A lot of attention on Marvel’s Luke Cage has focused on its slow but assured storytelling and racial politics, but clearly we should have just been hunting for cool Easter eggs instead – because one reddit user has spotted a very sly Back to the Future reference squirrelled away in the Netflix series. Great Scott!

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The Easter egg pops up in episode 10, when Detective Misty Knight (Simone Missick) is looking through microfilm newspaper archives for clues about Luke’s (Mike Colter) past back when he was still called Carl Lucas.

You can see one of the articles below, which talks about Luke’s father James – but if you look to the right, a different article talks about a gala honouring a scientist.

A certain Doc Brown…

Sadly however, the Back to the Future/Marvel shared universe isn’t QUITE a thing yet, as the article changes a few details of the classic 1985 film’s story (probably to avoid copyright issues). So Doc Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) becomes Martin Brown, the flux capacitor becomes the thrust capacitor, Hill Valley becomes Mill Valley and Doc’s teen friend Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) becomes Mac Fly.

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Still, probably the best reference is when this version of Doc speculates that time travel will only be possible “when plutonium is available at every corner drugstore” – a line from the original film when the 1950s version of Doc Brown speculates what the 1980s must be like.

So there you have it – in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s a version of the Back to the Future story where Doc Brown never got the DeLorean working, and is still a bit bitter about it. If Marvel ever brings the Kang the Conqueror storyline to screen, he’ll be livid.

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Marvel’s Luke Cage is available to watch on Netflix now

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