So, is breaking bad based on a true story? Breaking Bad is an excellent example of an antihero protagonist leading a morally ambiguous group of people in a morally ambiguous circumstance. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Walter White was merely trying to put his family through its paces. To accomplish so, he became a crystal methamphetamine kingpin. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks; His narrative was one of the most riveting television episodes ever filmed.
That engaging narrative frequently leads to speculation that the show’s origins are in the real world. So long after the program had finished airing, fans speculated about the show’s inspirations, both real and fictional. Now that the program has been running for more than a decade, we’ve found an answer – and it may surprise you! We gain insight into Breaking Bad’s true origins with the premiere of Better Call Saul’s sixth season.
Quick Overview
A neo-western criminal thriller tv series created and produced by Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad is one of the most popular shows in television history. The show ran on AMC for a total of 62 episodes throughout five seasons, beginning on January 20, 2008, and continuing until September 29, 2013.
In the program, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is a poor, unskilled, and depressed chemistry professor who has recently been diagnosed with stage three lung cancer. Both the setting and filming take place in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Arguably, “Breaking Bad” is one of the best and most significant television shows in the history of the industry. The show has spawned its spin-off series as well as a film, and it has had a significant and lasting effect on popular culture. Who would have thought that the tale of a high school chemistry professor in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was producing meth, would impact this many people all over the world?
Do not lose sight of the fact that the show “Breaking Bad” is a fictional production. The fundamental idea behind Vince Gilligan’s series was to launch it with a protagonist who, throughout the show’s run, would be revealed to be the antagonist. This idea would later develop into the series that most of us are familiar with and like, even though it never directly drew influence from any real-life figures.
Is Breaking Bad Based on a True Story?
Contrary to what many people believe, the show Breaking Bad does not draw any of its ideas or inspiration from actual drug dealing situations. Instead, it was after working on “The X-Files” that the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, originally conceived of the notion.
He had the ambitious goal of producing a program in which the protagonist would ultimately turn out to be the bad guy. In this manner, he planned to disrupt television’s practice of maintaining characters in a static state to increase the show’s overall length.
At one point, he and another writer named Thomas Schnauz joked about dealing drugs out of an RV throughout stagnation. One thing led to another, and Gilligan eventually sold his notion to Sony, Showtime, and numerous other networks.
FX picked the notion up, and subsequently by AMC, which led to the creation of Breaking Bad as we know it today, which was a critically acclaimed and Emmy-winning television series that ran for five memorable seasons.
It would seem that the fact that there are actual meth traffickers in real life with the name Walter White is a complete and utter coincidence. No one has entered the industry after being told they had a fatal illness. There were also chemists and professors (not named Walter White).
Since many of these people were already active in the business long before they made Breaking Bad, this amazing series was just the result of a crazy concept and the unfortunate victim of a fortunate coincidence. Who would have thought?
Is Walter White Based on a True Person?
Yes.
Admit it or not, there is a legitimate case involving a real-life Walter White. He was an actual person and construction worker in the past. However, he quit his job to build a reputation for himself in the very profitable drug trade. During this case, Walter White, the real deal, was arrested and accused of heroin trafficking. He was renowned as a meth kingpin, and he saw himself as having cooked the greatest meth in the whole of Alabama for almost 10 years. He was an expert meth cook who loved cooking meth. Most of his meth was the purest meth you could find.
This led to his reputation as a meth kingpin. In 2014, the man, now 53 years old, was put on trial for a felony, four counts of narcotics charges, and a lesser offense. Officials found him guilty of all charges. It came as a surprise when he only pleaded guilty to one count of possession, and the jury dropped all the other accusations against him. The jury ultimately had white pay a $2,000 fine besides serving 32 months of probation for his crime.
You may be thinking about a different Walter White, who was also a meth dealer, while you’re having trouble making sense of his punishment. According to CBS News, Walter conducted his business out of Montana, delivered an estimated 32 pounds of meth, and his son Brandon killed him. Brandon was also involved in the drug trade. The court handed a far more severe punishment of twelve years in jail down.
The show portrays Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston in a performance that is not to be missed, as a brilliant scientist. White worked as a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and he graduated from the California Institute of Technology.
Aside from that, he founded Gray Matter Technologies and was part of the Nobel Prize-winning team at the Laboratory. Eventually, he gave up on his business and watched as his ex-girlfriend and an old friend tied the knot and reaped the benefits of his efforts.
By the time we encounter him in the first episode of the program, Walter is a disillusioned fifty-year-old high school professor and part-time car washer. A world that doesn’t share his love imprisons him.
When Walter learns that he has Stage III lung cancer and that it is quite probable that he will pass away within the next two years, he concludes that he cannot abandon his family to a state of debt and financial instability.
As a result, he enters the outrageously lucrative world of drug trafficking. He rises to prominence as New Mexico’s most renowned crystal meth dealer. The five seasons of Walt’s increasing involvement in the local drug trade show his decline into villainy. The last episode depicts his death in the middle of an exceptionally well-equipped meth lab just as the cops arrive—all on his 52nd birthday, no less.
Is Jesse Pinkman Based on a Real Person?
No. Jesse Pinkman is a fictional character.
What Was Breaking Bad Inspired By?
‘Breaking Bad’ was Vince Gilligan’s fantasy that became a reality.
Gilligan received his degree in writing from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He then worked as a writer on The X-Files, which was one of his favorite television series. But he hadn’t reached the degree of success he desired, and he knew well that he was capable of far more.
The filmmaker, 53 years old, shared the following story with Vanity Fair:
“[A friend and I] were just joking around on the phone about what we should do next: Should we be greeters at Wal-Mart? Should we put a meth lab in the back of an RV and cook meth and drive around the southwest? And that image…I don’t know, it just stuck with me.”
Similar to Walter White, Gilligan was on the verge of a crisis in the middle of his life.
Gilligan remembers that he was just about a year away from becoming 40, and he feels that continuing with the crazy concept was a kind of mid-life crisis for him. This potentially unpleasant occurrence aided the creative process in his life. Gilligan stated, “I guess that’s why I felt like a kindred spirit with Walter White, because he’s a man who’s having the world’s worst mid-life crisis, at least in my mind.“
It has come to light that Walt is going through what is known as an “end-of-life crisis” after receiving the news that he has terminal cancer. But regardless of the outcome, Gilligan had a personal understanding of his reasons, which helped him add serious realism to the series.
Final Words
Breaking Bad depicts how the desire for power can warp a person in a way that is both beautiful and complex. And it’s all because Vince Gilligan had a strange idea about something years ago. Though the series only has a fictional Walter White, there was an actual Walter White as well.
