Breaking Bad: Difference between revisions

* [[And Some Other Stuff]]: Mostly done quite subtly, we're never shown entire recipes for anything particularly dangerous.

* [[Anti-Hero]]: Or is it [[Anti-Villain]]? Where Walt falls is unclear, and he keeps seeming to slip further down the [[Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes]]. Jesse envisions himself as a kind of [[Anti-Villain]], but it's probably a pose.

* [[Ax Crazy]]:

** Tuco takes this trope [[Up to Eleven]]. He will take any and every excuse he can get to beat someone up, especially when he's high on meth. Walt tells him, "We tried to poison you because you are an insane, degenerate piece of filth and you deserve to die."

** The Salamanca Cousins, quite literally. One of them carries around a chromed fire-axe with which they kill several people. One of them even refuses to shoot Hank in the head when he had the chance, choosing instead to go back to the car to get the axe.

** Todd's flavor of [[Ax Crazy]] is closer to the Cousins, where he commits horrible atrocities such as torture and {{spoiler|murdering children}} without so much as blinking an eye. But instead of being a near-mute Terminator wannabe like them, he acts like any moderately friendly guy you'd meet on the street, which might make him the scariest of them all.

* [[Badass Boast]]:

** Walt: "I am the one who knocks!"

* [[Dropped a Bridget On Him]]: [http://www.amctv.com/videos/breaking-bad/?bcpid=9787693001&bclid=69511873001&bctid=12064411001 Hank's prewedding jitter] Hank still doesn't seem to understand...

* [[Dumbass Has a Point]]: When Walt and Jesse are stuck in the desert in the RV after the battery dies, Jesse starts throwing out suggestions including stripping down the vehicle to make either a robot or a dune buggy (he was a bit delirious). Believe it or not, this helps Walt strike on the solution that actually does save their lives.

* [[Dying Moment of Awesome]]:

** {{spoiler|Hector Salamanca of all people gets one, giving Gus one last look of hate before blowing them all up}}.

* [[Ear Worm]]: In-universe example, for Walt the catchy theme song for a furniture store’s late-night commercials where he bought Walter Junior’s crib 16 years ago. "Don’t let shopping strain your brain-o, Just sing this short refrain-o, Our furniture is buen-o, Tampico is the name-o!"

* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]: Bryan Cranston's [[Bald of Awesome]] and [[Beard of Evil]] are now iconic for the show, so people might be a little startled to see him with a full head of hair and a particularly bad mustache in the first few episodes.

* [[Epic Fail]]:

** Walt's hilarious attempt to shatter a glass office door with a '''potted palm tree'''; the only thing that broke was the tree. Well, and Walt's composure. Oh, and then he got dragged outside by staff

* [[Enemy Mine]]: {{spoiler|How Walter gets Hector Salamanca to kill Gus.}}

* [[Even Evil Has Loved Ones]]:

** Walter, rapidly losing any moral high ground he might have started with, still loves his family.

* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: Subverted. Gus acts insulted when Walt accuses him of murdering a child, then later reveals that he's quite willing to such a thing, and more, if it suits his purposes.

** In "Over", Jesse wants to bring Jane breakfast in bed, but she walks on him in the kitchen. He says {{spoiler|"You weren't supposed to wake up", and she responds "Ever, or...?"}}

** The water heater. Walt Jr. mentions it in the first episode of the first season, and its breakdown in Season 2 starts Walt Sr. on a home repair spree.

** In the season 2 premiere, you see Skyler looking fondly of old photos of her and {{spoiler|Ted}} after she and Walt start having marriage troubles. {{spoiler|Ted}} isn't even introduced at that point and doesn't appear till 6 episodes after.

* [[Gambit Roulette]]:

** {{spoiler|Walt poisoned Brock with a not-quite lethal poison and stole the ricin cigarette from Jesse, hoping that Jesse would realize he was poisoned, assume Walt did it and come after him. Then he had to convince Jesse that Gus had planned to the whole thing, right up to Jesse holding a gun to his head. It worked (almost) perfectly, but relied on a lot of luck.}}

* [[Genius Bruiser]]: Hank initially comes off as tough, over-bearing cop who's main skills are kicking down doors and surviving gun battles. As time goes on, however, he reveals himself to be a pretty brilliant investigator. He basically deduces Gus's entire operation from his hospital bed, when no one else suspected a thing.

* [[Genre Savvy]]: Badger correctly susses that a customer looking to buy meth is a [[Agent Provocateur|police officer]], and also spots the two conspicuously inconspicuous vans parked nearby. {{spoiler|Immediately subverted when Badger falls for the old "A police officer can't deny he's one if you ask him directly" urban legend.}}

* [[Hollywood Silencer]]: Averted in Episode 313, "Full Measure."

* [[Hope Spot]]: Inverted with {{spoiler|Gus Fring's death. After Tio detonates himself, Gus Fring walks out of the gutted room, seemingly fine...and the viewer's stomachs drop as they think the plan failed. Then the camera pans to show half of Gus's face gone.}}

* [[How We Got Here]]: The episodes "Pilot", "Crazy Handful of Nothin'", "Grilled", "Breakage", "ABQ", and "Bug".

* [[Humiliation Conga]]: Season 4 is one long one for Walt.

** Walt's coughing in the pilot is a sign of his cancer.

** Subverted; in the episode where he starts coughing up blood, it turns out {{spoiler|that his cancer is going into remission}} and that was just a relatively minor secondary condition.

* [[Indy Ploy]]: Walt's "thinking on his feet" attempts to obscure the truth about his second life. Much of it in the first season revolves around making up lies to tell his wife. She gets wise after a while. He comes up with more dramatic ones to throw off Hank. In one episode he drives up in front of him and to say hello in order to block his view during a sting. In season three, he pulls some spectacular shit out of his ass to get Hank away from the RV in the salvage yard. In the fourth season, he gets into an auto accident to prevent Hank from scoping out the laundry.

* [[Infant Immortality]]:

** Walt makes ricin from the chemicals he's got in his lab.

** When Mike uses a plastic zip-tie to cuff him to a radiator in "Buyout", Walt tries to break a coffee pot and use the broken glass to cut himself free. Unfortunately, he knocks the pot too far way to reach. So instead, he bites open the cable and uses the ''wires'' to burn the ziptie off.

* [[Marijuana Is LSD]]: Jesse sees two men in white shirts who want to talk to him about Jesus as hulking, leather-clad thugs with machetes and hand grenades after smoking methamphetamine. Meth isn't a hallucinagen, but it can cause paranoia and long periods of sleep deprivation, which ''can'' cause hallucinations.

* [[Meaningful Name]]:

** Saul Goodman's name is pronounced like "'S all good, man". This may be intentional on Saul's part, as he tells Walter that his real surname is McGill, and he changed it to appeal to Albuquerque's criminal underclass.

* [[Midair Collision]]: {{spoiler|Season 2 finale.}}

* [[Mood Whiplash]]: So, so much. The show goes from comedy to tragedy and back at the drop of a hat.

** Plenty of the episodes have title drops. See, for example, Season 4, Episode 10 - "Salud".

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Ted absolutely ''refuses'' to pay his taxes, even when the IRS is preparing to audit him and Skyler practically drops the money needed to pay them off in his lap. {{spoiler|His stupidity ends up getting him crippled for life when he tries to flee from Huell and Kuby so he can cancel the check they forced him to sign, only to slip, fall, and bang his head.}}

* [[Trailers Always Lie]]: The season 4 trailer ends with the narrator claiming that "Walter White is not in danger. He is the danger", echoing his speech in "Cornered". It's obvious since the season premiere that in this season Walt is totally, totally in danger.

* [[Trash the Set]]: {{spoiler|Walt and Jesse blow up the laundromat superlab at the end of Season 4.}}

* [[Wham! Line]]:

{{quote|'''Skyler''': Walt, where's your cell phone, did you bring your cell phone?

 

{{quote|'''Hank''': {{spoiler|Since when do vegans eat fried chicken?}}}}