Cinnabon Gene was almost Hot Topic Gene.
Breaking Bad writer and Better Call Saul co-creator Peter Gould shared on BlueSky that he found an early draft of the script for “Granite State,” the penultimate episode of the original series, that revealed a different post-Albuquerque job for Jimmy McGill. “Cinnabon? Not just yet!” he wrote.
In the script, Jimmy / Saul / Viktor St. Claire tells Walter White, “Listen, I’m a civilian now. I’m not your lawyer, I’m nobody’s lawyer. Fun’s over. From here on out, I’m Mr. Low Profile — just another douchebag with a job and three pairs of Dockers.” That’s mostly the same as the aired version, but then: “I mean, a month from now, best case scenario, I’m managing a Hot Topic in Omaha.”
So why the change from Hot Topic to Cinnabon? “We found out that Hot Topic was carrying #BreakingBad stuff and we didn’t want to make it look like a cheap promo,” Gould explained. “So Cinnabon it was! (And they had no idea about it until the episode aired).” He also said “the Cinnabon folks were super-generous to us.” (The free treats for the finale helped.)
There should be a What If?-style episode of Better Call Saul where Jimmy actually works at Hot Topic. Mostly because I want to see emo Bob Odenkirk in a Five Nights at Freddy’s shirt.