Breaking Bad killed countless characters during its five-season run, from lowly dealers to
innocent bystanders to a certain karaoke-loving scientist.
But which one was the most devastating of all?
Keep watching and decide for yourself.
Domingo "Krazy-8" Molina and his cousin Emilio just wanted to sell a little meth with Emilio's
friend Jesse Pinkman.
In the normal world, that might not be the most sympathetic goal, but in the world of
Breaking Bad that's as close to an honest living as it often gets.
But when a meeting with Jesse and Walter White goes sideways in the series' first episode,
Emilio ends up dead and Krazy-8 is held prisoner in Jesse's basement.
Walt and Jesse's dilemma is clear.
Krazy-8 is an extreme liability and needs to be dealt with in a more permanent fashion
than simply being chained up, but at this point neither men are killers.
Walt's misgivings only grow as he and Domingo make a personal connection; Domingo's family
owns the furniture store where Walt bought the crib for his now-teenage son.
"Sixteen years ago, how old would you have been?"
"It was after school.
Trust me, I was there."
It isn't until Walt realizes that Krazy-8 has armed himself with a shard of broken dinner
plate that his survival instincts kick in.
The ensuing fight and death scene is brutal and ugly, a tragedy not just for the young
man but for Walt himself, as he has now crossed a line from which he can never return.
The deaths of Emilio and Krazy-8 are in many ways the show's original sin, and the consequences
reverberate all the way to the final episode and beyond.
Actions on Breaking Bad often have unintended and disastrous consequences.
Season 2 is perhaps the most explicit example of this, culminating in a series of small-
and large-scale tragedies that occur as a result of Walt and Jesse's fledgling meth
operation.
After their disastrous encounter with Mexican drug cartel lieutenant Tuco Salamanca [TOO-koh
sal-uh-MAN-kuh], the two attempt to both produce and distribute on their own.
Walt takes the street name "Heisenberg" and Jesse recruits his goofball stoner friends
Badger, Skinny Pete, and Combo to handle sales.
Of the three, Jesse is closest with Combo; in a Season 3 flashback scene, we even learn
that the Winnebago RV that he and Walt use to cook meth belonged to Combo's mother.
One morning Combo is working a street corner when a black muscle car parks nearby with
two men inside, watching him.
Soon after, a young boy bicycles around, the car honks twice and, before he knows what's
happened, Combo has been shot dead.
Combo's death directly leads Walt to seek out someone to handle distribution of his
meth, which puts him in the sights of the show's greatest antagonist, Chilean chicken
man Gus Fring.
Jesse, meanwhile, devastated by Combo's death and hurt by Walt's all-business attitude,
slips further into his addiction to heroin.
Artist and recovering drug addict Jane Margolis is trying to piece her life back together
when she rents the other side of her duplex to Jesse in Season 2.
As these things often go, a somewhat prickly business relationship warms into a friendship,
and then to something more.
But it is already a sad truth of the show that no one can know Walt or Jesse and get
away unscathed.
Before long, Jesse and Jane's addictive personalities bring out the worst in each other.
They also make pie-in-the-sky plans to get clean and move to New Zealand, but first,
just one more night of getting high.
Walt returns later that night to make amends with Jesse and finds the two of them strung
out.
Jane, sleeping on her back, begins to throw up.
Walt could roll her over, but he doesn't; instead, he watches Jane choke to death.
Walt let Jane die because he knew her being with Jesse would led to Jesse eventually overdosing
one day and also because she tried blackmailing him, threatening to expose his drug-affiliated
secrets.
Jane was Jesse's last tether to a life outside of Walt, the cartels, and meth, and his guilt
lingers for the remainder of the series.
Walt, meanwhile, feels little to no guilt over Jane's death, and doesn't reveal his
role in her death to Jesse until the end of the series.
"I was there.
And I watched her die."
But Jesse was not the only person to love Jane, and her death has further consequences
— on a massive scale.
The first episode of Season 2 teases a terrible future event by depicting a mangled pink teddy
bear floating in the White family pool.
The explanation, when finally revealed in the Season 2 finale, is unexpected yet at
the same time unavoidable: A tragic accident set in motion by every decision Walt and Jesse
ever made.
Jane's death hits Jesse hard, but it also devastates her father Donald, an air traffic
controller who takes a few weeks off from work in order to recover from his grief.
When he finally returns to his position at the Albuquerque airport, he is shaky, but
ready to get back to his routine.
At his console, he guides Wayfarer flight 515, but his mind begins to wander.
"Juliet Mike 2-1, climb and maintain one-seven-thousand.
Clear direct to Albuquerque via the… aircraft calling please stand by."
Suddenly, Wayfarer 515 collides with another aircraft high above ABQ, sending bodies and
debris flying all over the city, including straight into Walt's backyard — a blunt
but powerful metaphor for the destruction he has brought upon his family.
Months after Jane's death, Jesse has kicked his heroin habit and found a new partner in
young mom Andrea Cantillo.
Andrea looks after her young son Brock, as well as her younger brother Tomas, who is
mixed up in gang activity.
But Albuquerque is a small town, and Jesse soon makes a terrible discovery: Tomas is
the young boy who shot Combo to death in the street, and the gang he is running with is
affiliated with Gus Fring.
Jesse goes to Walt for help, wanting to kill the dealers using Tomas, but Walt goes to
Gus instead, who calls a meeting and declares that the gang is to no longer use children
in their business.
The dealers agree and take Gus' directions literally by killing Tomas.
Now bent on revenge for both Andrea's brother and Combo, Jesse sets out to gun down the
two dealers, and probably get himself killed in the process.
As he is about to confront them, however, Walt plows his car into the two, kills one
with a bullet to the head, and tells Jesse:
"Run."
Poor old Gale Boetticher.
Gale is a gifted chemist, an all around sweet guy, a karaoke fan, and a man with the incredible
misfortune to be caught between two of the coldest, most paranoid men alive — Walter
White and Gus Fring.
Brought on as Walt's assistant in the Fring-built superlab in Season 3, Gale and Walt have a
fruitful partnership at first.
But Walt grows concerned that Gale may be there as his replacement rather than his assistant,
and fabricates reasons to fire Gale and replace him with Jesse.
After the deaths of Tomas and Fring's two dealers, Jesse goes into hiding.
Walt makes a deal to forget about Jesse and continue cooking for Gus, with Gale reluctantly
returning as his assistant.
This time, Walt's paranoia is founded — Gus has indeed brought Gale back in order to take
over the superlab once Walt and Jesse have been killed.
Fring's fixers Mike and Victor take Walt to the superlab to kill him, but not before Walt
calls Jesse, who shows up at Gale's apartment with a gun and shoots him at point blank range.
The fifth episode of Season 5 opens on a young boy out in the desert alone.
Not much happens before the opening credits roll, and the boy isn't seen again for nearly
another hour.
After the fiery death of Gus Fring at the end of Season 4, Walt, Jesse, and Mike are
now their own bosses in the meth game, with all the responsibility that entails.
For one, they're dealing with Gus' former business partner at a German conglomerate.
They have also hired a young new assistant, Todd, who is eager to impress.
Most importantly, though, they need an industrial amount of methylamine to continue production,
and the only way to get it is to rob a freight train.
What follows is a marvelously suspenseful heist sequence, as Walt, Jesse, and Todd conspire
to bring the train to a halt in the middle of the desert, drain the methylamine it's
carrying, replace it with water, and get out without getting killed or caught.
It goes off without a hitch, and the three men are high off the exhilaration.
That is, until Drew Sharp, that young boy from the opening sequence, shows up again,
having witnessed everything.
So, without a second thought, Todd pulls out a pistol and shoots him dead.
Fan favorite character Mike Ehrmentraut was introduced at the end of Season 2 as Saul
Goodman's cleaner, arriving at Jesse's apartment to take care of Jane's body and make sure
nothing incriminating is left in the house.
Mike was soon brought back as a recurring character in Seasons 3 and 4, an enforcer
and all around bag man for Gus Fring.
By Season 5, he was a full-fledged lead on the show.
Even in the company of geniuses like Gus and Walt, Mike tends to be the smartest guy in
the room, a Philly ex-cop whose seen-it-all attitude hides a deep moral code.
That moral code is consistently offended, however, by Walter White.
Many of the show's deaths continue to weigh on him, and Mike expresses an almost fatherly
concern toward Jesse as he falls ever further into Walt's influence.
The money is good, so Mike keeps working with him, but something's gotta give.
That "something" finally does give when the DEA catches Mike's lawyer distributing money
to his associates in prison, paying for their continued silence.
Mike decides to skip town, but needs his emergency getaway bag picked up from the airport.
Walt delivers it to him at some faraway spot near a creek, and in their final conversation,
Mike lashes out, blaming Walt for ruining the good deal they all had under Gus Fring.
"You just had to blow it up.
You and your pride and your ego."
In a rage, Walt shoots Mike in the gut, and this iconic character is left to bleed out
by the creek.
Alpha male DEA agent Hank Schrader loves his family, including his brother-in-law Walter
White — even if he and White don't always understand each other.
Introduced in Season 1 as a meathead jock gone to seed, Hank bloomed over the course
of the series, revealing hidden depths and turning into someone the audience could really
root for.
By the Season 5's mid-season finale in 2012, Hank has finally discovered that the drug
kingpin Heisenberg, who he has been hunting for nearly two years, is in fact his brother-in-law.
The rest of the season concerns his fight to bring Walt to justice.
That struggle reaches a terrible conclusion in the standout episode "Ozymandias."
In the previous episode, Hank and Jesse team up and lure Walt out to the remote spot on
an Native reservation where he has buried barrels of cash.
Hank slaps handcuffs on Walt, but his triumph is short-lived as Walt's new business partners,
a gang of neo-Nazis led by Todd's uncle Jack, show up as well.
A shootout ensues that leaves Hank wounded.
Walt tries to talk Jack out of killing Hank, but Hank shuts him down:
"And you're too stupid to see… he made up his mind ten minutes ago."
Jack shoots him, and Walt's world finally crumbles.
Of all of Walter White's victims, Jesse is arguably the one who suffers the most.
He is put through the wringer in every season, and every time he tries to get out, Walt's
gravitational pull brings him right back around for more punishment.
The end of Season 5 has Jesse suffer to an almost absurd degree, as he is kidnapped by
Todd and Uncle Jack after Hank's death and forced to cook meth.
Walt, meanwhile, has fled to New Hampshire as the full, ugly truth of his drug empire
comes to light.
If there is a glimmer of hope in Jesse's life, though, it is the thought of seeing Andrea
and Brock again.
Todd knows this, and in the series' penultimate episode, he snuffs out half of this hope after
Jesse tries to escape and refuses to cook meth.
He puts Jesse in the back of his truck and drives to Andrea's house.
Todd knocks on the door, introduces himself to her as a friend of Jesse's, and promptly
shoots her in the back of the head.
Jesse screams in pain and rage, flailing, trying to escape his holds.
Uncle Jack, sitting in the front seat, issues a chilling command:
"Hey, remember.
There's still the kid."
Breaking Bad really doesn't get much more brutal than this.
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