The video has close to 3 million views on YouTube but little did Sam Barnett know that his “Breaking Bad” and Miley Cyrus twerking mashup would become a meme.

Barnett, a cinematography student, used an already famous recent scene from AMC’s thrilling drama “Breaking Bad,” where Marie and Hank are watching a shocking video. He then superimposed Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke’s famous performance at the MTV VMAs show, including twerking. The result was an instant hit.

Coincidentally this episode of “Breaking Bad” and the Brooklyn MTV VMAs were being broadcast at the same time.

Already it has spawned a whole series of ideas with “Hank and Marie watch…”.

Barnett told NewsTalk the whole thing took him just 30 minutes. He said, “When I got on the computer all saw was either the twerking fiasco or Breaking Bad fans losing it over the massive twist in the episode. It was at that point I figured ‘hey, I'll put the two together; it won't take all that long and it might be funny’."

He explained that Reddit really gave the video meme status. He said, “The only thing I did that sparked its spread was post it on Reddit's videos section. As soon as I put it up there I went to bed. When I woke up, the video was just after breaking 80,000 views. By midnight it had reached 1 million.”

He continued, “The Huffington Post and Rolling Stone really helped it kick off once it started spreading around. As soon as it had made it on to their front pages readers started tweeting about it, then tweeting to the show's cast about it, then it started spreading on Facebook.

Then came the piece de resistance. 

“Aaron Paul
, the actor who plays Jesse Pinkman on the show, tweeted about it. That just felt great to see because he's my favourite character on the show,” Barnett said. “The last notable person I saw to mention it was Damon Lindelof. He's the man who wrote the likes of Star Trek Into Darkness, Prometheus, and one of the lead writers on LOST. I'm an aspiring film writer/director and that on its own would've made my week.”

Here’s the now infamous video: