Saul almost worked at Hot Topic in Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad writer and producer, Peter Gould, uncovered an old draft of an episode indicating that the titular lawyer, Saul Goodman, could’ve been working at Hot Topic instead of Cinnabon. The problem was merchandise.

On Bluesky, Gould discussed the reworked script from the episode, Granite Slate, which was meant to set up his new job in Better Call Saul, the 2015 spin-off that lasted until 2022. In the old script, the public defender noted that the best case situation is he’s “managing a Hot Topic in Omaha.”

Now while this seems like a silly thing to introduce and question why it is the team shied away from the counterculture retail outlet, it’s more or less due to not wanting to feel like promotion. Whereas Cinnabon had nothing tying itself to Breaking Bad, Hot Topic was already selling merchandise plastered with the series’ icons.

After finding out about the Hot Topic merch, Gould twisted the script, with no one at Cinnabon supposedly knowing about it until the show aired.