In Sri Lanka, a chemistry textbook for grades 12 and 13 came off the press with a cover that nobody bothered to check twice: there is Jesse Pinkman, Aaron Paul’s character in Breaking Bad, wearing a hazmat suit and holding a beaker.
Whoever designed the cover looked for a stock image of a “scientist” and found exactly that one, without suspecting that it was one of television’s most famous meth cooks. The Sinhala text below says “Chemistry for the chemical industry”, and that’s where things get even better.
Because if you really think about it, few covers have been so accidentally honest. The book had already circulated among thousands of students before someone on the internet recognized that face, and now half the world is wondering how nobody in the review chain had seen Breaking Bad.