Walter White Breaks Down

Warning: this entry contains major spoilers for the television series Breaking Bad.

About

Walter White Breaks Down, also known as Shocked Walter White and Walter White Collapses, refers to a memorable scene from the crime drama television series Breaking Bad in which main protagonist Walter White reacts to the death of his brother-in-law, DEA agent Hank Schrader. Starting in 2017, the scene gained popularity as a shitpost GIF caption on iFunny.

Origin

On September 15th, 2013, episode 14 "Ozymandias" of season five of the Breaking Bad television series premiered.^[1] In one scene of the episode, character Walter White reacts to DEA Special Agent Hank Schrader, his brother-in-law who uncovered White's criminal identity, being shot in the head. White reacts to Shrader being killed by collapsing on the ground in despair (scene shown below).

On January 23rd, 2017, Tenor user cali7 posted a GIF based on the scene (shown below, left).^[2] While the first user to made a captioned post based on the GIF is unknown, the first viral post based on it was submitted by iFunny user Poap on August 17th, 2017 (shown below, right),^[3] with the post being featured on the platform and gaining over 38,500 smiles in two years.

Spread

In the following years, the GIF maintained its popularity in shitposts submitted to the platform. For example, an October 20th, 2017 post by iFunny user Pyrocynical received over 120 smiles in two years (shown below, left).^[4] A January 16th, 2019, post by iFunny user StoneFree received over 300 smiles in one year (shown below, right).^[5]

In late September 2020, the format regained popularity on Twitter and Instagram in the form of video edits.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References