Although it’s mostly a prequel to Breaking Bad, a huge slice of the action of Better Call Saul takes place in the aftermath of the original show. In those black-and-white scenes, Jimmy (aka Saul and Gene) is working at a Cinnabon in a mall in Nebraska. According to Peter Gould, who wrote for Breaking Bad and was a showrunner on Better Call Saul, Gene was almost working at another mall staple.
Gould posted a photo from the script for the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad on Bluesky. In the script, Saul suggests that he might wind up working at Hot Topic, not Cinnabon. “I mean, a month from now, best case scenario, I’m managing a Hot Topic in Omaha,” Saul says in the script.
In the caption, Gould wrote, “Came across this page from an early draft of #BreakingBad’s penultimate episode. Cinnabon? Not just yet!”
The next day, Gould elaborated, explaining why Hot Topic was switched out for Cinnabon. “In fact, we found out that Hot Topic was carrying #BreakingBad stuff, and we didn’t want to make it look like a cheap promo. So Cinnabon it was! (And they had no idea about it until the episode aired.)”
Of course, when Gould and the Breaking Bad writers wrote that line, they had no idea that Better Call Saul would eventually make it into a reality. Cinnabon became such an essential part of Better Call Saul that the show’s star, Bob Odenkirk, even learned how to make the treats himself. “I know what goes into Cinnabons. And I’m not going to tell you. So that you can still enjoy them,” Odenkirk told Conan O’Brien in 2016.
