Everybody knows that Mel Gibson and Tom Hardy are the only two actors to have played Mad Max on the big screen - but Furiosa secretly added a third actor to that list. Fury Road was trapped in development hell for two decades, with director George Miller being able to generate two other screenplays and even consult on a Mad Max game during that time. Furiosa began life as an anime spinoff, but before evolving into a live-action prequel following Fury Road's success. An oft-overlooked entry in the saga was 2015's Mad Max, an underrated game that Miller has essentially disowned.

What's unique about the Mad Max movie franchise is how loose the continuity is. Trying to map out a coherent timeline among the movies is a ticket to despair, and the canon status of the video game was always shaky. It was believed to be a standalone tale that...