Alexandria

So one of my FB friends shared the following image earlier today:

Having recently re-watched “Back to the Future 2” for the N-th time – where N = some arbitrarily-large number – when I saw the above image my first thought was, “Hoax?”  That hunch was correct.  Later, when I had a bit more time, I re-watched parts of BTTF2 yet again, and approximately 4 minutes & 33 seconds (4:33) into the movie, I heard the following bit of dialogue:

Marty:  Alright Doc, what’s going on, huh?  Where are we?  When are we?

Doc:  We’re descending toward Hill Valley, California, at 4:29 p.m., on Wednesday, October twenty-first, twenty-fifteen.

Marty:  Two-thousand fifteen?  You mean we’re in the future! 

During that exchange, the viewer is also treated to this shot of the DeLorean’s time readouts (at 4:42):

Later, at 9:42, we get the following shot of what Marty and Doc (at 10:11) describe as “tomorrow’s newspaper”:

Admittedly, the year in the upper-left quadrant of the above newspaper is somewhat unclear.  However, at 23:44, another shot of the newspaper gives its date as “OCTOBER 22, 2015”:

Finally, at 38:22, we get another shot of the DeLorean’s time readouts, which further corroborates the Oct. 21, 2015 date:

It seems fairly clear that the rest of the world won’t catch up with Marty & Doc’s (future) adventure for another 3 years, 3 months, and 21 days.

As for the origins of the hoax image:  I’m not entirely sure where it was taken from, but I suspect it was a Photoshopped version of the following shot of the DeLorean’s time display, from 24:44 in the original “Back to the Future”:

Consistent with this hypothesis are the date & time that the hoax image gives for “PRESENT TIME” and “LAST TIME DEPARTED”; these values match those in the above image from BTTF1.  Also identical is the time given by both images for “DESTINATION TIME.”

I realize I have gone on at some length regarding the above error.  However, given that said error involved a issue of such immense significance; and given that it has now occurred more than once (see here and here); I figured it merited a particularly thorough rebuttal.