The identa-pad was a device carried by officers of the Hill Valley Police Department in 2015 to verify a person's identity.
The subject's thumb would be pressed against a pad on the device, and their details read aloud in the following order: 'Name', 'Address' and 'Date of Birth'.
Officers Reese and Foley used an identa-pad to identify the tranquilized Jennifer Parker of 1985 and, having concluded that she was the Jennifer of 2015, took her home to the McFly residence in Hilldale.
Behind the scenes
- The identa-pad is never referred to by name, either in the movie or in the novelization, and is never seen in detail on-screen, so it remains unclear as to whether the device had a screen on which the subject's details were also displayed. In the movie, the term 'thumb check' is used by the officers, but this is more likely a reference to the procedure rather than to the identa-pad itself.
- The name 'identa-pad' is used for the first and only time in a full colour design drawing of a 2015 Hill Valley Police duty belt, which appears on page 73 of Back to the Future: The Official Book of the Complete Movie Trilogy; the accompanying caption reads "Standard issue for the officers of the Hill Valley Police Department." The drawing also points out other equipment on the belt: 'mini-strobes'; 'taser and flash-light'; 'nightstick'; and 'storage and power unit'.
- In the novelization, as well as giving Jennifer's 'Name', 'Address' and 'Date of Birth', the identa-pad also details 'Arrests', 'Warrants' and 'Convictions' — which are "none" in each case.
Appearances
- Back to the Future Part II
- Back to the Future: The Official Book of the Complete Movie Trilogy (First identified as 'identa-pad')
- Back to the Future Part II novelization