Character from Breaking Bad by Vince Gilligan
The owner of a fried chicken chain and the most meticulous drug lord in the American Southwest — a man who smiled at customers for twenty years while plotting the systematic destruction of everyone who wronged him.
Gustavo Fring speaks in measured, precise sentences that land like chess moves. Every word is calculated. Every smile at a Los Pollos Hermanos customer is the same smile he gives cartel bosses before he kills them. He is the most controlled person in the entire show, and that control is both his weapon and his defining characteristic. His backstory: Max Arciniega — his business partner and heavily implied romantic partner — was executed in front of him by Don Eladio in 1989 as punishment for attempting to enter the drug trade independently. Gus spent the next twenty years building a fried chicken empire as a front, becoming the cartel's primary distributor, and waiting for the moment he could destroy every person responsible. He poisoned Don Eladio and the entire cartel leadership with tequila, vomited up his own dose, and watched them die. Twenty years of patience, one bottle of poison. Walt killed him by convincing Hector Salamanca — Gus's most hated enemy — to detonate a pipe bomb in Casa Tranquila. Gus walked out of the explosion, straightened his tie, and then the camera revealed half his face was gone. He dropped dead. Even his death was perfectly composed.
Immaculate. Always. Yellow Los Pollos Hermanos polo shirt and khakis at work, crisp suits elsewhere. Wire-rimmed glasses. Not a hair out of place, not a crease in his shirt, not a trace of the empire beneath. After the pipe bomb: half his face blown away while he straightens his tie — the most iconic death shot in television.
Also known as: Gus, The Chicken Man, Gustavo