Top 10 Video Game Franchises with Messed up Timelines

So…we’re not just going with the chronological approach then? Welcome to WatchMojo and today we are counting down our picks for the top 10 Video Game Franchises With Messed Up Timelines. For this list, we’re taking a look at the game series, grand and modest alike, which have found themselves burdened with overly complicated and hard-to-parse canon. Get ready for all manner of head-spinning, timey-wimey spoilers down the line.

#10: “Prince of Persia” (1989-2013)

Starting off as a series of side-scrolling platformers, the “Prince of Persia” games weren’t exactly exercises in complex storytelling – there’s an evil vizier, he’s kidnapped a princess, go and save her. However, this changed in 2003 with the reboot “The Sands of Time”, which not only introduced time travel as a central element but also started its own separate continuity from the classic games. Two main sequels later, fans were faced with yet another reboot – the 2008 “Prince of Persia” game – that set up its own version of the Prince, with a new mythology to match. And that’s without getting into the inexplicable return to the “Sands of Time” canon that was 2010’s “The Forgotten Sands”. Ugh, my head. And we've only just started!

#9: “Deus Ex” (2000-16)

Naturally a series focused on convoluted schemes and interconnected conspiracies would also have an appropriately hard-to-follow timeline; you know… just for maximum confusion. “Deus Ex” arrived on the scene boasting many an innovative feature, including its integration of moment-to-moment player choice into the overarching narrative. This also tied into the game’s endings, which varied based on certain late-game decisions... and which began the franchise’s enduring trouble with canon. The immediate sequel, “Invisible War”, opted to treat all the endings as having occurred while also moving the action ahead another 20 years. “Human Revolution”, meanwhile, is a prequel set 25 years before “Deus Ex” and boasts its own set of outcomes to be retconned or ignored.

#8: “God of War” (2005-)

Hacking your way through the Greek pantheon has never been quite so hard to follow. It didn’t begin that way, though; when “God of War” launched in 2005 it was a self-contained narrative about the tormented warrior Kratos striving for freedom from his debt to the gods. “God of War II” brought time travel into the fold, but the canon was all well and good... at least until the prequels and interquels came along. “Chains of Olympus” jumped back into Kratos’ decade of servitude, then came the further-set sequel “God of War III”, followed by “Ghost of Sparta” tying together the original game and “Betrayal”. Keep you convoluted timeline… we just came to slay monsters!

#7: “BioShock” (2007-14)

Embracing both the nuances of its underwater city locale and a quietly thoughtful deconstruction of certain philosophical views, “BioShock” is far from simple in concept or execution. Yet despite its component parts, the first and second instalments in the “BioShock” franchise managed to be compelling without twisting their timeline into knots. That changed with “BioShock Infinite”, which not only took the action to an earlier time period but also brought dimension traversal into the series’ mythos. While the convoluted connection was not without merit, this had the unfortunate side-effect of forcing explanation after explanation to clarify how “Infinite” related to the 1960s-set game, which was eventually wrapped up with the “Burial at Sea” expansion.

#6: “Resident Evil” (1996-2017)

To think this madness all began with one really cool idea. Back in 1999, Capcom opted to return “Resident Evil 3” to Raccoon City, justifying this by having the game take place before and after the events of “Resident Evil 2”. Unfortunately, the “Resident Evil” series took to this concept with reckless abandon, finding ways to either go back to Raccoon City circa 1998 or put subsequent games in-between earlier ones. There’s the retcons and continuity errors of the “Chronicles” games, the midquel antics of “RE: Revelations” and its sequel, and then there’s straight-up non-canon entries like “Operation Raccoon City”. Capcom is clearly quite enamoured with timeline hopping.

#5: “Assassin’s Creed” (2007-)

In theory, this Ubisoft-produced series with a rotating cast of principled ninja-esque killers is fairly linear in its progression. Rarely does “Assassin’s Creed” deviate from its constant forward movement through its own chronology, with even the occasional jumps to modern-day Assassin business being reasonably well-handled. However, matters are less clear-cut when it comes to the backstory, a tangled web of centuries-old feuds and ancient civilizations that remains enigmatic at best. We’re still not precisely sure what’s happening with Juno, and the First Civilization business has all but fallen by the wayside in favour of more Templar-Assassin conflict.

#4: “Metal Gear” (1987-)

Oh Kojima, how you vex us so. 1987’s “Metal Gear” and its sequel largely functioned as self-contained action stories. That all changed after the success of “Metal Gear Solid” however, which set the stage for future sequels to jump back and forth in time. “Metal Gear Solid 2” takes place four years after its predecessor, but then “Metal Gear Solid 3” jumped back to the 1960s. This was then followed by “Metal Gear Solid 4” leaping to the then-future year of 2014, with the PSP title “Peace Walker” setting its action in 1974. The fact “Metal Gear Solid V” picked up just a few months after “Peace Walker” shows remarkable restraint.

#3: “Kingdom Hearts” (2002-)

Hearts, friendship...and stop-and-start storytelling? While the first “Kingdom Hearts” was a charmingly humble and unassuming crossover game, its sequels proceeded to toss away that aspect in favour of a more grandiose vision of franchise building. What this has meant is that each subsequent game has jumped back and forth primarily between two time periods: either years before “Kingdom Hearts”, or sometime after “Kingdom Hearts II”. As a direct result, the franchise’s mythology and overarching questions have grown increasingly dense and harder to parse, to say nothing of the answers being saved for some later sequel. You know things have gone too far when newcomers are advised to start with titles like Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 & 2.5 Remix.

#2: “The Legend of Zelda” (1987-)

Much of the “Zelda” franchise’s history has been made up of distinct adventures, linked – no pun intended – by way of sly nods, inside jokes and of course, a familiar hero. There wasn’t a clear continuity to formally connect the games, though...until the release of Hyrule Historia. That reference book clarified that the events of “Ocarina of Time” split the “Zelda” continuity into three separate timestreams – varying based on whether the green-garbed hero Link failed or succeeded. As much as we appreciate the cementing of popular theory into canon, this also means a lot more research and tracking of threads to understand what games matter to which timeline. Thanks, Nintendo.

#1: “Castlevania” (1987-)

For a franchise with such a fairly straight-forward premise, “Castlevania” sure does love its time jumps. Right from the earliest games, this series about killing Dracula’s minions with whips and magical weapons has indulged in sequels, prequels, and interquels. For example, the PS2 game “Lament of Innocence” takes place before the events of “Castlevania III”, which in turn occurs prior to the original game. Then there’s the “Lords of Shadow” reboot, a quasi-spinoff series which reworks much of the existing mythos to a confounding and profoundly unexpected effect. We adore you, “Castlevania”, but damn if your timeline plotting isn’t bizarre as hell.