Trivia / Back to the Future

• Banned in China: The film was banned in China mainland for a while because the notion of time travel "disrespects history". The ban has since been lifted.
• Cast the Runner-Up: J.J. Cohen was originally cast as Biff Tannen. However, he didn't look so imposing against Eric Stoltz, the Trope Namer for The Other Marty, so Thomas F. Wilson was cast as Biff while Cohen was recast as Skinhead, one of Biff's Mooks. According to Bob Gale, had Michael J. Fox been cast as Marty from the beginning, Cohen would definitely have landed the role of Biff/Griff/Buford Tannen instead of Wilson. Billy Zane also auditioned to play Biff before being cast as another one of Biff's mooks, Match.
• The Cast Showoff: Kind of. Although Michael J. Fox is miming his performance of "Johnny B. Goode" he did actually learn to play the song (having played guitar in high school) so he could do so accurately. The guitar solo was actually played by Tim May, who also had previously performed the guitar solo on "Born to Hand Jive" from Grease.
• Channel Hop: Zemeckis and Gale originally pitched the film to Disney and then to Columbia Pictures, both of whom turned it down, albeit for completely different reasons: Columbia felt it was too quaint (this was the era of sex comedies like Animal House, Porky's and Revenge of the Nerds), Disney thought it was too raunchy (in particular, they took umbrage with the angle of 1955 Lorraine coming onto her future son).
• Christmas Rushed: Test screenings got such a positive response that Sid Sheinberg asked The Bobs what it would take to get the film ready for the 4th of July weekend (instead of the original intended release date, July 19th). Sheinberg ponied up the extra money to get the needed effects shots completed, but as a result of the time crunch, some of them were a bit unpolished. The fading hand was saved for last, and deemed "acceptable."
• Creator Backlash:
  • Although Eric Stoltz was replaced by Michael J. Fox (a few clips of him remain in the finished film), the former has since regretted his involvement in BTTF. At one point, Stoltz turned down an offer to be interviewed for a BTTF companion book.
  • Crispin Glover was intensely displeased over the ending, in which Marty and his family are more well off and Biff now works for George instead of the other way around, claiming it to be too materialistic and lacking enough heart, as well as sending a bad message that it's okay for one to bully back his former bully.
• Deleted Role:
  • The father and daughter who sell George the peanut brittle at the beginning were cut from the final version of the movie.
  • A deleted cigarette commercial (to be used during the Baines family dinner) features a lung surgeon played by John McCook of The Bold and the Beautiful.
• Deleted Scene:
  • After Marty comes home to see the car wrecked, a neighboring father and daughter sell George the peanut brittle (or more accurately, put the payment down in his name without his consent) and George, being the Extreme Doormat that he is, goes along with it.
  • After the "Mister Sandman" Sequence, Marty asks a woman to pinch him to see if he's dreaming. She slaps him instead.
  • The 1955 Doc looks at the contents of his 1985 counterpart's suitcase, which include a Playboy magazine and the hair dryer Marty takes with him while playing "Darth Vader".
  • In 1955, before Doc gets introduced to George, Doc and Marty see Lorraine cheating on a quiz in class, surprising Marty.
  • While discussing their plan, Marty tries to get George to hit him as practice.
  • Just when Marty leaves for the dance, Doc gets asked for a permit by a cop for his "weather experiment", and Doc gets it: a $50 bill, quite a bit of money back then. Also, Marty worries about his plan, asking "What if I go back to the future and I end up...gay?", to which Doc says "Why shouldn't you be happy?"
  • George, realizing he's late during the dance, goes into a phone booth to confirm the time, but Dixon, the bully who'd kicked George and later cuts in on him and Lorraine, traps him inside, with Strickland chastising him.
  • While shooting with Eric Stoltz, they filmed a scene in which Marty uses some clever MacGyvering to escape detention with Mr. Strickland. The scene was never refilmed with Michael J. Fox, as they had apparently decided to cut it by that point. It does appear in the novelization, however.
  • There was a deleted cigarette commercial filmed for the Baines family dinner scene that was intended to be another funny contrast between The '50s and The '80s^note Television ads for cigarettes were banned by law in the United States starting on January 2, 1971, and this law is still in effect today, but was cut for being a showstopper.
• Doing It for the Art: Ford offered to provide cash if the filmmakers would be willing to use a Mustang instead of a Delorean. Although there was immense pressure to take the deal, and the funding would have greatly helped the tight budget, the filmmakers stuck to their guns and turned down the money because a Mustang would be out of character for Doc Brown.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Two examples that didn't make the film because of Eric Stoltz. When they filmed the cafeteria scene, Stoltz roughed up Thomas F. Wilson for real and Wilson almost broke his collarbone. The normally nice guy Wilson planned to get revenge during the car park scene at the dance by actually punching Stoltz but Michael J. Fox had taken over by then so he never got the chance.
  • An unintentional example, but remember that Michael J. Fox was filming the first movie at night while still keeping his obligations to Family Ties during the day. Any scene where Marty looks wiped out and exhausted from everything going on is most likely not acting.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Tom Wilson has said that he and Crispin Glover didn't get along very well with Eric Stoltz when he was initially playing Marty, as Stoltz acted fairly arrogant throughout filming. Stoltz was apparently very rough when shooting the diner scuffle and genuinely hurting Wilson, who said that he was ready to trade blows by the time Stoltz left the film. Wilson even said that for years he thought Stoltz was fired due to his behavior on set, not because the producers wanted Fox originally.
  • Post Stoltz firing, the cast became very timid towards the producers because they felt their job was in danger, after all they fired the lead actor months into filming. Lea Thompson was heartbroken because she was friends with Stoltz, having previously worked with him in The Wild Life, while Crispin Glover didn't come back for the sequels because of bad blood between him and producer Bob Gale (who claimed for years Glover was a prima donna asking for an absurd pay hike).
• Inspiration for the Work: According to Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History, there were two things that led to the creation of the movie:
  • Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis first toyed with the idea of a time travel story as far back as 1975. Their initial inspiration came from the Zeerust depicted in the Norman Bel Geddes "Futurama" display at the 1939 World's Fair^note And incidentally, yes, that is where Matt Groening's famous animated comedy got its name from, and the General Motors "Futurama II" display at the 1964 World's Fair, with their first concept being a time travel caper that ends with the present day turning into the future that those expositions promised. Gale notes that they didn't have a precise story or hook in mind, but he did come up with the title Professor Brown Visits the Future.
  • In 1980, Gale came up with Back to the Future's hook after he visited his parents in St. Louis, Missouri. Searching their basement, Gale found his father's high school yearbook and discovered that the elder Gale was president of his graduating class. Gale had not known the president of his own graduating class, and wondered whether he would have been friends with his father if they went to high school together.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • As opposed to the initially Extreme Doormat role of George McFly, Crispin Glover was actually very demanding and very argumentative, and, in fact, always tended to be at loggerheads with Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale over various matters.
  • Although the role of Biff cemented him as one of cinema's iconic bullies and meatheads, Tom Wilson is actually a self-professed music nerd and says that he used his own experiences as a bullying victim to create a character audiences would root against.
• Looping Lines: Crispin Glover lost his voice due to nervousness while filming. For some scenes, he had to silently mouth his lines, with his voice being dubbed in later at a recording studio.
• Non-Singing Voice: Michael J. Fox did not sing "Johnny B. Goode" (the final singing audio was recorded by Mark Campbell), although he did learn to play it. For bonus points, his guitar coach Paul Hanson taught him to play the song in B, figuring an 80s guitarist like Marty wouldn't play a song in B flat. He's playing the song on-set in B and says it's a "blues riff in B," but nobody told Tim May, the guitarist who recorded the final audio, so the film audio is the original B flat version. Of course, May was more well versed in 50s music, having previously played the guitar solo on "Born to Hand Jive" from Grease.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • Ever wonder why George had peanut brittle for dinner in 1985? Originally, after meeting with Biff, Marty tries to urge George to stand up for himself when a child selling peanut brittle shows up. Instead, he caves, buying all of it, with the child's father saying "See, I told you we'd only have to stop at one house."
  • The morning after George is visited by "Darth Vader", he meets Marty and tells him that he overslept. This is because the original cut of the Vader scene was longer, ending with Marty knocking George out with chloroform (too much from the looks of it). This got cut because the scene lasted too long and was redundant since George would repeat the dialogue in the next scene.
  • The end of the film has a subtle example in which George asks Lorraine if she was cheating when they were playing tennis together. This was originally a Call-Back to the deleted scene in which Marty sees the young Lorraine cheating on a test at school.
• The Other Marty: The Trope Namer.
  • Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty, and filmed some scenes, before being replaced by Michael J. Fox because people felt Stoltz was too serious for the role - all of which was a tad bit ironic considering that Fox was always the first choice for the role and came on as the replacement for the actor meant to replace him. A few shots of Stoltz remain, namely of Marty driving the Delorean and Biff being punched. They finally did include some Stoltz footage in the Blu-Ray release of the trilogy.
  • J.J. Cohen was initially chosen to play Biff Tannen, but was replaced by Thomas F. Wilson as Cohen wasn't considered physically imposing enough next to Stoltz; Cohen was cast as one of Biff's gang members instead. According to Bob Gale, had Michael J. Fox been cast from the beginning, Cohen would've probably won the part, because he was much taller than Fox.
  • When Claudia Wells temporarily dropped out of the movie due to scheduling issues, Melora Hardin was briefly cast as Jennifer Parker opposite Eric Stoltz, but had to be replaced after he was dismissed as it was discovered that she was taller than Michael J. Fox. Ironically enough, it was the female crew members who complained about the height disparity between Hardin and Fox, while the male crew members had no problem with it, whatsoever.
• Prop Recycling: According to the documentary on the Blu-ray, the two cat sculptures standing beside the clock were originally created for Cat People.
• Sleeper Hit: No one expected the movie to become as big as it did. Robert Zemeckis openly admitted he was just hoping it would break even and the final bit with the Delorean flying and "something's got to be done about your kids!" was meant as a Last-Second Joke Problem. Michael J. Fox recalled that when he was in London filming the Family Ties TV movie, his agent called and told him that the movie was a hit. He was pleased, but the agent had to reiterate that it was a BIG hit.
• Throw It In!:
  • Many of George McFly's mannerisms (the shaking hands, the infamous Honeymooner's laugh) were ad-libbed by Crispin Glover. Glover explained years later in an interview that he saw the original 1985 George as a deeply unhappy man, and that his laugh at such a trivial moment on TV was his way of forcing out happiness. Allegedly, much of that was Glover's normal behavior, and the real challenge was getting him to act normal for the improved-1985 scenes.
  • Huey Lewis improvised the line "I'm afraid you're just too darn loud", as the silly excuse for Marty's band to be rejected.
  • According to Thomas F. Wilson, he improvised the phrases "butthead" and "Make like a tree and get out of here".
  • During the "Mister Sandman" Sequence, when Marty sees the 1955 Texaco gas station, there was originally only one attendant working on a car, but Robert Zemeckis had the costume department find 3 more attendant costumes, believing it'd be funnier.
  • According to Bob Gale, Red (the homeless guy)'s name was ad-libbed by Michael J. Fox, so he isn't Red Thomas, the mayor of 1955 Hill Valley.
• Troubled Production: Everyone involved in the film was sure it would bomb because absolutely nothing went smoothly. (Among the crew, it was nicknamed The Film That Would Not Wrap.) The shoot nearly drove Robert Zemeckis insane, ruined his health, and threatened to wreck his career if the film wasn't a hit.
  • The script for the film floated around Hollywood for years. Writer-Director Robert Zemeckis and his cowriter, Bob Gale, were shot down by several studios for various reasons; Disney and 20th Century Fox considered the script too raunchy while Columbia Pictures thought it was too quaint, and others were hesitant due to their involvement in 1941 (1979). The film finally landed with Universal Studios after the two scored a hit with Romancing the Stone, but the film's script underwent heavy rewrites just prior to filming, some of which was due to budget limitations and Executive Meddling. While some of the changes were ultimately beneficial (in particular the climax being reworked from a nuclear explosion to the lightning striking the clock tower) Universal executive Sid Sheinberg had a handful of outright bizarre requests as well, most notoriously changing the name of the movie to "Space Man from Pluto". Thankfully, Spielberg stepped in to defuse the situation by thanking Sheinberg for his hilarious "joke memo", successfully banking on Sheinberg's massive ego preventing him from admitting he was being serious.
    • Additionally, once Universal agreed to finance the film they realized that the rights to the script still belonged to Columbia and were therefore concerned that asking for the script outright would ultimately lead to it being too cost-prohibitive right out of the gate to produce. Luckily, however, Columbia president Guy McElwaine just so happened to call up Universal in desperation as it had come to his attention that a movie Columbia was getting ready to produce (Big Trouble) shared too many creative similarities to Universal's Double Indemnity and they were terrified of a lawsuit. McElwaine ended up speaking with Frank Price, his predecessor as president of Columbia who had championed Zemeckis and Gale's script from the beginning, who played coy and asked for some time to think it over, before calling back the next day and offering to sign off on the rights for Double Indemnity in exchange for two scripts (knowing that asking for only one would raise suspicion and almost certainly the asking price) that were currently owned by Columbia, which he got without hesitation and for free. Price said he doesn't even remember what the other script was.
  • Zemeckis reportedly wanted Michael J. Fox from the start to play the lead role of Marty McFly, but Fox was busy with Family Ties and creator and executive producer Gary David Goldberg outright refused to let Fox even so much as read the script^note Fox's co-star Meredith Baxter was pregnant and about to go on maternity leave, so the producers needed Fox to carry the show more so than usual, so they cast Eric Stoltz in the role. According to Thomas F. Wilson, neither he nor Crispin Glover got along with Stoltz and found him arrogant. The producers had their own complaints with Stoltz, finding him too much of a dramatic actor for a comedy film and annoyed by his insistence on Method Acting. Eventually, Zemeckis presented Spielberg with a rough cut of the existing rushes and confided that he didn't feel like they were getting the laughs he'd hoped for with Stoltz's more intense take on the material. Spielberg agreed and reached out to Goldberg yet again, who this time relented and presented Fox with both a copy of the script and his blessing to take the role.
  • Six weeks into filming, a deal was reached to work Michael J. Fox into the film around the schedule of Family Ties. Stoltz was quickly fired and replaced with Fox, and Stoltz's scenes were reshot with Fox in the role. Prior to Stoltz's firing, Zemeckis shot more or less around him by prioritizing wide shots as well as shots that didn't feature Stoltz while rushing through the ones that did feature him as quickly as possible, causing everyone on set to become suspicious that the creative team was hiding something from them. Additionally, the plan to recast Marty was initially kept secret from the Universal execs to avoid them possibly shutting down production, although thankfully Sheinberg understood the severity of the situation when Zemeckis and Spielberg finally brought it up and agreed to finance the $4 Million needed for reshoots. Stoltz was reportedly very upset when Zemeckis broke the news, and to this day he refuses to talk about the film. His firing made the rest of the cast very nervous about their job security, with Lea Thompson in particular being dismayed as she was good friends with Stoltz, having previously worked with him in The Wild Life. Despite this, overall mood on the set improved with Fox in the role.
  • Because of working two productions at once Michael J. Fox was running on fumes, commuting between the BttF and Family Ties sets with virtually no sleep in-between. He would record the show during the day and film the movie at night, and once he went into a panic on the Family Ties set because he thought he needed the camcorder prop he was actually using for the movie. In his interview on Inside the Actor's Studio, he notes that he was basically a zombie, which luckily enhanced his acting a fair bit.
  • Crispin Glover lost his voice due to nervousness while filming, and repeatedly butted heads with Zemeckis and especially Gale (which led to him refusing to reprise his role in the sequels).
• Uncredited Role: Huey Lewis was uncredited for his appearance as the audience judge.
• Voice-Only Cameo: Tony Pope voices the radio announcer in the film's opening scene.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page along with Part 2 and 3.
• Working Title: The film was almost titled Spaceman from Pluto due to the insistence of Universal Studios President Sidney Sheinberg. It took the intervention of Steven Spielberg to get this resolved, and the way in which he did it is absolutely legendary. Instead of arguing against the title, resulting in a battle he may not have won, he pretended to misinterpret it as a hilarious joke, as if he couldn't comprehend someone seriously suggesting a title like that. The executives were too proud to admit they were serious and backed down.
• Write Who You Hate: As revealed in a Q&A with director Robert Zemeckis & producer Bob Gale found in the "Back to the Future" DVD, Biff Tannen was named after Ned Tanen, a former executive at Paramount Pictures, whom Zemeckis and Gale had a bad experience with while making I Wanna Hold Your Hand.

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