'Black Mirror' Season 4 confirms a long-running fan theory

Spoiler alert! This post contains spoilers for all of Black Mirror, up to and including Season 4.

With the Season 4 finale "Black Museum," Black Mirror finally confirmed what fans had long suspected: That every episode of the anthology series takes place within a single universe.

The question now is how all these episodes fit together. Does the reality-show dystopia of Fifteen Million Merits come before or after the social media hellscape of Nosedive? What was invented first, the grains from Entire History of You or the cookies from White Christmas?

Black Mirror hasn't explained that part. (Maybe they're saving that for Season 5?) But as noted by Oliver Whitney, it is possible to piece together a rough order based on the Easter eggs littered throughout the show.

Several of the episodes show headlines referencing other episodes, like a news ticker briefly glimpsed in "Hated in the Nation" announcing the MASS program from "Men Against Fire," or a social media feed in "Shut Up and Dance" referencing the game show from "Fifteen Million Merits."

Other times, certain objects or icons will cross over from one episode to another: a Waldo sticker from "The Waldo Moment" showing up in "Shut Up and Dance," or the dating app from "Hang the DJ" making an appearance in "U.S.S. Callister." Or, of course, all the various items on display in "Black Museum."

And still other times, it takes some common sense to figure out the evolution of certain technologies over the years. For instance, the implant from "Arkangel" seems to build on developments introduced in "White Christmas" and "Men Against Fire."

Whitney's best guess puts the series premiere, "The National Anthem," at the very beginning, and the post-apocalyptic "Metalhead" at the very end. It's probably worth pointing out, again, that this is just one fan's best guess, not an officially released timeline. Still, their guesswork is pretty damn solid.

Check out the entire elaborate theory at ScreenCrush.