After watching The Way We Almost Weren’t again with my daughters, I was stuck by the number similarities in this episode and the first Back to the Future movie.
- Lightning was the catalyst for time travel. Granted, they handled it very differently, but it was the same element.
- The central plot is the disruption of their parent’s big moment. In Hannah Montana it was first meeting, while in Back to the Future it was the first kiss.
- Once disrupted, the children begin to disappear, starting with the oldest. Marty was the youngest, but the photo with his older brother and sister showed them disappearing first.
- The first element to disappear was the hand. Both Marty and Jackson have shots of them looking directly through their hand in disbelief.
- Both Marty and Jackson mistakenly called their father “dad”, and changed it to “dad..dad…daddio“.
At first, I thought it was just coincidence. After thinking about it a bit more, I think it was an homage to Back to the Future, although rather subtle to most viewers.
Did you notice any other similarities between the two?
Yeah–it’s almost like someone saw this and then traveled back in time to 1985 to rip it off in Back to the Future.