The Back to the Future Date Hoax

What year did Back to the Future visit? 2012 or 2015? Rumors that the Back to the Future series visited the year 2012 persist, even though longtime fans (including this author) insist that the year was 2015. Let’s take a look at the rumor.

How did this rumor begin? Most likely someone with nothing better to do decided to Photoshop the current year into a screenshot taken from the movie. Thus, an image of the control panel from the car in the Back to the Future movie circulated, showing a 2012 date. Those who aren’t intimately aware of the details of the movie believed the photo and circulated it. Those of us, however, who are know the movie well, are sure the image is a fake and that the year was 2015, not 2012.

This is a faked image, falsely showing 2012 as the future date in the movie.

It should be noted that the movie traveled in 30-year increments: 1955, 1985, and 2015. And of course it went back 100 years in the third installment to the year 1885.

Below is a short clip from the movie in which you can clearly see that the date on the control panel is October 21, 2015 – and not June 27, 2012.

For an exhaustive timeline of Back to the Future, visit this site.

1/7/2013 Update
We spotted a 2013 version of this hoax floating around this week which shows the Back to the Future date as January 4, 2013. We’ve included the image below. As indicated above, the correct date is still 2015.

So we still have to wait for October 21, 2015 for the real date!

2013 Hoax Versions have included the dates January 4, 2013 and April 30, 2013:
 

Article updated April 30, 2013