Anachronic Order: Difference between revisions

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Compare [[Real Time]]. Don't confuse it to [[Out of Order]], which is where the proper order of the stories are shifted around because of a [[Executive Meddling|dodgy schedule]].
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== Anime &and Manga ==
* ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'':
** The novels aren't in chronological order. This was retained when the [[Animated Adaptation|anime]] was shown in Japan [[Mind Screw|in meta-random order]], and helpfully had Haruhi and Kyon arguing over the number of the next episode in the [["On the Next..."|previews]]. The English happens to put the episodes in chronological order, except for the first episode, but the special edition DVDs have the original order as well. The opinions about what order is "better" to watch differ. Notably, the series is paced with the anachronic order in mind, and climaxes halfway chronologically.
** The second season kicked off by inserting the new episodes into the rerun of the first season via chronological order (well, chronological except for the [[Time Travel]]). Thus, "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody", part of season 2, was inserted after the [[Baseball Episode]], "The Boredom of Suzumiya Haruhi". The second season is thus [[Anachronic Order|not a sequel of the first season]].
* ''[[Boogiepop Phantom]]'' includes shifts in both timeframe and perspective.
* Even though it's a simple [[Slice of Life]] series, ''[[Hidamari Sketch]]'''s episodes don't take place in chronological order. Luckily, each episode gives a calendar date in its title.
** The episodes that take place during Nori and Nazuna's first year are in chronological order with each other, but in different places throughout are episodes and half-episodes from the previous year and even Sae and Hiro's first year.
* ''[[Baccano!]]'' has this in spades. Within each episode there are random time cuts between events in three different years (1930, 1931, and 1932), and occasionally two others (1711 and 2001).
* ''[[Rental Magica]]'' is aired out of order, but the show's website shows where each episode is supposed to belong. The DVDs keep the anachronistic airing, though, presumably because it holds the most dramatic tension that way.
* An episode of ''[[Martian Successor Nadesico]]'' was told in [[Anachronic Order]] when half the cast was having their brains hacked through their [[Nanomachines]]. Most scene cuts did feature a time-stamp to help alleviate the confusion, but the principle was there.
* ''[[AIR]]'' starts out normally, {{spoiler|then has several episodes 1000 years in the past explaining the backstory. After that, the story starts over from the beginning, except it focuses around the [[Chekhov's Gunman]].}}
* Both the film adaptation and the original novel of ''[[KaranoKara no Kyoukai:|Kara no Kyoukai]]'' start the story in roughly the middle of the story, September 1998. The first four chapters jump back and forth in time, and the progression is chronological from the fifth to the final, seventh chapter. Then the [[Nasuverse|writer]] added an extra eight chapter ten years after the novel was published, which is chronologically fourth but ties up the entire story, adding an explicit happy ending. Not as confusing as other, considering that many chapters are standalone "cases."
** The film of the 5th chapter is also shown in a [[Anachronic Order]], with both large retellings of the same time period as well as small jumps or repetitions.
* ''[[Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito]]'' jumps back and forth in chronology but is actually quite comprehensible.
* ''[[Touka Gettan]]'', produced mostly by the same people as ''Yamibou'', is told completely in reverse order.
* This was accidentally done the first time around for DiC's dub of ''[[Sailor Moon]]''. The order was a followed: a full "Queen Beryl" arc, followed by the "Rini/Negamoon" arc up-to the point where the last two of the four Negamoon sisters are healed, then the full "Doom Tree" arc. In repeats, the orders in correct order: full "Queen Beryl" arc, full "Doom Tree" arc, then at that time the unfinished "Rini/Negamoon" arc.
* The first volume of ''[[Phoenix]]'' tells the very beginning, the second the very end, in the far future. After that, it more or less alternates between the increasingly-less-distant future and past, converging on the present, [[Author Existence Failure|which it never reached]].
* ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' is somewhat out of order due to a number of reasons, including time travel. Its always in order from ''somebody's'' point of view, but an in-universe observer (such as the cast of ''[[XxxHolic×××HOLiC]]'') would be ''incredibly'' confused (as is anyone attempting to make an objective timeline). A point of particular note is when we follow two souls through reincarnation, following the events of their next life, as the parents of one of the main characters, and thus explaining something that happened before the story begain but is just happening now and oh dear [[Mind Screw|I've gone and got a headache again]].
* A rare non-[[Mind Screw]] example: ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' is a mainly yonkoma series about history that doesn't even attempt to be in chronological order. It may be World War II one strip, the Seven Years War the next, then at the height of the Roman Empire in the next. To really understand it one needs either to have paid attention in World History or be basically skilled at wiki-fu, but the anachronic order doesn't have much to do with that.
** The anime makes a bit more sense, since each episode is usually centred around a single time period. It's still pretty anachronistic, though.
* ''[[Ga-Rei Zero]]'' starts off with a [[Non-Indicative First Episode]] {{spoiler|ending with the apparent protagonists being absolutely ''butchered'' by a demonic swordswoman}}, which is followed up by the second {{spoiler|and actual}} team of protagonists facing the same threat, while revealing that the main character and her were friends. The next 8 episodes build up to that point in the story. Additionally, [[Ga-Rei Zero]] itself is a prequel to [[Ga-Rei]], which is [[Adaptation Displacement|sometimes forgotten]].
* ''[[Twentieth Century Boys|20th Century Boys]]'' has five or so timelines interconnected and two more which take place in virtual reality.
* ''[[Billy Bat]]''. 1940s to {{spoiler|Biblical times to the 1950s to feudal Japan.}}
* In ''[[Not Simple]]'', the story continuously jumps around in time. The beginning is set before the events that lead to the end, followed by the end, followed by the beginning, which then carries on up until near the opening scene, and then finally jumps back sometime near the middle of the story.
* ''[[Hyakujitsu no Bara]]'' shows the main characters' childhoods, their time in the [[Military Academy]], and the present day, all jumping back and forth quite a lot. Even the very first scene is set up to look like the story will be told in flashback (being a [[Train Station Goodbye]]), only to immediately jump forward six months to the present time.
* ''[[The Tatami Galaxy]]'' goes there within the first episode.
* ''[[Princess Principal]]'' does this in order to have all five members of the team appear in the first episode, and to preserve some secrets for as long as possible. It ''is'' an espionage story, after all.
 
 
== Comic Books ==
* Dr. Manhattan in ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]'', and, indeed, the flashback episodes of ''Watchmen'' in general.
* The ''[[Sin City]]'' stories were published in [[Anachronic Order]]. A timeline of the main stories (and a few others that can be pinned down relative to them): ''That Yellow Bastard'' (with "Just Another Saturday Night" concurrent), ''A Dame To Kill For'' (with "Blue Eyes" and ''The Hard Goodbye'' concurrent), "Wrong Turn," "Wrong Track," ''Hell and Back'', ''The Big Fat Kill'', ''Family Values''.
* ''[[Atomic Robo]]'' frequently jumps around from the titular character's current activities with TeslaDyne and various exploits in the last 80 years, though, helpfully, we're always given dates and locations. Even if that location is "the Vampire Dimension".
* While the over all plot line in Brian Azzarello's & Eduardo Risso's crime noir series ''[[100 Bullets|One Hundred Bullets]]'' take place in a chronological manner, certain story lines (most notably The Counter Fifth Detective) are presented with events (pertaining to that arc) out of order and the reader left to reconstruct them. The epic back story is also peppered through out the main narrative in a series of flash backs from different points of view.
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* Silent Hill: Among the Damned, is in this order. Since [[Tropes Are Not Good]], this serves only to cause confusion, especially for Linkara.
* The Ultimate Thor miniseries was essentially three stories in one: Thor in Ancient Times, Baron Zemo - {{spoiler|who is actually Loki in disguise}} -'s plots involving Frost Giants in the middle of World War II, and Thor shortly before joining The Ultimates. The mini jumped between all three of these very sporadically.
* A lot of stuff written by [[Grant Morrison]]. For example, the storyline [[Grant Morrisons Batman|Batman RIP]] begins with Batman trimuphingly yelling "You're wrong! Batman and Robin will never die!" We don't see who he's talking to and the rest of the story is set six months before, including introducing us to the charcter Batman was/will be talking too {{spoiler|Le Bossu}}. Batman RIP ends with Batman {{spoiler|disappearing after being seen last in a helicopter which crashes in Gotham river and explodes. His ripped cowl is then found in the water by Dick Grayson, who's the Batman seen in the opening scene, not Bruce}}. Bruce then is in [[Final Crisis]], which begins a few hours after Batman RIP (and includes a fair amount of [[Anachronic Order]] in itself, since the final issue is told in non-linear [[Flash Back]].) A few monthes into Final Crisis (and therefore after Batman RIP was published), we got Batman RIP: The Missing Chapter, which explains how Bruce got from {{spoiler|the exploding helicopter}} to the JLA headquarters, where he is at the start of [[Final Crisis]].
* A [[Warhammer 4000040,000]] comic told three interwoven stories: the identification and indoctrination of a new recruit into a Space Marine chapter, an apparently hopeless battle by veteran Space Marines on another planet, and the awakening of a centuries-old Dreadnought for yet a third battle. In the last few pages {{spoiler|it's revealed that the three stories are about the same man. The last page of the first recruit's story has him taking the name he will use during the veteran's story, and the last pages of that has him falling in battle and being enclosed within the Dreadnought.}}
 
 
== Fan Works ==
* Chapters 24 and 25 of ''[[Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality (Fanfic)|Harry Potter and Thethe Methods of Rationality]]''.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' [[Fanfic]] ''[[The Joy of Battle|The Joy of Battle: Historical Espionage Action]]'' is told non-linearly with scenes being placed next to one another because of their similarity and several story lines happening in different times. Yet... it all makes sense.
* Used in the [[Fan Fiction|fanfic]] ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]'', in [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|the Anachronic Order Explanation Arc]].
* As a nod to ''Hetalia,'' this is used throughout the ''[[Nineteen Eighty Three1983 Doomsday Stories]].'' The time period jumps between 1983 and 2010, with a further jump to 2031.
* In ''[[I Am What I Am (fanfic)|I Am What I Am]]'', a ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' fic by M. McGregor, the [[Flash Forward]]s to Future!Xander's life cover a span of some seventy or eighty years, and bounce around unpredictably within that period.
 
 
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** ''[[Kill Bill]]'' helps us track the timeline by the Bride's list of people to kill. Notably, we see one name crossed off her list in the beginning of the first film who doesn't die until the climax.
** ''[[Jackie Brown]]'' is told in a linear fashion, except for the sequence with the money drop, which is told from three perspectives in a manner similar to ''Reservoir Dogs'' and ''Pulp Fiction''.
* The ''[[Are You Afraid of the Dark?]]'' [[The Movie|movie]] ''The Tale of the Silver Sight'' temporarily uses the "same time frame from different perspectives" approach, without using [[The Rashomon Style]] or flashbacks.
* The movie ''[[Go (film)|Go]]'' follows several different groups of people during the same 24 hour period, with some interaction between the various groups.
* ''[[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]]'' flips back and forth a bit, changing scenes as you go, and for part of the film you're confused about which part of the relationship is being portrayed. {{spoiler|Pay attention to Clementine's hair colour if you're confused.}}
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* ''[[Rendition]]'' follows two different subplots at the same time, but doesn't reveal till the very end that they take place at different times in the story.
* The movie version of ''[[Speed Racer (film)|Speed Racer]]'' jumps back and forth in time constantly.
* The storylines of the ''[[JuonJu-On]]'' series, as well as the US remake series, ''[[The Grudge]]'', are told in this fashion.
* ''[[Vantage Point]]'' shows the same 20 minutes over and over from a different perspective.
* The [[Akira Kurosawa]] classic ''[[Ikiru]]'' (Japanese for "to live") spends it's first half being very straight forward and chronological with the main character learning that he has a terminal illness and trying to find a way to make some kind of meaning out of his life. When he lands on the idea of spear heading a movement to turn a hazardous landfill into a play ground the movie shifts narrative style. {{spoiler|The latter half takes place at his funeral as various people recount stories about the man's last days and how he badgered other departments into working on the idea and cutting through the usual bureaucratic system to get the job done.}}
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* The opening scene of ''[[Trick 'r Treat]]'' is, chronologically, the very last event in the film. After this scene, it tells three stories that are more or less set simultaneously, before backing up to the beginning with another story, set during a time skip. It ends just before the opening scene.
* ''[[Two For The Road]]'' intercuts five different timelines to show a couple (Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney) as they first meet, get married, drift apart, and reconcile. The juxtapositions produced by this juggling make the story quite poignant.
* ''[[Primer]]'' -- made—made even more confusing because the plot itself is about time travel, so it's all a bit hazy chronologically.
* ''Mr. Nobody'' -- Not—Not only does it jump backwards and forwards at different ages of the main character, but is also jumps sideways to alternate timelines.
* ''[[A Few Good Men]]'' cuts around a bit early on.
* ''[[Bad Timing]]'' skips around the events of the main characters' disastrous relationship and its aftermath, often to juxtapose its sweet beginnings with its grim end.
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** ''[[The Girlfriend Experience]]'' cuts back and forth between a number of storylines within the life of the two main characters. Some of the storylines are single conversations, while others span days or weeks
* ''[[The Brave Little Toaster]]'' sequels ''Goes to Mars'' and ''To the Rescue''. ''To the Rescue'' is the last film in the trilogy released, but ''Goes to Mars'' is the last film story-wise.
* ''[[From Dusk till Dawn]]'' is the first movie in a three-film franchise, but is the second film story-wise, taking place after the events of ''From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money.''
 
 
== Literature ==
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* Likewise, the book ''Galapagos'', also by [[Kurt Vonnegut]]. The plot moves forward through time, but only on average. A large part of the book consists of flashbacks and flashforwards ranging from a couple months to a million years.
* ''Use of Weapons'' by [[Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alternates chapters between "past" and "present" events, with the "past" chapters being told in reverse order, so that the story diverges rapidly in space and time as a rather unorthodox form of backstory exposition. And then there's the flashbacks in ''both'' plot threads to complicate matters. It also has a prologue and epilogue that are quite difficult to pin down in the timeline at all. (Possibly the first "Culture" novel written, Banks notes that he shelved it for decades because its original incarnation was lumbered with an impenetrable multi-thread storyline which required the reader to think in higher dimensions.)
* ''[[The Tigers Wife|The Tiger's Wife]]'' covers three storylines - one taking place in the early twentieth century, one throughout the twentieth century, and one in the present day - and jumps between them at random. In addition, there are detailed backstories given for many minor characters, which often take the story even further back in time, and the present-day storyline is itself told in anachronic order.
* [[David Foster Wallace]]'s ''[[Infinite Jest]]'' starts at the end and then moves forward, ish. The years are named after products, so it's initially very difficult to figure out which time the characters are in, and there are many other brilliantly clever devices which take the reader all over the place.
* [[Stephen King]]'s novel ''[[IT]]'' jumps back-and-forth between two time periods (the 50s and the 80s), but follows each of these two periods chronologically. (That is, if we don't count ''normal'' flashbacks which also appear within ''each'' of the two narrative threads.) Not so in the [[Film]].
* Steven Brust's [[Dragaera]] novels about Vlad Taltos are written out of chronological order, with the original intention that they should each be able to stand alone. Some individual novels are told out of order. ''Jhereg'' alternates between two timelines, while ''Tiassa'' has three timelines that have whole books in between them. Brust wrote ''Tiassa'' with the specific intention of making it impossible to place the novels in chronological order.
* ''The Dispossessed'' by [[Ursula K. Le Guin]] starts at the midpoint of the story, with the protagonist Shevek boarding a spaceship. The odd-numbered chapters follow Shevek from that point onwards, while the even-numbered chapters fill in his life before that point, in order, with the last even-numbered chapter covering the events just before chapter one. This structure reflects Shevek's calling as a theoretical physicist trying to reconcile his culture's contradictory sequential and cyclic views of time.
* The novels in [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''Revelation Space'' universe mostly do this to some degree--thedegree—the catch is that, because of [[wikipedia:Relativity of simultaneity|the way relativity works]], it's actually unavoidable.
* A lot of big influential Hispanic writers were fond of using this one, probably ever since Julio Cortázar wrote his book ''Rayuela'', which has effectively two stories in one book: one which is found reading the book from front to back, another reading the book in the order given by the author. [[Gabriel Garcia Marquez]] also used the Anachronic Order in quite a bit of his stories.
* Seen in ''The Time Traveler's Wife''. It would be hard to make the scenes strictly chronological anyway, since the two protagonists are living them in different orders. (And Henry lives a number of them ''twice''.)
* Joseph Heller uses this extensively in the novel ''[[Catch-22]]''. There was never an official time line and any made by someone else would have taken lots of work and still wouldn't have been accurate. Heller reportedly tried to make a time line after he had written the book "to make sure everything was in order" and found he had made a significant contradiction at one point, but decided to leave it in since fixing it would be a hassle, nobody would notice it unless they tried to create a time line for everything, and "it added a little something".
* [[Orson Scott Card]]'s ''Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus'' is told with chapters alternating between historical fiction of Christopher Columbus and far future science fiction about the Pastwatch project. Eventually the two plot lines merge due to [[Time Travel]].
* The various threads of [[Michael Moorcock]]'s ''Eternal Champion'' series appear to take place in separate time streams. For instance, the ''Elric'' and ''Corum'' series have two [[Intercontinuity Crossover|Intercontinuity Crossovers]]s where Elric and Corum meet each other, but time is apparently moving in opposite directions from their point of view, meaning that in each instance one is familiar with the other while the other is not.
** Erekose is the most obvious example of this trope, as not only do his stories jump around between different time streams; but he himself has lived anachronically since leaving his John Daker incarnation.
** Elric is particularly prone to anachronic crossovers with other Eternal Champion incarnations; and they other incarnations are more likely to recall him, than he is to recall them. It's strongly implied that Elric is, if not the first incarnation of the Champion (that appears to be Erekose) at least the earliest in "real-world" chronology.
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** Chronologically, the third book in [[The Dalemark Quartet]] comes first.
** ''[[Fire and Hemlock]]'' begins with Polly at 19 getting ready to return to uni, then flashes back through her memories from age ten to age fifteen before coming back round to ninteen again.
* [[Sandy Mitchell]]'s [[Ciaphas Cain]] novels are presented as edited pieces of his rambles about his history, in no particular order. The first three books are in chronological order, the fourth is a prequel, the fifth takes place between books two and three, and the six takes place in the ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' universe's "present day" long after the events of the rest.)
* In [[Dan Abnett]]'s [[Gaunt's Ghosts]] novel ''First & Only'', flashbacks are interspaced throughout the novel -- andnovel—and the flashbacks are not in chronological order, either. {{spoiler|It ends on a flashback, with a Chaos witch revealing to Gaunt information that caused him to take an action that determined much of the plot of the book.}}
* ''Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant'' by Anne Tyler jumps back and forth between the childhood and adult lives of the family of the story.
* ''[[The English Patient]]'' is more or less set at the end of [[World War Two]], but devotes many chapters and extended flashbacks to the characters' backstories.
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* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' short story collection ''Short Trips: Time Signature''. While all the ''Short Trips'' books jump from Doctor to Doctor, ''Time Signature'' has an over-reaching [[Arc]] running through the stories, and isn't assembled in ''that'' order either. In the opening story, the Third Doctor meets an elderly composer who was once the companion to a future incarnation, and we then jump to the First Doctor finding the music that will haunt the composer's life, the Sixth meeting him for the first time, the Eighth dealing with his death, and so on.
* ''Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe'' works this way. Often, there will be a present-day chapter in which Ninnie tells a story, as she knows it, then a chapter with the entire story.
* This trope and [[Neologism|Neologisms]]s are the reason why many people give up to the Brazilian you-must-read-book ''[[The Devil to Pay In The Backlands]]'', in which the first person narrator tells his own history in the way it comes to mind, and justifies himself, because "to tell anything right and straight, it must be a thing of little value".
* ''[[Atlanta Nights]]'' seems to feature this, but given all the continuity errors it's really hard to say.
* [[Robert E. Howard]]'s ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'' stories are not in sequence. It starts with him on the throne, when most are of adventures in his wilder youth.
* ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'' are each linear stories, but are written in non-chronological order, and many fans of the book insist that they can only be appreciated that way because of the setup and payoffs; for instance, the [[Lemony Narrator]] ([[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]) frequently alludes to past and future events that happened from earlier to later books, and ''[[The MagiciansMagician's Nephew]]'', the second-to-last, is a [[Prequel]]. Not to mention huge gaps of [[Narnia Time]] transpire between each and every book.
* The chapters of ''[[Last Dragon]]'' are in chronological order, but the events within the chapters are rather jumbled up.
* ''The Good Negress'' by A.J. Verdelle is told somewhat like this. The events are more or less in chronological order(i.e. it may go to something that happened in October, then skip back to July, then back to November), but there are frequent flashbacks to when Denise was back in the South with her grandmother, and there are frequent time skips.
* ''Lanark'' by Alastair Gray starts with Book Three, then One, Two, and Four. The book numbers are in chronological order (i.e. Book One takes places first chronologically), but the sequence is not.
* Abused to no end by P. Howard, especially in his more lighthearted novels. more often than not, the first thing we find out about the protagonist's actions, is the impact they had on the whole plot, or the impressions they left on the witnesses. And I don't mean they are told through flashbacks. Several chapters will end with secondary or tertiarry characters discovering that their current most pressing issue was mysteriously solved, under very unusual circumstances, followed by several chapters retelling everything from the hero's point of view. Then the next plot twist comes in, and events seem to be told in chronological order again, until the situations is resolved again, in a seemingly anticlimactic fashion.
* Used, abused, and made sweet love to by [[Hal Duncan]]'s ''[[The BookofBook of All Hours]]'' duology, entirely justified by the main characters all being "unkin" (people with time- and space-bending magical powers) in a multiverse where spacetime is described not-inaccurately as being like [[Timey-Wimey Ball|a crumpled-up piece of vellum]], each crinkle and fold being a new reality. The characters (and thus the story) ignore the general order of causality as they will.
* Maurice Leblanc's ''[[Arsène Lupin]]'' stories are published in no particular order, so one tale might take place when he is a well-established thief, and another will be about him during his early years, perhaps even before he has settled on the Lupin name.
* Common in the later entries of the [[Mithgar]] series - the first chapter will feature the heroes in the middle of a quest, then a lot of chapters jumping back and forth between what they're doing "now", how they met, what they were like as children, and relevant world events throughout the whole era, before finally settling in a time period and continuing forward towards the climax. Each chapter comes with a time-and-place heading to help you keep track of how it all fits together.
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* ''My Sister's Keeper'' jumps between time-lines according to whose point of view the chapter follows.
* ''The Night Circus'' can be split into two narratives. The main one takes up most of the novel and is chronological, while the secondary one takes place several years in the future. The climax of the novel occurs when the two narratives meet.
* Michael Gilbert wrote a series of short [[Spy Fiction]] about middle-aged British counterintelligence agents Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens, collected in two books, ''Game Without Rules'' and ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens]]''. The very first story published, in 1962, is set after '''all''' the others, because it involves the death of a character who appears at least briefly in practically every other tale, including the very '''last''' published (in 1982). The account of this character '''meeting''' Calder and Behrens wasn't written until 1968, after he'd been shown or mentioned in some nine or ten stories, and is in the second book though the story of his death is in the first. The second collection also has a prequel about Mr. Behrens trying to help the [[World War II|Wehrmacht]] assassinate [[Adolf Hitler]].
 
 
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* Paula Vogel's controversial play ''How I Learned To Drive''. This trope is common with "memory plays."
* In the play ''[[Death of a Salesman]]'' the past and the present are jumbled together (and frequently overlap) in order to illustrate Willie Loman's crumbling sanity.
* ''Deus Ex Quanta'' by Gene Doucette uses this technique to add further twists to its [[Mind Screw|Mind Screwy]]y plot.
* ''Stop Kiss'' by Diana Son revolves around a kiss between two women. Every other scene shows the events leading up to the kiss, while the rest show its aftermath, so that the kiss itself is the very last thing the audience sees.
* Jason Robert Brown's ''[[The Last Five Years]]'' follows two characters who fall in love, get married and divorce. The man and woman alternate solos; Cathy's songs move [[Back to Front]], while Jamie's are in normal (chronological) order. The only time they interact directly is right in the middle, when they get married.
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* The ''[[Lufia]]'' series' chronological order is 2, 4, 1 and 3, although the fourth is a [[Gaiden Game|sidestory]].
* ''[[Tribes: Vengeance]]'' jumps between "The Past" and "The Present" levels arbitrarily, with the former detailing the story of Victoria and Daniel's [[Star-Crossed Lovers|doomed love]] and the latter, the story of their daughter Julia, set some 20 years apart.
* ''[[Eternal Darkness]]''. OK so, Alex is in [[Late to the Party|the year 2000]] exploring a mansion, [[Apocalyptic Log|discovering stories]] about the adventures of a lot of other people. So we start playing Alex, then switch to someone she's reading about, then back again and so on until Alex's own 'chapter' at the end. The stories she reads are out of chronological order too, although for each location in the game, we play the characters who visited that location in order. The whole structure allows for mostly conventional storytelling (eg. the Amiens chapters are seen in order: 814AD, 1485AD, 1916AD) and passing on items optionally obtained in one chapter to the next in the arc, while also mixing up styles by moving back and forth in time (the Amiens chapters are broken up with other locations in other times). The mansion itself is an exception, as Alex finds things in the present that hint at events we'll be seeing later in the past. <br />Which adds to the overall [[Mind Screw]] aspect of ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'' when you realize (for example) that Paul (1485AD) and Roberto (1450AD) both acquired spells that were first discovered by Edwin (1983AD). By [[Fridge Logic|reading about Edwin]] in the [[Tome of Eldritch Lore|Tome of Eternal Darkness]].
** This becomes [[Fridge Brilliance]] when, in the secret ending, it's revealed that {{spoiler|Mantorok has been messing around with time}}.
* ''Pokémon'' games seem to be like this. ''[[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl]]'' and ''Platinum'' seem to take place at the same time as (or possibly shortly after) the earlier ''[[Pokémon Gold and Silver]]'' and ''Crystal'' versions (events from ''Gold'', ''Silver'', and ''Crystal'' are referenced in ''Diamond'', ''Pearl'', and ''Platinum'', such as the Red Gyarados event being shown on TV at the beginning of the game and Professor Elm's research on Pokémon eggs being mentioned by a character), which were stated to take place three years after the original ''Pokémon'' games. ''[[Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire]]'' and ''Emerald'' never stated when they take place relative to when ''[[Pokémon Red and Blue]]'' took place. But the remakes of said original games are believed by many to be set at the same time as ''Ruby'' and ''Sapphire'' due to comments made by characters and perhaps more importantly trading between these games is described as trading with different countries as oppose to through time.
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* The ''[[Hitman]]'' games do this in a very interesting way, across two games, no less. Hitman: Contracts, a fully fledged game built around the flashbacks of the main character(so already in anachronic order) turns out to be the {{spoiler|ending of the third level of ''Hitman: Blood Money'', the fourth installment of the series.}}
* The trailer for ''[[Dead Island]]'' does this.
* The first three games in the ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' series are in chronological order. Then we got an interquel (that starts near the end of the first game and ends at the start of the third) and a prequel set ten years before the series began. Basically, the order goes like this: ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep]]'' - ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' - ''[[Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days Over 2|Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2]]/[[Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories|Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories]]'' (which happen more or less simultaneously, ''Days'' beginning slightly before ''Chain of Memories'' does) - ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'' - ''[[Kingdom Hearts coded]]'' (which leads into the epilogue of ''KH2'') - ''[[Kingdom Hearts 3D]]''.
* It can happen unintentionally in ''[[World of Warcraft]]''. Quest lines force players to do them in order, but some quest lines are follow-ups to quest lines in lower level areas; due to the freedom in the game, there is nothing to stop players from doing the follow-up quest line first.
** Why is John J. Keeshan impressed that you're still alive in the Burning Steppes? You obviously skipped the Redridge Mountains.
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== Web Comics ==
* ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'', "Chapter 11: Dobranoc, Gamma" begins near the chronological end. [[How We Got Here|The scenes leading up to that point]] are interspersed with [[Flash Back|Flash Backs]]s to Zimmy and Gamma before the start of the story. Fortunately, there are narration boxes to help the reader figure out the chronological order of events.
* ''[[Just Another Escape]]'', Almost the basis of the comic, to the point of the past, present and future being colored and drawn in different ways to better differentiate them. All of the story arcs are events shown in a non-chronological order, over what seems to be a (mostly) 3 year span.
* As mentioned in the quote above, [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in the [[Troperiffic]] ([[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|and aptly titled]]) ''[[Start of Darkness]]'' prequel book for ''[[The Order of the Stick]]''. The scene in question is part of [[Grumpy Old Man|Eugene Greenhilt]]'s complicated explanation of his [[Blood Oath]] against [[Big Bad|Xykon]] to his son, [[The Hero|Roy]].
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[[Category:Flashbacks and Chronology]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:Anachronic Order{{PAGENAME}}]]