Ways Back To The Future 2 Eerily Predicted The Present

Almost 30 years ago, Back to the Future Part II provided a glimpse of the future that seemed funny and utterly fantastical at the time—but has actually come true in a number of surprising ways. Here's some of the stuff future Marty and Biff wouldn't necessarily be surprised to see today.

While walking the streets of Hill Valley in the future, Marty is momentarily startled by a three-dimensional CGI Jaws erupting from a movie theater marquee. At the time, the shark was pretty terrifying, but compared to the increasingly immersive 3D movies that have been produced since then, the shark is far from scary, and even appears kind of cartoony.

At one point, Marty expresses surprise at the news that Florida has a baseball team—specifically Miami. While no team name is given, the mascot is a cartoon alligator holding a baseball bat. Since Back to the Future Part II, not one, but two baseball teams have established their homes in Florida. The first, in 1993, was the Florida Marlins, who changed their name to the Miami Marlins in 2011. The second, established in 1998, was the Tampa Bay Devil Rays—who also changed their name, becoming simply the Tampa Bay Rays in time for the 2008 season. True, neither team features an alligator as their mascot, but cut us some slack: the fact that a baseball team is based in Florida is what's important here. We're pretty close on this one.

When Mr. Fujitsu fires future Marty, he does so from a wall-mounted TV—a sight that's become pretty commonplace. The days of the bulky television set have been over since around 2010. True, flat panels have existed since the 1960s, but they didn't become easily available for purchase to the general public until the late 2000s and early 2010s. Now, try to find a cathode ray TV. You can't—unless you're in an antique store. At any electronics store, all you'll see are row after row of wall-mounted televisions, with widescreen aspect ratios that provide a true home-theater experience.

Here's one instance where a throwaway gag became a frightening reality. In the film, Marty's daughter Marlene McFly sits down to dinner wearing a pair of glasses she uses to do things like watch television and answer the phone. Google took the first steps to making this a real possibility with Google Glass in 2013, and while these glasses haven't become very widespread yet, some of the unintended consequences already exist. How many of us have been to dinner with people who paid more attention to their phones than their dining companions? Or worse, how many of us have seen someone lost in his or her cell phone while walking or driving? Maybe with this one, director Robert Zemeckis was trying to warn us.

During Griff and his gang's arrest, a USA Today drone snaps a picture of them for the newspaper. They didn't exist at the time, but today, a growing number of people use and rely on the gadgets. Farmers use them to keep an eye on their livestock or crops, the military has found obvious applications for them, and Amazon has plans to use them for deliveries. Drones are also available for purchase by the average person for recreational pursuits, which, unfortunately, sometimes comes at the expense of other people's privacy. In fact, drones are now so commonplace that the FAA has had to come up a set of regulations.

For about a decade, a company called Terrafugia has been working on making flying cars a reality. First, it unveiled the Transition in 2013, which has gotten off the ground—literally—and it has a range of about 400 miles. But to be honest, it just looks like a small plane, so it really doesn't quite fulfill the idea of a flying car. And with the hefty and "firm" price of $299,000, it may be awhile before every house has one in its driveway. Terrafugia's TF-X looks more like what we picture when we think of flying cars, and although it's yet to fulfill its promise yet, the company expects to have it on the road (and in the skies) by 2018. Flying-car fever seems to have caught on: in September 2015, Toyota filed a patent for one of their own. Now that companies are competing to make flying cars a reality, it's only a matter of time before we complain about rush hour from 30,000 feet.

The hoverboard became an instant sensation as soon as it popped up in Back to the Future II, and we spent decades demanding that science find a way to catch up. In early 2015, companies like Solowheel and the tantalizingly named Hov-Board released items they referred to as hoverboards, but those turned out to be just Segways without handlebars. But there is hope.

In August 2015, Lexus—yes, the car company—picked up the torch and created a hoverboard that actually hovers. The catch is that it needs a specially designed track and won't be mass-produced, as it was only created for a commercial. More intriguingly, in October 2014, husband and wife designers Jill and Greg Henderson mounted a Kickstarter campaign to fund their Hendo Hoverboard. With the $510,590 they raised, they founded their Arx Pax start-up and created an actual prototype, which was ridden by professional skateboarder Tony Hawk. While video of the ride shows that the board doesn't perform as well as the ones in the movie, it's enough for us to say that hoverboards do, in fact, exist. Just wear a helmet—and don't take it on the water.

In the '80s, what was the only futuristic sports fantasy that might have sounded more absurd than Florida getting a baseball team? The Cubs breaking their agonizing postseason drought and finally winning a World Series. Back to the Future Part II's gag about the Cubs taking the title in 2015 got a lot of laughs, but it very nearly came true: in 2016, the Cubs won the Series in dramatic fashion, taking Game 7 into extra innings before squeaking out a one-point victory over the Cleveland Indians. The fact that it all happened a year after the movie predicted was wryly noted by star Michael J. Fox, who added a couple of sly callbacks when he congratulated the team via Twitter.