Christopher Lloyd is guesting on tonight’s Raising Hope in a plot about the family buying a used Back to the Future Delorean. Hey, you’re probably saying, What a coincidence, because isn’t today the day that Marty and Doc went to the future in Back to the Future Part II? You’re probably thinking this because every few months someone posts a picture on Facebook of the Delorean’s dashboard in the film doctored so it looks like Doc Brown, Marty, and new-Jennifer (Elisabeth Shue) time-jumped to this date in 2015. It’s been July 5 and June 27, and it’ll be today, and it’ll be tomorrow. And every time people comment, “That’s so cool!†and hum “Power of Love†to themselves while others leap in to figuratively wave their arms and cite Snopes or show screen grabs to prove that in the movie they actually go to October 21, 2015, and they beg their friends to just be patient for a couple of years. But then soon it all happens again, and every time the clouds part and the sun shines on Huey Lewis. (Oddly, it’s still overcast for the News.)
So, as a public service, we’d like to preemptively avert the inevitable oncoming, Raising Hope–sparked wave of redoctored Delorean photos. Watch the original scene below to remind yourself that any date you see that is not October 21, 2015, is a lie, just the kind of sneaky trickery that evil Biff might have devised. Instead of obsessing over this, why don’t BTTF2 fanatics spend their time pondering something else: Shouldn’t that sequel have been called To the Future I, as Marty hadn’t been to the future before? Feel free to discuss this and other illogical sequel titles in another Vulture post.