37% Of Breaking Bad Fans Believe This Moment Went Too Far

Early in its run, "Breaking Bad" established that it was willing to push its characters and audience to the edge. After all, the first episode saw Walter White (Bryan Cranston), the mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher, cook meth and apparently kill two drug dealers. Things got even more intense in the very next episode: Walt and Jessie (Aaron Paul) try to dispose of one of those bodies by dissolving it in acid, only to have things go horribly and gorily wrong.

These shocking events set in motion a show that would become famous for upping the ante as it released one acclaimed season after the other. The show not only shocked viewers by including sequences that were physically uncomfortable but surprised people by just how far it was willing to follow Walt's descent into darkness.

However, any show that uses shock elements, whether it be through gore or questionable moral choices, has to walk a careful line to avoid alienating viewers. While "Breaking Bad" generally was able to find that balance, there were still some questionable moments. Looper polled 669 "Breaking Bad" fans to find out which moment went too far, and 37% of them responded with one specific scene.

While fans had plenty of shocking "Breaking Bad" moments to choose from, the one that many found the most upsetting was the scene in which Tortuga's (Danny Trejo) severed head was placed on a tortoise. That scene, which 37% of "Breaking Bad" fans said was the moment that went too far, occurred in "Negro y Azul," the seventh episode of Season 2.

Tortuga, whose name means turtle in Spanish, was an informant caught by the cartels, and they used his head to send a literal message to the DEA. Not only is the image of a severed head on a tortoise with the words "Hola DEA" shocking, but the scene gets even worse when a bomb hidden in the gruesome display goes off, killing one DEA agent and wounding the others.

In second place, with nearly 15% of the vote, was the death of Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), which occurred during the Season 4 finale, "Face Off." Walt goads Gus into a meeting with his most hated rival, Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis), who then sets off a bomb attached to his wheelchair. While Gus initially appears fine as he casually walks out of the blast and adjusts his tie, the camera then rotates around his body to reveal that half of his face is missing before he collapses and dies.

The Season 5 episode "Gliding All Over" features another shocking scene when viewers see 10 prison inmates get shanked, burned, and beaten to death, all within a few minutes, which 13% of viewers thought went too far. Another 12% of fans remembered the train robbery scene, also from Season 5, as the instance when "Breaking Bad" went too far. While the train robbery, which occurred in "Dead Freight," can't match the others in terms of on-camera shock value, the devastating death of an innocent child near the end makes it a challenging scene to watch.

The train robbery scene was tied with the mercury fulminate explosion, which also received about 12% of the vote, as one of Breaking Bad's most shocking scenes. The explosion occurred in the Season 1 episode "Crazy Handful of Nothing" when Walt tricked Tuco (Raymond Cruz) into thinking that the compound's crystalline structure was high-quality methamphetamine. Walt then threw the mercury fulminate at the ground, causing the explosion that wounded many members of Tuco's gang.

Coming in last, but still managing to collect about 10% of the vote, is the plane crash that occurs in Season 2 finale "ABQ." The incident results from an error by an air traffic controller, Donald (John de Lancie), which is caused by his grief over the recent death of his daughter, Jane (Krysten Ritter). Jane died when Walt found her overdosing and did nothing, making him indirectly responsible for her death and the plane crash victims.