Breaking Bad's grand epilogue, El Camino, is full of references to the beloved show
that preceded it, some more obvious than others.
If you were too busy freaking out that you finally got more Breaking Bad, here are some
small details in El Camino you may have missed.
Beginning in the second season of Breaking Bad, Walt and Jesse were frequently aided
and abetted in their illegal misdeeds by crooked lawyer Saul Goodman, who operated out of an
unassuming office located in an Albuquerque strip mall.
At the end of the series, Saul abandoned his legal practice and ran for his life, starting
over with a new identity in Nebraska.
If you look closely, there is a brief callback to Saul early on in El Camino, during the
night Jesse spends crashing at Skinny Pete's house.
In a series of brief time-lapse shots showing the sun rising over Albuquerque, we're treated
to three shots of different locations in the city.
The second shows a nondescript strip mall, but if it looks familiar, there's a reason
for that.
One of the businesses shown is Duke City Sports Bar, which resides in the same location that
used to house Saul Goodman & Associates.
Gus Fring is long dead by the time El Camino rolls around, successfully killed off by Walt
in Season 4.
While several other characters who perished over the course of Breaking Bad still managed
to make an appearance in El Camino, Gus is not among them.
However, there is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it nod to the show's greatest antagonist in the
same early morning sequence when we glimpse Duke City Sports Bar.
Right after the camera reveals the new business occupying Saul's former office space, it shows
a fast food restaurant named "Twisters."
Twisters is in fact a real-life restaurant in Albuquerque, which provided both the interior
and exterior shots for Los Pollos Hermanos in Breaking Bad.
In El Camino, it would seem that the fictional restaurant has since morphed into its real-life
counterpart.
"We take pride in everything that we do!"
One of the pivotal moments in Breaking Bad occurred in the first half of season five,
on the heels of Walt and Jesse's successful train heist, which they carried out with Todd's
help.
While they were still riding high from the robbery, things took a sharp turn when they
crossed paths with a young boy who'd been out riding his bike in the desert and just
happened to come across the criminal trio.
Although the child hadn't seen them commit a crime, Todd still shot and killed him over
Jesse's frantic protests, later arguing that no one was supposed to know that they'd been
in the desert at all.
How does this connect to El Camino?
It's subtle, but before the boy was killed, he came across a tarantula, which he scooped
up in a glass jar, presumably to keep as a pet.
In El Camino, Jesse sees that Todd has a pet tarantula, perhaps the very same tarantula,
which he keeps in a desert-like terrarium in his room.
When he returns after Todd's death, a saddened Jesse feeds the tarantula, no doubt thinking
of the child he was unable to save.
Throughout the five seasons of Breaking Bad, characters repeatedly hid things in places
where they hoped no one else would ever find them.
Stashing stuff in creative places only to later have to move them or risk someone else
finding them was a recurring motif of the show, so it was only fitting that El Camino
includes its own riff on the familiar theme when Jesse rips apart Todd's apartment in
search of his drug money after Todd moves it out of his World Book encyclopedias.
One of the first places Jesse looks is under Todd's kitchen sink.
The location should be a familiar hiding place for eagle-eyed Breaking Bad fans, since that's
where Jesse hid his stash of meth in season two's frantic "Mandala".
Of course, the meticulous Todd had been a little more inventive than Jesse and had actually
hidden his cash in the door of his refrigerator, but Jesse's beeline for the sink was most
certainly a callback to the earlier days of the show.
Before Todd was a drug dealer and casual murderer, he was an exterminator working for Vamonos
Pest.
While Vamonos Pest was a legitimate pest control company, its crew would often supplement their
income by stealing from the houses they were fumigating, or granting access to other criminals
for a price.
Vamonos was eventually purchased by Walt, Jesse, and Mike as a front for their meth
cooking operation, and as a result, Todd became increasingly entrenched in their business
before turning antagonist.
El Camino includes a subtle nod to Todd's pre-Breaking Bad profession in the scene where
the two Kandy Welding Company employees search his apartment for his money, pretending to
be police officers.
When Casey walks into Todd's bedroom, which Jesse had utterly destroyed in his frantic
search for Todd's cash, Todd's Vamonos Pest uniform can be seen in the foreground of the
shot, although the logo is only half visible.
It's a stark reminder of how disastrous Heisenberg's partnership with Vamonos Pest ultimately proved
to be, with Todd, Walt, and Mike all winding up dead, and Jesse fleeing to Alaska.
When Jesse realizes he's $1,800 short of what he needs to start a new life, he decides that
instead of asking his friends or robbing his parents, he'll instead go to the men of Kandy
Welding Company, who are as deep into illegal activity as Jesse ever was.
Earlier, Jesse convinced Neil Kandy to split Todd's money with him three ways, knowing
that they both had a vested interest in not doing anything that would draw the attention
of the police.
Although Jesse only asks for $1,800; a relatively small amount, considering Neil's take was
likely somewhere in the vicinity of a quarter of a million dollars; a coked-up Neil suggests
that the two of them decide who gets the money in a winner-take-all old-fashioned shootout.
"Like the Wild West?"
"Yeah.
Like the Wild West."
Breaking Bad has often been referred to as a modern-day Western, and this scene could
easily be a nod to the genre that inspired much of the aesthetic of the series.
However, the "Wild West" reference may be doing double duty, possibly also winking at
Aaron Paul's upcoming role on HBO's Westworld, another show that offers a post-modern take
on classic Western tropes.
Although little is known about Paul's role on the sci-fi series as of the making of this
video, his mention of the "Wild West" in El Camino may not only be tipping his hat toward
the show he's leaving behind, but also the one yet to come.
"Dude, you're on fire."
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