With X-Men: Days of Future Past (out today), director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Simon Kinberg had to make sense of one of the most convoluted storylines in all of comics. If they did their jobs well—and it seems they did—then moviegoers would spend their two hours being enthralled by the story, not nudging their seatmate in confusion.

However, the X-Men franchise as a whole doesn't even begin to compare to some others in terms of chrono-complexity. In case you need proof, we've mapped out the time continuums (continuua?) of the most temporally unmoored sci-fi franchises. And yes, we think about this stuff too much.