Just when you think you’re done writing about Halloween (I feel like Shaun White’s Halloween costume would have been a good place to wrap things up), in comes the next batch of outrage.

On Wednesday, meteorologist Al Roker and the rest of NBC’s Today team dressed in 1980s-inspired costumes on their show.

Some of the outfits were well received, whilst others had Fox News viewers frothing from the mouth.

Here’s the full cast below:

Cool.

Now it doesn’t come more 80s than Back to the Future, Marty McFly, and Doc Brown. That’s definitely what Al Roker was thinking, but, rather ironically, his Doc Brown outfit has led to accusations of ‘whiteface’.

A few more snaps of the outfit before we carry on:

Yes, that is the actual DeLorean from the movie, and signed by the original cast.

Cue the outrage.

Here’s the thing – Roker had been vocal in his criticism of Megyn Kelly, fired from NBC just a week earlier for her comments defending blackface, and it wasn’t long before accusations of double standards were levelled against him.

You know the drill:

Cool, but I believe @BigLargeTime is missing a rather vital difference.

Al gets it:

Over on VICE, they decided to spell things out:

Roker deciding to dress up as a lovable white character was kind of genius, because he was demonstrating exactly how to put these guidelines into practice. He didn’t change the color of his skin. Doc Brown may have been played by a white man, but nothing about his character dictates he has to be white.

He’s a kooky, time-traveling scientist. His character is signified by wild hair, a lab coat, maybe some goggles and gadgetry. If Back to the Future was rebooted today, I like to think that actors of all ethnicities would be considered for the role…

Halloween is all about trying on another persona and stepping outside of yourself for a day. Yes, it has to do with altering your appearance to look like someone or something you’re not. The difference lies in intent and execution: are you celebrating someone or dehumanizing them? And as a strict rule of thumb, never, ever, under any circumstances darken your face for a costume. Just don’t.

Yup, fair enough.

Oh, and don’t think that dressing up as an Arab person holding a bomb is OK, either.

Quite incredibly, this photo below was tweeted out by the official Bayern Munich Twitter account, and has since been deleted. The champions of Germany were celebrating Halloween with a team dress-up party, but Brazilian Rafinha, in the front on the right, had himself a shocker:

We’ll get in closer:

‘Vorsicht’ is German for caution, by the way. He’s holding a bomb, get it?

Ugh, dude.

So many teammates, and nobody thought to tell him that costume wasn’t cool.

Again, if you’re dressing up for Halloween this weekend, don’t go dressed as a tone-deaf knobhead.

[sources:cnn&vice]