I came of age during the era of peak TV when dramas like Game of Thrones (before the final season when even the cast started complaining), Breaking Bad, Justified and Mad Men were constantly exceeding our expectations when it came to writing and production. That era is now over, but good TV is (often) still being produced. While good shows don't always have the same fanbases, this week’s petty revenge plot between fans of Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms and Breaking Bad has been very weird to behold.
You’d think there’d be space for as many great TV shows as possible streaming, but if you were to ask at least a sizable chunk of the fanbase, this is not the case. In fact, some longtime Breaking Bad stans had spent years ensuring their show maintained a top slot when it came to TV reviews, only to be faced with another determined fanbase this month.
For Breaking Bad, the review bombing has been a pretty hard fall. The critically-acclaimed “Ozymandias” had long and widely held the highest rating for any episode of TV, coming in at a solid 10.0 for about as long as I can remember its IMDB rating existing. When we covered the review bombing initially, what had happened was this:
First, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms dropped a new episode on the 2026 TV schedule the fanbase really liked called “In The Name Of The Mother.” At the time of this writing, 140,000 fans have weighed in with 10-star reviews, but an additional 20K have dropped in to give the episode 1-star reviews. This seemingly was a play by Breaking Bad fans to ensure the absolute dominance of “Ozymandias” in the Top 10 list.
However, Game of Thrones spinoff fans popped right over to the IMDB page for the Breaking Bad episode and dropped their own 1-star reviews. When we first encountered this phenomenon over the weekend, the rating for “Ozymandias” had dropped to 9.8, then 9.7. However, now the review bombing has had an even bigger impact, and has dropped the episode to a 9.5 rating, AKA the same rating “In The Name Of The Mother” has.
Sometimes the Internet is a petty place, and of course, fans have thoughts. One fan posted a meme of the Breaking Bad ep’s previous rating with a shot of Arya noting, “When people ask you what happened here, tell them the North remembers.” Fans are all over the board when it comes to their feelings related to this review bombing story, however, with some noting on X:
- As a Breaking Bad fan, I love this. Ruining everything you had because of your own ego is so accurate to the show.
- IMDB reviews lost all meaning anyway, but very clear their record is from review bombing others to stay on top. KOTSK was great. BB was great. We should just all be able to appreciate great TV.
- [Breaking Bad Is] an excellent show but perhaps deserves a bit of a correction. Better Call Saul is superior. The Dark Knight comes to mind as another piece that deserves to be adjusted down a bit.
- I’ve often felt IMDb needs a better way to rate things anyway, perhaps this will change things. But BB fans did this to themselves.
- Am I the only one who appreciates the irony of the episode this happened to being titled Ozymandias?
Meanwhile, some fans who are clearly chronically online, or who have been paying attention to Breaking Bad for a decade plus now have known about this review bombing for a while. Smaller shows have been impacted by BB fans in the past, with one fan noting Breaking Bad fans did this to the well-rated Mr. Robot with Rami Malek some time ago. A separate example of review bombing happening came when Zack Snyder fans review bombed Godzilla Vs Kong.
In the case of Breaking Bad fans, this may be the first time they’ve taken on a franchise with an equally devoted fanbase, and gotten the taste of their own medicine. Meanwhile, I just can’t get enough of this sassy video response one of the HBO off shoots posted from Knight of the Seven Kingdoms when this story broke wide.
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