The five greatest ‘Breaking Bad’ scenes, according to Vince Gilligan

The severed tortoise 

In season two, episode seven, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are into the meth business pretty deep. Tortuga, a member of a Mexican cartel and a DEA informant for Walter’s brother-in-law Hank, reveals the location of a deal for the DEA to ambush, but his cartel brothers find out, decapitating him and pinning his head on a tortoise, which they release into the desert where the deal is due to take place. On seeing the tortoise, the DEA initially finds the whole thing hilarious, until one agent removes Tortuga’s head from its shell, setting off a bomb which kills one agent and wounds three others.

The movement was a highlight for Gilligan and the rest of the crew, who’d toyed with the idea of blowing up the tortoise before deciding they simply had to give in to booby-trapping the creature. ‘Tortuga’ is Spanish for tortoise, meaning the slow one, so the whole thing is steeped in meaning beyond the obvious. It’s one of the most shocking scenes on a TV show, taking its gore to another level.

The literal face-off

In this infamous scene in season four, episode 13, Walter’s rival, Chicken shop owner and New Mexico meth kingpin, Gus Fring, is about to experience his gruesome execution. It was months in the making, according to Gilligan, who had the pleasure of directing the scene and episode, making the particularity of Gus’s death ingrained in the collective audience’s memory.

A big figure in the community and funding local charities, Fring is one of the most ruthless characters in Breaking Bad, so his death deserved a notable ending. Catching wind of Gus’ plans to replace his own meth empire, Walter uses his rival’s enemy, Hector Salamanca, to kill Gus when he visits him in the hospital, attaching a bomb to his wheelchair, killing Hector and his friend in the process.

In the aftermath, Gus is seen walking out of the room with the front of his face entirely peeled off, exposing his skull and eye socket, appearing a twisted Harvey Dent look-alike, before collapsing dead on the floor. Gilligan admitted he was “obsessed with half-exploded faces”, which in this case, took 19 takes to get the perfect shot.

The real Walter

Walter White is one of the most complex and elusive characters on the show, and for a lot of season one, audiences are left wondering how a nice school teacher could decide to cook and sell meth, ultimately establishing an empire, no matter the cancer justifications. But in season one, episode five, there’s a real turning point, when the audience gets to experience the true nature of Walter’s personality. When a former friend and lab partner from school appears called Elliott Schwartz, now a millionaire running a scientific research company, he offers Walter a lifeline, offering to pay for all his medical treatment and give him a job to help him and his family.

But in a pivotal and revealing movement, Walter declines the offer, his ego too proud to accept. As Gilligan puts it, “One of our finest moments was not necessarily one of our most dramatic”, instead subtly revealing the true drive behind the protagonist, turning him from a good but misled guy into something darker. Before this moment, Gilligan admitted, the writers of the show weren’t so sure who Walter was themselves, but this scene cemented his position as a “creature of such pride and such damaged ego” that he’d rather go his own way and endanger his family’s life than take a hand out.

That’s when he “broke bad”, according to Gilligan, kicking the show into a higher gear.

‘Better Call Saul’

It wouldn’t be a list of the top episodes of Breaking Bad without one involving Saul Goodman, one of Gilligan’s favourite characters. So impactful was Saul’s character in the show that a whole spin-off prequel was made about this unscrupulous crooked lawyer, to huge acclaim. Saul eventually becomes the facilitator of Jesse and Walter’s drug empire, but their humble meeting in season two, episode eight, is what really sets the tone with one of the greatest opening lines.

When one of Walter and Jesse’s pushers is arrested by the DEA for street-dealing, they set him up with Saul. When the two meet in his office, he spends the next five minutes talking about what kind of billing procedure they were going to use, cash, money order, but definitely not American Express. It’s a hilarious scene that sums up Saul’s abrasive and buffoon-like personality, bringing in one of the finest arcs in the show.

Mike down

Another fan favourite character is Mike, a private investigator, head of security, fixer, and hitman who works for Gus Fring. Apologies, however, because you’re only meeting him here at his death in season five, episode seven. The story goes that Mike and Walter cross paths, sometimes working together, but their relationship deteriorates after Gus’ death, and Walter catches Mike trying to leave town. In a tense stand-off where Mike refuses Walter’s demands to reveal his imprisoned associates so he can eliminate them, the latter Walter shoots him in a fit of rage, something Gilligan says Walter himself wasn’t even expecting.

It’s this scene that turns Walter truly to the dark side with no way back, and has a big impact on Jesse. The scene was written and directed by one of Gilligan’s closest friends, Thomas Schnauz, and the episode was his first professional directing gig.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the house that day,” he reflected.