"The films have no strict chronology."

The continuity of the Mad Max film series is quite confusing. It might be hard to believe, but the 40-year-old franchise that spawned from a micro-budget Australian film about raiders in a post-apocalyptic wasteland doesn't actually have the most coherent timeline. Furiosa, the latest full-throttle film in the series, pulls no punches despite having a specific timeline connection to its predecessor, Mad Max: Fury Road. But we will try our best to help you understand it.

The first important thing to remember about the Mad Max timeline is that it sort of rebooted. Fury Road, the fourth installment in the series, was originally slated for production in the 90s or early 2000s, with Mel Gibson returning to his central role as lone wolf Max. But after many delays and many instances of Mel Gibson being a terrible person in public, the film received an updated script and a new Max – the much younger Tom Hardy.

With the change in cast and in Max's apparent age, the series also had to change somewhat. So Fury Road is essentially set in an alternate timeline from the original films, with key events occurring at slightly different times. In Fury Road's timeline, the nuclear annihilation of much of humanity took place between the events of Mad Max and The Road Warrior, rather than after The Road Warrior, as they do in the original trilogy.