Better Call Saul - All Opening Titles
The title sequences of Better Call Saul are different for each episode of a season, but show the same clips from season to season, with decreasing video quality as the series progresses.
There are ten main title sequences, featuring various images from Jimmy McGill's future life as Saul Goodman, all presented with the same terrible image quality of early VHS or public access television and dominated by the show's stylized title logo. Some of these sequences feature archived footage seen in Breaking Bad.
As every season except the last has 10 episodes, the title sequence for every season's corresponding episode number reuses the same imagery. With each season, the opening title credits progressively lose color and appear more deteriorated. By season 5, the images from the next episode's title credits begin to blur into the intro, and by season 6, the title sequences are entirely devoid of color.
With the sixth and final season having 13 episodes instead of the usual 10, the title sequences for the later episodes take on a new format. The intro for "Nippy", the tenth episode of the sixth season, serves as a transition. It begins by showing the coffee mug falling before shattering on the ground, the sequence typically used for every season's 10th episode, before abruptly stopping midway to display a VHS blue screen, with white captions for the title and creator credits, cutting off at record mode.
Following "Nippy", the intros for the final three episodes open with VHS static and a blank VHS blue screen. They then briefly flash a relevant motif from the Gene timeline as a degraded version of the theme song plays, captioned with the show's title now shown plainly in white VHS font. This is followed by a return of the blue screen displaying only the title and creator credits, and finally a split-second flash of a scene that will later appear in the episode as record mode is activated.
Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, and Curtis Thurber have given a very interesting interview on this subject to Alan Sepinwall of Uproxx.
Descriptions[]
- A close-up of the inflatable Statue of Liberty outside of Saul Goodman & Associates is shown.
- Saul's 1997 Cadillac DeVille is shown driving on a road, from "Full Measure", with close-ups on the "LWYRUP" vanity plate.
- A woman is seen smoking in a law office and using a Scales of Justice as an ashtray.
- The drawer of burner cell phones in Saul Goodman's office is shown, with a quick flash of the Hello Kitty cellphone he gives Jesse Pinkman in "Confessions".
- Saul Goodman's bus stop bench advertisement is shown, as seen in "Better Call Saul".
- A Saul Goodman ad from a tattered phonebook is shown hanging at a payphone.
- Saul's chi machine, from "Sunset" and "Full Measure", is shown turned on.
- Three different shots of Saul's ties lying on the ground from "Confessions", all with tarantulas crawling out of them.
- A Saul Goodman matchbook floats inside of a flushing urinal.
- A "World Greatest Lawyer" mug falls from Saul's desk and breaks to the ground, spilling coffee.
- [Season 6 only] A recliner chair rocking back and forth with a drink in the cupholder, and a crossroads in a cornfield, ("Breaking Bad")
- [Season 6 only] A car with a Nebraska license plate parked out in the snow, and a silhouette at the airport, ("Waterworks")
- [Season 6 only] An Albuquerque Isotopes air freshener hanging from a rear-view mirror, and a dough-making machine. ("Saul Gone")
Trivia[]
- The decreasing quality of the videos from season to season could be a representation of Jimmy in the post-Breaking Bad timeline, now living as Gene, rewatching his old commercial tapes over and over again. VHS tapes are known to lose their video quality overtime as they are used.
- In the final episode of every season except the last, the intro depicts Jimmy's "World's Greatest Lawyer" mug falling off a desk and shattering. The end of every season has had a revelation that broke Jimmy and reformed him more as Saul:
- Season 1: Marco's death.
- Season 2: Chuck's secret recording of Jimmy's confession.
- Season 3: Chuck's suicide.
- Season 4: Jimmy feigns remorse over Chuck to get his license back, exclaiming "S'all Good Man" to Kim.
- Season 5: Kim's decision to proceed with the Howard Hamlin character impeachment scam, or Lalo's survival.
- The fact that Season 6 doesn't have this happening in the intro shows that Jimmy is already broken as the episode is set entirely in Jimmy's life as Gene.
- Unlike all the traditional intro sequences from Season 5 and Season 6, the tarantula intro featured in "Point and Shoot" does not include a glitch that shows footage of the next episode's intro.
- From "Wine and Roses" to "Fun and Games", the intro sequences contain HD frames of the footage presented.
Season 6[]
| In the tenth episode of the sixth and final season, "Nippy", the tape suddenly stops, and is replaced with a blue screen that says "Better Call Saul" and "Created by Vince Gilligan & Peter Gould". The machine then switches to record mode. | |
| In the eleventh episode, "Breaking Bad", the tape shows Jimmy's glass and drink on his recliner chair for a few seconds before the tape suddenly stops again, then later shows a crossroads in a Nebraska cornfield a slight second before stopping. | |
| In the twelfth episode, "Waterworks", the tape shows Jimmy's car during a snowy night in Nebraska before it stops, and shows Kim's return to Albuquerque a slight second before stopping. | |
| In the thirteen episode, "Saul Gone", the tape shows an Albuquerque Isotopes air freshener from a rear-view mirror in Jeff's taxi, and shows a dough-making machine at ADX Montrose a slight second before stopping. | TBA |
