Did You Catch the Back to the Future Easter Egg in Luke Cage?

Vest, meet hoodie. Photo: Netflix, Universal Pictures

Marvel’s Luke Cage, the latest outing from the much-lauded Marvel-Netflix team up, digs into a lot of thorny issues: police violence, post-9/11 trauma, and time travel. What, you didn’t catch the time-travel subplot? Sheesh, way to drop the ball, reader! Lucky for you, the Reddit hive-mind was paying close attention to every damn frame of the show, and user Leahcimwerf discovered an easter egg shout-out to Back to the Future Part 2. In the second half of the season, a character does some research about an event in the title character’s past and finds an article about the time he got arrested in his youth. But that wasn’t the only story in the local paper that day.

Leahcimwerf’s annotated screenshot from Marvel’s Luke Cage. Photo: Marvel/Netflix

Off to the right, you can find a news item praising a local inventor named Martin Brown. The text of the article is near-identical to a fateful narrative object in BTTF 2, one that first documents the arrest of Emmett “Doc” Brown, then transforms into praise of him after Marty fixes the timeline. Names are swapped in and out, which is a legally wise move, though that frustratingly means Doc and Marty don’t exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We’ll always have fanfic.

Did You Catch the BTTF Easter Egg in Luke Cage?