11 Movie Mistakes Only Smug Nerds Would Ever Notice

7. Back To The Future Instrument Errors

To list every single anachronism, plot hole and remaining question from Back To The Future would be a foolhardy endeavour, simply because the film has transcended to that special space occupied by cinematic phenomena, along with Star Wars, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo. It is cherished and scrutinised in a way that only a lover would affectionately scrutinise the face of their beloved, or a mother the body of her child, and thus more flaws and blemishes have been uncovered than it would be prudent to attempt to list here.

One scene that seems to get music history lovers annoyed is the infamous Johnny B. Goode climax that sees Marty McFly invent rock and roll (despite the fact that Chuck Berry never actually hears any of the good bit of the performance, and only the Van Halen inspired riffing that annoys the crowd of sexually charged teens.) In it Marty plays a Gibson ES-345 with a retrofitted Bigsby vibrato, as we are reliably informed by proper music nerds, despite the fact that the guitar wasn't first produced until 1958, and the vibrato later still.

And that's not all: when he finishes his mental rendition of Berry's classic, he kicks over a guitar amplifier, which creates the unmistakable sound of an amp fitted with a reverb tank, which wasn't prototyped until 1961.

And if that wasn't enough, Marty tells Marvin Berry and his band that the song he's about to play (and they mysteriously learn in a matter of seconds) is in the key of B, before launching into the song, which is unmistakably in B Flat.