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In the 1980s, Walt co-founded the company Gray Matter Technologies with his friend Elliott Schwartz and then-girlfriend Gretchen, but he left both Gray Matter and Gretchen soon after and sold his stake in the company for merely $5,000, while Gretchen and Elliott married and then went on to propel Gray Matter Technologies to becoming a multi-billion dollar business. Walt was never credited for his early work in the company, and resented them for it for years after. Walt eventually took up two jobs as both a high school chemistry teacher and a car wash employee in order to stay financially afloat. Eventually, though, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and, fearing the idea of dying without leaving any money to his family, Walt began to search for other means of making money.
After joining his brother-in-law and accomplished DEA agent Hank Schrader on a drug bust and hearing from Hank about the lucrative profits that drug manufacturing and dealing could produce, Walt decided to use his knowledge of chemistry to become involved in the drug trade as a chemist and manufacturer in order to settle his financial woes and leave money behind for his family. Knowing nothing about the drug trade, he enlisted the aid of Jesse Pinkman, to help manufacture and, more importantly, sell his meth. Walt, by means of a P2P cook utilizing methylamine, produced methamphetamine of unrivaled chemical purity and a distinctive blue color, which was christened "Blue Sky" by dealers and users alike and which instantly began to dominate the market thanks to its potency.
While initially heavily reluctant to use violence, Walt gradually came to see it as a necessity, and eventually developed into a ruthless drug lord motivated largely by vanity, ego, and greed. At the beginning of his new career, he and Jesse made mere thousands of dollars through street dealing, and were constantly met with failure. Following multiple tense, deadly partnerships with distributors Tuco Salamanca and Gustavo Fring that ended in their respective deaths, however, and with the help of Jesse, Gus's former enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut, and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, Walt eventually became the head of his own drug empire: the largest methamphetamine manufacturing operation in US history, branching as far as Eastern Europe, and enlisting Skyler to help him launder the profits.
After accumulating over $80 million USD from his involvement in the drug trade, and following a resurgence in his cancer, Walt retired from the drug business permanently. However, shortly after, Hank accidentally stumbled upon a vital clue that led him to the realization that his own brother-in-law, Walt White, was in fact the famed drug kingpin that he had been chasing for a year: Heisenberg. Though Walt attempted to blackmail Hank by threatening to paint Hank as Heisenberg and himself as a victim of Hank, Hank was able to corner Walt with help from Jesse, who finally betrayed Walt after a devastating revelation. Walt fell into a trap when Jesse falsely threatened to burn his accumulated fortune, and Hank and his longtime DEA partner Steve Gomez finally arrested him. At the last minute, though, Jack Welker and his gang appeared, Walt having just minutes before called them to come save him from Jesse, who Walt had thought was alone and about to kill him. Walt pleaded with Jack, but could not stop him, and, following a large shootout, Steve was killed and Hank was executed. Walt had his entire fortune stolen by the gang, save for one barrel of money that Jack left him. Seething, with the rewards of all his drug efforts stolen and his brother-in-law dead, Walt betrayed Jesse to Jack, who, at Todd Alquist's request, took Jesse as a slave to cook meth for him and his gang.
Walt returned home and attempted to escape with his family, but Skyler and Walt Jr. resisted him, and, desperate, Walt left them, kidnapping Holly (though he later had her returned) and berating Skyler in a DEA-tapped phone call in an attempt to paint her as a victim and absolve her of any criminal guilt or suspicions. With his whole family and most law enforcement now against him, though, Walt went into hiding in New Hampshire with the help of a disappearer and remained in hiding for almost a year. Eventually, he returned to Albuquerque to both say farewell to Skyler and to give her the coordinates to Hank and Steve's undiscovered bodies so that she could strike a deal in court and get their family's life back, to settle an old dispute, and to ensure his family's financial security once and for all.
Walt went on to confront and then massacre Jack's entire gang, executing Jack in the same way that Jack did Hank and getting revenge for the murders of both Hank and Steve. In doing so, Walt set Jesse free from his slavery, and quietly succumbed to a ricocheted bullet wound he sustained in the massacre on the floor of a meth lab, having finally resolved many of the problems he had caused.
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