How to retain visual breadcrumbs? Custom post template?

I’m building a review site with lots of different categories.

Here’s what the site strucure is shaping up to be:

• backtoschool.com
• backtoschool.com/reviews/
• backtoschool.com/reviews/calculators
• backtoschool.com/reviews/mechanical-pencils
• backtoschool.com/blog/
• etc

I’m trying to maintain a visual hierarchy of site navigation, e.g. users at “backtoschool.com/reviews/calculators” should be able to easily see that they’re browsing the Calculators subsection within the Reviews section.

Here’s where I’ve given myself a headache.

The problem is, I want my individual calculator and whatnot reviews to be located at the root directory, e.g. when users on “website.com/reviews/calculators” click on a link to my TI-83 Review, they should be taken to “website.com/texas-instruments-ti-83-review”, NOT “website.com/reviews/calculators/texas-instruments-ti-83-review”.

This leaves me confused as to how I can retain a logical breadcrumb structure (visually speaking).

I was thinking that I could write some kind of IF/THEN statement perhaps in single.php.

Maybe I could write something to the effect of IF post category=calculator-review, THEN load calculator-review.css AND write breadcrumb indicators aka “All Reviews –> Calculators” to the HTML just below the main navigation. On calculator-review.css, I would create styles that would give contrast to the main navigation “Reviews” section, and then below that give contrast to “Calculators” placed in the PHP-written breadcrumb.

OR – and here’s where my head explodes

Should I instead create a custom post template like calculator-reviews.php for review section, and then just be sure to use the correct post template for every individual review? This seems easier but I like to keep plugins to a minimum.

I would greatly appreciate your help!