Breadcrumbs to show non-functional web pages?

The breadcrumb element combines a lot of functions in one and this often causes confusion about its proper use. Breadcrumbs could serve the following purposes:

• a gist of where am I currently (micro web site map)
• how did I get here (browsing history trail)
• go back one level (duplicating the browser back button)
• go back a few levels
• context of the meaning of the current page category.

If "how did I get here" is important for users, I see no problem for "Parent DDL" to be present in the breadcrumb, as long as it is not clickable (it cannot be anyway).

One could argue that by being non-clickable, it could cause cognitive dissonance in the user who would be expecting all pieces of the breadcrumb, except the last one, to be clickable and they would perceive it as some sort of an error at first sight. I have no experience with that, therefore I could only advise to test it.

For me, as a user, breadcrumbs are very useful. I started to notice that I was using the breadcrumbs a lot when I was browsing for products in eCommerce websites.

Most accurate breadcrumb would be:

Home (link) / Parent DDL (link) / Child 1 (link) / Card 1 (link) / Item 1

Very often, I find myself clicking on Child 1 or Card 1 to browse other options when browsing products in online shops.

I hope this answers your question :)