20 Things You Somehow Missed In Back To The Future
6. The Stanley Kubrick Reference
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have a reputation for inserting hidden phrases in their projects. The term "THX-1138" appears in nearly every film Lucas directed. In Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy's plane reads "OB-3P0" as a nod to the Star Wars characters, Obi-Wan Kenobi and C-3P0. Although Lucas and Spielberg are well-known for these Easter eggs, they are not the only directors to do this.
In Marty's first scene in Back to the Future, he plays a single power chord using an amplifier, which blasts him off his feet. To set up the amplifier, Marty inserts keys into a slot which reads, "CRM-114".
This is a nod to visionary director, Stanley Kubrick, who used the term "CRM-114" in three of his films; as the registry number of the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the name of an encryption device in Dr. Strangelove, and on a bottle label in A Clockwork Orange.
The term has appeared in other properties including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Heroes, and Men In Black 3. This is probably the most obscure in-joke in the film but I'm sure film fanatics got the reference and appreciated it.