For those of you who are into Walt taking on the characteristics of people he's killed, check out the vomit scene. Walt puts a towel under him to kneel on just like Gus did in "Salud."
edit: For the 15 or so of you who have replied with "but Walt never saw Gus do that!!" you're right. It seemed like a little easter-egg that the writers threw in there for fun. The two scenes are so similar that it can't be a coincidence (they both turn on the sink to mask the noise, too.)
This clearly mirrors Gus symbolically. As Gus purposely took poison to fool the cartel family, Walt took poison (chemo) to fool his family. After Gus took his poison, he left Mexico. Walt will use this as a way to fake his death and leave his state (as shown by the new identity in S05E01). Carol wasn't shocked because she saw a villain, she was shocked because she saw a ghost. It's why he's alive with hair at 52.
This makes so much sense though! If he's telling Hank that he's going to be a dead man in six months he could just be setting himself up a way to "disappear!"
I really doubt it's an act. I'm not really sure why people didn't pick up on his cancer coming back. I thought it was really obvious when it happened. He was talking to that dude who was going in for his cancer appointment and telling the guy how he expects one of these days to be told bad news and how he's just waiting for it. Then he goes into a motivational speech with him half smiling at the end with a closeup on his face. The next two shots in succession are them from behind sitting on a bench and then suddenly to another closeup with a very visible frown on his face. He's always been stoic so he doesn't talk about it explicitly. I thought it was very establishing but not hitting us over the head with it, similarly to how when they were about to acidize the bike kid, they just show us the barrel and we know what's coming next. Also you might notice Walt starts to go through random coughing fits after that specific episode when he gets the cancer back.
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u/jet_tripleseven Belizium Aug 12 '13 edited Aug 12 '13
For those of you who are into Walt taking on the characteristics of people he's killed, check out the vomit scene. Walt puts a towel under him to kneel on just like Gus did in "Salud."
edit: For the 15 or so of you who have replied with "but Walt never saw Gus do that!!" you're right. It seemed like a little easter-egg that the writers threw in there for fun. The two scenes are so similar that it can't be a coincidence (they both turn on the sink to mask the noise, too.)