[Movies] Man Behind Back to the Future Hoax Says It Was An Accident
Posted by Joseph Lee on 06.28.2012
And people fell for it twice...
The man behind the Back to the Future hoax, Steve Berry, told Mashable said the hoax was "just an accident."
There was a photoshopped image circulating the internet that claimed today was the "future date" Doc Brown sets the DeLorean to in Back to the Future. The photo says that Doc and Marty McFly go from June 27, 2012 to October 26, 1985, the future date is actually October 21, 2015. The picture was shared thousands of times and went viral in a few hours. This wasn't the first time the same hoax happened.
Berry, a social media manager for mobile checkout company Simply Tap, designed the image to promote the Back to the Future trilogy blu-ray set for his client. It was a reference to the same hoax that was started by Total Film in 2010.
Berry said: "We promoted the image fully confident in the knowledge that everyone was familiar with the original hoax from a couple of years ago. We figured that no one would fall for the same joke twice, so the caption was deliberately replicated it word for word so people would get the reference."
But that's not what happened. It was reposted on several Facebook pages, including craft company Colour Me Fun, which had more than 10,000 shares, almost 1,000 likes and 300 comments. Berry says he wishes he would have included the web address of his client. He added: "Just think of the traffic I've failed to gather."
