It's a movie you would expect to play well in Toronto, with references and in-jokes about MuchMusic and Jian Ghomeshi. So why are audiences as diverse as those in the U.S. and South Korea laughing so much? 

Its creators and stars have no idea, but are happy to find their time travelling film, made on the extreme cheap, has somehow become a worldwide hit. "Nirvanna, The Band, The Show, The Movie," was filmed in and around Toronto and contains a ton of local references. It shouldn't translate to anyone overseas, but it has. 

No less an entity than the BBC has taken notice, with a full page rave on its website. 

"Matt and Jay have just taken a Back to the Future-inspired journey to the past, travelling in their jerry-rigged time machine from modern-day Queen Street West to the same downtown strip in 2008....

The punchline is a billboard emblazoned with the visage of Jian Ghomeshi. The long-time host of CBC Radio's Q, a hip talk show with a rotating cast of celebrity guests, Ghomeshi was a somewhat obscure but beloved big fish in Canada's constitutionally small-pond media ecosystem – until 2014, when a sexual abuse scandal made him into a figure of national notoriety. For Canadian viewers who cringingly recall the controversy, the callback is darkly hilarious.

But it also raises the question: would anybody outside of Canada get it?"

Apparently, somehow, a lot of people do. 

How a Canadian Back to the Future parody became a cult hit