Breaking Bad: Quiz + 12 Surprising Facts About The Show

Regularly rated the best fictional TV series in history, Breaking Bad has gripped and thrilled audiences all over the world. The series centres on Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston), a high school chemistry teacher who gets a terminal lung cancer diagnosis, and so starts cooking crystal meth in order to pay for his treatment, as well as to set his family up with some money for after he’s gone.

To separate the ones that knock from the ones that end up in an acid bath, we’ve created a Breaking Bad quiz!

Let’s see how you do…

Take our Breaking Bad Quiz

How did you do?

Please share our Breaking Bad quiz with your friends and family to see if they can beat your score!

We’ve pulled together some awesome Breaking Bad trivia!

Here are 12 surprising facts about the show…

1) Aaron Paul’s Knockout Scene

During the filming of Grilled, Raymond Cruz (Tuco) accidentally threw Aaron Paul through a screen door so hard that he smacked his head on the wooden frame. Paul was dazed, tried to call a timeout, but Cruz thought it was acting and kept going until Paul blacked out. When he woke up, a medic was leaning over him – talk about method acting gone wrong!

2) Nick Fury Crashes Los Pollos

While Breaking Bad was filming a Los Pollos Hermanos scene, Samuel L. Jackson wandered over from a nearby Marvel set – dressed as Nick Fury. He asked if he could sit in the background as an Easter egg, but Vince Gilligan had to turn him down. Imagine Nick Fury munching fried chicken while Walt and Gus sized each other up!

Only 316 days until Christmas

Check out our Breaking Bad gift guide…

Take Me To The Gift Guide

3) The Fan Who Helped Shape the Ending

Teenage superfan Kevin Cordasco, who was battling terminal cancer, got to meet the cast and crew of Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan even asked him what he wanted from the ending — Kevin wished to see more about Gretchen and Elliott. That wish directly inspired their cameo in the finale, making Kevin’s influence part of Breaking Bad history.

4) Jesse Was Supposed to Die Early

Originally, Jesse Pinkman was only meant to last a couple of episodes before being killed off. But Gilligan quickly realized Aaron Paul’s chemistry with Bryan Cranston was too good to lose. Instead of a throwaway sidekick, Jesse became the heart of the show.

5) How a Joke Became a Masterpiece

Vince Gilligan and fellow writer Tom Schnauz were lamenting their lack of work after The X-Files. Jokingly, Schnauz suggested, “We should just buy an RV and cook meth.” That offhand comment sparked the creation of Walter White – and one of TV’s greatest dramas.

6) Felina: What’s in a name?

The finale title “Felina” comes from Marty Robbins’s cowboy ballad El Paso, where a man returns to his love, Felina, even though it means his death. It also doubles as an anagram for “finale,” and fans note it can be broken into Fe-Li-Na — iron (blood), lithium (meth), sodium (tears). However you read it, the name is as layered as Walt’s fate.

7) The Walking Dead Made Gus a Zombie

When Gus Fring walked out of that hospital room with half his face missing, the makeup looked eerily familiar. That’s because AMC borrowed the Walking Dead effects team to design his gruesome exit. One of TV’s most shocking deaths owes its horror to a team of zombie experts.

8) Ferris Bueller Breaks Bad (Almost)

AMC originally wanted Matthew Broderick (yes, Ferris Bueller!) or John Cusack to play Walter White. Both turned it down, so Gilligan showed execs Bryan Cranston’s role in an X-Files episode called Drive. That performance convinced them — and the rest is TV legend.

9) The Candy Lady’s Blue Meth

The iconic blue meth wasn’t meth at all — it was rock candy made by an Albuquerque candy shop called The Candy Lady. Fans still flock there to buy little baggies of “meth” as souvenirs. Sweet and sinister all at once.

10) Leaves of Grass Sold for $65,500

The book that exposed Walt – a copy of Leaves of Grass inscribed “To W.W. My star, my perfect silence” – didn’t just change the show, it sold for a jaw-dropping $65,500 at auction. A pricey reminder of Hank’s fateful bathroom read.

11) Real Chemistry (Mostly)

Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul were trained by actual DEA chemists to look authentic in the lab. The science is mostly legit, but Gilligan intentionally left out steps so no one could actually cook meth from the show. And in case you wondered – MythBusters proved the infamous “acid bathtub” scene wouldn’t really work.

12) A guy tried to ‘pick up’ Wendy

Wendy the prostitute appears several times throughout the series. From her first appearance where Hank shows her to Walt Jr to try to scare him off drugs, through to her last, where Jesse hires her to deliver poisoned hamburgers to the rival dealers, she certainly has some memorable scenes. The makeup and costume teams clearly did a great job making Julie Minesci look like a junkie prostitute, because when they were filming outside a shopping arcade one day, a man pulled up in a car and tried to hire her for real. The crew had to jump in.

There you have it – 12 awesome pieces of Breaking Bad trivia!

Only 316 days until Christmas