Most films tell their stories in chronological order, but filmmakers have been scrambling time since the earliest days of cinema. D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) cut between four stories set thousands of years apart, and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) opens with a death and rebuilds a life from contradictory memories. Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) shows one killing through four unreliable witnesses and never settles which version is true. The 1994 film Pulp Fiction made this mainstream, and Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000) runs black-and-white scenes forward and colour scenes backward until the timelines meet at the midpoint. Non-linear structure works because the audience has to reassemble the story, which makes the viewer an active participant.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.