leaving Gray Matter, one of which was well-paying enough that he considered buying a bigger starter home when he and Skyler first began building their family. What exactly happened since then to bar him from chemist jobs is left unclear.
• Unscrupulous Hero: In "Felina". Having accepted that everything is his fault, Walt salvages anything that hasn't yet been destroyed. He ensures a hefty inheritance for his family and that Hank and Gomez's bodies are found. He avenges Hank by killing the Neo-Nazis and rescues Jesse before giving him the chance to kill him. Finally, he clears his family of any charges for good, or at the very least, puts them in good legal standing.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • He lets Jane die when he could have saved her, which quickly snowballs into a mid-air collision in "ABQ".
  • Walt also tells Jack about Jesse's relationship with Andrea and Brock. This leads to Todd killing Andrea in the penultimate episode.
• Victory Is Boring: In "Gliding Over All", anybody who could pose a threat to Walt is dead and that, combined with the meth business feeling like a 9-5 job, prompts him to finally leave the meth business... until Hank discovers his dark secret.
• Villain Killer: Walt is directly responsible for the deaths of Gustavo Fring, Hector Salamanca, Tyrus Kitt, Mike Ehrmantraut, Jack Welker and his gang (minus Todd, who is killed by Jesse), and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle.
• Villain Protagonist: His actions have gradually become more extreme and immoral as his greed and pride increasingly influence his behavior, pushing the limit on how far he can go before he stops being a sympathetic Anti-Hero. Come Season 5, he has finally transitioned to full villain status, murdering several people to secure his own safety, continuing to cook even though he has more money than he ever needed, and stating outright that with his family life in ruins, his goal now is to build a drug empire. Dials back slightly in the second half of the season when he finally gets out of the business for good and makes it clear that he still loves his family, but it may be too little too late in-universe by this point. By the end, he flat out admits that everything he did was all for himself, and while he admits this to his wife and is finally honest to her and himself, he is still completely unapologetic.
• Villain's Dying Grace: As is obvious from the other tropes, Walt swings back and forth between being a hero, villain, and everything in between. However, by his death, he has alienated Flynn and Skyler most of all and emotionally destroyed them. They both make it clear that he can't be forgiven for that - but he finally admits to Skyler the last time he sees her that he acted selfishly. Plot-wise, Skyler shows obvious relief and gratitude when he, on a bugged phone line, silently forgives her for turning on him, fully implicates himself, and frees her as much as he can so that she may still raise Flynn and Holly.
• Villains Out Shopping: During his first encounter with Gale, the two get along well by reproducing Gale's coffee and playing chess, stuff that has nothing to do with cooking meth.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Epically a mix of this and Heroic BSoD at the end of "Crawl Space" when he fears his family has no way out of being murdered by Gus Fring's henchman, which also stresses his descent into total moral bankruptcy.
  • Right before "Ozymandias", "To'hajiilee" sees Walt set up by Jesse and Hank with a ruse to threaten his money, which results in Walt furiously ranting to Jesse about how he earned all of that money and everything he did for it — the entire rant was recorded by Hank for the purpose of busting Walt. The last third of '"To'hajiilee" through "Ozymandias" is one long breakdown for Walt.
  • In "Ozymandias", Walt undergoes two of these. The first is an even more severe one when Hank is killed right in front of him. And another equally memorable one, upon seeing he has lost everything. To sum it up:
    Walt: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!? WE'RE A FAMILY!^note He screams at Skyler after she pulled a knife on him for thinking he killed Hank and escaped We're a family...
• Villainous Parental Instinct: While his pride and rage against the world were ultimately the main reasons why he began cooking meth, he also does genuinely want to provide for his children and means it when he says he wants them to have some kind of financial safety net after he dies. He's also devastated when his son Flynn turns on him and when he briefly kidnaps his baby daughter Holly, he returns her to Skyler when she cries for her mother. Among his last actions to correct his wrongs include ensuring that Gretchen and Elliot set up a fund for Flynn, even though it means going back on his pride (which was the big Fatal Flaw that made him get into the drug trade in the first place) and pushing Jesse (who had been something of a surrogate son to him throughout the series) to the floor to protect him from getting shot.
• Was It Really Worth It?: Deconstructed Trope.
  • Both Jesse and Skyler call him out on this in the first half of Season 5.
    Jesse: Mr. White... is a meth empire really something to be that proud of?
  • In the second half of season 5, Walt ties up his loose ends and finally admits the truth to Skyler. Most notable is that he never truly apologizes to anyone, in the end, only giving a brutally honest admission of his motives.
    Walt: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Initially played straight but the "well-intentioned" bit is mostly in his own head by the later seasons.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Walt goes in and out of this with Jesse until Jesse finds out that it was Walt who poisoned Brock.
  • He was also fairly close to Hank until Hank finds out Walt is Heisenberg.
• What a Piece of Junk: Walt finally gets a vehicle that gets some action when in the finale he buys an old Cadillac and installs a remote-operated M60 machine gun in the trunk, turning the car into a mobile turret that he uses to gun down the entire Neo-Nazi gang at the climax of the episode.
• What You Are in the Dark: A major element of the series is putting Walter through ever higher and higher stakes and showing his response. The majority of the ones he makes show him to be quite a reprehensible human being.
  • This makes the rather tragic contrast in a Jerkass Woobie way of the few times he was a positive example of this. He really did intend to properly retire from the drug trade in "Gliding Over All", as shown when he rebuffs Lydia in the very next episode. And in "Ozymandias", he really genuinely tries his absolute hardest to save Hank, even with Hank arresting him, by being willing to give up $80 million. He not only fails at saving him but his family believes he meant to get him killed.
• When It All Began: Walter's life as Heisenberg begins on his 50th birthday, the day Hank offered to take him on a ride-along for a meth bust, and ends on his 52nd.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Deconstructed in that he really wasn't a Butt-Monkey even at the start of the show but thinks he's one and hates himself for it, which is why his ego easily inflates after he gets into the meth business. From his distorted perspective, he's taking back control of his life after being nothing more than a coward who let other people walk all over him.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: The flipside of him increasingly viewing and treating Jesse like a second son is that he has a form of this trope going on towards Flynn. While Walt does love Flynn, it is also clear that he, at the same time, at least subconsciously views him as somewhat of a disappointment. He's especially frustrated by his son's independent streak, which his lowkey irritation of him rejecting his birthname name of "Walter Junior" and some other incidents, such as his dogged insistence that Flynn drive a car "the right way" rather than a way that allows him to compensate for his handicap, bears witness to. In a nutshell, it is frequently implied that the main reason why he favors Jesse is because of Jesse's whole "Well Done, Son" Guy complex, which makes him more obedient and dependent on Walt and allows Walt to act as a more "traditional" father figure, a relationship which he cannot have with his more strong-willed and free-spirited biological son.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In Season 2, he goads Jesse into embracing his fearsome reputation, clearly believing that the street cred alone will allow his burgeoning crew to expand unopposed. It doesn't quite work that way, as Walt's rivals are hardened cartel associates, who couldn't care less about that kind of empty reputation and casually dismantle Walt and Jesse's independent operation overnight.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: In the earlier seasons, it seems like his meth cooking and increasingly aggressive behavior is his way to get even with a world that had always treated him like dirt. Even after all the terrible things he's done, it's hard not to feel sorry for him in "Granite State" when he has to go into hiding in complete solitude, pays someone $10K to be his friend for just an hour, and has his son yell at him that he needs to just die.
• Would Hit a Girl: He and Mike are in agreement that Lydia needs to go. Walt even mocks her for thinking she could use his children to appeal to his sentimentality and get him to spare her.
• Would Hurt a Child: Poisoned Brock as part of his plan to get Jesse back on his side against Gus. While it doesn't really excuse his actions, he at least made sure to use a non-fatal poison. And it was after Gus had threatened to murder Walt's family so it was also out of desperation.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: After the shooting that results in Hank's death, Walter taunts Jesse with the exact details of Jane's death before Jack's men take him away.
• You Can't Go Home Again: After Hank's death, whereupon he embarks on a self-imposed exile to New Hampshire. Until Gray Matter sparks his final move in the finale.
• Your Days Are Numbered: He knows he's doomed from the very beginning after his cancer diagnosis; which, of course, is what sets everything in motion in the first place.

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"I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And... I was... really... I was alive."