Sticking to a timeline is like walking a trapeze: one wrong move and everything comes crashing down. And while writers and showrunners do their best to avoid inconsistencies, sometimes it’s unavoidable .
Below are 10+ times movies and shows threw their timeline out the window. Have a look and see which, if any, you were able to spot your first time through.
1. The kids in *Beverly Hills 90210* go through Junior year, twice.
When the show begins, it’s at the very beginning of Junior year (grade 11). At the beginning of the show’s second season, it is once again — Junior year.
How does that make any sense? Did the kids fail all their classes; what’s going on here?
2. Was Shirley really only pregnant for 6 months in *Community*?
We discover that Shirley and her ex-husband Andre rekindle their love sometime in the early fall.
Yet when the time comes for Shirley to give birth, it’s during finals week. It’s been a while for me, but don’t finals typically take place in April-May?
3. How is it that Lily in *Modern Family* is older than Jay and Gloria’s relationship?
I love Modern Family but season 9 has more holes than a block of Swiss cheese.
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If Jay and Gloria are celebrating their ten-year-anniversary, how could Lily possibly be 12-years-old? She’d be 9 or 10 at the most!
4. Why did Snape stay the same age during the flashback sequence in *Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2*?
Snape is a middle-aged man when we first meet him. By the time the seventh film rolls around, he’s closer to 60 than he is to 30.
So shouldn’t a younger version of Severus have been the one to discover Lily Potter’s body?
5. *That ’70s Show* has 5 Christmas episodes.
Five excellent Christmas episodes, I should add. But it doesn’t change the fact that That 70s Show takes place between 1976-1979.
So how did they manage to cram in an extra Christmas in the Foreman residence?
6. Nicky ages roughly 5 years over the course of a single season in *The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air*.
Nicky was born at the very end of the show’s third season and spends all of the following year as a newborn.
When the fifth season premiered, Nicky was all of a sudden recast as a wise-cracking toddler.
7. *X-Men: First Class* completely rewrites key elements from the *X-Men* universe.
Let’s keep in mind that X-Men: First Class is supposed to be a prequel to X-Men . Yet in the films starring Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, there’s no mention of Xavier’s relationship with Mystique.
First Class also changes the way in which Xavier came to design Cerebro.
8. What war were they fighting on *MASH*?
MASH is an acronym for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The sitcom revolved around the lives of a group of soldiers and doctors in the Korean War.
The show lasted 11 seasons, whereas the Korean War was fought in 1950-1953.
9. Were Sully and Hitchcock in *Brooklyn 99* hot cops or not?
In episode 20 of Brooklyn 99 , we see a quick flashback scene of Scully and Hitchock in the ’70s. Aside from Hitchcock sporting a bad mustache and an even worse hairpiece, they look pretty much the same.
Flashforward to season 6 and that’s when thing start to get murky.
There’s an entire episode that shows them in the 1980s (a decade later) looking much younger and a lot hotter.
What are we supposed to believe? What timeline is the truth?
10. Aiden moves incredibly fast in *Sex And The City*.
Aiden shows up roughly one-and-a-half years after his breakup with Carrie. When they bump into one another on the street, Aiden is remarried and carrying a newborn baby who appears to be at least 4 months old.
Unless he conceived the child in a wormhole , this doesn’t make sense.
11. Rachel was pregnant for well over a year on *Friends*.
If you remember correctly, Rachel first discovers she’s pregnant the day of Monica and Chandler’s wedding in May 2001.
But she doesn’t actually give birth to Emma until April 4th 2002! I’m no doctor but I think something may have gone awry.
12. Nick Fury had one seriously busy week.
As you might imagine, Nick has seen his fair share of action. But according to the MCU timeline, Iron Man 2 , The Incredible Hulk and Thor all take place within the same week.
That’s a lot to handle, even for the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D.
13. There seems to be some debate as to who’s been working at Dunder Mifflin longer: Jim or Pam?
At the end of season two’s “The Client,” Jim and Pam enjoy a ham and cheese sandwich on the roof of Dunder Mifflin.
Jim turns to Pam and asks “do you remember what you said to me on my first day of work?”
But then just six episodes later, the timeline seems to change.
In the episode appropriately titled “The Secret,” Jim tries in vain to prevent Michael from spilling the tea about his true feelings for Pam.
He finally admits to her “I told Michael that I had a crush on you when you first started here.”
So who really started first; Jim or Pam?
