Inventor Emmett "Doc" Brown, played by actor Christopher Lloyd, left, and Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, prepare for the first test of the Doc's time machine in a shopping mall parking lot in the 1985 film "Back to the Future."
10 things 'Back to the Future Part II' predicted we'd have by now
When "Back to the Future Part II" debuted in November 1989, audiences were floored by the technology depicted in the movie's vision of 2015. The movie opens with Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Emmett "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd) landing their DeLorean time machine in the unfamiliar future of Oct. 21, 2015, surrounded by strange devices and social norms.
Now that Oct. 21, 2015 is actually upon us, it's a good time to take a step back and analyze the technology that the movie's writers thought we'd have by now.
So dig out your flux capacitor and rev your DeLorean up to 88 mph, because we're going back to the present to check out "future" technology.
Self-tying shoes
(Credit: Nike)
When Marty McFly first arrives in the year 2015, he is given a pair of Nike MAGs (Magnetic Anti Gravity) to wear. Despite the shoes' name, their most memorable feature was power laces, allowing for self tying with a simple push of the button. Nike released a few hundred replica pairs of the Nike MAGs in 2011, sans power laces.
Smart clothing
(Credit: OMsignal )
In addition to self-tying shoes, Marty McFly's jacket from 2015 includes two futuristic features: self drying and auto-adjusting sleeve lengths. While we're not quite there yet, today's "smart clothing" has a slew of unique features of its own. Companies, like OMsignal, whose namesake shirt is seen here, incorporate built-in biometrics, health and fitness monitoring, in addition to odor and moisture control.
Video conferencing
(Credit: AP)
Video chatting was seen as a staple of everyday life in the 2015 of "Back to the Future Part II." Video phones were everywhere, with video pay phones even being installed in public places. Today, services like Skype and FaceTime give anyone with a computer, tablet or smartphone the ability to video chat with anyone else anywhere in the world. However, the rise of the smartphone has effectively killed off the pay phone, making a video pay phone extremely unlikely going forward.
Video glasses
(Credit: AP)
Marty McFly's future children can both be seen wearing a pair of JVC video glasses in the 2015 of "Back to the Future Part II." These devices allowed the wearer to watch TV or participate in video calls without needing a separate screen. While JVC hasn't developed a version of video glasses yet, Google's Glass effort has produced a similar product with several other features available, including the ability to record video, read text messages and search the Web.
Dehydrated food
(Credit: AP)
While at his future home, Marty McFly witnesses a small, cookie-sized, dehydrated Pizza Hut pizza instantly grow to portions large enough to feed a family of four via a Black & Decker hydrator. While Pizza Hut has yet to adopt dehydrated food, the process has been in practice for years, especially among astronauts who bring dehydrated food with them to space. Here, NASA's Vickie Kloeris demonstrates the rehydrating of some freeze-dried shrimp fried rice for journalists at the Space Food Systems Laboratory at Johnson Space Center, Texas, on Nov. 19, 2003.
Automated restaurant servers
Marty McFly was shocked when he walked into Cafe 80s in 2015 to find a video representation of Michael Jackson taking his order. While the late king of pop won't be bringing you your salad anytime soon, the move toward automation in restaurants is already underway. Chili's Bar & Grill, for example, has installed touch screen Ziosk tablets, seen here, at more than 45,000 tables nationwide, allowing patrons to order food, place drink orders and even pay their bill without ever interacting with their server.
Flying cameras
(Credit: AP)
The 2015 depicted in "Back to the Future Part II" was home to devices called hovercams -- robotic cameras that were able to fly to locations where news was happening. While TV news stations today don't generally use flying cameras for live shots, camera-mounted drones have become increasingly popular among consumers in the last few years.
Games that don't use your hands
(Credit: AP / Nam Y. Huh)
Children in "Back to the Future Part II's" version of 2015 were less than impressed with Marty McFly's shooting skills in the classic arcade game "Wild Gunman," referring to the game as "a baby's toy" because players needed to use their hands to play the game. While most video games today still use handheld controllers, more immersive technology has been incorporated. Microsoft's Xbox One, for example, allows users to control various aspects of their games with both motion and voice controls, through its Kinect sensor bar.
Hoverboard
Hoverboards were probably the most iconic and tantalizing pieces of technology "Back to the Future Part II" promised us we'd have by 2015. While they're still not available, several companies have announced working on prototypes of this next evolution of skateboards. Lexus, in particular, pulled the tarp off its own offering, the Lexus SLIDE, in June 2015, saying it's currently testing the sleek-looking board.
Flying cars
(Credit: Terrafugia video still)
Doc Brown's time-traveling DeLorean was given the gift of flight in the "Back to the Future" films via a hover conversion -- a seemingly common practice in 2015 that cost $39,999.95. Today, flying cars still aren't a reality, although some companies, like Terrafugia, are working on airplanes that can become as compact as a car, with mass production slated to occur within the next decade. Terrafugia's Transition, which includes fold-up wings, is seen here.
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(Credit: Universal Pictures)
