10 Most Spiteful Movie Easter Eggs Ever
6. Eddie Van Halen Trolls His Own Bandmates - Back To The Future
Few who've seen Back to the Future will forget the scene where Marty (Michael J. Fox) masquerades as "Darth Vader" and blasts loud rock music at his father George (Crispin Glover) in order to wake him up and convince him to ask Lorraine (Lea Thompson) out.
You probably noticed that the cassette Marty inserts into the walkman is labelled "Van Halen," but considering the label is only seen on-screen for around a second, you might've missed that the word "Edward" precedes it in much smaller type.
There's an entire backstory behind this.
Basically, the filmmakers wanted to use Van Halen's music for the scene, but when all the band members except for Eddie Van Halen himself refused, they had to get creative.
Because Eddie Van Halen had previously recorded music for another Universal film released the year prior, The Wild Life - also starring Lea Thompson, funnily enough - some of those compositions were simply re-used here as imitation Van Halen music.
But because neither the rest of the band nor the record label had given permission for Van Halen's brand to be invoked, the cassette couldn't simply say "Van Halen."
Yet given that Eddie Van Halen's real name was Edward Van Halen, director Robert Zemeckis was able to get away with the namedrop by including the musician's full name on the label.
As we all know, being technically correct is always the best kind of correct. Given that Back to the Future's soundtrack album ultimately sold over 500,000 copies and spent 19 weeks on the Billboard 200, the other members of Van Halen might've grown to regret their decision.