How we decide the order
Every Bingerun guide answers one question, what order should I watch, read, or play this in?, and the answer is a real editorial judgement, not a number scraped from a database. Here's exactly how we make it.
Two kinds of information, kept separate
Each guide combines two things, and we're deliberate about where each comes from:
- The facts, which entries exist, their titles, and release years, come from open, verifiable reference data (primarily Wikidata, which is CC0, cross-checked against Wikipedia and official publishers). These are objective and citable.
- The order and the reasoning, release order versus chronological versus a recommended path, and why one beats another, is our own editorial work. That judgement is the thing an encyclopaedia entry or a one-line search answer can't give you, and it's the whole point of the site.
How an order is built
- Establish the canon. We list every entry in a franchise and confirm its release date and format (film, season, game, book) against reference sources.
- Map the real timeline. Where a story is told out of sequence, prequels, flashbacks, branching continuities, we work out how the in-world events actually line up.
- Choose the orders worth offering. Most guides give at least release order and one alternative (chronological, a recommended newcomer path, publication vs. in-world, and so on). We only add an order if it genuinely changes the experience.
- Write the "why". Each guide explains the trade-offs in plain language, what a given order spoils, what it sets up, and which one we'd actually recommend, so you can decide for yourself.
- Flag the gotchas. The single entry people get wrong (the prequel that's a bad starting point, the movie that's secretly a midquel) gets called out explicitly.
What we don't do
We never copy another site's list or "spin" someone else's article. The facts are sourced from open reference data; the editorial framing is written from scratch for each franchise. We don't auto-generate pages and publish them unread, every guide is reviewed before it goes live, and pages that would just restate an obvious one-line answer aren't worth making, so we don't.
Accuracy & keeping it current
We aim to be correct, and we date every page. Franchises change, new entries release, and studios occasionally re-arrange their own canon, so guides are revisited when that happens, and the "last updated" date reflects the most recent review. We're not infallible: if you spot a mistake or a missing entry, please tell us at [email protected] and we'll fix it. Corrections are welcome and genuinely useful.
Sources
Reference data: Wikidata (CC0), cross-checked against Wikipedia, official studio/publisher pages, and, for film and TV metadata, the TMDB API. Editorial order and commentary: written by the Bingerun team. Individual guides list their own sources at the foot of the page.