Back to the Future...(now terror-free!)

Okay, this is a strange one. I'm flipping channels and come across Back to the Future, one of my all-time favorites. Erin says "I wonder how many times we're going to see this movie over the course of our lifetime". Agreed. We've seen it a lot and we'll see it again. In fact, it's one of the first movies I watched on TV with my son. He was a few weeks old and slept through most of it.

Anyway, tonight, as I was watching, I noticed a very subtle change in the scene where Marty's writing the letter to Doc Brown that he's hoping Doc will read in the future. In the original film, Marty says:

"Dear Dr. Brown, on the night that I go back in time, you will be shot by terrorists. Please take any precautions that are necessary to prevent this terrible disaster."

In the television version I saw tonight on SciFi, the words "by terrorists" were deleted and replaced by a repetition of the word "please" in an effort to mask it.

I did a quick search online and found that someone had posted the same information on IMDB with an additional note. They even deleted the words from the shot of the letter. I went back to the TV and un-paused it. The scene continues and sure enough, there's the letter with the words digitally removed! The post also details some changes to Doc's death scene and notes the changes were made shortly after 9/11.

Bizarre.