Walter White treats the world like his personal chemistry set, but when he needed a street name for his criminal alter ego, he turned to physics.
He has relished his menacing nickname. During one of "Breaking Bad's" spaghetti Western-style desert showdowns, he made sure his reputation had preceded him.
"Say my name," he commanded his new business partner, who wearily replied, "Heisenberg."
After five relentlessly grim seasons, AMC's critically acclaimed drama ends Sunday, and it won't be with a family picnic in the sun. "Breaking Bad" finally won its best drama Emmy last weekend, adding to the fan frenzy and endless speculation: Will Jesse (Aaron Paul) blow up the bad guys in a meth lab? What about the poison cigarette Walt made? Will science come to the rescue one more time?
The show's influence has been slowly building since 2008, when Bryan Cranston first brandished a gun in the New Mexico desert in his button-down shirt and tightie-whities.
Ratings have been gradually building - 8 million viewers are expected to tune in for the finale - but "Breaking Bad" also helped change the equation from appointment TV to marathon catch-up sessions. The deeper fans got into their Netflix queue or stack of DVDs, the less they saw of that desperate high school teacher battling lung cancer and more of the cold-blooded mastermind Heisenberg.
The real Werner Heisenberg was an early 20th-century physicist and pioneer of quantum mechanics. His work might hold answers to Walt's motivation - and maybe even what will happen Sunday night.
"What he's most well-known for is something that's called the Uncertainty Principle, and I think this is probably why Walter White chose that name," said Daniel McIntosh, an astronomy professor in the physics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
McIntosh, who is such a big "Breaking Bad" fan that he "twists everybody's arms" to get them to watch it, said Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is about understanding the nature of matter.
"Basically, when we're thinking about little particles, which is what all matter is made of, we can't know exactly where the particle is and how fast it's moving - or what its energy is - at the same time," he said.
"No matter if we make the most precise measuring machine in the history of the universe, we still can never know where the particle is and how fast it's moving. It's a fundamental aspect of the universe."
We can never know? That doesn't sound like a motto for a guy whose control freak tendencies take center stage every week.
"There's something mysterious about the true nature of matter, and maybe he's trying to be mysterious by using that name, that he's suggesting that you can't know him with certainty," McIntosh said.
One thing is certain: "Breaking Bad" creator Vince Gilligan didn't just Google the phrase "famous scientists" to choose that name. Gilligan has spent five years scattering clues for fans like breadcrumbs in the dark forest.
"Breaking Bad" seems to be headed for a showdown involving Walt, his old partner Jesse and neo-Nazi gangster Jack Welker's crew, who have been making Jesse cook batches of the good stuff while shackled to the ceiling.
Werner Heisenberg had some dealings with Nazis himself. He wasn't a fan of their ideology, but in 1939, after a Gestapo questioning session, he agreed to join the German push for an atomic bomb. His notoriety made Robert Oppenheimer's team work even more frantically on the Manhattan Project.
Eventually, his pessimistic report to Albert Speer threw a wet blanket on the project. Heisenberg claimed later that this was a ruse, because "the idea of putting an atomic bomb in Hitler's hand was horrible."
Some historians take him at his word, but after examining Heisenberg's post-War debriefing by the Allies, some scientists determined he couldn't have pulled it off if he'd tried. Heisenberg died of cancer in 1976.
Walt, who looks like he'll be dying of cancer soon himself, was last seen in a New Hampshire bar, watching Charlie Rose interview his old friends Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz. They're on TV to distance themselves and their company from Walt, now that he's a notorious drug lord.
"The sweet, kind, brilliant man that we knew long ago - he's gone," says Gretchen.
Walt doesn't even finish his drink before bolting out the door. What got him off that bar stool and into a car with a machine gun in the trunk is still unclear.
Maybe he's going to confront the Schwartzes again about getting the credit he deserves. Maybe the news that Blue Sky meth is still on the market made him realize Jesse is still around and needs killing, or even rescuing. Maybe he doesn't appreciate being denied the spoils of his life's work a second time.
The neo-Nazis, who took $70 million of Walt's money and killed his brother-in-law, probably top his take-care-of list.
"Those stupid white supremacist guys have to go," McIntosh said, echoing popular sentiment. "And anybody that's gotten in Walter White's way has been defeated."
Walt might have to get in line. Jesse, who has been force-fed misery for the show's entire run, is a ball of rage trapped in the gang's midst. He's seen Walt kill using the ingredients at hand. And they aren't concerned with wearing gas masks in the lab.
Of course, no amount of shootouts or toxic fumes will keep Walt's wife, Skyler, out of prison. Would Walt turn himself in to save his family? He's wearing the black hat again, but we still don't know his true nature. Which brings us back around to that aggravating Uncertainty Principle.
"It bothered Einstein so much that he said, 'God doesn't play dice,' " McIntosh said. "But Heisenberg was right and Einstein was wrong."
So you do have a plan! Yeah, Mr. White! Yeah, science!
Just some of the MacGyver chemistry tricks Walter White has pulled out of his hat:
- Synthesizing thermite for a bomb from the aluminum powder inside old Etch-a-Sketches.
- Killing two bad guys by locking them inside his RV after creating a deadly cloud of phosphine gas.
- Jump-starting that same RV with a makeshift battery made from sponges, brake pads and loose change.
- Blowing up a jerky stranger's car engine with a well-placed windshield-cleaning sponge.
- Escaping plastic handcuffs by melting them with an electrical arc after chewing through a coffee pot's power cord.
- Erasing the incriminating hard drive of a laptop in police custody by creating a giant electromagnet from 42 car batteries.