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Better Call Saul

All The ‘Breaking Bad’ References in Season 2 of ‘Better Call Saul’

Devon Taylor (@DevonTaylor113)

Source: Screenshot via AMC

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Better Call Saul brilliantly returns Breaking Bad fans into the Walter White universe, telling the story of upstart lawyer Jimmy McGill. Most viewers will be aware that Jimmy eventually loses the battle against his own flimsy ideals of legal ethics and becomes Saul Goodman, a lawyer that becomes more well known for chasing ambulances and helping drug dealers hide their dirty money.

Even though we know the ending, series creator Vince Gilligan makes the journey worth watching. With very detailed and precise writing, the Better Call Saul crew expertly weave Jimmy’s story into the same Albuquerque, New Mexico that we remember from Breaking Bad. And while it’s unlikely (but not impossible) that Jesse Pinkman or Walter White will show up in the series, Better Call Saul contains numerous Easter eggs and subtle references to the show that it spun off from. We’ve already gathered all of them from Season One, and you can find them right here. Here’s the Season Two version, all spotted by eagle-eyed fans across the internet!

Familiar Faces

We’ll start off with the easy ones. Since Better Call Saul takes place in the same town as Breaking Bad, just a few years earlier, it makes sense that some of the people living there would be the same in both series. Along with returning main characters like Tuco and Mike Ehrmantraut, Better Call Saul features a surprisingly large number of returning extras.

The local dinner has the same waitress, a woman named Fran. She first served Mike back in Season Five of Breaking Bad, when he met with Lydia. The police department continue to send Officer Saxton to deal with house calls. He responded to Daniel’s complaint that someone stole his “baseball cards,” but he was also the one who showed up in Season Three of Breaking Bad when Skylar called to complain that Walter had broken in to his own house.

There’s also Ken Wins, the egotistical rich guy that Jimmy and Kim scam for a bottle of fancy tequila. He first appeared in the very first season of Breaking Bad, where he zooms in to steal a parking spot from Walter, who would later get a small measure of revenge by short circuiting the battery in Ken’s fancy car, causing it to explode.

Via AMC

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The Tequila Bottle

Speaking of the ultra expensive bottle of Zafiro Anejo (a single shot costs $50), the fictional tequila isn’t new to the White/McGill universe either. You might remember it being used by Gus Fring to poison all of his enemies in the Mexican drug cartel back in Breaking Bad.

According to Gilligan, the prop crew couldn’t find another identical bottle to use in Better Call Saul, so they had one 3D printed for the episode. Now that’s attention to detail!

Via AMC

The Gun Salesman

Towards the end of Season Two of Better Call Saul, Mike decides he needs to purchase some “heavy equipment” in the form of a sniper rifle. He purchases it from a sketchy underground gun dealer named Lawson, who sounds like he’s definitely a Veitnam vet.

Lawson seems to enjoy the profession of dealing arms, since he pops up multiple times later in the Breaking Bad timeline. He sells Walter White a small gun to use for personal protection, and later an M60 machine gun that Heisenberg mounts in his trunk for that spectacular finale.

Via AMC

Boxing Glove Necklace

Tuco Salamanca has a taste for the garish bling in both series, and can regularly be seen sporting gold and silver around his neck, wrist, and fingers in the forms of chains, watches, or fancy rings. Not to mention that flashy grill he wears in his mouth sometimes.

When Tuco and Mike get into a fight (which is all planned by Mike), the drug lord’s boxing glove necklace ends up in Mike’s possession. That may not seem important, but we know that Tuco has the necklace back at the beginning of Breaking Bad, where it sits around his neck as he threatens Jesse Pinkman in Season One. Does he simply replace it? Or will we eventually see how he gets it back from Mike?

Via AMC

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Ice Station Zebra Associates

A random set of words, it would seem. But “Ice Station Zebra” is actually a 1968 movie that Jimmy McGill and Kim watch together. Later, they scam some poor sucker out of $10,000 after they convince him to invest in their start-up company, which obviously doesn’t exist. They tell the unsuspecting mark to make the check out to “Ice Station Zebra Associates.”

Jimmy presumably uses this to start his illegal shell company for laundering money, because the name is also used in Breaking Bad when Saul Goodman is trying to evade taxes and launder money for his drug kingpin clients.

Via AMC

Who is Dawg Paulson?

When Nacho and Mike are discussing the problem with the erratic and somewhat crazy Tuco, Nacho tells the story of Dawg Paulson. Tuco apparently shot Paulson, his former drug supplier, in a fit of paranoid rage. A piece of Paulson’s skull even became embedded in Nacho’s shoulder, and he shows off the scar to prove it.

Flash back to Season Two of Breaking Bad, and DEA agent Hank Schrader is seen putting together a criminal profile of Tuco. He mentions in passing that Tuco “allegedly whacked” Dawg Paulson. Turns out, the rumors were true.

Via AMC

World’s Second Best Lawyer

When we first met Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad, he was described as a criminal lawyer. No, not a lawyer who defends people accused of crimes (although he does that too). In this case, Jesse was referring to the fact that Goodman has no problem bending or breaking the law himself, in order to achieve his goals. It was ironic, then, that Goodman’s desk is back dropped by a large copy of the United States’ Constitution, and that a mug on his desk reads “World’s Best Lawyer.”

In a hilarious nod to Jimmy’s eventual future, Kim gets him a gag gift in Better Call Saul — a travel mug with the slogan “World’s 2nd Best Lawyer.”

Via AMC

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Krazy-8

Domingo Molina, aka Krazy-8, isn’t a major character in the Breaking Bad universe. But he is important. He represents the first person that Walter White kills with his own hands, when he’s still tied up in Pinkman’s basement early in Breaking Bad. It’s one of Walter’s first real shifts into the Heisenberg character that would eventually consume him.

In Better Call Saul, we see Domingo in his early days, still working for the family company, called Tampico Furniture. He’s just starting out in the criminal world, and seems nervous and timid. In fact, he’s not even Krazy-8 yet. Still just lowly Domingo.

Via AMC

FRINGSBACK

This is the most publicized one, and the internet picked up on it pretty fast. But as soon as the episode titles were all revealed for Season Two of Better Call Saul, it became apparent that an old Breaking Bad fan favorite would soon be making his presence felt.

If you take the first letter from every episode title in Season Two (Switch, Cobbler, Amarillo, Gloves Off, Rebecca, Bali Ha’i, Inflatable, Fifi, Nailed, and Klick), and rearrange them in the correct order, they spell a simple and ominous message:

Fring’s Back.

Gustavo Fring, one of Walter White’s most deadly and memorable enemies, will officially be showing up in Season Three of Better Call Saul. We already know that Fring has a connection with Saul Goodman and Mike from what happened in Breaking Bad. Now it looks like we will get to see how those relationships get started when Better Call Saul returns in April 2017.

Via AMC

Devon Taylor (@DevonTaylor113)

Devon has been writing about random things online since 2013. His favorite video game is Rocket League, his favorite TV show is The Sopranos, and he hated the last season of Game of Thrones. Follow him @DevonTaylor113.