Depiction of the future
Although the filmmakers researched contemporary predictions by scientists on what might occur by 2015, Zemeckis has said that the film was not meant to be a serious attempt at predicting the future. In 2010, he commented: "For me, filming the future scenes of the movie were the least enjoyable of making the whole trilogy, because I don't really like films that try and predict the future. The only ones I've actually enjoyed were the ones done by Stanley Kubrick, and not even he predicted the PC when he made A Clockwork Orange. So, rather than trying to make a scientifically sound prediction that we were probably going to get wrong anyway, we figured, let's just make it funny". Similarly, Gale said: "We knew we weren't going to have flying cars by the year 2015, but God we had to have those in our movie".
However, the film did correctly predict a number of technological and sociological changes that occurred by 2015, including: the rise of ubiquitous cameras; use of unmanned flying drones for newsgathering; widescreen flat-panel television sets mounted on walls with multiple channel viewing; smart home technology; video chat systems; hands-free video games; talking animated billboards; wearable technology; tablet computers with fingerprint scanners and head-mounted displays. Payment on personal portable devices is also depicted. Although payment by thumbprint was not widely used in 2015, fingerprint scanning was in use as security at places such as airports and schools, and electronic payment with fingerprint scanning as a security feature deployed for Apple Pay.
Other aspects of the depiction of the future would not come to pass by 2015, but efforts were made to replicate those technology advances.
The film shows Marty putting on Nike "Air Mag" tennis shoes with automatic shoelaces. Nike released a version of its Hyperdunk Supreme shoes, which appear similar to Marty's, in July 2008. Fans dubbed them the Air McFly. In April 2009, Nike filed the patent for self-lacing shoes, and its design bears a resemblance to those worn by Marty in the film. In 2010, a fan named Blake Bevin created shoes that tie themselves. Though Nike had made a very limited quantity of Air Mags in the same style as the movie, the company stated in September 2011 that its consumer-line MAG line of shoes would not feature the self-lacing feature shown in it. Tinker Hatfield, one of the shoe's designers, indicated in 2014 that it would introduce shoes with power-lacing technology the following year, 2015. In March 2016, Nike unveiled the HyperAdapt 1.0 shoe, a consumer-market model of the Air Mag which features the same self-lacing technology used for the commemorative Air Mags; these were put on sale in limited quantities in late 2016.
The producers created a futuristic flying car to depict a typical taxi cab in the future world of 2015. This taxi was based on the Citroën DS.
The concept of the hoverboard—a skateboard that can float off the ground—has been explored by various groups since the release of the film. Attempts similar to hoverboats, which blast air at the ground, have been demonstrated, with a 2021 record distance of 275 meters (902 ft). A different type is the MagBoard, developed by researchers at the Paris Diderot University. It uses a large superconductor plate on the bottom cooled with liquid nitrogen as to achieve the Meissner effect and allow it to float over a special track; it was shown capable of carrying the weight of a human in its practical demonstration. However, the requirement to run the superconductor at higher, more ambient temperatures prevents this from becoming practical. In March 2014, a company named HUVr Tech purportedly demonstrated a working hoverboard along with several celebrities including Lloyd, though this shortly was revealed as a hoax created by the website Funny or Die. Self-balancing "hoverboards" became popular in 2015 even though they do not hover above the ground.
In the 2015 scene, the film imagines the Chicago Cubs winning the 2015 World Series against the fictional Miami-based Gators, referring to the Cubs' longstanding failure to win a championship. In the actual 2015 season, the Cubs qualified for the postseason, their first postseason appearance since 2008, but lost the National League Championship Series (not the World Series) to the New York Mets on October 21, which coincidentally was the same day as "Back to the Future Day", the day Marty McFly arrived in 2015 in the film. Despite losing, one year later the Cubs did win the 2016 World Series against the Cleveland Indians; in congratulations to the Cubs, the official Twitter feed for the Back to the Future franchise jokingly tweeted out that Marty & Doc's time-traveling caused "a rift in the space-time continuum" that led to the 1994 strike (and subsequent cancellation of the 1994 World Series), thus delaying the accurate prediction by a year. In the real 2015 World Series, the Kansas City Royals defeated the Mets to win their first World Series championship since 1985, the year which Marty and Doc time traveled in the film. As for the fictional Miami team, when the film was made, Florida did not have a Major League Baseball team, but has since gained two: the Florida Marlins (now the Miami Marlins) in 1993 and Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now the Tampa Bay Rays) in 1998. While both teams have each made two appearances in the World Series (the Marlins winning in 1997 and 2003, and the Rays losing in 2008 and 2020), neither qualified for the postseason in 2015. Another sport mentioned in the film, SlamBall, would indeed become a real sport in 2002.
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