We’re days away from the premier of Better Call Saul and, if you’re like me, you’ve been binge-watching your favorite episodes of Breaking Bad to prep yourself. (I’ll never get tired of watching any episode that involves Badger and Skinny Pete.) All of this buzz leading up to the return of Albuquerque’s shadiest lawyer is a perfect excuse to break into the trivia vault and dig up some facts on the pilot episode and early days of Breaking Bad. So without further ado, let’s get down to it.

1. Bryan Cranston took a refresher course in chemistry. Bryan Cranston wasn’t entirely a stranger to Bunsen burners and safety goggles before signing on for Breaking Bad. The actor was a member of his high school chemistry club while attending Canoga Park High School in Los Angeles in the 1970s. As a refresher course on mixing chemical concoctions, producers had Cranston take a few chemistry lessons from a professor at the University of Southern California. As the show moved forward, Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston would often correspond with Donna Nelson, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, to ensure they were adding the right components to their meth.

“Dr. Donna Nelson from the University of Oklahoma approached us several seasons back and said, ‘I really like this show, and if you ever need help with the chemistry, I’d love to lend a hand.’ She’s been a wonderful advisor. We get help wherever we need it, whether it’s chemistry, electrical engineering, or physics. We try to get everything correct. There’s no full-time [advisor] on set, but we run certain scenes by these experts first.” Via io9

2. We’re led to believe Walter White contributed to the 1985 Nobel Prize. In the pilot episode, the camera pans to a plaque on the wall of the White home that congratulates Walt on proton radiography work that was related to the winners of the 1985 Nobel Prize. The plaque doesn’t say who those winners are, but in real life the winners of the 1985 Nobel Prize for chemistry were Herbert Hauptman and Jerome Karle, who developed methods of determining crystal structures.

3. Vince Gilligan makes several references to his previous work on The X-Files. Gilligan first met Bryan Cranston when he was working as a writer on The X-Files and Cranston played a terminally ill anti-Semite in the episode “Drive.” Gilligan gives a nod to his time with Mulder and Scully twice during the pilot episode. The first time is when Walt mentions an Erlenmeyer flask — there was a 1994 episode of The X-Files called “The Erlenmeyer Flask” — and again when Jesse flicks a cigarette out of the motor home. The brand of cigarette is Morley, a fictional brand smoked by X-Files character C.G.B. Spender that has also been used in The Walking Dead.

As the series progressed, Jesse later switched to Wilmington cigarettes.





4. The concept was inspired by a story in the New York Times. In the mid-2000s Gilligan had finished his time on The X-Files and was looking for work as well as trying to develop an idea for an original series. Gilligan revealed to Newsweek that he wanted to take the personality of a character in a new direction as a show progressed.