Better Call Saul / Tropes F to N

Main Page | A-E | F-N | O-Z

---

F

• Failed a Spot Check: Jimmy makes sure that the skaters memorize the make, color and license plate number of Betsy Kettleman's car. They still screw up and mistake a very similar-looking car for hers (they don't even memorize the shade of brown). That's minor. What's most egregious is that the Spanish-speaking little old lady who got out of the car should have raised the red flag that they'd got the wrong person. 'Cause there's no way on Earth that this woman's name is "Betsy Kettleman".
• Failed Attempt at Drama: In "JMM" Jimmy turns down Howard's job offer in spectacular fashion... or so he thinks. Once he's done with his "LIGHTNING BOLTS SHOOT FROM MY FINGERTIPS!" rant he just looks like he wants the floor of the courthouse to swallow him up.
• Fake Nationality: In-Universe. The Irish Jimmy McGill accuses a golf club of denying him membership because of his new Jewish name.
  Saul Goodman: Five thousand years, and it never ends!
• Faking the Dead: Lalo Salamanca kills a body double with matching dental records so he can continue to investigate Gus in secret, but since Gus is Properly Paranoid it doesn't take long before he figures out the truth.
• Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: Jimmy goes through a lot of them: HHM's mail room after his arrest, working in a cell phone store during his 12-month suspension, and managing a Cinnabon as "Gene".
• False Confession: Jimmy claims his taped confession is this, even though it isn't.
• False Flag Operation:
  • In "Something Beautiful," Gus has Tyrus and Victor stage a highway robbery to make Arturo's death look like the work of a Salamanca rival, retroactively pin Mike's truck robbery on this rival, and cover up Nacho's defection by shooting him nonfatally.
  • In "JMM," Lalo calls Nacho from jail and directs him to torch one of Gus' restaurants. Since Nacho is now a double agent for Gus, Gus finds out about this, and decides to let Lalo think he's got the upper hand by allowing Nacho to carry out the attack. But since Gus wants to mitigate his losses, he selects the Los Pollos Hermanos in Los Lunas rather than the one in Albuquerque where he keeps his office, and personally goes along to rig an improvised bomb to destroy the restaurant.
• Fanservice:
  • "Rock and Hard Place" has a shirtless, oil-smeared Michael Mando hosing himself down.
  • After Bob Odenkirk trained up for Nobody, Jimmy suddenly got himself a lot more shirtless scenes. It's almost an apology for the "Fun and Games" heartbreak that when Saul Goodman gets out of bed, he's completely naked.
• Fat and Skinny: Jimmy is thin while his brother Chuck is corpulent, reflecting how high or low on the hog each has been living for most of his life.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Jimmy's impulsiveness and need to self-sabotage. Every time he gets something good, he always sabotages it with both his scams and his terribly misguided attempts to do the right thing in his own way. It ensures that no matter how many good things he gets, he'll always throw them away soon enough. However, in an inversion, one of Jimmy's few enduring virtues is his sympathy for old people, which proves to be his undoing. In the end, he finds himself unable to harm the elderly Marion to prevent her from informing on him.
  • Chuck's biggest flaw his is his refusal to believe that people are capable of change. He believes that Jimmy is simply incapable of being anything other than "Slippin' Jimmy", and as such he does everything he can to prevent Jimmy from being a lawyer in an attempt to prevent the rise of Saul Goodman. His insistence on sabotaging his brother not only costs him everything, but it's a big part of Saul's existence in the first place.
  • Kim, for all her intelligence, believes that her actions will have no long-term consequences and that she can do whatever she wants as a result; it's why she jumps so fast into pulling all her cons with Jimmy once she gets a taste. This flaw not only leads to the ruination of Kim's life once she finally crosses a line she can't walk back, but costs Howard Hamlin his life.
• Fell Asleep Driving: Kim adds a new client even though she already has plenty of work to do for Mesa Verde. She ends up so exhausted that she dozes off at the wheel, crashing her car. When she wakes up, she is in a deserted location with a broken arm and all the papers in her briefcase flying around.
• Female Gaze: The creators have acknowledged there’s a bigger female audience than in Breaking Bad, and so give them treats, Jimmy ass-out on multiple occasions while Kim gets very little nudity, their relationship being fem-dommish, and plenty of focus given to Nacho’s arms and Lalo’s crotch area.
• Finger Gun:
  • At the end of "Winner" Jimmy does double finger guns as he triumphantly announces his intention to practice law under the name Saul Goodman. This is later echoed by Kim in ''Something Unforgivable" as she declares her intention to destroy Howard's reputation. In both case the gesture signifies the character's turn to the dark side. The final scene of the series features a callback to the gesture.
  • In "Bali Ha'i" the Cousins also use finger guns as an Implied Death Threat, intimidating Mike with a threat to kill his granddaughter.
• Fingore: In "Mijo" Tuco threatens to cut Jimmy's fingers off with wire cutters.
• The Fixer: Since this is a Prequel focusing on Protagonist Journey to Villain for both Jimmy McGill and Mike Ehrmantraut, both gradually grow into this role.
• Five-Finger Discount:
  • In "Wiedersehn" Kristy Esposito tells the scholarship panel at HHM that her experience of being convicted for shoplifting is actually what sparked her interest in the law. Unfortunately it is also what ultimately prevents her from being offered the scholarship.
  • The flashback at the start of "Axe and Grind" reveals the start of Kim shoplifting. She is caught by the store's owner, but is let go with a warning.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In "Klick", Mike doesn’t hear the pop of Lecerda getting shot until a minute later, which sets up how Gus can get to his car and disappear before Mike realizes what's happened.
• Flashback Effects: Flashbacks have bluish tint with a high contrast filter applied to distinguish them from events in the present day.
• Flash Forward:
  • "Sunk Costs" begins with a seemingly throwaway Cold Open showing a Los Pollos Hermanos truck driving towards the U.S.-Mexico border. The end of the episode reveals that this scene is set a few years in the future, possibly overlapping with Breaking Bad, showing that Mike's gambit helped Gus edge out Hector from the drug market.
  • The teaser for "Quite a Ride" is essentially a prequel for Breaking Bad's "Granite State", showing Jimmy/Saul ransacking his office before he contacts Ed the Vacuum Repair Guy.
• Flatline: In "Klick", Chuck and Jimmy's mother calls out for Jimmy just before her electrocardiogram flatlines. This confirms "Jimmy" as her last words, and further adds to Chuck's resentment at his perceived Parental Favoritism of Jimmy.
• Foil:
  • Howard Hamlin for Jimmy. He's confident and successful in the ways Jimmy isn't.
  • The Vargas are one for the Ehrmantrauts, at least in the father-son pairings. Both families have one member who is highly noble and ethical and one member who is involved in criminal activities, the difference being which is which. Both eventually have the dirty one being forced to involve the straight one in their illegal acts. Both straight ones hesitate to accept a bribe, which puts both of them in mortal danger. The difference ends up being that Matt Ehrmantraut ends up getting killed for his obvious discomfort in taking dirty money, whereas Manuel manages to survive since Nacho goes above and beyond in making sure Manuel avoids that same fate, eventually dying himself to protect him.
• A Fool for a Client: Jimmy decides to represent himself, despite being warned against it and knowing full well about the reputation doing so has. In this case at least he is a lawyer, and has done criminal cases, but even so. Downplayed as he teams up with Kim.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Played With. In their early years, Jimmy was the foolish sibling, living off small-time scams rather than getting a real job, before getting into serious legal trouble and having to call his more responsible older brother to bail him out. Later in life Jimmy is the responsible sibling when Chuck develops electromagnetic hypersensitivity and becomes dependent on him for his day-to-day care.
• Footsie Under the Table:
  • Kim and Jimmy under the HHM boardroom table in "Cobbler".
  • Jimmy tries this again in "Amarillo" while he is trying to convince the board that he did not solicit clients. Kim realises that Jimmy is lying- and lets him know by angrily pulling her foot away.
• Foregone Conclusion: Given that this is a prequel, a lot of the conflict and tension doesn't rely on if something will happen, but how.
  • Obviously, while Jimmy may begin as a benevolent public defender scraping by on his morals, he's going to eventually become Saul Goodman, the most infamous Amoral Attorney New Mexico has ever seen. The very first scene of the show is a Cold Open following just how much his life has tanked since his role in Walter White's meth operation was revealed and he went into hiding. This ultimately means that any good opportunity that comes his way will ultimately be ruined one way or another.
  • On the other hand, while Jimmy will eventually become Saul Goodman, he's still legally practicing law, even if not under the same name. This means that Chuck's attempts to get Jimmy's bar license revoked are all doomed to fail from the start, even when he does get a year-long suspension. It also means that once Howard catches on to the kind of things Jimmy is willing to do and proclaims his intent to reveal his true colors, destiny arrives in the form of a bullet to the head from Lalo Salamanca.
  • Hector may be able to walk and talk at the beginning of the show, but he's eventually going to end up in a wheelchair, unable to speak. The season three finale reveals that Nacho swapped out his heart pills in an attempt to kill him, but Gus kept him alive long enough to be resuscitated before sabotaging his care to ensure he never fully recovered.
  • Gus is still in good standing with the Cartel at the beginning of Breaking Bad, meaning that despite all the moves he's making against them in this series and his infiltration of them via Nacho, his machinations ultimately aren't going to come to light until it's too late.
  • None of the major characters in Saul's life are around by the time of Breaking Bad, particularly Chuck, Kim, Howard, Nacho, and Lalo, so a major question for them is how their fates will be tied up. In the end, Chuck, Howard, Nacho, and Lalo are all dead, while Kim is alive and living in Florida.
  • Mike and Gus's central conflict throughout the show is creating the Superlab, and by the time of Breaking Bad, the cartel still doesn't know about its existence. This means that while it may be a massive logistical challenge, it will eventually be built, and most importantly, Lalo will fail in his goal to find it and inform the cartel. This means that as soon as Lalo gets inside it for the first time, there's no way he's coming back out. Additionally, Gus confirms to Hector that every Salamanca is dead in season four of the original show, so Lalo wasn't coming out of the show alive one way or another.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When berating the skaters for their attempt to pull a Staged Pedestrian Accident on him, he gives them "a 9.6 for technique, and a 0.0 for choice of victim." After all, as we later learn, "Slippin' Jimmy" knows a thing or two about the proper way to pull this off...and it also foreshadows an even poorer choice of victim later in the episode: Tuco Salamanca's grandmother, for whom they get a 9.6 for technique and -6.0 for choice of victim...
  • In "Pimento," when Hamlin harshly tells Kim that the "partners have decided" in not hiring Jimmy. Note the use of "partners," as in the plural sense, which foreshadows the revelation of Chuck's involvement in denying Jimmy a job.
  • As far back as the first episode, Chuck tries to convince Jimmy to accept Howard Hamlin's notion of changing his business cards so as to de-emphasize the name McGill, and Jimmy flat out asks "Whose side are you on?" In "Pimento", he finds out. Chuck responds to this by asking "wouldn’t you rather build your own identity", not unkindly, but the fact that Jimmy would rather just be someone else, multiple times, is a big theme in the show (he even spends his remaining money a few episodes later on dressing up like Howard for a troll). It's also a clue that Howard ultimately isn't the one who wants Jimmy to use a different name.
  • After Jimmy's meeting with the Kettlemans, he holds out a business card to Craig, but it is quickly snatched up by Mrs. Kettleman. Her offering the bribe to Jimmy instead of her husband doing it will force them to take Jimmy's plea bargain.
  • Marco's occasional coughing and pounding his heart in "Marco" foreshadow his heart attack and death at the end of the episode. The Green Ribbon cab company is an allusion to green ribbons showing respect for patients, worn in the 18th century.
  • The first letter of each episode title in season 2 form the anagram "FRINGS BACK", foreshadowing the introduction of Gus Fring to the show in Season 3.
  • Numerous hints pointing to Chuck's suicide are scattered throughout Season 3:
    • "Mabel" is a reference to The Adventures of Mabel, a book that Chuck read to Jimmy when they were children. The book was written by Harry Thurston Peck, who, like Chuck, committed suicide following professional disgrace.
    • At the beginning of "Witness," the gas lantern is placed in the foreground. During the climax, Jimmy threatens to burn Chuck's house to the ground when he confronts him about the confession tape.
    • At the beginning of "Sunk Costs", Jimmy tells Chuck that he will alienate everyone in his life and die alone. Chuck does indeed die alone after cutting off ties with Jimmy, estranging himself from Howard, and getting kicked out of HHM.
    • In "Sabrosito", Jimmy specifically notes Mike's photo of "a gas lantern sitting on a stack of friggin' Financial Times," and goes on to enter it as evidence during the trial in "Chicanery".
    • Finally, the Cold Open of "Lantern" all but spells it out for us as the camera zooms in on the gas lantern while Chuck is reading The Adventures of Mabel to Jimmy in their childhood flashback.
  • In a deleted scene from "Sabrosito", Victor meets up with Gus behind Los Pollos Hermanos to inform him about Mike turning down the money, while Gus is in the midst of taking out the trash. Shortly before Victor gets out of his car, you can see a box cutter in Gus' back pocket much like the one Gus will cut Victor's throat with.
  • Near the start of "Bagman" Jimmy notices a spot of dirt on his shoe and decides to rinse it off using his Davis & Main water bottle. The second that precious clean drinking water hits the New Mexico desert sand you know he's going to regret wasting it.
  • In "Marco", Marco asks Jimmy why he isn't more tanned: "I mean, 10 years in the desert, you should look like Anthony Quinn in Lawrence of Arabia". Jimmy explains: "Hey, I’m Irish, ok? I spend my time staying out of the sun.", Sure enough, in "Bagman", the episode which pays homage to Lawrence of Arabia, Jimmy and Mike return from two days in the desert with horrific sunburn.
  • The episode title "Breathe" spoils the final scene with Gus suffocating Arturo with a plastic bag.
  • Jimmy's crazed lashing out ranting at Howard in "JMM" that Howard has no idea what worlds he walks in serves two purposes; Jimmy soon finds out that for all his ease with low level idiots he has no idea what he's got himself into regarding the actual criminals he's involved with, and when Howard starts to realise the world Jimmy and Kim are in, he’s killed.
  • In “Bagman”, Jimmy attempts a Heroic Suicide ^note Odenkirk confirmed he had given up, and he never really gets that piece of himself back while wearing the space blanket that reminds him of Chuck. While that had a practical use, getting himself noticed, it would be followed by more parallels to Chuck in terms of Sanity Slippage.
  • In "Something Unforgivable", when Kim wants to ruin Howard's life, Jimmy is the voice of reason telling her in the cold light of the day she wouldn't be okay with this. She takes that as a challenge to go ahead, but after she keeps Lalo a secret because she’s having too much fun, which indirectly leads to Howard getting killed, her husband terrified for life over being held captive by Lalo, and Kim gaslighting Cheryl, he turns out to be right and she self-destructs.
  • In “Point and Shoot”, Jimmy is willing to die if it means that Kim has a chance of getting out, and to a lesser extent, atone for getting Howard killed. The very next episode, Jimmy McGill does effectively die when Kim leaves, becoming Saul Goodman. Kim is also willing to kill Gus if it means protecting Jimmy, and seeing him as Saul (feeling like that’s her fault) makes her want to destroy herself in penance even more.
  • The sweet version. In "Nippy", Gene (conning with his real feelings as usual) bemoans that nobody would care if he died and he doesn't have a wife waiting for him. By the finale, he'll have found out that Kim called Fran because she was terrified Jimmy was dead after "Granite State", and she'll visit him in prison very clearly intent on making it a regular thing, and help him get out.
• Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics: The opening titles are styled in the mould of Saul Goodman's cheesy late-night commercials, which is why the show's theme tune ("Better Call Saul" by Little Barrie) cuts off at an awkward moment. It also cuts off just before the lyrics begin.

  ♫ Kill communication
  Steppin' off the grid
  Just to let me know
  So maybe cut my ties... ♫

• Forgot the Disability: Chuck is convinced that he has developed a painful sensitivity to all electronics and anything that uses or conducts electricity, which has turned him from one of the most prestigious and influential lawyers in the state to a rather pitiful shut-in. Although Chuck's symptoms are psychosomatic, at times he has gone into a catatonic state reminiscent of locked in syndrome. On a few occasions however, Chuck has been so distracted by other things that he has failed to react at those same external stimuli and situations that otherwise cause him so much grief. In the end, his problem is exposed as psychosomatic (which he had denied) when Jimmy surreptitiously has a battery planted in his pocket, yet Chuck doesn't react to it until it's revealed.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: By Season 4, the show has four main storylines: Jimmy, Kim, and their individual storylines that are tied together by their relationship, as well as a separate storyline for the cartel that's further divided into subplots for Gus, Mike, Nacho, and the remaining elements of Hector's organization.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Applies to the four main lawyer characters.
  • Sanguine: Jimmy/Saul.
  • Choleric: Chuck.
  • Melancholic: Howard.
  • Phlegmatic: Kim.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • If you're wondering where Jimmy hired the billboard worker for his stunt, he briefly appears in the courthouse lobby during a timelapse shot in the "Mijo" montage of Jimmy's public defender work.
  • In "Breathe", as Jimmy is scouring the job section of the local newspaper, an ad for Beneke Fabricators can also be seen◊.
• Freudian Excuse: Shared by Jimmy and Chuck is a big reason why they're... like that. There's a sixteen year age gap between them, and Chuck was expected to be a surrogate father. He didn't even start out great, but Jimmy started acting up partly because his brother resented him, and their parents didn't want to admit it, so Chuck's anger and Jimmy gearing his whole life to get his brother's attention both got worse.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: In his "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Howard guesses a few of Jimmy and Kim's reasons for trying to ruin his life (both holding a grudge regarding issues with Chuck and her Red Cloud history) but tells them very bluntly there's no justification for what they did to him. They admit this much later, Kim saying in her confession that Howard was perfectly coherent, and Jimmy confesses in court about him, while they actually start working on their shitload of trauma.
• Freudian Trio: The Salamanca Cousins.
  • Tuco is murderously unstable (Id).
  • Marco and Leonel are stone-cold remorseless killers (Superego).
  • Lalo is outgoing but a highly effective killer and planner (Ego).
• Friend in the Black Market: Caldera the vet, who is able to get his hands on a tracking device for Mike and serves as the Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy role that Jimmy serves in Breaking Bad.
• Frivolous Lawsuit: Saul makes calls regarding several Noodle Incident lawsuits after the Time Skip in "Fun and Games", including threatening to sue a radio station for playing one of his ads in mono.
• Funny Answering Machine:
  • The Kettlemans have a joint message with all of them speaking. "Hello! You’ve reached Team Kettleman! Please leave a message for Craig, Betsy, Warren and Jo Jo AFTER THE BEEP!"
  • In season 1, Jimmy tries to class up his solo law practice by imitating an English secretary on his answering machine message. In Season 2, he records another version of the message, but erases it and does one as himself in his normal voice.
• Funny Flashback Haircut: Jimmy has a dumb looking mullet in the flashback where he is locked up because he defecated through a sunroof.
• Futureshadowing: In the "Marco" flashback, when Jimmy is saying goodbye to his friend, Marco is Cassandra Truth about how he shouldn't trust Chuck and that it'll be like being a slave or in prison again if he works for his brother.

G

• Games of the Elderly: Jimmy works (and excels) in a retirement home, where his main duty is calling bingo.
• The Ghost:
  • Howard's father, George Hamlin. He's a partner, but only his son is ever seen. He seems to take no part in the firm's activities, and Howard's conversation with Kim in "Fifi" implies that the elder Hamlin is deceased. We only learn his first name in season 4 when Howard is reading Chuck's obituary to Jimmy to get his final approval before running it in the newspaper.
  • Though his death was a major part of "Five-O", Mike's late son Matt never showed up on camera (except as a child in a brief flashback in "Talk").
  • Jimmy brings up Judge Papadoumian by Season 4's "Winner," who he later describes by Breaking Bad as hating harassment of elders and Saul's fashion sense. We potentially see what they look like◊ during one of the webisodes.
• Gilded Cage:
  • The man who was once the most infamous criminal lawyer in Albuquerque and acquired a bit of celebrity and a load of money in that life is now an anonymous Cinnabon manager with a nice house in Flyover Country, and can never again hope to achieve anywhere near the same level of fame or fortune.
  • Jimmy also feels this way about Davis & Main, which is welcoming and comfortable, and yet at the same time has elements that cause Jimmy discomfort, like the annoyingly small cupholder in his company car, or even the corporate apartment he stays in.
  • It is hinted that HHM is something of a gilded cage for Howard. In "Fifi" he admits to Kim that he had actually wanted to start his own firm but joined HHM at his father's insistence. Given that he isn't a skilled litigator and his talents lie more in client development it is also possible that his father pressured him to study law and follow in his footsteps rather than pursue his own interests.
    • Howard's home life is another example. He lives in a Big Fancy House where he is trapped in a loveless marriage to a woman who refuses to attend therapy or discuss getting a divorce.
• Glory Days:
  • The Framing Device of the series is a post-Breaking Bad Saul, hiding out as the manager of a Cinnabon in Omaha and spending his nights watching tapes of his old commercials and morosely reminiscing about his time as a lawyer. The scenes are Deliberately Monochrome, but the reflections of his advertisements are given a Splash of Color.
  • Jimmy also has some fond memories of his time in Cicero, which is most evident when he tells Cal and Lars about "Slippin' Jimmy." However, this changes after a brief return to his old ways. He realizes through Marco that he was right to leave when he did.
  • Chuck was once a successful lawyer and a named partner in a major law firm. An EMS allergy has crippled his ability to function outside his home, and now he lives as a recluse in a dark and cold house.
• Go Out with a Smile: Lalo Salamanca.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny: Saul's house is largely decked out in gold. This goes up to eleven with a gold toilet.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Jimmy's scheme to get Chuck in trouble with HHM's insurance company goes too well. The episode causes Howard to essentially fire Chuck, which leads Chuck to relapse into his mental illness, which leads to Chuck's suicide, which Jimmy did not want or expect. Realizing this puts Jimmy into Stepford Smiler mode going into Season 4.
    • History repeats itself with Kim and Jimmy's scheme to discredit Howard and secure an early end to the Sandpiper case. It goes entirely to plan, and when Howard confronts them at their apartment he admits defeat and even congratulates them on a scam gone right... and then Lalo turns up and, sees Howard as an inconvenient witness who must be despatched, and murders him with a bullet to the head.
  • Jimmy's plan to turn the retirement home against Irene then manipulate her into settling succeeds, but he is unable to repair the damage he has done to Irene's friendships.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Downplayed with the last Rolex scam in "Marco": it was going just fine until Marco's health screwed everything up, leading to Kevin running off with the wallet and Marco dying.
• Good Is Boring:
  • Part of the contrast between Chuck and Jimmy, and implied to be a big part of Chuck's resentment toward Jimmy. Chuck's always been hard-working, ethical, and meticulously follows the rules, which has made him successful but boring. Jimmy's always been a scammer and a cheat, but he's funny, entertaining and good with people. Chuck cares a lot more about doing the right thing, but Jimmy's the one people like to be around.
  • This also sums up the respective fates of Jimmy in Nebraska and Kim in Florida. Both are evidently bored with their new lives staying under the radar as law-abiding citizens.
• Go-to Alias: Before Jimmy adopted it as his full professional name, "Saul Goodman" was Jimmy's fall-back alias; he used it when he was a conman, then later when selling his advertising time, and then on his business cards as a burner phone salesman.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Tuco, who is mostly doing his own thing while Mike and Jimmy interact with Nacho.
  • For the fourth season, Chuck takes this role posthumously, as he dies at the end of the third season but Jimmy spends the season with his suspension which Chuck caused and the grief with his suicide.
  • For Season 6B, Walter White becomes this, also posthumously, as 6B mostly takes place in the post-BB era with occasional flashbacks to the past. In particular, Jimmy is eventually arrested and has to serve time for his role in Walter White's empire.
  • Lalo also posthumously ends up this for both 6B and for Breaking Bad as well due to the trauma Jimmy suffered from seeing him come Back from the Dead toppled on top with seeing him murder Howard and then tell Jimmy he'd return. To the point that in the future, Jimmy thinks Lalo returned when's abducted and taken to the desert and also says "apparently" when referring to Lalo's death to Kim too.
• Green-Eyed Monster: In "Something Stupid" Kim brings Jimmy to a social event at Schweikart & Cokely. Jimmy takes a look around Kim's office, noting all the Mesa Verde statuettes before walking across the soft carpet and counting his paces to get a rough idea of the dimensions- and how much bigger it is than any office he can afford. Back at the party, he gets into a conversation with Rich Schweikart, suggesting a company retreat and then loudly holding court as he describes hiring a party bus, chartering a private jet and taking the employees to Aspen for a skiing trip. While the other S&C employees are transfixed and entertained by his little performance, it is all done with barely-suppressed rage and envy, and Kim is clearly mortified. Cut to Kim and Jimmy sharing a very awkard car journey home in total silence.
• Grief-Induced Split: A combination of grief and guilt leads to the end of Jimmy and Kim's relationship after they witness their colleague get murdered by a psychopath due to a juvenile prank they were playing.
• Groin Attack: In "Black and Blue", the boxing match between Jimmy and Howard shows us that Jimmy is something of a dirty fighter.
• Gun Porn: Lawson's exposition on the rifles he's offering to Mike when Mike contemplates using one to snipe Tuco. (And hinting at a little more of his backstory.)

H

• Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: In both directions:
  • In "Nacho" a flashback shows both Jimmy and Chuck with considerably more hair.
  • The flash-forwards that begin each season show us that in his new life as "Gene", Jimmy has significantly less hair.
  • The season 6 episode "Fun and Games" features a Time Skip from 2004 to approximately 2007, which shows Jimmy seemingly inhabiting the Saul Goodman persona full time, and with a bald patch which he struggles to hide under a combover. As the time jump is just a few years this could also be a case of Ominous Hair Loss due to the stressfull events of season 6.
• Happily Married: Tragically it only lasts a month in show time, but Jimmy and Kim are delighted to be married, with the excuse that it’s only a legal arrangement dying fast, and them taking every opportunity to mention their husband or wife.
• Happy Ending Override: Even with Walt dying while taking out Jack Welker and his gang; Skyler being able to get a deal meaning she and the kids can move on and it being believed Jesse fled to Mexico—though he's now hiding in Alaska instead, the DEA is still out for blood in wanting to punish not only Jimmy, but anyone who was even remotely associated with Walt—meaning no one who was a known ally of Jimmy's when he was Saul is safe. The DEA and Marie also blame and villainize Walt further for what happened to Hank and Gomez—even though Walt and those who actually killed them are all dead and it was against Walt's wishes to begin with—and have now basically made it the goal to punish Jimmy for it all now instead since he's the only one left.
• Hard Work Fallacy: Zig-zagged. One of the themes of the show is that hard work and playing by the rules often completely fail to improve your situation, while ethical flexibility and outright crimes often do. However, this is often just the perception of the characters.
  • Jimmy worked hard to become an attorney but doesn't get the respect he deserves and resorts to cutting corners to get ahead. However, he does have several opportunities to simply put his head down and work hard to achieve success, but he's unwilling to do so. Jimmy's situation is further complicated in that he will always have to live under his more succesful brother Chuck's shadow. He adopts the Saul Goodman alias largely for this reason.
  • Kim finds herself attracted to this mentality. She started out working in HHM's mailroom, went to law school (apparently while still working), became a lawyer, and worked very hard to rise to the top. But she's repeatedly found her career derailed by forces beyond her control. Over the seasons, she's found real success by working hard, but keeps getting drawn back into Jimmy's habit of cutting corners to get even more.
• Hard-Work Montage: "Mijo" has a variation (complete with Adventurous Irish Violins!) of Jimmy's daily life of litigation. He needs that $700 per client to pay his and his brothers' bills.
• Have You Come to Gloat?: In "Nailed" Mesa Verde drop HHM and decide to hire Kim's services instead. Jimmy offers to help her retrieve their files from HHM:
  Jimmy McGill: "You want some help?"
  Kim Wexler: "That depends. Are you gonna carry boxes, or are you gonna gloat?"
  Jimmy McGill: "Uh, some from column A, some from column B."
• Heaven Above: In the episode "Wiedersehen," Jimmy insults Kim for acting like she's better than him by telling her to go back to her "office in the sky," implying its more perfect and godly up in the heavens than wherever Jimmy is in life.
• Hereditary Suicide: Willard McGill's Death by Despair was very likely a suicide. Chuck kills himself after ripping his whole house apart and passing the Despair Event Horizon, while Jimmy attempts a Heroic Suicide in "Bagman", while wearing a space blanket to get noticed (and for symbolism). Obviously he gets out of that okay, but he's been metaphorically killing himself since Chuck’s death and his desert experience just makes him worse.
  Odenkirk: Chuck burned his whole self down, and Jimmy is burning big parts of his psyche down.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Despite being well-known in Breaking Bad for his hilariously awful commercials, Jimmy proves early on that he's a pretty gifted director when he actually wants to make something good - for all that his way of handling it caused problems, the commercial he makes for Davis & Main is genuinely emotional. He's even shown using accurate film jargon, suggesting that he's done actual research into the topic rather than just picking it up naturally.
  • As it turns out, Howard is pretty athletic. He's a very skilled boxer (which has real-life basis, as boxing is a common hobby for those in white-collar jobs for stress relief) and knocks Jimmy on his ass when they fight, and the pictures at his memorial reveal him to have been a recreational triathlete (the pictures of which come from Patrick Fabian's Instagram account). Patrick believes that he took up swimming and biking because they're sports that can be done alone, meaning he can focus on the task at hand without thinking about putting on his work persona.
  • Lalo isn't just a skilled cook, he's also shown to be a heavy car enthusiast and is even seen tending to his car's engine himself at one point.
  • "Fudge" Talbot, a public masturbator Jimmy poses as a Vet pilot as part of his commercial, knows enough about history to point out the Fifi was used against the Japanese, despite only pretending to be a pilot.
  • While it's not impossible for an ex-cop to know how to hang a door on a doorframe as well as repair said doorframe, it's still a surprise Mike can do it well enough to convince Chuck he's legitimately a repair company employee. He's even later shown reading a magazine on the topic, suggesting that doing so caused him to develop a genuine interest in it.
  • Despite being just as goofy as he was in the original show, Huell turns out to keep meticulous track of time, pointing out that the time between planting a battery on Chuck's person and Jimmy revealing it in court was exactly an hour and forty-three minutes. He’s also the only person involved in Jimmy and Kim’s scheme against Howard to finally ask them why they’re putting in so much effort on the scheme when they’re both successful adults who don’t want for anything, and he’s clearly not swayed by Jimmy’s response.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: Both played strait and inverted. Hamlin is built up as the Big Bad of season one and seems determined to torpedo Jimmy's career, but at the end of the season Jimmy realizes he'd been doing so on behalf of Chuck the whole time. After that it becomes clear Hamlin has no real grudge with Jimmy and actually admires his slickness. Though Jimmy's actions as the series progresses lead to the two hating each other.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: In "Wine and Roses" Jimmy is up to no good in a country club locker room when Howard and Clifford Main walk in and he suddenly has to hide. There is no suitable hiding place, so he takes all his clothes off and throws a towel over his head. He is taking advantage of the tendency for men to avert their eyes from other men's bodies in a locker room situation- and the ploy works.
• History Repeats:
  • The writers called both Jimmy/Marco and Jimmy/Kim a love story, and they both involve scamming as addiction metaphors with Jimmy getting pulled back in when he tries to say they're done. While Kim and Jimmy get their happy ending, Marco dies and Kim leaves, and they both loved him so much but Jimmy is left to think they only wanted him for "fun". Elsewhere, he managed to find two wives who cheated on him.
  • Thanks to a lot of PTSD (Jimmy over Chuck and Lalo, Kim not over her past), feeling of lack of control over their lives, getting off on it and greed, Kim and Jimmy conspire against Howard in season six much like they did against Chuck in season three. Only Howard is actually pretty innocent whereas Chuck very much wanted to destroy his brother, and this time Jimmy is the Guilt-Ridden Accomplice. As one can assume, it all goes badly wrong and everyone pays dearly for it. How Kim and Jimmy deal with the guilt repeats as well, Kim self-flagellating ( ruining her life with too much work/a grey existence with no happiness in Florida) and Jimmy slowly killing himself ( cruel and self-degrading schemes/becoming Saul Goodman)..
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • If Chuck hadn't gone through with his scheme to attempt to force Jimmy into disbarment over the Mesa Verde confession — heck, if Chuck took Howard's advice and didn't testify at Jimmy's disbarment hearing at all — he wouldn't have given Jimmy an opening to make himself implode and Chuck might have succeeded in ending Jimmy's career.
  • HHM concealed Chuck's condition from their clients for years, happy to cash in on the prestige that his name brought them while keeping him quietly tucked away. The firm's reputation takes a huge hit when Chuck's issues are finally revealed in his public humiliation at Jimmy's disbarment hearing.
• Holding Hands: Jimmy and Kim in "Saul Gone". She holds a lighter for his cigarette, but she's shaking, so after checking that it's okay, he holds her hands steady and squeezes. It's the first time they've touched in six years.
• Hollywood Law:
  • The Philadelphia detectives who talk to Mike in "Five-O" describe Matt as working in a "precinct". For the purposes of policing, Philadelphia is broken up into "districts", not "precincts". Outside of the NYPD, the word "precinct" is rarely, if ever, used by either police officers or civilians.
  • It's what Jimmy himself practices, often committing ethically questionable (bribing a bus driver to stop so he can solicit passengers, for instance) or outright illegal acts (forging documents to gaslight Chuck; Squat Cobbler) to advance his lawyer goals. Unsurprisingly, he gets called out a lot.
  • Jimmy's hearing before the Bar in "Chicanery". As an adversarial hearing, both sides have rights to a fair hearing, so in real life, there is no way they could provide all the accommodations for Chuck with nothing said at all about Kim objecting to having the hearings in the dark and everyone being forced to turn over watches and phones. No sane judge would even entertain Chuck's requests absent a motion by Chuck's side to grant them, and an independent physical and mental exam required before granting them. It doesn't matter if everyone on that panel owed their careers to Chuck, they're on the panel because they've proven themselves to be objective jurists with a firm grasp of the law, so they're not going to subject a defendant to all of these accommodations unless Chuck could prove (backed by the testimony of an independent doctor) it was medically necessary. Justified in that Kim and Jimmy's plan was to discredit Chuck in court so they accepted the accommodations and without any parties objecting there was no reason to consider the hearing unfair.
  • Also from the Bar hearing, there is a big conflict of interest for Kim to be Jimmy's attorney of record since they're sleeping together and more importantly (as noted by LegalEagle), the actions Jimmy's facing disbarment over happen to be actions that Kim benefitted from, with Jimmy stating in the evidence tape that he committed his actions for her (thus making her a material witness). It continues to be a problem when they both represent opposite sides in the Everett Acker dispute, without telling anyone they're involved (living together, having sex and then even married).
  • There are a number of problems with Chuck going in to work at HHM in season 2. Namely, in knowingly putting a mentally ill lawyer on casework (although it can be argued that as far as HHM knows his illness is physical and in their interest to believe it), they are deceiving their clients. Chuck's illness isn't physical, it's mental, and it makes him a malpractice liability: if a client catches wind of Chuck's illness, then every client that HHM has allowed Chuck to work for subsequent to the onset of his mental illness would have grounds to make a class action case against HHM for malpractice, breach of contract, and a slew of other ethical violations. Every lawyer with knowledge of Chuck's impairment (and there was a conference room of them who had to turn over their cell phones and cut the power to the building whenever he came by) would be subject to disciplinary proceedings, with Howard being lucky if he got off with his license being suspended at minimum. Lawyers have an ethical and moral obligation to inform their state's Bar Association about an attorney who is obviously impaired. Chuck may be "brilliant" per se, but it is highly unlikely that his illness, and all the limitations and delusions that come with it, does not compromise his ability to practice and render competent legal counsel.
    • This is lampshaded by Howard early in season 3, as he points out that while Jimmy is at fault for forging the Mesa Verde papers, it shouldn't have happened in the first place since HHM locks those documents in safer places to avoid these kind of problems.
    • Ultimately, this comes crashing down when Jimmy tips off the insurance company about Chuck's mental illness. Between that and Chuck's testimony at the Bar hearing becoming public knowledge, Howard is left having to wine-and-dine HHM clients left and right as damage control. And the insurance provider punishes HHM for the deception by doubling the malpractice premiums on all of their practicing attorneys.^note Yes, Jimmy did this with malicious intentions. But even if he hadn't, the insurance company would have inevitably found out about Chuck's condition on their own, just much later; Jimmy just made the inevitable happen sooner Howard's patience with Chuck is already growing thin thanks to Chuck prioritizing his vendetta against Jimmy over the firm's future, and that, plus the aforementioned things, proves to be the straw that breaks the camel's back between them. And in "Pinata", when Jimmy goes to Howard to get a check for the measly $5,000 Chuck left for him in his will, he sees that Howard's had to lay off quite a number of staff due to the number of clients that abandoned them (plus the strains of paying out to Chuck's estate).
    • At Howard's mild suggestion that Chuck consider retiring, Chuck decides to fire back a lawsuit against HHM for breach of contract. This lawsuit would be doomed to fail right out of the gate, as New Mexico is a state where "firing for cause" exists, and gross misconduct or negligence that directly harms a business's bottom line is enough justification, which Howard could demonstrate by the damage control he's been having to do with the firm's clients. Not to mention no client looking for lawyers specializing in banking regulations would want to hire a lawyer who sued their own firm. The fact Chuck jumped straight to suing the firm, rather than do something reasonable like negotiate a plan for paying out his severance in regular installments, is something that just further cements Howard's decision that Chuck's judgment is too compromised for him to continue working at HHM.
  • In "The Guy for This", Krazy-8 and Saul work out a deal with Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez, allowing Krazy-8 his freedom in exchange for information that leads to arrests and the location of half a million dollars of Gus Fring's money. During this negotiation, however, there is no US Attorney in the room. The DEA agents have no authority to offer what they claim to offer in their deal without the prosecutor's presence and consent.
  • In "Namaste," Saul swaps a defendant on the stand with a lookalike to injure the credibility of a witness. Although this sort of switch is doable (a trial is considered valid as long as the defendant is present in the room, with no specific requirements for seating, and as long as the bailiff is aware of where the defendant is so they can keep an eye out, there should be no security risk), doing so without informing the judge beforehand should've gotten him held in contempt of court and fined.
• Hookers and Blow: Jimmy and Kim attempt to frame Howard as a cokehead who frequents prostitutes.
• Hope Spot:
  • At the end of season one, Jimmy has a small but reputable practice, a reputation as a savior to the elderly, a job offer with a partnership opportunity from another firm where he'll be working on his own high-profile case, and is finally ahead of Chuck's sabotage. But the events of the first season have taken too much of a toll, and Jimmy leaves the case with the intention of making money by playing to his strength as a conman. Which, of course is the only way it could go. Kinda subverted, as he does take the job offer from Davis & Main, but this only prolongs the inevitable.
  • After Chuck is confronted with proof that his EHS condition is in his head, he makes a sincere attempt to overcome his delusion, to the point where he restores the power to his house and goes to the grocery store unattended. However, being forced into retirement by Howard and confronted by Jimmy (who ruined his reputation and, in Chuck's mind, got away with it) causes his EHS delusion to come back with the vengeance. After tearing apart his walls and trashing his electronic appliances, Chuck decides to end it all by kicking over a gas lantern and letting the house catch fire with him inside.
  • In-universe, the flashback of Jimmy and Chuck actually having fun at karaoke and Chuck staying the night has Jimmy thinking he's finally on the way to getting his brother's love and respect like he's always wanted. He isn't.
  • For a few episodes in season six, while he can't exactly be called better with the Saul of it all, Jimmy's PTSD eases off a little and he's back to animated and talking a lot instead of sounding like he's scared of his own shadow. Then he sees Lalo alive, and he's fucked from that point on.
  Plan and Execution: Kim is frozen in shock, but at least she had Mike's warning that Lalo was still alive. But Jimmy... the air leaves his body. He sees a fucking GHOST. Lalo was dead. But here he is, again, a shit-eating grin on his face as he casually strolls into their home behind Howard. Jimmy's PTSD kicks in hard as he tries to comprehend what's happening.
• Hourglass Plot: In “Wexler vs Goodman”, Jimmy tells Kim that he lies to protect her and she calls him out on it. In early season six, it’s revealed to her that Lalo is actually alive, and she keeps it a secret which eventually blows up in her face, admitting in the end it wasn’t even because she was protecting him, it was because she was having too much fun destroying Howard with him.
• Hypochondria: Chuck suffers from electromagnetic hypersensitivity, a psychosomatic illness where being near any electromagnetic fields causes someone pain. In season 1, a doctor turns on an electric medical device without Chuck's knowledge to determine that the illness is just in his head. In season 3, Jimmy proves it at his disbarment hearing by slipping a battery into Chuck's pocket without Chuck suffering any ill effects. After this, Chuck begins to consider whether he's ruined his life for nothing. He finally admits he's mentally ill and begins treatment for it, but it doesn't last.
• Hypocrite: In "Chicanery" Kim cross-examines Howard at Jimmy's bar hearing. When asked why HHM refused to hire Jimmy he claims there was a risk of his hiring looking like nepotism. As Kim is talking to Howard Hamlin of Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill she finds this hypocrisy pretty easy to expose.
• Hypocritical Humour: "Piñata": Jimmy mocking Howard's receding hairline is more than a little rich.
• Humble Pie: After six episodes of false starts, Jimmy finally delivers the Kettlemans the justice that entitled people like them so goddamn deserve.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • Daniel Wormald has his money, pills and baseball cards stolen by Nacho, and his efforts to get the cards back invites the suspicion of the police. In order to get his cards back, he has to give up his brand new car (which Nacho gleefully says he's selling to a chop shop), and to get the police off his back he has to make a humiliating fetish video where he sits in pies while crying.
  • Howard Hamlin is put through one in season 6, in a series of events plotted by Kim and Jimmy and intended to humiliate him and destroy his reputation.

I-J

• Iconic Attribute Adoption Moment: Among the fandom there has been much discussion of "the moment when Jimmy becomes Saul". The transition is pretty gradual, with Jimmy slowly becoming sleazier, his outfits getting more colourful, and his hair getting thinner. That all changes with "Fun and Games, where there is a Time Skip and we finally see Saul's signature combover. This signifies that Jimmy McGill is no more and the Saul Goodman we know from Breaking Bad has arrived. This is also the episode where we first see Saul's famous white Cadillac DeVille with its Vanity License Plate reading "LWYR UP".
• Identity Breakdown: The Show. The writers have pointed out a few times it’s the long and slow killing/metaphorical suicide of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman though he does get better!, with diving into many other little identities on the way. This is mostly because of three main things: he wants love, he wants things to be easy, and he is terrible at dealing with his pain.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • All but one of the titles of the first season episodes end in the letter "o." The only exception is "Alpine Shepherd Boy", which was originally titled "Jell-O" until Kraft Foods threatened legal action. There's also the first episode of season 2, "Switch".
  • Taking the first letter of each episode title from Season 2 will form an anagram of the phrase "Fring's Back". Word of God confirmed that this was intentional. Gus did not appear on-camera, although associates the man works for show up, and it's implied that he was the one who left that "DON'T" note on Mike's car. Gus isn't properly brought back until the second episode of season 3.
  • The episode titles of the last three episodes of season 3 telegraph the build-up to Chuck's suicide: "Slip", "Fall", and "Lantern".
  • The episode titles for Season 6 all follow the convention of "____ and _____" ("Wine and Roses", "Carrot and Stick", "Rock and Hard Place", etc.) until the story concludes the 2002-04 timeline.
• I Have No Son!: At the end of "Pimento", after Chuck finishes his rant about how he doesn't consider Jimmy to be an actual lawyer, Jimmy leaves his house, saying he no longer wants anything to do with him. This feeling deepens further in Season 3 when Jimmy humiliates Chuck by using his mental illness in court and puts on a show of no remorse for it. He tries to make amends in the season three finale, but that conversation and Chuck's suicide makes him go into denial harder, while also spiralling.
  Rebecca Bois: "Jimmy, he's still your brother."
  Jimmy McGill: "Not anymore, he's not."
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: But a realistic version. Rhea's read of "I think you should turn yourself in" is that Kim knows Jimmy is still down there somewhere, under Gene and Saul and Viktor, and she knows he has a conscience and can't live like this. After some petulant Sanity Slippage and more running, he proves her right.
• Implausible Deniability: Jimmy tries to come up with a plausible explanation that the Kettlemans can give to the cops to explain why it seemed like they were kidnapped but quickly realizes that anything they say will sound like a lie. However, since no laws were actually broken, it does not really matter if their excuse is believable.
• Improvised Bandage: When Mike arrives in Albuquerque he stops by an empty ladies' restroom in the train station and obtains a maxi pad, using it to stanch a bullet wound in his shoulder.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Marco coughs and thumps his chest in the beginning of "Marco." While waiting in an alley, he does it again. Surely enough, he's had a fatal heart attack by the time we see him next.
• Inherently Funny Words:
  • The law offices of Schweikart & Cokely.
  • Jimmy wants a cocobolo desk for no reason other than he likes saying the word "cocobolo".
• In Love with Your Carnage: Downplayed with Kim and Jimmy, who both get turned on by how good the other one is at scamming. They’re also both insecure love interests, Jimmy assuming Kim just enjoys him for sex or cheap thrills and Kim assuming Jimmy will leave if she doesn't make things exciting with a new scam, despite how much they truly adore each other/love existing next to each other, and so this ends up with a body count.
• Innocent Innuendo: Jimmy is hired by an inventor who invented "Tony the Toilet Buddy," a toilet that is intended to encourage kids as they poop. When Jimmy comes to observe it, he and the audience can't help but observe that the recorded messages sound more like phrases of sexual pleasure.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Four of them are in this series, so far:
  • “Mijo” starts off everything with the cartel, along with Jimmy’s issues over deserts and being helpless, as well as his tendencies to try and ignore the trauma that mounts up in him. It’ll also parallel “Rock and Hard Place” Nacho’s execution in the desert and “Point and Shoot” Jimmy is hostage to Lalo six seasons later.
  • "Coushatta" seems like a Filler or Breather Episode, but it's actually important to the series since it reveals what all of Gus Fring's plans for Nacho have been building up to and it reveals Lalo Salamanca showing up to take control of the gang, plus notably, Kim Wexler's Face–Heel Turn (on a sliding scale of evil, not that evil yet, but still, a grifter).
  • The Kettleman subplot in season 1 may have seemed like filler at first to establish the kinds of clients Jimmy takes on. But it has major payoff in season 5, as Nacho's dealings with Jimmy during that period lead Lalo to hire Jimmy to be his attorney, which ends up dragging him into the conflict between Lalo and Gus.
  • "Inflatable". Not just the montage of Jimmy wearing brightly coloured clothes and incorporating them into his wardrobe (and Kim liking them), but his rare moment of self awareness that he Desperately Craves Affection to the point of changing himself for Chuck or Kim but it's also not their fault, and Kim's interview where she can't admit her past, just saying she wanted more, sets up both of their Blueand Orange Morality, their various insecurities, and the finale where they can admit what they've done and be at peace with themselves.
• Insane Troll Logic: The Kettlemans attempts to justify the money they stole. Apparently Craig earned it by working overtime. It's so absurd it sounds like it came straight out of an Onion article.
• Insatiable Newlyweds: Always pretty horny anyway, in "JMM" Jimmy and Kim last just long enough getting back home for a cute grin about actually being married before taking each other's clothes off.
• Insecure Love Interest: Jimmy to Kim. He is worried that she just sees him as her bit of rough, someone she can have fun with but not someone she'd ever make a long-term commitment to. He has a tendency to bring up property whenever he's feeling especially needy, suggesting they rent an office or buy a home together as a little test of her commitment. In "Wiedersehen" he is visibly upset when Kim tells him to "stop going on about that stupid office!", not realising that to him a shared office represents something more than just bricks and mortar:
  "I'm good to live with, to sleep with, but God forbid you should have an office with me... You get bored with your life, so you come roll around in the dirt, have some fun with Slippin' Jimmy, then back up."
  • Played With:They eventually get married, and it was Kim who popped the question.
    ♫“I know I stand in line
    Until you think you have the time
    To spend an evening with me
    And if we go someplace to dance
    I know that there's a chance
    You won't be leaving with me..."♫
  • It's eventually revealed that Kim is almost as bad as Jimmy, with the "Waterworks" Insider Podcast confirming that she suggested bigger scams when she thought he might leave her (despite how obvious it is to the contrary), and not wanting to lose him by telling him about Lalo.
• Inside Job: Jimmy (as Gene) plots a robbery of his own mall in "Nippy."
• Intimate Telecommunications: In "Nacho", Kim assumes that a late night phone call from Jimmy is him requesting dirty talk, or vice versa. It's not, but they've clearly done that before, and she knows all about the "sex robot" voice.
• Interface Spoiler: Nacho was always considered to be Doomed by Canon due to Breaking Bad not mentioning his major role in Gus's battle with the Salamanca family, but what prematurely made it clear he would die was when he didn't receive a new promotional picture for season six despite still being a main character at that point. The episode where he dies also gets a big "Suicide" content warning on Netflix that likely will tip viewers off to his fate the second the episode starts, since Howard and Kim aren't in danger and all the other characters appear in Breaking Bad.
• Internal Homage:
  • Over on Breaking Bad, Jesse and Jane try to tell themselves they'll get clean, not because anyone is telling them to but because they want to. That attempt is doomed, but scamming has always been a metaphor for addiction, and Jimmy and Kim really do get "clean" for their own sakes at the end of the show; prison visits aren't much, but they'll take what they can get along with the chance of getting out early.
  • Even the Insider Podcast for "Sunk Cost" brought up that Jimmy's big speech to Kim is like her "I save me, you don't save me". But unlike that where she did in fact save herself and Jimmy (lovingly, and her own choice to stick with it) got her into shit, Kim knows full well he's going to need saving because impulsiveness, talent for getting into mess, and the biggie of Chuck is actively looking to hurt him while she at least got out from her mother.
  • In "Breathe", Kim started to show her real dark side, pinning everything on Howard, followed by his asking what he could do to make it right, with her responding coldly that there was nothing. She's on the other end in "Waterworks" with Cheryl, as she tries to soothe her conscience (also partly to try and self-destruct) but realizes she can't do anything to fix this and feels like she's ruined not just Howard but everything.
  • In more references in "Chicanery", an ex-wife comes in to rattle a McGill in "Saul Gone". Only this time, Jimmy got Kim down there himself because he wanted to prove he could be good in front of her and confess what's been rotting him for years. Plus Chuck rants he saved Jimmy and shouldn't have, while Jimmy thinks he should have tried even harder to mend their relationship.
• Ironic Echo:
  • In the “Nacho” flashback, a healthy Chuck puts all of his electronics into the prison box, in comparison to having everyone place their own in his mailbox.
  • Nacho tells Jimmy that he rips off criminals because his victims can't report the theft to the police without having to admit to their original theft; in other words, they have no legal recourse for having their stolen property stolen from them. So naturally, when Mike takes the Kettlemans' embezzled money from its hiding place under the bathroom sink and sends it to the district attorney, and Betsy subsequently threatens to have Jimmy arrested, Jimmy echoes Nacho's threats to him by telling them that as criminals, they have no legal recourse for property stolen from them.
  • In the season two premiere, Kim implores Jimmy to continue being a lawyer because, after all, he put in all that time and hard work in law school. Jimmy explains to her that it's the "fallacy of sunk costs" to keep moving in a given direction regardless of consequence simply because you've committed to it. Which means Kim knows exactly what it means in this exchange in season 3, when she's insisting on helping him fight Chuck at the bar hearing
    Jimmy: Why are you helping me?
    Kim: Let's call it...the fallacy of sunk costs.
  • In the season 2 episode "Rebecca" Jimmy offers to get Kim out of the mess he got her into even if it means quitting his cushy job at Davis and Main. "Wow, my knight in shining armour" she retorts, before uttering the immortal words "You don't save me. I save me." In the season 6 episode "Fun and Games" she admits she knew Lalo was still alive but withheld this information from Jimmy because she was enjoying their scam on Howard too much and was afraid he'd call it off and try to save her from Lalo. In this instance, Jimmy actually could have saved not just Kim, but also Howard, Kim's career, and their relationship- if only she had let him.
  • In "Chicanery", Chuck utters "let justice be done, though the heavens fall". At the end of "Fun and Games", Jimmy in full blown space blanket Saul Goodman mode, says the same line.
  • In a version that also doubles as a Call-Forward, originally Chuck had told Jimmy that if he were sick manifesting as The Shut-In, he'd look after him. Jimmy's face has a mix of hope, guilt (as he used the night to swap the numbers) and a fair amount of doubt. In "Saul Gone", set before the series, Jimmy tells Chuck that he's looking after his brother because Chuck would do the same for him ^note "because you're my brother, duh" itself a nod to "because you’re my brother, and nobody should do that to their own brother" in "Sabrosito". Chuck also looks rather doubtful and a little ashamed.
• Irony: For a guy with such I Just Want to Be Loved issues, Jimmy has a habit of ignoring people who really do love him (his parents, Marco) in favor of chasing Chuck's approval. Even with Kim, he only really understands that he has her love and will for the rest of his life in the finale.
• Ironic Name:
  • "Saul Goodman" of course.
  • Ken Wins. Between being conned into paying for a lot of very expensive tequila and getting his car blown up by a chemistry teacher, he really needs to change that license plate to "Ken Loses".
  • The model of Jimmy's car, the Suzuki Esteem, was chosen because it was an ironic name for a man who gets no respect and has very little self-esteem.
• It Has Been an Honor: Marco's last words to Jimmy. He says their week of pulling scams like old times was the best he's had. Apparently, the feeling's mutual, as Jimmy's memory of Marco spurs him to abandon a more legitimate opportunity.
• It Kind of Looks Like a Face: Jimmy manufactures a visage of Jesus on a fence to stall the demolition of a client's home.
• It Runs in the Family:
  • It’s heavily implied, especially from season four (and how they both assert that Chuck would look after Jimmy if the situation was reversed), that Jimmy has mental health issues of his own, and that it's not actually just Chuck; he goes for more Emotion Suppression and unstable identity while Chuck is an obsessive shut in.
  • Something about the McGill men that makes them want to commit suicide. Willard's Death by Despair is hinted to be killing himself after the misery regarding the shop and subsequent failure of his marriage, Chuck dies by setting his house on fire, and while Jimmy can't die because he has to survive to be Saul, he slowly kills himself after Chuck's death, he attempts two heroic suicides, and all but tells Kim he would have let himself die in the desert if it weren't for her.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • Jimmy reflecting on the events leading up to "Something Unforgivable":
  Jimmy McGill: "Kim... am I bad for you?"

  • It's Played With in that Kim's response suggests that, by this point, Jimmy may not be bad enough for her.
  • Kim later refer to Jimmy's question in "Fun and Games" and concedes that they are bad for each other, and while they do love one another and have a great time together, that will never justify all the hurt they cause to others, and so she ends their relationship for the sake of them both. Eventually subverted in that they're both empty shells of human beings without each other, and later reconcile better people.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Attempted on Jimmy by Tuco in "Mijo". Nacho has to remind his boss that Jimmy will say anything with wire clippers on his fingers.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: While Jimmy is still nowhere near as cynical as the Saul of Breaking Bad, we definitely see the scales falling from his eyes. In flashbacks we see how excited Jimmy was to pass the Bar exam, and how much he was looking forward to making it as a lawyer and winning Chuck's respect. After years of hard work his brother still thinks he's a scumbag, and he finds himself living in the boiler room of a nail salon, wondering if Hard Work Hardly Works.
• Jaywalking Will Ruin Your Life:
  • Chuck takes his neighbor's newspaper off her driveway (leaving $5 as payment) and gets the cops called on him. They show up, and from the way he's acting, plus their observation of camping fuel and cut electric lines, conclude he's a junkie. They end up tasering Chuck, and he winds up hospitalized.
  • We learn in "Marco" that the "Chicago Sunroof" incident that landed Jimmy in jail consisted of him getting drunk and defecating through the sunroof of his rival's car. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that the guy's kids were in the back seat, and ended up charged with indecent exposure and sexual assault.
  • In "Winner" Jimmy sits on the board of HHM's scholarship committee. One hopeful, Kristy Esposito, is turned down because of a shoplifting conviction, and Jimmy fails to convince the board that she made a youthful mistake and deserves a second chance, mainly because her situation is all too familiar to him.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While our sympathies lie with Jimmy, causing Chuck's attacks on him to seem cruel, he's correct in his assessments of Jimmy's lack of ability to use the law ethically.
  • Jimmy got his degree from a shady correspondence school and then failed the Bar Exam twice before finally passing. Chuck has little reason to hire Jimmy except nepotism, and Jimmy is being pretty unfair to expect such a handout.
  • Chuck's determination to keep Mesa Verde with HHM instead of Kim is unsympathetic (given that she found the client in the first place) and clearly part of a campaign against Jimmy. That said, he's entirely correct that trying to retain a major client is the only logical thing for someone in his position to do. Moreover, his methods consist solely of giving a completely honest and convincing sales pitch. He acknowledges and praises Kim's abilities, while very reasonably pointing out her limitations as a relatively young lawyer without the resources of a firm behind her. And later seasons prove him to be entirely correct, as practical realities make it impossible for Kim to meet the needs of Mesa Verde on her own.
  • Jimmy is handed a perfect opportunity at Davis & Main to go straight and practice law ethically, but chooses to throw it away, preferring to use his shady, cut-corners tactics. There's no reason to suspect that he wouldn't have done the same thing if handed a job at HHM.
  • Even Jimmy occasionally has his moments, especially when it comes to dealing with people like the Kettlemans (like insisting they come clean with the authorities rather than try to fight the charges).
  • While Jimmy committed a felony and really should be disbarred after that, he is right that his brother's hard-on to catch him is unhealthy, as Chuck was sent to the hospital twice because he tried to discover Jimmy's secrets. Jimmy is a criminal but not one worth dying over.
  Jimmy: I thought you would finally accept it as a mistake and move on but no! Wishful thinking!
  • Chuck's last words with Jimmy in "Lantern" that it was pointless for Jimmy to try to make amends, or to express remorse, and that Jimmy would continue to go through life with a sort of "Midas Touch In Reverse", destroying people and things with whom he came in contact, turns out to be 100% correct, as we see in Breaking Bad. The problem is that Jimmy's motivation to help people hinges on Chuck being proud of him as a brother, making it a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Jimmy is true to form: if he gets you into trouble, he tries his damnedest to get you out. And, if he cares about you, he'll fight for you. In his own way, and even if you don't agree. This actually earns him a larger cut than he expected in "Something Beautiful" after the Hummel heist, and Ira sees it as honor amongst thieves that Jimmy chose to rescue him from being caught in Mr. Neff's office rather than hang him out to dry.
  • Howard Hamlin is introduced as a jerk, but is sometimes gracious towards Jimmy and Kim even despite their past disagreements, and occasionally goes out of his way to help Jimmy and others.
• Jewish Complaining: Thanks to adopting the Ambiguously Jewish persona of Saul Goodman, Jimmy is able to play this up to his benefit in "Wine and Roses." Jimmy infiltrates Howard's country club as part of his revenge scheme, but is spotted by Kevin Wachtell and nearly thrown out by the club's manager. Jimmy loudly accuses the staff of anti-Semitism, claiming that he was only told to leave after they learned his last name was "Goodman."
  "Five thousand years and it never ends!"
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: As a prequel and sequel and wanting to recontextualise Breaking Bad, it's a slow burn to a reveal but they will eventually come out, like Jesse talking to Kim leading to him having Saul as a lawyer, or what crippled Hector Salamanca, or who Lalo and Ignacio are. Then there's flashbacks that explain how characters are, like Kim's mother making her pathologically self-reliant, or Jimmy watching his dad get scammed, or the mess that is him and Chuck.
• Just Train Wrong: In "Five-O", Mike is shown arriving in Albuquerque on a New Mexico Rail Runner commuter train. It's anachronistic as the episode is set in the summer of 2002, and the New Mexico Rail Runner didn't begin service until 2006. Also, Mike wouldn't be arriving on the Rail Runner if he'd just come from Philadelphia. He'd be on Amtrak's Southwest Chief, the passenger train that runs from Chicago to Los Angeles and goes through Albuquerque.

K-L

• Kansas City Shuffle: A favorite tactic of Jimmy’s. He uses it in his plots against his brother Chuck as well as Howard Hamlin. Both men know they were set up by Jimmy but cannot prove it, and both go on a highly public tirade against Jimmy which causes them to lose the respect of their colleagues.
• Karaoke Bonding Scene: "Winner" begins with a flashback to Jimmy's admission to the New Mexico State Bar, followed by celebrations at a karaoke bar. Jimmy spots Chuck, then recently separated from his wife, sitting alone and looking depressed. Just as Chuck tries to make an early exit, Jimmy begins a terrible rendition of The Winner Takes It All and manages to drag Chuck on stage to duet with him. Chuck comes out of his shell and eventually snatches the microphone for an actually pretty great solo performance of the song. Later we see the brothers at Chuck's house, laughing and singing.
  • Subverted in that while it seems to have brought the brothers a little closer, Chuck does not answer Jimmy's only-half-joking suggestion that he make him a name partner at HHM because he decided long ago that he will never employ Jimmy as an attorney.
• Kick the Dog:
  • In Season 3, Jimmy starts pulls a cruel confidence trick on his Sandpiper Crossing clients in order to profit from an early settlement, but he feels pangs of guilt for this and voluntarily undoes the scheme.
  • In "Waterworks", Saul sexually harasses Francesca in front of Kim after signing their divorce papers.
• Kill the Lights: Gus kicks out the plug on the work lights in the underground lab to get the upper hand against Lalo.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Howard is shot in the head by Lalo when the latter unexpectedly shows up at Jimmy and Kim's apartment.
• Kinky Cuffs: Jimmy and Kim always were a horny couple, and him being in prison doesn't damper that, as he pouts a little when she asks him to be uncuffed.
• Kinky Roleplaying:
  • Jimmy and Kim start out mocking Kevin Wachtell just for fun, with Jimmy doing a (bad) Kim impression and Kim imitating Kevin’s accent, but then she starts bossing “herself” around and they get off on it, Jimmy still in character asking Kim as Kevin if she wants to have a shower with him.
  Kim [still with accent]: …well shoot, I believe I would.
  • In "Bali Ha'i", they play siblings Viktor and Giselle St. Clair and are... not shy about still being horny for each other, him smirking when she calls him a brat and her No Sense of Personal Space. Luckily the mark is either too drunk or too mooning over "Giselle" to notice.
• Knight of Cerebus: Gustavo Fring, again. The stakes and body count of the series increase significantly with his arrival in Season 3.
  • Lalo repeats this pattern; his arrival significantly ups the tension between Gus and the Salamancas, and he's responsble for Jimmy's deepest dive into the criminal underworld yet. By the time he leaves the picture, Howard Hamlin is dead and both Jimmy and Kim are never the same again.
• Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy: Dr. Caldera is a veterinarian who has underworld connections. He helps Mike find criminal work, and also introduces Jimmy to Huell. He has a small book that has all of his connections through code, as well as a business card with instructions for when one needs the Disappearer, which all end up with Saul.
• Lampshade Hanging: More than a few characters point out that taking on a new identity, and hating your old self (as Jimmy tells Kim in Magic Man, “Jimmy” is “Chuck’s loser brother”) is not exactly the sign of a mentally well person.
• Last Kiss: In the episode "Fun and Games" Kim and Jimmy leave Howard's memorial and share a kiss at the spot in the parking garage where they used to go for a shared cigarette. The kiss is passionate but also seems ominously like their last, and comes before they drive home in their separate cars. Later in the episode Kim does indeed tell Jimmy that she is leaving him.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Netflix openly shows off Gus on the show's main page image even though his appearance was originally meant to be a surprise.
  • An infamous Netflix trailer for the fourth season, which would automatically play when the site was visited, revealed Chuck's death in under five seconds.
• Late Spin-Off Transplant: Gus Fring joined the cast during the third season.
• Laughing Mad: Jimmy laughs hysterically in his holding cell after he is arrested in "Saul Gone".
• The Law of Conservation of Detail: Much like in Breaking Bad, everything in the scene is there for a reason. Lampshaded in the season three bloopers, where Gilligan moves a leaf, and McKean gently snarks that he saved the show.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Kim and Jimmy will (from season three) talk about Saul Goodman like a Third-Person Person, or character separate from Jimmy. It serves three purposes: Jimmy's personality fracturing, a reminder that Saul will happen eventually and the fact that original flavour Saul and Jimmy McGill are technically different characters.
  • Mike's "bad choice road" speech. As well as showing off his self-justifying ("you might as well stay making bad choices"), he’s in a prequel where his road, Gus' road and Jimmy's road are all set down by Breaking Bad and there's nothing that can be done to change that. When it gets to the Gene/sequel parts however..., then Jimmy and Kim are free in every sense to go down any path they choose, turning it from one road you can only go down to a time machine.
• Let Me Tell You a Story: Gus' story about the coaiti in "Piñata" is perhaps the most typical example, but this trope is used to great effect throughout most of the series.
• Leit Motif: The riff from "Smoke on the water" is hummed or played many times by Jimmy, often before or after he pulls off an especially dicey con.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Played for Drama, as after the second desert trip, Jimmy gets told he can forget and it’ll be like it never happened. Well-versed in burying trauma anyway, he takes it onboard, and expresses to Kim that they never have to talk about this again, but it’s obvious that he has PTSD and of course Saul begs Walt and Jesse that they can off him anywhere but the desert.
• Lighter and Softer: The tone of the show is lighter than Breaking Bad, and the stakes are lower. Jimmy is struggling to build a legal practice and occasionally uses shady tactics to achieve his goals, a big contrast to Walter White getting diagnosed with terminal cancer and building a murderous meth empire. That said, dark elements like the Salamancas and the drug cartels are still there, especially so from Season 3 onwards, when Gus Fring becomes part of the show. Even more so, the introduction of Lalo from Season 4 marks a significant turning point to the series, with the sixth and final season being easily on par with Breaking Bad in terms of themes.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Jimmy is two-faced, conniving, greedy, likes to spread the misery and runs from the problems he’s made as fast he can, while Kim is a Control Freak with a god complex and minor sadistic streak to people she thinks deserves it, and Mike makes sure to tell them that Howard’s death is indirectly their fault, but they’re small drops in the water (with both having good qualities and a lot of self hatred) compared to Gus Fring and the Salamancas and all the twisted games they play with each other.
• Like Goes with Like: Inverted by Nacho Varga. Some scenes show that he has two live-in mistresses: one is white and one is Asian.
• Logo Joke: The title placards degrade from season to season. In season 1, they look like high quality recordings with only a couple of glitches. By season 6, they are so distorted and degraded that they are often barely comprehensible, and one finally cuts out entirely in the tenth episode.
• Loose Lips: In season 4, the German construction crew that Gus has hired to build the underground lab isn't permitted to know where they are for security reasons. That said, a French engineer that Gus had looked at prior to hiring Werner got rejected because he couldn't help but run his mouth about past jobs. And Werner has a slip-up when he drunkenly divulges details about the project to some patrons at a bar while Mike is distracted by another issue. Mike lets him off with a warning, only for Werner to break out of the compound and leave to see his wife. When Mike catches up to him with the intention of bringing him back in, he's unintentionally divulging details about the project to Lalo. At this point, Gus decides that Werner needs to be killed. So Werner is killed, while the rest of the German crew are sent home.
• Lonely Together: As pointed out on the "Inflatable" commentary, one of the things that draws Kim and Jimmy together is that they’re both damaged in similar ways.
• Long-Distance Relationship: When Jimmy is imprisoned for his crimes. He and Kim won't be able to snuggle on the couch watching a black and white film anymore, and they can't physically be together, but the strong implication (and supported by the actors) at the end of "Saul Gone" is that they'll be alright, she'll visit as much as they can, and their love will be the Splash of Color in the grey.
• Longing Look: In "Saul Gone", Jimmy gets so distracted by Kim that it looks like he forgot he's cuffed and on his way to his own court case. Later on, she repays the favour when walking out of the jail, looking back at him for as long as she can, making it clear she'll be back.
• Long Speech Tea Time: In "Alpine Shepherd Boy", Chuck makes a long speech about probable cause, but the cops have already gone round the back of his house and made the assumption that he’s an addict.
• Loser Protagonist: As this show covers the rise and fall of Saul Goodman, minus the brief period of success in between, we mainly see the protagonist in his loser days. This is Lampshaded by Jimmy when he admits one major reason for changing his name:
  "Jimmy McGill the lawyer is always gonna be Chuck McGill's loser brother."
• The Lost Lenore: Anita's husband went on a walk only to never come back. She attends a grief counseling group that seems to be targeted at people that lost their loved ones, including Mike and Stacey.
• Love Cannot Overcome: To quote Kim when she's breaking up with Jimmy, "and I love you, but so what?". While she's also fuelled by self loathing and the feeling she doesn't deserve anything good, in three episodes alone, they got Howard killed, Jimmy was willing to die for Kim, Kim was willing to shoot for all she knew an innocent man for Jimmy, and she gaslit Cheryl Hamlin, using her failing marriage against her.
• Love Doodles: In season two and four, Jimmy does essentially the trope when he has a whole page of W+M logo doodles. Kim finds it later when he's sleeping and is very endeared.
• Luxury Prison Suite: Jimmy tries to arrange one for himself as part of a plea deal when he pretends he was intimidated into working for Walter White in "Saul Gone". He ultimately gives it up by confessing all his crimes.

M

• Man of Wealth and Taste: While Gus Fring seems to put almost all of his money back into his criminal empire, he does have a sophisticated palette, which is to be expected for a restaurateur. In particular, he seems to be a fan of fine wine.
• Marriage of Convenience: Although Kim and Jimmy genuinely care for each other, the driving force behind their marriage is to protect them both legally, as she can't be forced to testify against him if they're married.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Kim and Jimmy's relationship is a subtle example, with Jimmy being the more emotional and flamboyant and Kim being the more stoic and practical. In addition, Jimmy is usually the one who prepares dinner, while Kim is the one who plays golf.
  • In the words of Kim herself:
    "I'm very much more the stereotypical 'man' as far as the relationship roles. Jimmy is more emotional, more reactive, wants to talk everything out, and thinks everything is personal and Kim's very project-oriented. Very just, 'Slow it down, here's the problem, here's the solution' kind of thing."- Rhea Seehorn
• Match Cut: The opening montage of "Fun and Games" uses these to cut between Jimmy and Kim at work and Mike cleaning up the scene of Howard's murder in their apartment, reflecting how much the legal and criminal worlds have finally bled together.
• Meaningful Echo: In “Fun and Games”, Jimmy begs Kim to not leave him with almost the exact words he said to Chuck in the “Nacho” flashback, pleading with her to tell him what to do, and whatever it is he’ll do it. Unlike Chuck who took advantage, Kim can’t. Kim also tells Jimmy she had the time of her life with him before leaving, like Marco told him he had the best week of his life with him, before dying.
• Men Don't Cry: “Slippin’ Jimmy” gets mad about being accused of crying to his mom in the middle of a jail. Given that he cries five minutes later in panic when Chuck starts to leave, and Jimmy is Prone to Tears anyway, it’s fair to say he did.
• Medication Tampering: We find out how Hector Salamanca wound up in that wheelchair: his abused henchman Nacho switches out his heart medication with regular, unhelpful ibuprofen.
• Milholland Relationship Moment:
  • While Kim's annoyed at the Mesa Verde swapping numbers and tells Jimmy she doesn't want to know (though still feels like she deserves them), she gives him her usual Do Wrong, Right advice about covering his tracks and is endeared when she actually does hear his confession. So much so that the script says she'd footsie with him if she could.
  • Jimmy kept his role in Chuck's suicide a secret from Kim because he was afraid she'll see him as evil and as worthless as Chuck thought. He confesses finally in front of everyone, and she processes, but she still loves him as much as she ever did.
  • Jimmy and Kim have a painful argument in "Wiedersehen", all the buried shit coming out like him assuming she sees him like Chuck did and her sick of Parenting the Husband (who keeps sabotaging because he won't go to therapy), but as soon as Jimmy assumes that's it and they're done, she still assures him it's not over.
• Mirror Monologue: In Jimmy's very first appearance he is in the courthouse bathroom, nervously rehearsing his clients' defence in front of a mirror. The unglamorous setting and his nervousness serve to inform the audience that Jimmy has a long way to go before becoming the successful and breezily confident Saul Goodman.
• Missed Him by That Much: In "Marco", Jimmy waits outside in his car for as long as he can, and Chuck notices, but Jimmy drives off before Chuck can get up the will to open the door.
• Misplaced Retribution: Throughout season one, Jimmy thinks it’s Howard sabotaging him and trying to stop him from using his own name. It’s only in “Pimento” he finds out the Awful Truth, Howard is just acting on Chuck’s say-so. This also applies after Chuck’s death, as Jimmy transfers all his brother issues onto Howard (and for Howard daring to think he should get help), and Kim is pissed with him because she hasn’t got over her childhood self-hate of being dirt poor and sees him as a nepo baby.
• Mistaken for Junkie: Two police officers assume Chuck is a junkie when he refuses them entry to his run-down home and begins rambling that they must leave their electronics outside.
• Mistaken for Prostitute: There’s a small Running Gag of various people either comparing or mistaking Jimmy for a hooker. As he has a flamboyant fashion sense, a tendency to sell his soul for money, is very loud and persuasive and has a willingness to charmingly flirt to get what he wants, it’s not an entirely far off notion.
• Modesty Bedsheet: Played With in "Namaste" where one covers most of Kim but absolutely none of Jimmy. For Kim this is also a case of Toplessness from the Back.
• Modesty Towel:
  • In "Bagman" Jimmy uses a towel to preserve his modesty. Well, some of it.
  • Played With in "Wine and Roses": Jimmy infiltrates a country club of which Howard is a member in order to plant a bag of fake cocaine in his locker. When Kim sends a text to warn him that Howard and Clifford Main are returning from the golf course, he has nowhere to hide... except under a too-small towel, so he quickly undresses and throws the towel over his head. Fortunately Howard doesn't recognise his voice. Or his ass.
• Mondegreen Gag: An early chat with a mark before the Heel–Face Turn to a lawyer suggests Jimmy's later name "Saul Goodman" (of which he jokes to the crook that's his name) came from "It's all good, man!".
• Monochrome Past: The sequences that start off each season, showing Jimmy as "Gene" in the depths of his despair, are in actual monochrome; however, they represent the future rather than the past.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • "Inflatable" goes from a montage in which Jimmy acts like an idiot to annoy everyone and get fired, to Cliff genuinely asking why he never gave the job a chance and Jimmy with tears in his eyes getting close to admitting he felt like there was no point in trying.
  • “Rock and Hard Place” goes from Nacho calling his father, sobbing as he realises that was goodbye, and deciding to go to his death, to Kim and Jimmy dressing each other for work and getting turned on by their scam.
  • "Plan and Execution" begins with Kim and Jimmy on a comedic caper to humiliate Howard, complete with a hired lookalike of a judge and Makeup Girl in an elf costume and prosthetic ears, having just been called from the set of "a live-action production of The Dark Crystal". It ends with Lalo coldly murdering Howard with a gunshot to the head.
• Morality Chain:
  • Chuck, Jimmy's brother, is an ethical lawyer and it is clear that his influence kept Jimmy from fully turning into an unethical Amoral Attorney. Sadly Chuck's stubbornness and the resulting bills are slowly turning him into a Broken Pedestal. The pedestal is fully shattered come "Pimento".
  • Kim Wexler tries to help Jimmy make positive life choices, though this becomes more of a Deconstructed Character Archetype as the series goes on and Kim begins roping Jimmy into schemes of her own.
• Motif:
  • Fire. Chuck's lanterns, Jimmy threatening to burn the house down, it actually burning down, Jimmy making up stories of saving someone from a fire, Jimmy telling Kim that his old name should be "burned".
  • White noise and darkness. Chuck is associated with both as a result of his condition. His pain from electrosensitivity is represented by blairing white noise, while his house is nearly pitch black from gutting the power lines. Both motifs seem to connect to his mental state- if his frustration is boiling over, the white noise increases, and as his delusions get worse he is submerged in more and more darkness. [[Spoiler: Fittingly, he dies in the pitch black darkness of his home after full diving into his EHS delusion.]]
  • Ghosts. Lalo and Howard get buried together under the next show’s superlab, Jimmy was dead since the beginning, Marco is buried but Jimmy wears his ring for as long as he can, Chuck’s suicide hangs over everything after season three, Gene calls himself a ghost, Kim destroys herself out of guilt and her legacy lives on in Saul Goodman, Mike is haunted by his dead son while Manuel has to be told about Nacho, Gus is motivated by his dead lover, and it lives with the knowledge of Breaking Bad and how most of these characters die.
  • Frankenstein: Jimmy McGill is both Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, a bright man who seeks to be acknowledged by his peers and who ultimately becomes a "patchwork" of different personas. Kim Wexler is Elizabeth with some elements of Igor, a young woman completely devoted to her lover who is ultimately "destroyed" by the creature she helped create: Saul Goodman.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • The skaters try to pull a Staged Pedestrian Accident on Jimmy, not realizing that he is a former conman and would see right through their scam. Jimmy and the skaters then try to pull the same trick on Betsy Kettleman but end up accidentally targeting Tuco Salamanca's grandma.
  • Hector Salamanca honestly believes Mike is just a random old man he has to threaten to lighten Tuco's sentence. Mike goes on to steal a quarter million dollars from him, reveals Hector's supply line to the D.E.A. to give Gus an edge, attempts to assassinate Hector with a sniper rifle, and participates in Nacho's plot to cripple Hector, all as payback for threatening his granddaughter. Not to mention the Salamanca family members Mike will go on to kill personally in Breaking Bad.
• Musical Spoiler: Not satisfied with just Walt parallels, the scene with Gene in "Nippy" threatening Jeff replays "Chuck’s Relapse" from "Lantern", hinting at how Gene’s mental state is going to be for the next two episodes.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: "Namaste":

  Howard Hamlin: "Am I allowed to call you "Jimmy"?"

  Jimmy McGill: "Uh, Saul Goodman is my professional name, but my friends still call me Jimmy. You can, too."

• Myth Arc:
  • The Sandpiper Crossing class action lawsuit is introduced in Season 1 and takes until Season 6 to get resolved. It is touched upon once in a while at various points in the seasons, and speeding up the settlement becomes the focus in both the second half of Season 3 and the first half of Season 6.
  • The Omaha storyline with Gene Takavic is slowly developed at the start of each season. Until Season 6, where it becomes the final plotline of the series.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Betsy Kettleman is named after Betsy Brandt (Marie Schrader in Breaking Bad).
  • The company that runs the courthouse parking lot that Mike works at, SMQ Parking, is named for the initials of Steven Michael Quezada (Steve Gomez).
  • Kristy Esposito, the student who is denied a scholarship from HHM over her past as a shoplifter, is named after Giancarlo Esposito, who plays Gus Fring.
  • The very colorful shirts Jimmy looks over are a reference to a page pulled down from bettercallsaul.com, his presumed family brand McGill & McGill's.

N

• Nature vs. Nurture: It's subtle but fundamental to the McGill brother's conflict: Chuck wholeheartedly believes that Jimmy will never overcome his nature as a conman while Jimmy has made genuine attempts at going legit.
• Necktie Leash: In one of the lighter moments of "Rock and Hard Place", Jimmy and Kim dress each other and end up getting turned on by their scam. Kim does Jimmy's tie, but then pulls it to make out with him.
• Nephewism: As in Breaking Bad, the various Salamanca family members are all cousins who are loyal to their only older male relative, their uncle Hector.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Invoked by Jimmy during the second reinstatement hearing, during his real-feelings-used-to-con speech about Chuck's final letter to him.
• Nice Guy:
  • Jimmy starts off as a way more caring lawyer than he is in Breaking Bad, but this aspect of his character slowly fades as the show progresses.
  • Clifford Main, Jimmy's boss at Davis & Main, could hardly be a nicer guy.
  • Howard when he's not being Chuck's puppet. He's even willing to personally mortgage himself so the employees don't lose their jobs when he forcibly retires Chuck at the end of season 3.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Chuck McGill's undermining of Jimmy's attempts to become an honest lawyer is what turns Jimmy into Saul Goodman.
• Nice to the Waiter:
  • We repeatedly see Jimmy having friendly, first-name basis relationships with low-level workers: custodians, mailroom workers, courthouse clerks, etc. There's a practical aspect to this (it's not uncommon for him to need favors from these people), but it also seems to be an innate part of his nature. Chuck on the other hand is really taxing on assistants like Ernesto and can come out as condescending when he tries to be polite toward others like Dr. Cruz and Howard.
  • After Hector takes Los Pollos Hermanos hostage in an attempt to intimidate Gus, Gus makes it up to his traumatized employees by offering them counseling and compensating for a lost day of wages.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Somewhat of a recurring theme in Jimmy's life.
  • While returning the entire sum stolen by Craig Kettleman - including the bribe given to him by Betsy for his silence - means giving up the new, professional-looking office he was planning to rent, and sending Kim, whom he wanted to join him as a partner at this office, right back into Howard Hamlin's good graces.
  • Talking Tuco down from killing the skaters to breaking one leg apiece and being met with not only anger but the ensuing personal trauma and guilt.
  • Calling the Kettlemans to warn them of danger which sent them on an ill-advised impromptu camping trip disguised as a kidnapping, which netted Jimmy a handsome bribe which he desperately needed but would later be forced to return, as well as the contempt of Nacho Varga. To make matters worse, the Kettlemans still refused to hire him.
  • When Jimmy gets into Elder Law, he uncovers a massive case of fraud on his elderly clients. When he takes it to Chuck, Chuck convinces him to hand it over to his firm and then works to make sure that Jimmy won't get hired on anyway despite how much he proved himself. All because Chuck doesn't believe Jimmy's ever changed (or ever will change) from his "Slippin' Jimmy" days.
  • Jimmy's father was a Nice Guy who liked to help people in trouble but was extremely naive about it. This made him a target of various grifters who took advantage of his charitable nature. Jimmy witnessed it all but was helpless to do anything about it. His concern for his father turned into resentment and Jimmy started Stealing from the Till.
  • Ernesto is probably Jimmy's only real friend at HHM — meaning Chuck sees him as a useful pawn against Jimmy. He uses Ernesto's Nice Guy nature to tip off Jimmy about the Mesa Verde tape's existence and lure him into committing the break-in. Then, because Ernesto has served his purpose in the scheme, Chuck unceremoniously fires him.
• Non-Action Guy: Jimmy couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, and often has to rely on his wits to get out of hairy situations. In "Bagman" we also see he is terrified of guns and even struggles to use one in a desperate self-defence situation.
• Noodle Incident: Something happened to Chuck which caused him to develop his 'allergy' to electromagnetism about two years ago, but the details are vague. One hint we get is that Jimmy thinks it's connected to his own behavior, getting worse when he suspects Jimmy of wrongdoing, though Chuck insists this is not the case.
• No "Police" Option: Attempted to be exploited by Nacho, who robs people that he knows are criminals and thus they won't go to the police because if they do they will have their own misdeeds exposed in the ensuing investigation. The fact that it's "attempted" is because he then steals from Daniel Wormald, a crook who is so stupid that he does exactly what Nacho didn't want and does call the police, placing the two of them (and many other crooks) in trouble.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
  • It was almost a foregone conclusion since he doesn't appear in Breaking Bad, but Chuck's suicide hugely alters the dynamic of the show at the end of Season 3.
  • The murder of Howard Hamlin is the beginning of the end for the world of Better Call Saul; Lalo dies hours after, Gus resumes construction of the underground lab uninhibited, HHM downsizes and is renamed, and Kim surrenders her law license and leaves Jimmy, leaving all the characters more or less where they are at the start of Breaking Bad after the Time Skip.
• Nothing Personal: Like Chuck, Howard refuses to accept Jimmy as a partner in their firm, but unlike Chuck, that's simply because he doesn't feel Jimmy would make a good addition to their business. But he still recognises Jimmy as a good lawyer in his own right. Jimmy doesn't begrudge him for this. At least not until Howard starts punching down on Kim with Chuck's blessing.
• Not Hyperbole: Among one of the teaser ads for Season 2, Jimmy is at a stop with a left (bright) and right (dark). Jimmy screws both and the camera pans to find a cliff in that direction. According the directors in a post-interview, who were asked what direction they want the series they want to go on (after joking that they really had no idea what to do with the series and were just doing things to see if it works), they remarked that they want the series to go off a cliff.
• Nouveau Riche: Saul Goodman to a T. He lives in a gaudy mansion and wears the tackiest of suits all to project the image of wealth and success.
• Nurture over Nature: With the series finale, and Jimmy being spurred on by Kim's honest confession, throwing away Saul and admitting both damage and sins, the show answers the Nature Versus Nurture question as "people aren't innately evil, that's just a convenient excuse for not changing." Even Chuck in a flashback is willing to believe that his brother can be better, if only for a moment.

---