History WMG / BackToTheFuture

That's why she starts off as Claudia Wells in the first movie and has suddenly transformed to Elisabeth Shue by Part II. (Of course it doesn't explain the fact the same scene has played out twice in the subsequent movies with both actresses.)

** If it was intended to be Goldie Wilson, they probably would have gotten the actor from the first film to play him, since he was already in the film as Goldie Wilson III.

* The last part is jossed. No fourth film was released. At best, VideoGame/LegoDimensions might joke about [=BTTF's=] version of 2015.

* Doc is visibly younger in 1955 than in 1985 in the first movie. After going to the future, he got a rejuvenation that allowed Christopher Lloyd to play 1985-Doc without heavy age makeup. [[TooMuchInformation They also replaced his spleen and colon.]] Granted, at the end of Part 3 about ten years have passed for Doc, but maybe rejuvenation slows senescence.

*** Whitey's full name is Chester Nogura, implying Japanese descent on his father's side.

** Utterly and thoroughly Jossed in the Telltale games, where we meet an adult William and Arthur [=McFly=]; the former indicates that Seamus was his father and Arthur is his son. And George indicates that Arthur was his father (which, given that he's an [[IdenticalGrandson Identical Son]], didn't really need to be stated, but still...)

* The last part is jossed. It's August as of this writing and there's no signs of another film. At best, VideoGame/LegoDimensions might joke about [=BTTF's=] version of 2015.

** Okay, [[strike:what are you smoking]] what version of the film did you watch?
*** The one where Doc in part II wears a LatexPerfection mask to avoid giving away his age-- and when he pulls it off looks exactly the same as he does in all three films.

* Does it even need to be stated that the Telltale games Joss this three ways 'til Thursday?

** Considering how often people keep pressing Marty's berserk button, it wouldn't be too far fetched that someone else could get Marty to do something illegal by pressing it. If the sting operation theory is true, Needles could have pressed it to see if Marty would fall for it, since the motivation of solving his family's financial problems didn't get him to take the bait. If anything, him falling for it makes things even WORSE for Marty, since he wouldn't do it to help his family, but for his own selfish wounded pride.

Doc has a toon-like reaction to alcohol, and has a twin who is the most human-like toon we see in WFRR. Judge Doom's name in the expanded universe is Baron von Rotton, and Doc's ancestors were the von Brauns in Germany. Let's say that they're both branches of an even bigger German "toon" family from the 19th century, who intermarried with humans and left Germany in the early 20th century. The von Rotten branch retained more aspects of tooniness, but the von Brauns were basically squibs who tried to completely assimilate to human society. Except for a certain eccentric demeanor and an aversion to alcohol!

[[WMG: Doc Brown is The Doctor.]]
An eccentric old man, more then happy to take an impulsive teenager back and forwards in time with him, but still takes preventing paradox's very seriously. Pacifistic enough that knowing a group of Libyan terrorists is coming after him he uses the information to get a Kevlar vest, which would do nothing if the terrorists decided to shoot him in the head point blank, even though he could have easily set up a trap to kill them. He must have aged at least 35-40 years (based on estimated age of the kids on the train) between 1955 and the end of film yet he looks no older.there are about 200 years between episode 11 and 12 of doctor who season 6 during this time we know nothing about his whereabouts. alternatively it is made very clear that the doctors intention at the end of season 6 is to lay low for a while. oh and his nickname is doc. just saying.
** Either that, or Doc Brown is the Doctor after his twelve regen limit is used up, and he's just living through the rest of the years. However, it is also possible that Doc Brown is just a human who was ''visited'' by the Doctor. Doc had a vision, and the Doctor just happened to take a liking to him--he "gently nudged" Doc in the right direction. On top of all that, the [=DeLorean=] ''has'' to use the Time/Space Vortex in some way: one miscalculation, and your bright, shiny Time Machine goes flying off the face of the earth.
*** I would like to point out that the First Doctor and the Sixth Doctor have each shown a dislike for people calling them "Doc."
*** Also, the second guess has been {{jossed}} by the new series of ''Doctor Who'', wherein the Doctor receives a new set of regenerations.

[[WMG: The Miami team that lost to the Cubs in the 2015 World Series were [[MajorLeague a Relocated Cleveland Indians Team]]]]
The 2015 where Marty got into an automobile accident was one where the Cleveland Indians were successfully relocated to Miami per the plan by Rachael Phelps, meaning the attempt for the Indians to win the whole thing from the movie MajorLeague failed. This explains why Miami's team would play the Cubs in the World Series instead of the NLCS. Also fitting since it would still be the same franchise that the Cubs actually beat in our timeline (albeit a year afterwards). It would make sense to replace the Indians name and offensive logo with something else when trying to rebrand your team after relocation.
* On the flip side, a relocated Indians team would mean that Cleveland caves in to the Browns' stadium demands in the mid 1990s afraid of losing 2 franchises in less than a decade so in this universe the Browns won the Super Bowl in 2000 & 2012 (The Baltimore Ravens as a result would've been a relocated Houston Oilers team instead forced to keep it's past history in Houston).

* When Mr. Baines hits Marty with his car, he claims that this isn't the first time this happened. Imagine that Biff was peeping on Lorraine the same way that George was, fell out of the tree the same way, and Mr. Baines hit him and they brought him into the house to recover. After being taken care of by Lorraine Biff became obsessed with her, while she was turned off by his jerkass personality (knowing Biff, he'd try to immediately get her to sleep with him). This would explain why he's so determined to have her as his girl.

Carl Sagan's deservingness of his fame is something of a point of contention among the scientific community because of how little he has actually contributed to science. However, his immensive skill in getting people interested in science and in providing perspective and aiding in understanding is indisputable. Compare with Doc, whose only admirers were a teenage kid who broke into his garage and that kid's father, who only respected Doc because his son did.

Claras reaction to Doc Browns claim, that he had build a Time machine and travelled with these from the future to her "now" (the year 1885) is like someone who was culturally exposed to popular science Fiction about Time Machines (e.g. she hears the Term, knows immediatly what it means, and think it is something from science fiction). There is just one Problem with that: the Term "Time Machine" was introduced und popularised by H.G. Wells novel "The Time Machine", published in 1895, ten years after the supposed Time Period Clara is from. Even H.G. Wells short story "The Chronic Argonauts" (acording to Wikipedia " the first well-developed use of a machine constructed to travel through time (a "time machine") in science fiction") wasn't published until 1888, three years after the 1885 setting. There is simply no way, that somebody from the year 1885 would know exactly what the Term "Time Machine" means, and treat it like some Science-Fiction stuff, since the Term wasn't introduced for several more years. That left just three possibilitys: 1) Clara is a Time Traveller from sometime beyoined 1895, 2) Clara already had contact to Time-Travel-Science-Fiction via real Time Travelers, 3) (possibly) due to further meddeling with the Time Line, Time Travel-Fiction within the Back-to-the future-Universe exists at least a few years before it does in ours.

Given his knack for inventing and creating machines, plus the considerable expense of re-creating a time machine from scratch with technology you would have to create from scratch right down to the basic components (no vacuum tubes even before the 1900s and no way Jules or Verne are even in their mid teens in the ending scene, so the family as we see them must come from the 1890s), it's hardly suprising and indeed necessary. Being a blacksmith in a whistle-stop town is hardly likely to generate that kind of income. Most likely he put his skills to work and started developing products and grew a manufacturing business out of it, which helped the nascent economy of Hill Valley on its way, whilst being careful to avoid inventing (or "inventing") anything too out-of-period for hte time that could be commercially exploited.

** Oh it gets even worse: according to the IDW comic, it turns out that [[spoiler: 1985A Doc was actually ''lobotomized''.]] That's a mental image that'll scar you for life...

A new ''Back to the Future'' trilogy will star an alternate Marty [=McFly=] and Doc Brown who are respectively [[AdaptationRelationshipOverhaul student and teacher]] at [[AgeLift Hill Valley Community College]] who discover [[AlternateUniverse parallel timelines]] instead of time travel, bringing them into contact with the Marty, Doc and Hill Valley we know.

Doc cared about his friend enough that he went to great lengths to teach him a valuable life lesson.

*** Technically nobody ever mentions Griff's surname. Doc just calls him "a guy named Griff." The credits do identify him as Griff Tannen though.

In a deleted scene, we see old Biff dissappear after [[spoiler: changing the timeline]]. that's because in A!1985, The door opening killed A!Biff, so ''Old biff didn't exist.''

* Leaving out the instances of people traveling back to where they belong (the various trips back to 1985) and the instances of people trying to fix something (all of the other trips the movies followed), the only time travel in the movies that was ''intentional'' were Doc's first trip to 2015 and Old!Biff's trip to 1955. Doc probably just figured on thirty years being a nice round number for his trip forward, and Old!Biff probably just went back to 1985 because that was the year he turned 18 (and - due to the events of the first movie - the date had a certain significance for him). There's no reason to think that the machine can't travel to other years.

The real function of the Flux Capacitor is to ensure that anyone traveling through time remains isolated from changes made to the time stream that may affect them. This is why Marty retains his memories from the "original" timeline and his RippleEffect proof memory. Doc doesn't actually use the machine himself until the very end of the film and so his past was changed thanks to Future!Marty's involvement while Marty remembers things the way the used to be. This is also why Marty fades from time so slowly. In reality he should be the ''first'' kid in his family to fade because if they never married and had Dave they sure as hell aren't going to have Marty, but Marty was shielded from time's effects due to the Flux Capacitor.

* Second-movie!"1955"!Marty is taking part in what appears to him as a StableTimeLoop. The ripple effect went round and round until it found an equilibrium.

He came up with the Flux Capacitor concept when he hit his head on the sink and was unconscious, right? Well, maybe Future!Doc (or someone) came back and implanted the idea in his head using future neural technology, or old-fashioned hypnosis? The time machine has no origin, it just keeps going around and around...

This also explains the difference between [=FirstMovie=]!Marty and [=SecondMovie=]!Marty pointed out in the "Changed To Fit The New Timeline" WMG above-- between films, the original and "new timeline" Marties exchanged places, going back to their respective universes.

* In a deleted scene, Old!Marty discoveres Old!Jennifer passed out (after encountering her younger self). He mutters "She's tranqed ''again''...". So at least one member of the household is tranqing.

** Oh it gets even worse: according to the IDW comic, it turns out that [[spoiler: 1985A!Doc was actually ''lobotomized''.]] That's a mental image that'll scar you for life...

[[WMG: When 1955!Doc asked Marty whether something had happened to the Earth's gravitational pull by 1985, he was just being sarcastic.]]

* It's simple logic, really: The promo at the end of "Citizen Brown" shows that [[spoiler: Citizen Brown ''might've'' resisted the mind control]]. And this had to have happened, because another chunk of the trailer shows that at least ''Marty'' (although in non-period accurate clothing) got to 1931, [[spoiler: meaning the [=DeLorean=] was fixed.]]. Besides, it seems the only two problems left are [[spoiler: making sure 1931!Doc and Edna break up AND that 1931!Doc has that "spectacular failure" at the Hill Valley Expo".]] Therefore, there's a chance that everything will be corrected by the end of episode 4.

* Conversely, [[spoiler: because the first of the three Marties from the future let himself be seen by his younger self, it caused the parallel future timeline that the second Marty would come from, which then caused the parallel future timeline that the third Marty would come from. It could be seen from the fact that the second Future!Marty talks of the first Future!Marty as if his timeline's been erased, and the third Future!Marty is sick of the both of them. By ditching all three of them, the Doc and Marty of the Present hope to prevent the events that set the paradox in motion before a fourth Marty from a parallel future timeline shows up.]]
** This is FridgeBrilliance. FutureA!Marty comes back for whatever reason, creating a timeline in which 1986B!Marty apparently decides to eventually come back to that moment because things thereby eventually get screwed up (becoming FutureB!Marty/"Evil Twin" Marty), which ''again'' screws things up for poor 1986C!Marty, who comes back from the future to settle things as FutureC!Marty. Hopefully, 1986!Marty just decides at that point never to revisit that moment in time...

This would explain [[spoiler: the first Future!Marty using the expression "'''our''' great-great-grandkids" when talking to ''Doc''. If one of Future!Marty's kids has kids with one of Doc's kids, their kids' kids (see what I did there? :-D ) will be both Marty's '''and''' Doc's great-great-grandkids.]]

* As a corollary, the whole incident with [[spoiler: the three Future!Martys]] will never be mentioned again, for the same reason: to troll fans and make them rage.

[[WMG: Leather jacket future Marty is LP!Marty.]]
See the headscratchers page for the TP!/LP!marties confusion. LP!Marty will be the new BigBad of season 2, trying to kill TP!Marty for stealing his place in life. Future Marty #2 is the Marty of the current alternate present as of episode 5.

This is only speculation, but the three Future!Marties are possibly from the Twin Pines Timeline, the Biff Future Timeline, and the Current Timeline, respectively. As for ''why'' they're all here... my guess is that thanks to all the time travel and frequent changes to the space-time continuum in such a short amount of time (relatively speaking), the timeline has become splintered several ways. If there's ever a second season, it will involve figuring out how to stabilize the fractured timeline.

* Makes a lot of sense when you realise just how slippery a character the Doc is. not only does he rip already stolen plutonium (which he has no legal right to keep hold of) but in the outtakes of the first film, 1955!Doc is seen bribing the police officer who asks him about the "permit" for his "weather experiment". Insurance fraud in the pursuit of his dream experiment is not exactly much different.

He checked the historical records of the time where fut!Doc in the past should have died, and found out that a duel between Marty and Mad Dog Tannen instead occurred. The impressed locals likely recorded quite a few details, including the bulletproof vest.
* {{Jossed}} by [[WordOfGod Bob Gale]]. During an interview about the game, he said that in the series, the effects of a time jump are never shown before showing the time jump itself. Meaning that [=LP=]!Doc used a bulletproof vest despite living in a timeline where the events with Marty and Doc in 1885 never happened.

* Based on this and the fact Marty stayed in 1955 for a whole week before returning to the very same day he left, it took exactly one week after Marty's return before George, Lorraine and Biff to remember how their lives used to be before Marty messed with their past. Remembering a former life as a white-collar worker who made a living by taking credit for George's work must have compounded 2015!Biff's bitterness. He probably also figured out Doc's TimeMachine is the reason his life changed and decided his own attempt to change his past would be a case of "two wrongs make a right", or "left" if [[{{Malaproper}} nobody corrected him on that specific saying]]. Upon checking records of his life prior to 1985, Biff figured out when his life became different from what he remembers and it was no mere coincidence that his 2015 self went to the day of the dance that made George and Lorraine a couple.

** Oh it gets even worse: according to the comic, [[spoiler: Doc was ''lobotimized''.]] That's a mental image that'll scar you for life...

* Would this then suggest that our reality is the one where the Lybians got lost on their way to the twin pines mall, Doc went back in time but was immediately gunned down by a farmer, and the DeLorean was confiscated by the US government?

[[WMG: The [=Delorean=] door opening in Part II killed Biff.]]

But...it wasn't pointless. Doc PLANNED the entire thing. Doc knew that Marty being a hothead about being called "chicken" resulted in a future that was...not really great. He wants Marty to get over this, but can't just say "You're going to be in a car race that Needles eggs you in to, you're going to hit a Rolls Royce and ruin your future." Doing that would cause problems, because as he says multiple times, no one should know too much about their own future. So instead, he comes up with a plan: set into action a chain of events that will cause Marty to mature, and get over his whole problem with being called chicken. So he uses his knowledge of how timelines and time travel works, and figures out this plan, that involves the entirety of [=BttF=] 2 AND 3, that eventually gets Marty to mature. His tombstone just HAPPENS to be next to where the [=Delorean=] is buried in 1955? No...he planned it that way. He let it be known that is where he wanted to be buried, so that Marty would see the tombstone in 1955 and plan to come back to the past, and that the events of part 3 would happen and allow Marty to get over his issues and not get in that accident. Another part of the theory is the malfunctioning Time Circuits in part 2. They worked just fine, he simply made it look like they weren't so he'd have an excuse to be sent back to 1885. When he was trying to land the [=Delorean=] in 1955 after Marty burned the book, he says that he has to fly back around due to the wind, but in what we've seen of the [=Delorean=] flying previously, it seems like it is able to do a vertical landing, akin to a harrier jet. So why suddenly does the wind matter? It doesn't. Doc knows that if he stays in the air he will get hit by lightning, and has the time circuits ready to go to 1885, as it is all part of his perfectly thought-out plan.

** Of course there is a year zero, just not everyone calls it that. The number assigned to a year is an arbitrary convenience. It doesn't matter what label your calendar slaps on it, if the time machine knows to go back a certain number of years that's all that matters. Doc programmed his [=Delorean=] with a different calendar than the common modified Gregorian-- there are several calendars that use a zero year to mark the birth of Christ.

** Either that, or Doc Brown is the Doctor after his twelve regen limit is used up, and he's just living through the rest of the years. However, it is also possible that Doc Brown is just a human who was ''visited'' by the Doctor. Doc had a vision, and the Doctor just happened to take a liking to him--he "gently nudged" Doc in the right direction. On top of all that, the [=Delorean=] ''has'' to use the Time/Space Vortex in some way: one miscalculation, and your bright, shiny Time Machine goes flying off the face of the earth.

* Consider that by the time Part III happened, Doc learned that the Flux Capacitor could actually work, he'd already had a week to study the original time machine, and even rebuilt the Time Circuit Control microchip with 1955 components. All that he really needed was to wait until 1981 (When the De Lorean DMC-12 was released) to start building it.

[[WMG:The time [=Delorean=] is responsible for all life on Earth.]]

Even though we already have some rudimentary form of [[http://www.terrafugia.com/ flying car]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4N-CLPXF8w hoverboard]], by 2015 they will not be as advanced and ubiquitous as they were depicted to be in [=BTTF2=]. On the other hand, information technology marched much faster than what was shown in [=BTTF2=], and pretty much every electronic device we have can be connected to the internet (which was implied not to exist in [=BTTF2=]). This is because another time traveller used his own time machine to change the timeline for his own purposes (just stealing the [=Delorean=] for it would result in a time paradox, because it is equipped with technology from a future this action would cause not to exist). More precisely, he went back to 1989 and invented the World Wide Web as Tim Berners-Lee. This caused information technology to progress with unnatural speed, while at the same time slowing down to a crawl every other sector of technology.

** This depends on what those modifications count as. Inanimate objects carried through time are never erased by the alteration of history, only modified. If the modifications count as their own objects, they will survive the prevention of the dystopian 1986, but if they count as being part of the Delorean, they're on the same level as people in a photo, so it's glitch time.
** And where will our intrepid heroes go? Well, with the time circuits going berzerk, the [=Delorean=] wouldn't be confined from the measly range of 0 to 9999 AD. A crossover with Telltale's upcoming Jurassic Park game may occur, courtesy of the actual Jurassic Period (continental drift notwithstanding). And, of course, as hinted in Episode 1, [[spoiler:2011]] may also be on the cards.

* And then of course Doc [[AesopAmnesia doesn't get the hint about the problems of time travel]] after the De Lorean is destroyed, [[BrokenAesop even disregarding his aforementioned paraphrased quote and his previous resolve to destroy it]]...[[FridgeHorror he builds a whole new time machine]]!

At first, all Biff knew about the almanac was that "some relative" knew a guy who could see into the future. With millions of dollars and the years passing, Biff eventually became more intelligent and started to realise how his Gray Sports Almanac could tell the future-then he met the wild-eyed professor Doc Emerett Brown. After interrogating him, Biff put two and two together and figured out that a time machine brought back the Gray Sports Almanac, and that Doc Brown will one day build it. Wanting Doc Brown to not be a threat yet needing his genius, he had Doc Brown committed and looked after in a makeshift duplicate of his lab. His cronies gave Doc the technology to design the Delorean, and had this timeline progressed Biff would've used it to go back and give himself the Gray Sports Almanac. Anything he's saying to Marty-A is partly him playing dumb

It temporariliy stores a large amount of electrical energy as a conventional capacitor does, then discharges it as gravitational energy, possibly somehow generating exotic matter. Basically creating a wormhole big enough and lasting long enough to transport a Delorean-sized object travelling at 88mph through time.

Following on from the previous WMG, it's not random but is the speed at which the Delorean must travel to get through the wormhole generated by the time circuits before it naturally collapses. Doc Brown calculated it as the necessary speed based on the length of the car and the projected time the wormhole would stay open.

Obviously, the films are all canon to one another. The some of the recent comic series by IDW fills in some of the gaps in the timeline (such as how Doc and Marty "meet" originally in the 1980s) and even adapts the story of the Telltale game for the storyline "Citizen Brown", which Bob Gale had a hand in for creating and himself considers it as a "Part IV." Now, you're probably thinking, "Where does the animated series fit in? And how?" Well, at the end of the game, Doc and Clara maintain a part-time residence in Hill Valley in 1986. And we know that Doc and Marty still have the DeLorean, and Doc clearly must have the Time Train stashed somewhere whenever he's staying in 1986. And seeing both are intact, and that Doc and his family has a residence in Hill Valley, that could set up the animated series. After the ending to where they jump to whenever, Doc and Marty come back and eventually, Doc and Clara decide to relocate closer to where Doc has the Time Train stashed, and have a bigger plot of land for Jules and Verne to play on and a bigger garage for Doc to perform experiments in. Of course, this allows Doc to be able to update the DeLorean several times and gives it features that could come in handy.