In this era of expanded universes, remakes and mega-franchises things are bound to get complicated. Linear timelines are all very well, but why make your movieverse sequential when you can catapult it into the future, retcon the past, introduce a whole alternate history and leave audiences crying, "Wait, what?"
These are the franchises that messed with the timelines – and our heads – the most.
1. X-Men
The X-Men timeline is so bleedin' complicated that even Hugh Jackman, who's appeared in all the movies except Deadpool, gets frustrated.
"[Following the timelines] becomes a chess game that you try to serve, which actually doesn't help to tell a story and it's sort of been a bit all over the place," he told Digital Spy.
So as far as we understand it:
The first three X-Men movies to be released – X-Men, X2 and X-Men: Last Stand – exist in one timeline. X-Men Origins: Wolverine also exists in this timeline and tells the story of, you guessed it, Wolverine's origins.
X-Men: First Class is a prequel along with X-Men: Days of Future Past (a sequel to that prequel) which retcons X-Men Last Stand and arguably X-Men Origins: Wolverine by erasing both from history and making the Deadpool movie possible – because Ryan Reynolds plays Deadpool in both films but as a very different character in each. This is also how we can have a Dark Phoenix movie.
X-Men: Apocalypse carries on from Future Past in the timeline of First Class and Days of… – ie in the '80s – but doesn't revisit the changed future.
The Wolverine leads directly into Days of Future Past and Logan... well, Logan just does its own thing.
And how about Gifted? Frankly we have no idea and neither does the cast...
2. Saw
You thought Saw was just a series of increasingly horrible torture-porn movies about a dude who wants to play a game? Ha! Wrong! You lose! In fact it's an increasingly complicated, flashback-heavy nightmare which is difficult to keep tabs on even if you binge-watch it all in one day.
To explain it all in detail would take an entire feature
