The connections between Breaking Bad, a show about a high school teacher who becomes a meth kingpin after being diagnosed with cancer, and The Walking Dead, a show about zombies eating people’s faces off, would seemingly begin and end with both series airing on AMC, but it’s not that simple. In a season two episode of The Walking Dead, before anyone knew it would turn into the biggest thing on TV (except for Fuller House), we see that Merle’s drug stash includes Blue Sky, the street name for Heisenberg’s 99.1% pure product. There are other connections between the series, including Glenn’s car and Merle’s “I’m gonna kill you, bitch” dealer, but those are less convincing.
That didn’t stop Netflix from connecting the dots and positing that Breaking Bad is the prequel series to The Walking Dead. (It’s probably a total coincidence that they’re two of the most quickly-binged shows on Instant.) “What if Breaking Bad was about more than Walter White starting as a bumbling chemistry teacher and turning himself into a full fledged monster?” the streaming service asks in a new theory video. “What if he turned everyone into full fledged monsters? What if Walter White’s Blue Sky meth started the zombie epidemic of another all time great show: The Walking Dead!”
There’s one major flaw (and many minor flaws) with Netflix’s hypothesis: Skinny Pete and Badger explicitly say “zombie” in a season four episode of Breaking Bad; the z-word is never used on The Walking Dead because, according to creator Robert Kirkman, “they’re not familiar with zombies… They’ve never seen this in pop culture, this is a completely new thing for them.” If only Rick Grimes had played Left 4 Dead. Then he’d know all about how “them bitches get all cranial when you cap ’em in the head.”
Wise man, that Skinny Pete.
