This Is How Many People Mike Really Killed On Breaking Bad

AMC's Breaking Bad excels in many things. However, its absolute forte is presenting characters who may not be physically imposing, but who radiate a sense of quiet threat that makes it clear they are fully prepared to kill you without a second thought, should things turn out that way. Take the gruff Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), for instance. Elderly and apathetic as he may seem, he has an air of professionalism and danger that even his employer, Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), approves of — and as any fan of the show can tell you, Gus is no slouch in this respect, either. 

Mike is no gym bunny, and both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are full of characters that probably should, on paper, be more intimidating than him. However, Mike more than makes up for this by his sheer, chilling intelligence and toughness, not to mention how Banks sells the fact that he's a stone-cold, dead-eyed killer. But how much of a killer is he, really? Let's take a look at how many people Mike really killed on Breaking Bad.

Thanks to his ongoing adventures on Breaking Bad's prequel series, Better Call Saul, Mike's full kill tally remains to be seen. However, his actions on Breaking Bad alone make it clear that he's not someone you want to mess with. Per Screen Rant, Mike kills no fewer than nine characters over the course of the show. The most notorious one of them is arguably Leonel Salamanca (Daniel Moncada), one half of the dreaded Cousins, whom Mike murders at the hospital with a lethal injection in season 3 in order to cover Gus' machinations after the failed attempt on Hank's (Dean Norris) life. In season 4, he strangles the Juárez Cartel's lethal emissary, Gaff (Maurice Compte), and in season 5, he outsmarts and kills Lydia's (Laura Fraser) assassin Chris Mara (Christopher King). Over the course of the show, he also kills a total of six Cartel underlings. 

While this doesn't make Mike the most murderous character on Breaking Bad, it does cement him as one of the show's most lethal people. Apart from creepy psycho types like the Cousins, Todd (Jesse Plemons) and Uncle Jack (Michael Bowen), the only people with a higher personal kill count than Mike are Gus and Walter White (Bryan Cranston), both of whom racked up the majority of their body counts in a single, premeditated incident — the Cartel poisoning and the machine gun turret attack in the series finale, respectively. Meanwhile, Mike only kills when he has to, but he's brutally efficient when the situation calls for it.