The Flash: 24 WTF Moments
13. Eric Stoltz Was The Star Of Back To The Future
The Flash is unmistakably inspired by the frothy time travel shenanigans of Back to the Future, enough that its director, Robert Zemeckis, very nearly ended up helming this movie.
And so, one especially fitting yet niche gag pays most unexpected homage to Zemeckis' film by revealing that, in this timeline, Back to the Future starred Eric Stoltz, not Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly.
This is of course a nod to the fact that Stoltz was originally cast as Marty and even shot over a month of footage before Zemeckis, feeling he wasn't the right fit for the part, replaced him with Fox.
It gets better, though: in Young Barry's timeline, this had a knock-on effect throughout Hollywood, resulting in Fox instead starring in Footloose, and Kevin Bacon (who starred in Footloose) taking the role of Maverick in Top Gun, as was played by Tom Cruise in our timeline.
Understandably this leaves Prime Barry incredibly freaked out, but it does raise a tantalising thought - how awesome would it be to see all the different multiversal versions of classic movies?