Originally Posted by
ElliotJA
It's been noted that flashbacks to the pasts of the current iteration of Asgardian gods are frequently inconsistent. It has also long been known that there have actually been many different cycles of existence for the Asgardians, all ending in Ragnarok, after which they are reborn with new histories, all orchestrated by Those Who Sit Above In Shadow. A theory I have developed is that, after Thor broke the cycle and then resurrected the gods, he did not just bring back the most recent cycle, but all prior cycles, so in effect the current gods are amalgamations of all their past selves blurred into one. This is how they remember all their different pasts as though they happened to them.
Also, I'm wondering if, while the past cycles were sequential in their own dimension, they may have overlapped slightly on ancient Earth, so different versions of characters like Thor were active at the same time. This is what I think the case is with stories like AGES OF THUNDER, which depict the activities of past cycles of Asgard, but their interactions with Earth appear to take place at times when the current cycle should have been around.