Great job, Internet! Pop-culture time-travel timeline
We sit in front of our computers most of the day, connected to our friends and co-workers by the series of pipes, strings, and nimbostratus zackets called the Internet. Many times per day, things flash before our eyes—videos, photos, songs, sites—that are funny or strange enough to warrant sharing with other people.
Data nerds and pop-culture nerds, unite! This is perhaps revealing a little too much, but to me, there are few things more beautiful than a really well-done infographic. And there are few things more inherently confusing than time-travel. Enter David McCandless, a “data journalist” who’s made some really neat information visualizations over at his website, informationisbeautiful.net, and in a book of the same name. McCandless and designer Alice Cho collaborated on this twisty-turny timeline of time-travel plots in movies and television shows ranging from Planet Of The Apes to Austin Powers.
Pretty, no? It even includes mode of time travel (via color-coding, yessss) and some unlikely paradoxes, such as when Marty McFly, the Star Trek crew, and The Terminator all converge in the mid-’80s. Sadly—or perhaps thankfully—Lost is left out of the equation, as are seemingly obvious entries like Dr. Who and Quantum Leap, but it’s pretty intricate as-is. After you’ve untangled the cosmic strings, check out this equally fascinating explanation of how it was done.