The Tangled Logic Of Time Travel In Movies [Infographic]

This flowchart contains spoilers!

This infographic by Mr. Dalliard documents the nature, logic, and scale of time travel in film. Most of the terms are straightforward, and then there’s the “Novikov self-consistency principle.” Developed by a Russian physicist between 1975 and 1990, it asserts

that if an event exists that would give rise to a paradox, or to any “change” to the past whatsoever, then the probability of that event is zero. In short, it says that it’s impossible to create time paradoxes.

Neat! Next up: finding a physicist to explain why the first three Terminator movies all follow different time travel logic.

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Kelsey D. Atherton

Contributor, Tech

Kelsey D. Atherton is a military technology journalist who has contributed to Popular Science since 2013. He covers uncrewed robotics and other drones, communications systems, the nuclear enterprise, and the technologies that go into planning, waging, and mitigating war.