Laravel 5 back() working on dev server, but not production

We have a site developed in Laravel 5.8. When we move the code to the production server, our back() function references all result in a 302 redirect to the home page. On development, they redirect properly. We've been trying to find a point of differentiation between the servers and the PHP versions are the only significant differentiator. Development is running 7.3.11 and production is 7.2.26. We're having the production server updated to match, but both of these versions are ahead of v7.1.3 required by Laravel.

Does it seem like the PHP version is the issue or are we missing something else?

via Chebli Mohamed