Apart from a GIF out of The Walking Dead presented as an image from an actual MRI scan, the most annoyingly persistent Tumblr hoax concerns Back to the Future trivia. In the middle of the trilogy, Marty McFly time-travels 30 years forward in a tricked-out Delorean. But on what date does he arrive? According to Photoshop, any day you care to name.
Some version of the frame above, adjusted to reflect the current date, is daily reblogged by hundreds of users, often accompanied by a complaint to the effect that hoverboards have not yet been invented. In fact, McFly’s temporal destination was October 21, 2015—almost two years from now—so who keeps creating and spreading the fake stills?
Amazingly, most of this confusion may be the work of one dedicated sadist. “Today is the Day Marty McFly Went to the Future” is a Tumblr whose sole purpose is to generate a Photoshopped image of the Delorean’s familiar display panel for every single day on the calendar. Despite the posts’ suspicious provenance, people fall for them every time.
The endless, repetitive cycle of forgetting, the frustrated attempts to explain what’s really going on—it all starts to seem like another film entirely. Will this accursed day ever end?
H/T @evanengel | Photo by Tim Evanson/Flickr