Popular Breaking Bad Characters We Wound Up Hating By The Show's End

Ted Beneke (Christopher Cousins) provides an early example of how "Breaking Bad" loves to play with and subvert viewer expectations. As a tall, handsome, rich guy with a reasonable amount of charisma, it can be easy to see Ted as a potential lead in a traditional series. However, in "Breaking Bad," Ted is best known for his weak-willed nature that kept prompting him to make a mess of his own life. 

Despite starting out with all the advantages that life could offer a man in his privileged position, Ted never knows when to let a good thing well enough alone. He has a crush on Walter's wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), and has an affair with her — despite knowing she is married to a man with cancer. Ted also resorts to cooking the books at his company after struggling financially for years. 

While this kind of petty criminality is small potatoes in "Breaking Bad," it is Ted's reaction to his sins being found out that sets audiences against him. After Skyler provides him with the money to pay off his debts, Ted tries to hold on to the cash and even blackmails Skyler to give him more. Ted's clumsiness eventually results in a paralyzing injury, which is a pretty weak way to go out on a show where half of a dude's face gets blown off and he still has time to adjust his tie before dying. 

At its core, "Breaking Bad" is the story of a frustrated genius and the lengths that one man goes to in order to be remembered as someone important after his death. Walter White started out cooking meth to help his family, but he eventually admits that he became a drug kingpin because he wanted the world to know he was capable of great things.

Walter's attitude has its roots in his past, as was a brilliant chemist and the brains behind a promising pharmaceutical company. Walter headed the company alongside his partners Gretchen (Jessica Hecht) and Elliott Schwartz (Adam Godley). Various circumstances (and his ego) compel Walter to give up his part of the company, Gray Matter Technologies, to Gretchen and Elliot. In the beginning, his former partners are portrayed as sympathetic friends trying to help Walt through tough times after he is diagnosed with cancer.

However, Gretchen and Elliott's final appearances on the show reveal their true nature and why Walter always disliked them. They are weak and cowardly folk, happily telling the world that Walter had little to do with the success of their company after he is revealed to be the notorious criminal Heisenberg. In a world of ruthless criminals, Gretchen and Elliot are not the most hateful characters, but they do earn a lot of contempt from fans for their fake bluster and "holier-than-thou" attitude. 

On most other shows, being a White supremacist would automatically make you the worst person in the story. It says much about the moral gray area that "Breaking Bad" always operated in that Kenny (Kevin Rankin), the second-in-command of a gang introduced as neo-Nazis, still seemed like a better person than Walter White at the time.  

Despite his hateful ideology, Kenny seems like a reasonable person who knows his way around technology and simply follows the orders of his gang's leader. However, as more of Kenny's personality is revealed, his worst instincts surface. Kenny plays a key part in getting 10 inmates at a prison killed whom Walter fears could expose him. Later, Kenny also helps his allies eliminate a rival gang to take over their territory.

In the last episode of the series and the spinoff movie "El Camino," the full extent of Kenny's depravity appears. Walter finds out that the neo-Nazis have been keeping Jesse (Aaron Paul) captive to keep cooking meth for them. Kenny takes a particularly sadistic pleasure in making Jesse suffer by treating him in a subhuman manner. 

In a sea of brutal killers and ruthless crime lords, Todd Alquist stands apart as something much more disturbing on a primal level. He is first introduced in Season 5 as a crew member that helps Walter set up his secret meth lab. Todd's youthful looks and eagerness to help Walt, whom he obviously admires, come off as quite charming — at first.

Todd's good impression on audiences continues as he proves himself an intelligent and obedient student to Walter, in all the ways Jesse is not. During a train heist, Todd shows his willingness to take risks for the sake of the operation. But then, just as it seems like Todd is all set to replace Jesse as Walter's favored second-in-command, he shoots a child who sees the heist in the face. 

At that moment, Todd's true nature is revealed. He is a cold-blooded killer who feels no remorse for killing a child and later threatens to do the same to another young kid, Brock, if Jesse refuses to work for his gang as a cook. Despite his soft-spoken nature and desire to please those higher up in the chain of command, Todd has no problem killing innocent civilians and torturing Jesse into working for him.

"Breaking Bad" villains can generally be divided into two groups. There are the gang leaders who operate in the shadows and give the orders which get Walter started on his road to becoming Heisenberg and the enforcers who mete out brutal punishments once Walter starts developing his ambitions to become a drug lord. 

While they fit in the latter category, the Salamanca cousins (played by Daniel and Luis Moncada) manage to stand in a class of their own. They are brought across the border to avenge their cousin Tuco's death by killing Walter White. The cousins show they meant business right from the start when they blew up the truck they arrived in to cover their tracks, killing all the immigrants inside. 

The cousins have drawn comparisons to the Terminator from fans on Reddit due to the implacable way they silently track down Walter and his allies, taking out every obstacle in their path without remorse. There is something almost supernatural about the unique brand of voiceless evil that the cousins bring to "Breaking Bad" which made them resonate with fans despite their limited screen time and lack of dialog.

The creator of "Breaking Bad," Vince Gilligan, famously told The Guardian that his intention with the main character of Walter White was to tell the story of "a man who transforms himself from Mr. Chips into Scarface." Suffice to say that the experiment was wildly successful, as audiences see the meek and humble high school chemistry teacher Mr. White turn into the vengeful drug lord Heisenberg.

Nothing about the show would have worked if Walter's character had not managed to hold on to audiences' sympathy through every twist and turn in the narrative. At first, Walter has the relatively noble goal of cooking and selling meth to leave his family financially secure before succumbing to cancer. However, as the series progresses, Walter's actions become increasingly difficult to justify.

From letting Jesse's girlfriend die despite being in a position to save her (and then taunting him about it) to poisoning a young child to turn Jesse against Gus, Walter's mania for control and lust for power eventually turn him from an anti-hero into a full-fledged villain. The final straw is Walter finally admitting his true nature when he tells Skyler about his various criminal actions in the series finale, "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it." Even Scarface would feel a little uncomfortable being compared to the kind of guy Walt eventually becomes.