This Mistake in 'Back to the Future' Has Bugged Fans for Decades

In a sci-fi comedy film that's pretty much perfect (fight me), one mistake in the timeline of Back to the Future has famously plagued fans who are in the know.

Near the end of the film, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) plays two songs at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. He does so on a Gibson ES-345 guitar that a member of the band gives him.

This is supposed to occur in 1955, but the Gibson ES-345 wasn't manufactured until 1958. The guitar also featured humbucker pickups (the electromagnetic devices behind the strings), which weren't patented until 1957.

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Anachronisms occur in movies all the time, but in a film about time travel, some fans read into this as an Easter egg. Did Marty go to 1958, too?

Fox Says There's No Hidden Message

Fox has acknowledged the blooper in his new book, Future Boy, which came out this week.

The actor writes the mistake was "a temporal inconsistency that guitar aficionados and Back to the Future fans have pointed out again and again" (via CBR).

Fox adds later, "There's no cinematic Easter egg intended here—the film's art department simply picked the ES-345 because it evoked the iconic wine-red axe that Chuck Berry famously duck-walked across stages all over the world."

According to Guitar Player, the guitar did accurately resemble Berry's famous guitar, but it was just the wrong model.

According to Screenrant, a more historically accurate choice would have been the Gibson ES-350T, which debuted in 1955 and was used by Berry on American Bandstand.

"Both the '55 and '58 versions of the Gibson electric are rare and beautiful instruments," Fox writes. "For me, it makes little difference which I played. I've always loved the Gibson E line: big, imposing guitars yet hollow-­bodied and therefore lightweight. Even a little guy like yours truly could sling 'em and fling 'em and still make 'em sing."

In another infamous twist, the red Gibson from the film went missing after the shoot and has yet to be found.

Gibson's Mark Agnesi has been on the hunt for the piece of movie history, and recently, he reported they have found the ES-345 from Back to the Future Part II, but not the Enchantment original (via Guitar World).