Back To The Future II Infographic Charts What The Film Did And Didn’t Get Right
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In 1989 Back to the Future II showed us a vision of a not-too-distant future where the world had become a strange place where things hover off of the ground much more often than they do in our own time. That particular imagining of the future is almost upon us—Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly flies his DeLorean into October of 2015—and because our sort obsess over this sort of thing, we keep comparing the reality of the film to the reality of our reality, to see how the two stack up against each other. This new inforgraphic does the same thing, listing out some of the inventions that the movie shows, and seeing which of those have come to pass over the last 25 years.
In this image, which popped up on T-shirts.com, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) himself—sort of—guides you through items that have and have not materialized since Robert Zemeckis’ second time going back to the…you get it. How prescient was the film? Like most predictions, it was way, way off about some things, but it did manage to hit the mark on a few. Overall it’s batting about .500, which, given the circumstances, isn’t bad. There’s still one still left to happen, and a couple inventions even Hollywood didn’t see coming.
If you’re familiar with this site, odds are you’ve probably heard us harping about the world’s woeful lack of hoverboards in our daily lives. We’re admittedly a little bitter about that one, and out of this list, it’s also the one we want the most. You may also have noticed that, even given omnipresent nature of 3D movies, we’re still a ways off from holographic video. That Tupac thing was close, but it isn’t here yet. Neither are those 15 Jaws, sequels, but there’s a guy on that.
Google Glass may be a weird, obnoxious invention that definitely divides people, but it is a reasonable approximation of the video glasses from BTTF II. Widescreen TVs, the ability to video chat, and 1980s-themed restaurants have also become commonplace—we have even moved beyond caring about 80s nostalgia as a society ahead of schedule, good for us.
One event in particular a lot of people would like to see happen is the 2015 World Series. The Chicago Cubs haven’t won one since 1908, the longest drought in professional sports. Hell, they haven’t even been since 1945. As the infographic notes, Miami does have a baseball team now, so it’s at least physically possible for the Cubs and Miami to play. Here’s the problem, the Cubs and the Marlins both play in the National League. Since only one team can represent each league, the Fall Classic isn’t going to shake out like this anytime soon. It’s possible that the Cubs could play the Tampa Bay Rays, a Florida-based American League team, which is pretty close. Either way, Cubs fans would be psyched to see this go down.
What are your favorite hits and misses from Back to the Future II? What do you really want to see, and what are you sad that we don’t have yet?
