Hoverboard Hoax: Christopher Lloyd Says People Who Believed Viral Video Were ‘Hoverduped’

A hoverboard video that showed riders floating on air seemed too good to be true, and it turns out there’s a good reason.

The video showed the hoverboard, which became popular after the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II featured the fictional floating skateboard in the movie. Since then there have been intermittent rumors that developers were bringing the hoverboard to life, though nothing ever took shape.

That all changed this week when a start-up company called HUVr put out a video showing Christopher Lloyd (who played Dr. Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future movies) introducing the company’s president. The viral video went on to show skateboarder Tony Hawk, musician Moby, and former NFL star Terrell Owens testing out the hoverboards.

The video sent 1980s movie geeks into a tizzy, but it turns out that it was all a big hoax.

Lloyd and the team from Funny or Die posted a video apology saying anyone who thought the hoverboard was real got “hoverduped.”

“What can I say,” Lloyd says in the video. “Those rascals over at Funny or Die tricked you and me both into thinking hoverboards were real. We were hoodwinked, flim-flammed, hornswaggled, Shanghai d, bamboozled, hoverduped, swindled, and scammed.”

The hoverboard video had amassed more than 4.5 million views on YouTube, though a number of commenters had healthy doubts over whether the seemingly groundbreaking technology was real.

The initial video said the demonstrations were completely real, however. The HUVr website had even more details, claiming that the company was started in 2010 as a spinoff from the MIT Physics Graduate program.

The video even includes testimony from billionaire tech entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban:

“Once in a rare while do you get the chance to be part of something this big. This is one of those times. I’ve never been so excited for a product I’ve invested in. This f**king thing is going to change the world!”

Entrepreneur saw the video and cast some serious doubt on whether it was real, even going so far as to contact Cuban and try to dig up details on the unnamed founders of HUVr. They concluded that the video was a publicity stunt for the Back to the Future musical stage play, set to debut in London next year on the movie’s 30th anniversary.

So it seems fans will have to keep waiting if they want to see a real hoverboard developed.