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The image of a damaged pink teddy bear with a missing eye appears throughout the series. It first appears at the end of the music video “Fallacies” for Jesse’s band “TwaüghtHammër.” Later, it’s seen on the mural on Jane’s bedroom wall, in black & white flash forwards where it is the only object in color, after a midair collision between to planes and in Walt’s pool when the NTSB fishes it out.

Television critic Myles McNutt has called it “a reminder for Walt – a symbol of the damage he feels responsible for.” But when Gilligan was asked about it, he said “the teddy bear eyeball that Walt found in his swimming pool is symbolic. It’s very, very symbolic. However, I’m not sure I can tell you with 100% certainty of what the symbolism is, what it represents…On the face of it, when we were coming up with that eye as an image, it probably, represented some form of the eye of the universe, the eye of god, the eye of morality, I suppose judging Walter White…And so symbolism like the eyeball, I’m not sure what it means to me completely but I’m always interested in hearing what it means to viewers of the show. I guess if you’re going to hold my feet to the fire, what it means to me is the eye of God on Walt. If not necessarily judging him, nonetheless watching him, keeping tabs on him. And then the question: If that is what the symbolism stands for, then why does Walt keep that eye? Why does he keep it in his drawer versus discarding it?”