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.
(Click for full-res version.)
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.
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