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Referenced By / Back to the Future

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  • From Atomic Robo: "Should an intense young man or a wild-eyed gentleman ever approach you and mention the word 'Tunguska', I want you to shoot them."
    • Also, the Telluric Interchanger that Emma presents at the National 4th Grade Science Fair is more than a little bit similar (read: identical) to the Flux Capacitor.
  • A Flux Capacitor cameos in the background of issue 10 of the Darkwing Duck comic book.
  • Monica's Gang: In a story that mostly parodies the Terminator, Jimmy Five is sent back in time to steal Monica's bunny when she was a baby. His friends become so enraged with his failure the story ends with him desperately begging Doc Brown to take him away from them.
  • The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis: Fry and Bart use the anti-gravity gum to make their skateboards fly and go to the Simpsons' house faster. Comic Book Guy sees this and points out that they're ripping off Michael J. Fox's flying skateboard scene from Back to the Future Part II:
    Comic Book Guy: Worst tribute, ever!

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • During the opening credits of A Christmas Carol (2009), a few kids are having fun by clinging onto the backs of carriages and hitching a ride on them. Upon being redeemed, Scrooge himself does this too.
  • A chase scene in Aladdin ends with the pursuers getting covered in manure.
    • Later, Aladdin pretends to jump off a balcony and is caught by a flying device hovering at a height just far enough below the balcony for his head to disappear, much like the purpose the DeLorean served in Part II.
  • One of Raoul's puns in the English version of A Monster in Paris is a reference to the series.
  • During the car chase between the heroes and the weasels in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the weasel driving sneers "I'm gonna ram 'im!"... then, when the attempted target of their vehicular assault dodges, he and his mooks scream as they hurtle towards a crash, just like the scene with Biff chasing a skateboard-riding Marty in the first movie. Both films are directed by Robert Zemeckis.
  • In How to Train Your Dragon (2010), a sketch of a flux capacitor can be seen on a wall◊ behind Hiccup.
  • Mr. Peabody & Sherman: When Mr. Peabody is talking about the WABAC needing to go faster than it had ever before to go forward in time, the speedometer reads 88 miles per hour.
  • Teen Titans Go! To the Movies has time travel scenes that reference BBTF in various ways: the BTTF theme is used as background music; Robin exclaims "Then let's go back to the future! I mean, the past!"; and Raven asks where they're going to find Libyan terrorists to sell them plutonium at this hour.
  • The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part explicitly references the series when Rex Dangervest who is actually an alternate Emmet from the future builds a time machine with pieces taken from LEGO sets about time travel franchises: Doc Brown's DeLorean is naturally the first one. Near the end he's fading from existence piece by piece (starting from the hand, of course) and says he's "Back-to-the-Futuring".

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Wishful Thinking van taking off into the sky at the end of A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner! mimics the famous ending shot of the first movie.
  • Avengers: Endgame: The Team mentions the film along with various Time Travel films when discussing about their plan for a "time heist".
  • Bloodsuckers Anonymous, among other references, has a very familiar Time Machine.
  • In The Boondock Saints McGerkin is known for misquoted proverbs and references Biff Tannen's misquoted "Why don't you make like a tree, and get out of here." almost verbatim when he demands that the Russian mobsters leave his bar.
  • Camp Nowhere
  • As soon as Time Travel is brought up in Donnie Darko, Donnie mentions the DeLorean.
  • In The Flash (2023), one of the first differences with the prime universe that Barry discovers is that Eric Stoltz remained in the role of Marty McFly.
  • Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel has several references to Time Travel-related media, this being among them. One character lifts his shades ala the famous movie posters, and later a movie theater is shown playing "A Boy's Life", the Working Title for the original film.
  • Seth MacFarlane's western comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West features an in-character cameo of Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown in a reference to the third film.
  • Here's some interesting trivia: originally, the climax of getting Marty McFly back, well, to the future, was that Doc Brown was going to take him and a refrigerator to an A-Bomb test, and let the bomb's effects send him back to his rightful time. However, Steven Spielberg was uncomfortable with the idea, concerned that kids might climb into abandoned fridges to play-act the scene, and so asked Robert Zemeckis to find a different approach. However, no good idea goes unpunished, and thus was born the infamous fridge scene from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
  • Il migliore dei mondi, a film by Maccio Capatonda who also directed and starred in Italiano Medio (see below), is about an alternate temporal line and has a few nods to BTTF, since it is Capatonda's favorite film ever. A BTTF poster hangs on Ennio's office, the girls he falls for is dressed as Marty for a costume party, and to woo her Ennio mentions how Eric Stoltz was going to be Marty before being replaced by Michael J. Fox. (Not to mention that the name of the character Capatonda plays, "Ennio Storto", kind of sounds like Eric Stoltz)
  • A subtle one in Italiano Medio: one of the placards inside the environmentalists' hideout reads "Save the clock tower!".
  • Sharknado 5: Global Swarming: The final scene mimics the final scene of the first movie, including a flying car about to time travel.
  • Sing Street: Conor Lawlor asks few characters if they have seen Back To The Future.
  • Welcome to Marwen: near the end, protagonist Mark Hogancamp builds a DeLorean model out of random stuff including a kitchen timer, Christmas lights and a lava lamp, and his alter ego uses it in the doll world to get rid of the witch that represents his PTSD after having been assaulted (It Makes Sense in Context). The car is functionally identical to the one in BTTF, with the only difference being the flaming trails being blue instead of red. Parts of the BTTF theme are also used in the soundtrack. The movie was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who wanted to include a meta reference.

    Literature 
  • In A Boy Made of Blocks, Sam's friend's father is a classical composer who is said to look like Doc Brown, only more eccentric.
  • Ciaphas Cain has a flying DeLorean in Duty Calls.
  • In Dark Future, Bronson Manolo's high-tech and highly secure tank and mobile command center is a DeLorean Sand Master.
  • In Dogs Don't Talk, Diane throws a Back to the Future-themed graduation party for Johnny and his classmates.
  • In Harmony (2016), Tilly imagines a world in which people disappear from photos when they die, like when Marty almost fails to get his parents together.
  • The Light Jar: In a flashback, Nate tries to bring a friend over, hoping to watch Back to the Future.
  • Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! has Luhy Distone owning a green Delorean that can fly (and leaves behind flame trails).
  • Ready Player One: The vehicle Parzival uses to go to Ogden Morrow's party is a DeLorean.
  • In There's More Than One Way Home, Anna buys the trilogy as a boxed set, and that night she and Jack watch all three in one sitting. Jack keeps asking questions about celebrities he's never heard of and plot holes, until finally Anna says, "Time travel stories never hold up if you look at them too closely."
  • The Delorelion from Zoofights has a Flux Capacitor, which gets set off in the sixth installment during a fight, sending both combatants back in time.
  • In Mindblind, Cooper says "Hello, McFly?" when Nathaniel spaces out.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The final episode of Ace of Cakes was made for the series' 25th anniversary, and is appropriately decked with references.
  • The Birds of a Feather episode "It Happened in Hollywood" has a brief scene where Tracey, Sharon, and Dorien run past the set for the clock tower.
  • The Castle episode "He's Dead, She's Dead" has a reference to the series, among other Time Travel-based works.
  • In Chuck, Dr. Leo Dreyfus (played by Christopher Lloyd) is constantly called "Doc" by Chuck.
    • An entire episode was laden with Back to the Future jokes, when one of the characters ill-advisedly buys an old DeLorean for cheap because it's owner is fed up with it. The car can't go faster than 22 miles per hour, and there are several jokes lampshading both the car's prominent role in the series and it's general lack of quality.
  • Cold Case: The episode "Greed" features a victim who owned a DeLorean and was killed in 1985.
  • The Community episode "Introduction to Finality", Evil Abed makes his opinions on Part II quite clear.
  • The first victim in an episode of CSI: NY is named Dr. Martin Browning, a mashup of Marty McFly and Doc Brown's names. The ep in question deals with the possibility of time travel.
  • Doctor Who, also being a famous time travel-based series, has a few references to the series:
  • The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder: There was an episode titled, Back to the Scooter, (A reference to the film) where Viv and Roy travel back to 1996, to get their parents to change their minds about a school dance.
  • The Flash (2014): The film trilogy was mentioned by the eponymous protagonist and his friends when discussing Time Travel. Interestingly, Thomas F. Wilson plays a major Recurring Character in one of its sister shows.
  • Fringe:
  • In the Hannah Montana episode "The Way We Almost Weren't", Miley and Jackson time-travel back to the diner where Robbie met their mother for the first time. When they accidentally interfere with the initial encounter, Jackson starts fading out of existence. They spend the rest of the episode trying to make their parents meet so that they are actually born.
  • The series Get a Life features an episode where Chris Elliot's man child character needs to time travel (it's that sort of show). While going through, and rejecting various famous time travel devices (such as a Time Tunnel that is infested with bats), he rejects a DeLorean because it has a broken turn signal and that can be dangerous at 88 MPH.
  • In the Legends of Tomorrow season 1 episode "Night of the Hawk", the team travels to 1958 and has to go undercover in a small Oregon town. The episode contains a lot of references to the first movie, and the characters themselves give some of their own, such as Jax calling a bully met in a diner "Biff".
  • Once Upon a Time: The two-part season three finale, "Snow Drifts" and "There's No Place Like Home". Would you believe Rumpelstiltskin as Doc Brown and Snow White and the Prince as Lorraine and George?
  • Spin City has Michael J. Fox's character looking at his watch in a matter quite similar to the famous posters for the series. This was most definitely intentional.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Hollow Pursuits", one of the systems that Barclay mentions is malfunctioning is the flux capacitor. However, in a previous scene, it's referred to as a "flow capacitor," making this either a script error or a flub on Dwight Schultz's part.
  • Stranger Things Season 3 has Dustin, Erica, Steve, and Robin hide at a midnight showing of Back to the Future while escaping from the Soviets at the mall. Steve, who is disoriented from a dosage of Truth Serum the Soviets gave him earlier, doesn't understand what's happening and sums it up as "Alex P. Keaton trying to fuck his mom."

    Music 
  • The Busted song "Year 3000" has several references to the series.
  • The description for the "Guilty Pleasure" home video says that the label gave them $650,000 to make the video, which they blew on a sports car. Afterwards, the official video for "Guilty Pleasure" was released, and we get to see that the car the band blew all that money on was a DeLorean.
  • The music video for the Electric Six song "Down at McDonnelzzz", a DeLorean shows up at one point.
  • British band McFly are named after the main character and his family.
  • The album "Tillbaka till samtiden" ("Back to the present") by the famous Swedish band Kent. It doubles as a pun, since "Back to the future" means "Tillbaka till framtiden" in Swedish.
  • I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME, a concept band consisting of Dallon Weekes (ex-Panic! at the Disco) and Ryan Seaman (ex-Falling in Reverse), took their name from a line in the first film. Fittingly enough, a large part of the band's mythos is based around Time Travel.
  • The official video for Pinguini Tattici Nucleari's "Ringo Starr" recreates the "Enchantment Under the Sea" scene, complete with the film's Italian dialogues in the spoken parts.
  • The song "What If" by Matthew West contains the line "I can't go back in time, I don't have a DeLorean."

    New Media 

    Pinball 
     Podcast 

    Radio 

    Roleplay 

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • A very subtle one when Westridge is briefing you when you first arrive at the safehouse in the Middle East in Alpha Protocol. Apparently the computer has an internet connection "that's so fast you'll feel like you're going back in time."
  • The first Amateur Surgeon game has a boss referencing the series.
  • The Time Travel plot from the very 80's-inspired game Retro City Rampage alludes to the series quite a bit.
  • In the Wild West-themed "Ham 'em High" chapter of Angry Birds, Level 14-5 has a DeLorean as a set piece.
  • One of BlazBlue Continuum Shift's achievements is named "1.21 Gigawatts!"
  • A white-board in Black Mesa notes that the high powered laser requires 1.21 gigawatts.
  • Burnout Paradise has a floating DeLorean knockoff.
  • The first Borderlands game has this quote from Patricia Tannis:
    "We'll need a nuclear reactor to generate the 1.21 gigawatts - oh, hey!"
  • The Guardian, from Call of Duty: Black Ops II's multiplayer, consumes 1.21 gigawatts of power.
  • During the Reverie DLC for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, you come across a scroll which mentions a time machine built by Emmett Marron.
  • One achievement in Civilization V references the series.
  • In Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley, Smiley refers to the "speed of time travel", 88 MPH. Also, Winklemeyer's helmet seems to be intended to resemble the one Doc Brown is seen wearing.
  • When starting his vehicle after a full stop in Crash Tag Team Racing, Cortex sometimes says "1.8 Gigawatts of power!"
  • In Crysis 2, in the electrified tunnel near the end of the second chapter, the first time you get shocked, the suit discreetly warns you that the electricity is 1.21 gigawatts.
  • The power output of Tesla's Hypercoil weapon in Dark Void is 1.21 gigawatts.
  • The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark: In the episode "Funfair Dismissal", a key plot point involves a vehicle that teleports when it travels at 88 meters per hour, powered by a familiar-looking device called "the Duck's Capacitor".
  • At one point in Dead Space, you have to salvage a "Singularity Core" from the USM Valor. Said core looks an awful lot like a Flux Capacitor.
  • In Déjà Vu (1985), Stogie remarks that he'd never seen anyone wearing purple underwear before. At least he didn't call you "Calvin."
  • The terrorist combi van in the second Desert Strike game is ripped right out of the first movie.
  • There's a quest in DragonFable called "Back To The Past". The boss is called Biff, and his death animation is a manure truck dropping on him.
  • Disco Zoo lets the player use a Delorean to travel through time to the Jurassic.
  • The secret Nostalgia Level in Driver: San Francisco is unlocked by driving 88 MPH in a DeLorean.
  • Dungeons of Dredmor has a katana item with the description "All the best stuff is made in Japan."
  • In one level of Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, Duke can come across the DeLorean.
  • In FreeSpace, there's a cutscene where scientists are testing new shield technology. The firing beam discharges at 1.21 gigawatts.
  • Grand Theft Auto V has a car modeled on the Delorean, which has a levitating mode inspired by the movie.
  • Kingdom of Loathing:
    • One ultra-rare enemy can send you hopping throughout time as an attack, ending with "Great Scott!"
    • Also, an encounter in the Haunted Ballroom mimics the plot of the first movie, the difference here being that the Marty stand-in is a ghost, like everyone else there, and therefore isn't really in danger of death. Nonetheless, the player character helps him out. (As an added bonus, the filename for his image is named "Keaton.jpg".)
    • Another adventure is titled "Hack to the Future".
  • The Five Nights at Fuckboy's series uses a time-traveling DeLorean as a major plot device.
  • The climax of the Western Movie level in Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! has Buster and Montana Max riding on a handcar to evade a runaway train. Once they get up to 88 MPH, they disappear in a trail of flames.
  • Slaps and Beans have an NPC character looking a lot like Doc Brown. Said character even exclaims "Great Scott!" at one point.
  • Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion has the level McFly Station, named after Marty McFly himself. The reference also extends to the station's subtitle: "Do it with some style!"
  • In Stray, Doc is a robot with wires around his hair emulating a wild mane of hair, a fondness for goggles, and who has made an invention that requires 1.21 gigawatts to work. Also, everyone just calls him "Doc" and he hangs out with a younger person who constantly wears a reddish orange sleeveless puffer vest and whose legs are denim blue. Doc's home is also filled with clocks. In addition, there's a robot named Seamus. Seamus is the name of Marty McFly's great great grandfather.

    Visual Novels 
  • Yo-Jin-Bo has a reference to the series.
  • Steins;Gate makes many references to the series including mentioning "1.21 gigawatts" and the main plot device is called D-Mail, which is short for DeLorean Mail. The lead writer even calls Back to the Future one of his favorite movies.
  • The first movie is mentioned as a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo in Zero Time Dilemma in order to describe the concept of SHIFTing.

    Web Animation 
  • As Twilight looks over the wreckage the titular Double Rainboom causes, a double fire trail is shown. To further cement in the reference, the famous theme cameos in the background music for a few seconds.
  • At the end of the Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse episode "Endless Summer", Summer rides the Mattel-branded hoverboard from the sequels.
  • The time machine in the Dick Figures episode "Steakosaurus" has a Flux Capacitor right in the middle of it.
  • Several references in Homestar Runner and its main attraction.
  • Expect the DeLorean to show up if a game reviewed on Zero Punctuation involves Time Travel. (Either that or a TARDIS.)
  • Clear Skies 3: When Sol's boosting the drive output near the end, his screen shows a prompt warning him that rerouting the power will void the warranty, and the amount of power transferred is 1.21 gigawatts.

    Web Comics 

    Web Video 

    Western Animation 
  • Alvin and the Chipmunks has two episodes named "Back to Dave's Future" and "Back to Our Future".
  • In one episode of American Dad!, Stan and Steve are trying to get a door for Stan's project of building a DeLorean, and are competing with a Back to the Future fanboy, who steals the knob from Stan's gearshift. Steve climbs out onto the hood, leaps into the other guy's DeLorean, steals the knob back, and then jumps back to Stan's car, even flipping back down into the passenger's seat. All while a Suspiciously Similar version of the Back to the Future theme song plays.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: In the "Warriors of Kyoshi" episode, Aang tells Sokka "Where we're going, you won't need any pants".
  • Professor T. Bird introduces his new Flying Car to the Battletoads with this line:
    "Where we're going, we don't need tires!"
  • Sparky from the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Does Pavlov Ring a Bell?" is quite similar to Doc Brown.
  • From Chop Socky Chooks: "Where did I go? Back to the future?"
  • Family Guy:
    • The episode "Meet the Quagmires" is a Whole-Plot Reference to Back to the Future, with Peter going back to 1984 and accidentally preventing his marriage to Lois.
    • In "Business Guy", one of Carter's Video Wills for if he's dead or otherwise unable to run his company has him saying that the train wasn't able to push the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour and he's stuck in 1885.
    • "Finders Keepers" has a cutaway where George questions Lorraine about the similarities between their son and the "Marty" they met in 1955.
    • During the chicken fight from "Internal Affairs", Peter and the Giant Chicken go back in time to the Old West and return to the present via Marty and the DeLorean pushed by a train.
    • A cutaway in "Peter's Sister" shows an alternate ending to the first movie where Marty figures that since he's about to fade into oblivion, he might as well have sex with Lorraine in the past. The result is that in his picture of himself and his parents, they're replaced with an inbred Marty, and the "To Be Continued" card is replaced with "To Be Contondered".
    • An unused joke from Family Guy Presents: Laugh It Up, Fuzzball had a reference to the past Lorraine kissing Marty when Leia kissed Luke.
  • An episode of Garfield and Friends is titled "Quack to the Future".
  • When the twins travel into the past in an episode of Gravity Falls, Dipper asks "When the heck are we?" Mabel is about to ask the same question. This is a reference to the first film, where Marty asks "Where the hell are they?" and Doc Brown replies with, "The question is, when the hell are they?" Dipper said the line Mabel was about to say, as she expected him to start with, "Where the heck are we?", thereby copying the exchange word for word.
  • During the montage in the Hey Arnold! episode "Grandpa's Birthday", Arnold and Grandpa Phil see a movie with a man hanging from a clock tower.
  • The extremely rare cartoon adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors — Little Shop — has an episode called "Back to the Fuchsia".
  • Milo Murphy's Law:
    • "Missing Milo": As in Part II, Milo writes a letter to be delivered for his friends to read decades before/later. Likewise, the Cliffhanger ending shows a Pistachion on the loose in 1955.
    • "The Race": Dakota and Cavendish get stuck in the Old West, and their method of getting home requires a risky maneuver with a cliff.
  • An episode of Muppet Babies (1984) is entitled "Back to the Nursery". In this episode, Baby Fozzie accidentally spills hot cocoa on a photo in Nanny's yearbook. The babies then build their own pretend Time Machine and imagine they go back in time to recreate the photo.
  • Phineas and Ferb: The Time Travel episode "Quantum Boogaloo" sees Adult!Candace accidentally cause a chain reaction that turns Danville into a gloomy dystopia.
  • Rick and Morty is an Affectionate Parody of this movie franchise.
  • Robot Chicken featured various sketches based on the movies, and Christopher Lloyd reprised his role as Doc Brown in a few sketches, namely one which explained how he got the plutonium from Libyan terrorists.
  • The Simpsons:
    • In "The Boy Who Knew Too Much", Bart hides from Principal Skinner by covering himself with a blanket in the backseat of a convertible, like Marty in Part II
    • The title of "Lisa's Date With Density" is a play on how George accidentally introduces himself to Lorraine as "her density".
    • In "When You Dish Upon A Star", Homer tries to give Alec Baldwin a script he's written about "a killer robot driving instructor who travels back in time for some reason". As he looks through the script, we see a drawing that resembles the flux capacitor.
    • In "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)", Homer worries about a duel the next morning while looking at a gravestone with his name on it, like Marty in Part III.
    • "Bart to the Future": Besides the episode's title, the future Nelson resembles the Biff Tannen of 1985-A.
    • In "That 90's Show", Homer performs at a concert, where a certain "Marvin Cobain" calls his cousin to tell him about the new sound "he's been looking for", in a parody of the scene where "Marvin Berry" makes a similar call to his cousin Chuck.
    • In the third segment of "Treehouse of Horror XXIII", "Bart & Homer's Excellent Adventure" Bart used Professor Frink's time machine car (Similar to the DeLorean time machine) to go back into time to get a low-priced comic book in 1974. While in the past, he prevented his parents from meeting and checks out his picture. The picture seems to disappear, suggesting that he prevented his existence. Instead, a new picture showed up, revealing him to still be born despite his mom marrying someone else.

 
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Chuck, listen to this!

When Ice-T starts experimenting with a new flow style, his producer calls his cousin Chuck and asks him to listen up, only to fart into the receiver.

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Bait-and-Switch

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Chuck, listen to this!

When Ice-T starts experimenting with a new flow style, his producer calls his cousin Chuck and asks him to listen up, only to fart into the receiver.

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