A Polish chemistry textbook features the characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman from the successful US television series “Breaking Bad”.
In early August 2024, a photo purporting to show a Polish chemistry textbook featuring characters from the television series “Breaking Bad” began circulating on social media. A Facebook post was captioned “High school chemistry textbook in Poland” and received over 6,300 reactions and 970 comments at the time of writing.
Google reverse image search results and TinEye search results showed that the photo first appeared online in early September 2022.
For example, it was shared on Reddit on September 8, 2022:
In addition, on September 8, 2022, another X user wrote: “On the cover of Polish chemistry textbooks is Walter White’s Cooking Drugs.”
However, we have classified this claim as “false”. Neither Nowa Era nor any other Polish publisher has ever published a chemistry textbook with the cover depicting the characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman from “Breaking Bad” (the TV series is about a teacher and a former student who get in trouble for making meth).
A viral photo allegedly showed a chemistry textbook for Polish high school students with the logo of the publishing house Nowa Era (which means “New Era” in English).”
The alleged title of the textbook, ‘Ciekawa Chemia’ (‘Interesting Chemistry’), was followed by the subtitle ‘Chemia ogólna i nieorganiczna, Podręcznik dla liceum ogólnokształcącego i technikum, Zakres rozszerzony’, which translates as ‘General and Inorganic Chemistry, Textbook for General Secondary School and Technical School, Advanced Level.’
The cover layout was similar to other textbooks of the Nowa era:
(Google search results)
However, upon closer inspection, it turned out that the cover of the textbook was tampered with and probably printed by the person who created it. The photo of the cover was taken afterward. Below you can see the original photo from Alarmy.coma stock photo website that was used to design the cover of the chemistry textbook:
(Alamy.com)
A legitimate chemistry textbook entitled “Ciekawa Chemia” (“Interesting Chemistry”) does exist, but was published by another publisher, Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne (WSiP), for Polish students in grades 7 and 8. However, this textbook also does not feature any characters from “Breaking Bad” on the cover.
(wsip.pl)
This is not the first time we have investigated a rumor related to Breaking Bad.
In March 2024, we investigated the claim that lead actor Bryan Cranston would star in a sequel to “Breaking Bad” set to hit theaters in August 2024 and titled “Heisenberg.” In addition, in July 2022, we investigated whether “Felina,” the title of the final episode of the “Breaking Bad” series, means “blood, meth and tears.”
