2015 is a year in the 21st century.
On October 21, 2015, one hour before his past self would arrive with Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker, Dr. Emmett Brown went back in time to prevent a nuclear holocaust in 2045.
A new timeline was created, and most things that they originally witnessed in 2015 never existed.
Original Timeline
By this time in history, technology had progressed as much during the 30 years since 1985 as it had during the previous 30 years from 1955 to 1985. Electronics were in virtually everything from clothing to garbage cans to make them move, talk and/or make electronic noises.
Flying cars, once they were invented and perfected, had become so common that drivers no longer needed roads — except perhaps for short journeys. Skyways dominated the skies of central California and eventually the entire world. Cultural influences from other countries, particularly Japan, were more often seen in food and clothing.
Life was lived at a quicker pace than before, in evidence by the speed that people walked down the street, the time it took to cook dinner, and the swiftness of court trials.
Hill Valley underwent a period of gentrification, or revitalization of its downtown. With an increased concern for the environment, the Courthouse Square was landscaped with a large artificial lake (with the surrounding road having NO LANDING markings applied to dissuade drivers of flying cars from bringing their vehicles down near the lake), and businesses were brought back with the construction of an underground Courthouse Mall.
New technology
- Air traffic control
- Auto-adjusting and auto-drying jacket
- Automatic dog-walker
- Automated Texaco service station
- Barcode license plate
- Binocular card
- Bionic implants
- Compu-Fax
- Compu-Serve
- Computerized breastplate
- Cosmetic factory
- Data-court
- Dehydrated pizza
- Dust-repellent paper
- Flying circuits
- Fruit dispenser
- Hands free video games
- Holobillboard
- Holofilms like Jaws 19
- Hoverboards like the Mattel hoverboard, No Tech hoverboard, Pit Bull, the Rising Sun hoverboard, and the Question Mark hoverboard.
- Hovercam
- Hover conversion
- Hydrator
- Identa-pad
- Internet
- Kirk Gibson Jr. Slugger 2000 adjustable bat
- Litter Bugs, robotic mobile trashcans
- Master-cook
- Mr. Fusion
- Multi-channel video screen and the 300-plus channel universe
- Neon curbing
- Ortho-lev
- Pac Fax
- Portable thumb unit
- Power-lacing shoes
- Rejuvenation clinic
- Scene screen, featuring The Scenery Channel
- Skyway
- Slamball
- Sleeping device
- Soda bottles with built-in straws
- Flying cars
- Tablet computer
- Thumb pad
- Tranquilization
- Transponder
- U.S. Weather Service, controlling and scheduling weather
- Video glasses/Video telephone glasses
- Video simulacrum
- Video telephone
New culture
- Female president
- Multiple ties
- Transparent necktie
- Color-shifting lenticular baseball cap (teen fashion)
- Auto-adjusting and auto-drying jacket (teen fashion)
- Wearing pants inside-out (teen fashion)
- Privacy act
- Queen Diana
- Thumb bandit
- Vietnam becoming a favored spot for surfing vacations
- $100 is seen as spare change
- Proposition 237
New slang
New locations
- Blast from the Past
- Bottoms Up
- Cafe 80's
- Courthouse Mall
- Hill Valley International Vector Port
- Hill Valley Payroll Substation
- Hill Valley Surrogate Parenting Center
- Hydrators Unlimited
- Hyperlane Grid 4
- Pizza Hut restaurant
- Skyway C25
- Pontiac dealership
- The Ice Cream Clone
- Uniglobe Travel
- World O' Transponders
New organizations
- CusCo
- Fusion Industries
- Griff's gang
- International Center for Alternative Scientific Theory (ICAST)
- Luxor Cab Company
- Mothers Against Drunk Flying (MADF)
- Unit N11-11
Events
- Timeline 1:
- Saturday, August 8:
- Doc and Einstein arrive from 1985.
- Hill Valley 1980s Car Expo is held. Doc enters his DeLorean and wins first prize, 10% off a hover conversion at Goldie Wilson Hover Conversion Systems. To get the money he needs for this and the Mr. Fusion, he searches the internet for the best investment to make, then travels back to April 18, 1938 to pick up several new copies of the first issue of Action Comics. The
- Wednesday, October 21: Marty McFly Jr. is arrested after being set up for a robbery by Griff Tannen.
- Thursday, October 22: Marty Jr. is tried, sentenced and convicted to 15 years in the state penetentary for the robbery.
- Wednesday, October 28: Marty's daughter Marlene attempts to break her brother out of prison. She is sentenced to 20 years in jail.
- Dates unknown
- Goldie Wilson III, has his DeLorean outfitted with a Mr Fusion, and establishes a fake identity under the name Leroy Brown. Then he travels to another point in 2015 to sell another of his Action Comics at Southby's Auction House for $2.5 million dollars. After picking up several new copies of the first issue of Action Comics in 1938, Doc returns to an unknown time in 2015 where he sells one of the comics. He then uses the discount he won to get a hover conversion by
- Doc undergoes personal rejuvenation surgery and learns as much as he can about Marty Jr.'s meeting with Griff on October 21. Doc also places Einstein in a suspended animation kennel. He places the remaining money in a bank. Eventually, Doc leaves for 1985 to pick up Marty and Jennifer.
- Saturday, August 8:
- Timeline 2:
- Friday, October 9: Holomax Jaws 19 debuts at the theater: "This time, it's really really personal."
- Wednesday, October 21:
- The Chicago Cubs win the World Series.
- Doc Brown, Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker arrive in 2015 to save Martin McFly, Jr. from being set up for a crime by Griff Tannen.
- Marty poses as Marty Jr. and manages to change future history for the better by causing Griff and his gang to crash into the Hill County Courthouse, resulting in their being arrested.
- 2015 Biff Tannen steals the DeLorean time machine and heads back to 1955 with the sports almanac, then returns the DeLorean without either Doc or Marty noticing.
- The 47-year-old Marty, dared by Needles, illegally lets Needles scan his card, and subsequently gets fired by Mr. Fujitsu.
- Thursday, October 22: Griff and his gang are sent to jail for wrecking the Courthouse Mall.
- Friday, October 23: Queen Diana visits Washington, D.C. according to the October 22, 2015 issue of USA Today (of course, in reality, the princess died in 1997).
- Timeline 3:
- Wednesday, October 21: Biff Tannen is erased from history, as his changing the past has caused him to run Hill Valley in an alternate timeline. As a result of his actions, he is not alive in 2015 in the new timeline.
- Marty, Doc, Jennifer and Einstein travel back to 1985, not realizing that they are in a new timeline.
- Wednesday, October 21: Biff Tannen is erased from history, as his changing the past has caused him to run Hill Valley in an alternate timeline. As a result of his actions, he is not alive in 2015 in the new timeline.
- Timeline 4:
- October 16: Statler Toyota airs a commercial featuring Jimmy Joe Statler.[1] Friday,
- Wednesday, October 21:
- After changing the timeline where Biff ran Hill Valley, and refusing to race Needles in 1985, the fax machine no longer prints that Marty McFly was fired from his job on this date, as Jennifer Parker witnessed the words being erased in 1985.
- Date unknown: After being accidentally sent to 1885, where he settled to raise a family, Doc managed to create a steam time car, which he used to travel from 1893 to 2035. He then traveled in his temporal field generator Mk II from 2035 to 2015 to pick up a Mr. Fusion. After this, he took the Mr. Fusion back with him to 1985, and installed it in the second DeLorean time machine.
- Thursday, October 22: Griff and his gang are convicted and imprisoned for crashing into the Courthouse.
- Timeline 5:
- July 15: Microsoft's failed visions of the future were actually a success, leading to an alternate timeline where Microsoft's failed digital assistants, Clippy and Microsoft Bob, were now holograms that controlled everything. This timeline was erased once Doc Brown took the senior vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools business, Bob Muglia, back to April 4, 2007 to give a revised version of his "Visions of the Future" speech. Wednesday,
- Timeline 6:
- Wednesday, October 21:
- One hour before his past self would arrive with Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker, Emmett Brown set up a video camera to capture video of a space time correction. He goes back in time to an unknown destination to put his plan in motion.
- Griff and his gang crash into the Courthouse Mall, and Griff Tannen tries to unsuccessfully implicate Marty McFly Jr. This seems to imply that Marty and Jennifer allowed their son to get involved with Griff, knowing that their past selves would come to the future to help him.
- Wednesday, October 21:
- Timeline 7:
- Wednesday, October 21: The hydrator, Nike MAG, hoverboard, and Mr. Fusion are erased from from existence, as Doc Brown traveled to an unknown point in time to prevent these inventions from being available by 2015 to prevent a nuclear holocaust in 2045.
- Because of this, most things that they originally witnessed in 2015 never existed. The only technology that was shown to exist in the new timeline was tablet computers, the internet, self tracking video cameras, and digital versions of newspapers.
- Wednesday, October 21: The hydrator, Nike MAG, hoverboard, and Mr. Fusion are erased from from existence, as Doc Brown traveled to an unknown point in time to prevent these inventions from being available by 2015 to prevent a nuclear holocaust in 2045.
- Timeline 8:
- October 25: Time travel volunteers at the Institute of Future Technology, aboard Doc Brown's 8-passenger DeLorean, travel from 1991 to intercept Biff Tannen joyriding in the DeLorean time machine on this date. Sunday,
Behind the scenes
- Saturday, May 30: World premiere of Back to the Future Live in Concert in Lucerne, Switzerland.
- Thursday, June 23: Caseen Gaines' book, We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy is released.
- Sunday, September 27: The video game LEGO Dimensions, which includes Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox reprising their roles as Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty McFly, is released in the United States.
- Wednesday, September 30: Diamond Select releases the board game, Monopoly: Back to the Future Trilogy Edition.
- Wednesday, October 7: The original date that Marty, Jennifer and Doc would travel to as opposed to the 21st.
- Tuesday, October 13: The 30th Anniversary Edition of Back to the Future: The Game is released for PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
- Friday, October 16: Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History is first published by Titan Books in the UK.
- Tuesday, October 20:
- Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History is first published by Harper Design in the US.
- Back to the Future: The Animated Series is released on DVD in the United States.
- "How Back To The Future 2 Should Have Started", a short parody of Back to the Future Part II, is uploaded to YouTube by How It Should Have Ended.
- Wednesday, October 21:
- Back to the Future Day takes place.
- Universal Studios re-releases the films to theaters across the United States and United Kingdom.
- The first issue of IDW's Back to the Future comic is released.
- Wednesday, November 11: The second issue of IDW's Back to the Future comic is released.
- Wednesday, December 9: The third issue of IDW's Back to the Future comic is released.
Appearances
- Back to the Future Part II first draft screenplay
- Back to the Future (Alluded to when Doc said he'd travel to 30 years after 1985.)
- Back to the Future Part II
- Back to the Future Part II novelization
- Back to the Future Part III (Mentioned only)
- Back to the Future Part II & III
- Back to the Future: The Pinball (Date shown)
- Back to the Future: The Ride
- Back to the Future: The Animated Series (Season One opening theme)
- Super Back to the Future Part II
- Back to the Future: The Card Game (Mentioned only)
- Back to the Future: The Game
- Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 1: It's About Time (Mentioned only)[2]
- Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 2: Get Tannen! (Mentioned only)
- Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 3: Citizen Brown (Mentioned only)
- Doc Brown Saves the World
- Back to the Future (IDW Publishing)
- Back to the Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines
- Back to the Future: Continuum Conundrum
- Back to the Future: Continuum Conundrum Part 1 (Mentioned only)
- Back to the Future: Continuum Conundrum Part 3 (Mentioned only)
- Back to the Future: Continuum Conundrum Part 4 (Mentioned only)
- Back to the Future: Continuum Conundrum Part 5 (Mentioned only)
- Back to the Future: Continuum Conundrum Part 6
References
- ↑ Real-world Toyota 2015 ads show Jimmy Joe Statler with two ties and a flying car in the background, setting it in the timeline before Doc Brown erases hover technology from existence.
- ↑ When asking Doc why his 1931 counterpart couldn't have invented a hoverboard, Doc responds that they wouldn't be invented for another 84 years.
Actuality
- In 2015, in real life, there were no widely-produced flying cars, auto-adjusting and auto-drying jackets, power-lacing shoes, etc. Nike had produced prototype power-lacing shoes, there were prototype flying cars, such as the Transition road-able aircraft by Terrafugia, and Falyon Wearable Tech created a prototype auto-drying jacket. However, none of these will be shipping commercially until 2016. Another flying car, the Terrafugia TF-X, is planned for release in 2021.
- In reality, in 2015, the basic concept of watching multiple channels at once, as exhibited by Marty Jr., technically existed. Televisions offered picture-in-picture functionality and various satellite TV packages offering overviews of certain groups of channels based on genre – like sports or family channels – which could be viewed all at once. Some smart TVs also supported simple voice commands which allow the viewer to control functions such as turning the TV on and off, changing channels, accessing apps, and navigating the internet.
- Almost all of the billboards shown around Courthouse Square are holographic billboards, which were yet to be widely adopted in reality. The technology required to produce such displays was still in its infancy in 2015.
- On October 21st, 2015, the short, “Back to the 2015 Future”, premiered at Universal CityWalk as part of the 30th anniversary celebration. It features cameos from original Back to the Future cast members as well as sets from the original movies. It played five sold-out theatrical screenings, which you can attend ... if you have a time machine. Otherwise you can watch it here now.