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Bob Odenkirk, known for his roles in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, revealed in a Wired interview that his commitments to How I Met Your Mother indirectly led to the creation of one of Breaking Bad’s iconic characters, Mike Ehrmantraut.
Odenkirk explained that his involvement in the final four episodes of Breaking Bad’s second season was cut short to three episodes due to his obligations to How I Met Your Mother. As a result, the Breaking Bad writers had to come up with a new character to fulfill the plot requirements originally intended for Odenkirk’s character.
He stated, “[I was in] the final four episodes of the second season [of Breaking Bad], and I was only in three of them because I had to do How I Met Your Mother. And because I had to do How I Met Your Mother, they had to invent another character to pull that plot along, and they invented Mike Ehrmantraut.”
Mike Ehrmantraut, played by Jonathan Banks, became a pivotal and beloved character in Breaking Bad and went on to play a significant role in its prequel, Better Call Saul. The character’s creation turned out to be a fortuitous consequence of Odenkirk’s scheduling conflicts, leading to one of the most memorable figures in the Breaking Bad universe.