What is the timeline?

That’s very difficult to answer, because BHVR tends to leave certain details deliberately vague. I mean, just look at the Hag’s backstory. Can you tell, definitely, what era she lived in? She seems to have gone to a relatively modern school, but beyond that, the time and place she lived in is indistinguishable.

Also, it’s not clear if the Entity is pulling all of the non-licensed Survivors and Killers from the same universe/timeline. To be clear, of them are obviously from the same Earth - Renato and Thalita are SIBLINGS, Mikaela and Sable were friends pre-Fog, Elodie and Felix had a childhood connection, Taurie tried to kill Haddie’s brother, Jane’s recent Tome references Dwight and Zarina, etc. But a lot of the Survivors and Killers have no connection to each other.

I've more or less pieced together the Killer Timeline on this very forum (though, I've admittedly not been updating it after running into a character limit with Springtrap's release and I'm still trying to figure out how to share the Google Doc I've made continuing it without exposing my e-mail that has my actual real name in it), but Survivors have ALWAYS been difficult to figure out. There was one person years ago who tried, but their distaste for Stranger Things was so immense that when that chapter was announced, they left the game entirely, so that effort went completely defunct.

There are some who are easier to work with than others (Vittorio being a very obvious one, but characters like Min & Nea have direct years mentioned either in their cosmetics [Min's default shirt directly points to a 2016 tournament] or in promotional art [Nea spraying a camera showing the year of 2021 in one of her skin's banners]), but most are just generically modern. Sable's podcast is specifically called out as "old" in Orela's story, and given other context clues we can reasonably assume she's probably early 2010s at the latest, but you might as well be throwing darts at a dartboard trying to figure most of them out.

We also know for a fact that not every original Survivor is from the same universe. This has not only been directly stated by BHVR themselves, but also shown with Jonah's tome, where he gets confused for a man named Max by a teacher involved with an investigation that Haddie's performing. However, this Haddie is a decently old woman from a universe where JORDAN was taken instead of her, meaning our Haddie (and Taurie) physically and temporally CANNOT be from Jonah's universe.

I do apologize if it seems like I'm about to go off on you, that is genuinely not my intention. This is just something I've seen so many times and have even argued about in my own friend group and it annoys me every time I see it.

Thalita and Renato are very explicity NOT twins. Not only does the language in their stories explicitly point to Thalita being older by more than a few years, nor does the term "twin" show up even ONCE in either story, but their shared archive explicitly calls Renato a baby while Thalita is watching a kite-fighting tournament. Thalita is at least 3-4 years older than Renato.

I do not know where this came from, and it is such a minor thing for me to get irritated over compared to the rest of the literal OCEANS of misinformation surrounding DBD's lore (mostly spread by the largest lore-based content creators who've carved a niche they don't deserve), but it genuinely does get to me every time I see it.

Also, Hag is most likely from the late 80s to early-mid 90s, based on the fashion seen in her tome's cutscene and some of the language within, but yes, she's always been a problem child.