The term breaking bad means to raise hell, although if you weren't a Southerner, you might not have been aware that the rest of the country didn't know the phrase before Vince Gilligan, a Virginian, created the TV show by that name. This is part of a complete episode.
In a 1930 movie, titled Behind the Makeup, a vaudeville clown meets a man weak with hunger and invites him home for a meal. In the course of conversation, at around 6:30 into the movie, the comic asks the man "Things been breakin' bad for ya?" The implication is that breaking bad means for things to go hard for someone.
The phrase 'breaking bad' occurs in two early sound movies I know of, Behind the Make-Up (1930), and The Big Timer (1932). In both the sense is that things are going wrong.
