Actor Michael J. Fox spotted wearing a Casio

In Back to the Future Part II, released in November 1989, Marty McFly travels to the then-distant future of October 21, 2015. Throughout the film, Michael J. Fox wears the Casio Databank CA53W on a black rubber strap — a detail so understated it almost escapes notice, yet one that has resonated with watch enthusiasts and film historians for decades.

The Casio CA53W is part of the Databank series Casio launched in 1983, designed to pack genuine computational utility into an everyday wristwatch. The case is molded resin, the display a standard LCD module, and the movement a quartz digital caliber with calculator, alarm, stopwatch, and calendar functions. The eight-digit calculator requires a stylus — or a patient fingernail — to operate the miniature keypad. Water resistance sits at 50 meters. The watch runs on a single CR2016 battery and weighs almost nothing. It is, by any conventional measure, a utilitarian object.

What elevates the CA53W beyond utility is context. Costume designers working on Back to the Future Part II chose it not as a futuristic prop but as period-correct 1985 teen gear — which it absolutely was. That grounded authenticity is precisely what makes the choice so effective on screen and so interesting in retrospect. The watch was not aspirational; it was real, affordable, and recognizable to every kid in the audience.

For Michael J. Fox, the CA53W is inseparable from the Marty McFly persona he defined across the trilogy. Fox has worn the character so completely that even a $25 Casio becomes a meaningful artifact of his legacy. The watch appears in a film that grossed over $330 million worldwide and continues to generate cultural conversation more than 35 years later.

On the market, the CA53W remains in production today at roughly $25 new — making it one of the most accessible celebrity watch sightings ever documented. Vintage examples from the late 1980s in unplayed condition attract modest collector premiums online, though the continued production run keeps values firmly grounded. Its appeal is not financial; it is entirely sentimental, cinematic, and, in the best possible way, democratic.