6 Best Parodies Of Back To The Future, Ranked

Published Oct 13, 2026, 1:20 PM EDT

Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 17 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic.
 

The world changed for lots of sci-fi fans in 1985, thanks to the combined genius of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and the immense charm of Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd. When they came together to make Back to the Future, they created such an enduring cultural touchstone that it has tangled itself into the fabric of storytelling since.

Back to the Future quotes are instantly recognizable, and the DeLorean is now more known as the time machine in the franchise than as the terribly made, poorly performing passion project that took so long to release that it came out in a depressed market and basically sunk the manufacturer entirely. Gale’s ideas about time travel and paradoxes have also become the foundation for how lots of movie fans even think about time travel, which was confirmed with aplomb when Back to the Future was referenced directly in Avengers: Endgame.

In fact, Back to the Future references are all over the place, with the DeLorean honored as a key part of Stephen Spielberg’s Ready Player One, and Lloyd’s Doc Brown actually turning up in a cameo in A Million Ways to Die in the West. Weird shared universe, but it’s a nice touch from Seth MacFarlane, all the same.

That sort of incredible longevity is beyond all, but the very best of movies, and the reaction to any suggestion of a remake or a fourth Back to the Future movie proves exactly the kind of fierce protectiveness baked into the fanbase. That commitment does, however, also mean that modern filmmakers and showrunners can drop in Back to the Future references and score points. So it happens a fair bit, and sometimes it goes beyond Easter eggs into bigger parodies. Here are the six best of those Back to the Future parodies ever brought to screen, ranked by how well they worked.

6 Alvin and the Chipmunks Go To the Movies

Back in 1990, when Back to the Future hysteria was still fresh, ongoing animated series Alvin and the Chipmunks Go To the Movies added the movie to Alvin, Simon, and Theodore’s pop culture library. In "Back to Our Future," Alvin effectively plays Marty McFly, as eccentric Professor Clyde Crashcup turns up with a time machine to warn the Chipmunks that the 1957 version of Alvin wants to quit music, prompting the modern group’s CD cover to fade.

It’s not a like-for-like redo, and it’s very much geared towards younger audiences, but “Back to Our Future” is a fun little parody that follows the same temporal anxiety model. And it also features a delightful Chipmunks cover of Huey Lewis & The News’ “Back in Time.” The whole episode is available to watch for free on YouTube now.

5 Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live has a long history of movie skits, and in March 1991, Michael J Fox guest-hosted, so it was inevitable that Back to the Future would come into focus. The opening monologue transformed into a complex skit, featuring Fox, plus Kevin Nealon as Doc Brown, who appears with a second version of Fox (played brilliantly by Dana Carvey) from 90 minutes in the future, who warns him not to do SNL because it will ruin his career.

They leave in an animated DeLorean and head back in time to a week earlier to find a third version of Fox, this time played by David Spade, who is even better at the impersonation than Carvey and apparently originated the bit, but was deemed insufficiently well-known to pull it off. They warn him, at NBC Studios where he’s taking a meeting with Lorne Michaels about hosting SNL, not to do the show. Eventually, all pretenses of concern are cast aside when Michaels gives all 3 a huge sack of money, and they head back to the present, with the monologue ending with Fox, Carvey, and Spade saying in unison, "We've got a great show! Black Crowes are here, so stick around, we'll be right back!"

Years later, SNL did another Back to the Future skit showing alternate auditions including Nic Cage (Andy Samberg), Alan Alda (Bill Hader), Bill Cosby (Kenan Thompson) and Prince (Fred Armisen).

4 Robot Chicken

Few shows do pop culture references quite as well as Robot Chicken, and over the past couple of decades, the show’s various visits to Hill Valley have produced some of its finest work. While the humor is pretty caustic, there’s an obvious affection behind it, and there’s a hilarious focus on why giving an obviously erratic inventor control over the space-time continuum might be a recipe for disaster.

The best skit is “Eaten by Cats,” which actually featured Christopher Lloyd’s return to play Doc Brown, which shows the professor trying out other vehicles as his time machine after prematurely settling on the DeLorean, against Marty’s advice. He uses the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and an ice cream truck, before settling on the Batmobile, and bringing Cleopatra and Amelia Earhart along as his dates. Marty concedes the Batmobile makes a great time machine, but is shunned for his earlier negativity.

3 The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror XXIII"

Like Robot Chicken, The Simpsons has referenced Back to the Future a significant number of times, but the segment "Bart and Homer's Excellent Adventure" from "Treehouse of Horror XXIII" is the pick of the bunch. Despite the Bill & Ted riff in the name, the segment is a nod to Back to the Future, as Bart travels back in time to 1974 in Professor Frink’s time machine to buy a comic book for 25 cents, rather than paying Comic Book Guy’s modern valuation of $200.

Back in the past, he encounters a young Homer, just moments before he meets Marge for the first time, and Bart intervenes, telling Marge to never marry Homer. When he gets back to the future, he discovers his own cursed alternative future timeline, where Artie Ziff married Marge and is now Bart’s father, the family is rich, and Nelson is Bart’s butler. It turns out that the 1974 Homer stowed away in the time machine’s trunk, summons every temporal variant of Homer ("The United Federation of Homers Throughout History") and attempts (and fails) to beat up Artie, prompting Marge to fall in love and invite every single Homer to live with her.

2 Family Guy - "The Courtship of Stewie's Father"

Seth MacFarlane has made his love for Back to the Future very clear over the years, and Family Guy has that affection on full display. The excellent Something, Something, Something Dark Side in particular mashes up Star Wars’ acceptable incest with BTTF’s weirdly casual use of it by having Leia (Lois) say, "I don't know what it is, but when I kiss you it's like kissing my brother", when they kiss. The ending of the special also sees Joe Flaherty, who played the Western Union man from the end of Back to the Future Part II, return to play the same character delivering a message to Luke (Chris).

Elsewhere, Season 4 episode “The Courtship of Stewie’s Father” shows a cutaway in which Doc Brown turns up to tell Marty and Jennifer that “something’s got to be done about your kids,” inverting it completely to be an intervention to stop their daughter’s interracial marriage. Not exactly high-brow, but a funny riff on Doc being an older man and Marty and Jennifer being more liberal. And in “Baby Not on Board,” Peter rides to school on his skateboard in a shot-for-shot remake of BTTF’s opening scene, including the soundtrack “The Power of Love.”

1 Rick & Morty

Could it be anything else? It’s impossible to discuss Back to the Future parodies without putting Rick & Morty at the top of the pile. Starting out life as Justin Roiland’s unhinged short film, The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, Rick & Morty evolved into one of the most enduring animated sci-fis ever made. The entire thing was built on a riff of Marty and Doc’s odd-couple dynamic, pushed through several incredibly dark mirrors, admittedly.

Rick Sanchez is like an elseworlds Emmet Brown. He has the same genius intellect, but he’s far more cynical, volatile, and morally bankrupt. Morty Smith is a straighter stand-in for Marty, complete with wide-eyed naivety and endearing anxiety. The show takes the best theories about Back to the Future - the idea that Doc had a death wish, primarily - and turns it into a gonzo work of genius that was way more than just a few nods to iconic scenes in the original