[1] In 1984, a hoverboard appeared in the shoot 'em up arcade video game SWAT, developed by Coreland and distributed by Sega in Japan and Bally Midway in North America.

[1] During the 1990s there were rumors, fueled by the film's director Robert Zemeckis,[3] that hoverboards were in fact real, but not marketed because they were deemed too dangerous by parents' groups.

Several companies have drawn on hovercraft "air-cushion vehicle" technology to attempt to create hoverboard-like products but none have demonstrated similar experiences to the kinds of levitation depicted in science fiction films.

On 24 December 2015, ARCA Space Corporation claimed it developed a hoverboard named ArcaBoard, and the batteries can provide energy enough for six minutes of hovering at height of up to 30 centimeters (12 in).

[14] In July 2019, Franky Zapata flew the newer Flyboard Air "jet-powered personal aerial vehicle", referred to as the EZ-Fly, during Bastille Day celebrations in France.

[21] In October 2011, the Université Paris Diderot in France presented the "Mag surf", a superconducting device which levitates 3 cm (1.2 in) above two magnetized repulsing floor rails and can carry up to 100 kg (220 lb).

[22] In October 2014, American inventor Greg Henderson demonstrated a prototype hoverboard working on a magnetic levitation system using the electrodynamic wheel principle.

[23] The New York Times said that although the board worked, Greg Henderson had no personal interest in skateboarding and that the Kickstarter was "basically a publicity stunt," designed to call attention to his company.

[24] On June 24, 2015, Lexus released a video as part of their "Amazing in Motion" series purporting to show a real hoverboard they had developed, the Slide.

[25] On August 4, 2015, Lexus revealed the working principles of the Slide hoverboard with a promotional campaign, filmed in Barcelona and starring Ross McGouran, a professional London skateboarder.

Special effect failures such as incomplete wire removal have conclusively identified the video as a hoax or joke, traced to the Funny or Die website through identification of the cast and public references to the project.

In May 2015, the Romanian-born Canadian inventor Cătălin Alexandru Duru set a Guinness World Record by travelling a distance of 275.9 m (302 yd) at heights up to 5 m (16 ft) over a lake, on an autonomously powered hoverboard of his own design.

The Flyboard Air was powered by jet engine propulsion, and its use allowed Franky Zapata, in Sausset-les-Pins, France to beat the previous record by nearly 2 km (2,200 yd).

Later on, Marty McFly would revisit 1955 and use the hoverboard to steal the Grays Sports Almanac book back from Biff Tannen, to prevent him from taking over Hill Valley.