YMMV / Back to the Future

• Accidental Aesop: Don't push yourself to be with someone because you've convinced yourself that it's 'true love', find someone with qualities you actually like and admire. It'll help you both grow as people, as your relationship strengthens over time. Lorraine originally married George because he was hit by a car and she felt sorry for him, and they were miserable together. When Marty interfered, they had to fall in love for real, meaning they still ended up together at the end, but were much happier overall because they had found actual reasons to be together far beyond just a minor car accident.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • How genuine was Biff's nicer personality after Marty meddled with the past? Did he really become a better person after George stood up to him, or was he merely sucking up to George out of fear and respect? While he seemed truly excited when George's book got published and made sure that Marty's truck was ready for him to take Jennifer to the lake, a few scenes from the sequels suggest that he never fully outgrew his old ways.
  • Darker and Edgier for Doc with him being suicidal. As mentioned in this video comment, Doc is a failed inventor that has turned to desperate means to gain funding and materials (associating with terrorists and potentially burning his own mansion down for the insurance money). Combined with Marty being the only friend he has, staying in the car's path during the test, and holding Marty in place, it was one mistake away from a Murder-Suicide.
  • Young Lorraine finally ends her infatuation with the sense that she's kissing her brother. Is it really a sense of her relation with Marty? Or could it simply be the fear of God engendered by Lorraine's unexpected aggressive kissing?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • As Marty tries to tell George to ask Lorraine to the dance, George objects because that would mean missing his favorite TV show Science Fiction Theatre. Science Fiction Theatre was an actual sci-fi show from the 50s, a spiritual predecessor to The Outer Limits (1963) and The Twilight Zone (in the extended version of the "Darth Vader" scene, Marty also name-drops those shows).
  • In Lou's Cafe, someone is heard ordering a "cherry coke." This sounds like an anachronism to some viewers, who remember that the brand Cherry Coca Cola wasn't introduced until the 1980s. However, the term is much older, referring to regular Coca Cola manually flavored with cherry syrup.
• And You Thought It Would Fail:
  • The film was passed on by practically all the major studios for not having raunchy enough humor ^note This was the era that brought films like Animal House and Fast Times at Ridgemont High., while Disney passed it on for being too raunchy by their standards ^note because of the subplot where the young version of Marty's mother is attracted to him.. It was only after the box office success of Romancing the Stone that Amblin Entertainment started expressing hope in Robert Zemeckis' and Bob Gale's science fiction comedy...which would later become the highest-grossing movie of its year.
  • One executive, in particular, was quoted by the film's producers as saying "Time travel movies don't work. They just don't work."
• Angst? What Angst?: Lorraine shrugs off her Attempted Rape after she is rescued, and the fact that the man who attempted to rape her is working for the family thirty years later doesn't seem to cause her any noticeable distress. It is also true however that Lorraine's adult self gets barely a few minutes of screen time and, as noted, thirty years have passed. Plenty of time for a reconciliation (which there are many cases of in real life), especially with this far more timid version of Biff.
• Award Snub:
  • One of the most critically acclaimed films of 1985 (according to Rotten Tomatoes, has a bigger average rating and percentage than any of the Best Picture Academy Award nominees of that year), and while it did get a Best Original Screenplay nom, it didn't get a Best Picture nom.
  • While "The Power of Love" was nominated for Best Original Song, Alan Silvestri's iconic score wasn't nominated for Best Original Score.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The scene in the movie's opening where Marty cranks Doc's massive speaker up to 11 and blows himself across the room with just one strum from his guitar. While it does serve a purpose in demonstrating that Marty is both a risk taker and a bit of a rebel, in addition to establishing his affinity for rock and roll, it happens without any setup or context and is a ridiculously over the top example of cartoon logic in a movie that is otherwise fairly grounded in reality (the nuclear powered, flying, time-traveling DeLorean notwithstanding), and once Marty takes Doc's call the only further mention it gets is Doc advising him not to plug into the amp due to a "slight possibility of overload" and then it's never brought up again at any point in either this movie or the sequels.
• Catharsis Factor: George standing up to Biff and knocking him out with just one punch is this in spades after seeing Biff act like such a massive Jerkass and bully towards George throughout the whole film and attempting to outright rape Lorraine. Even more so, as this event finally gives George the boost in confidence he needs to become happy and successful in the new future.
• Covered Up: Many younger people are first exposed to "Johnny B. Goode" and "Earth Angel" through this movie, unaware of the originals.
• Ending Fatigue: While not wearing out its welcome, the film looks like it's going to end about twice before it actually does. Doc drops Marty off at his house before heading off to the future. Is it the end? Cut to Marty waking up the next morning. Marty is reunited with Jennifer. Is it the end? Doc suddenly returns to bring Marty along on another adventure with Jennifer accompanying them. It is there that the film finally ends.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Marty returns to the future to find that, as a result of his actions in 1955, his parents and siblings are all more successful than before. This is presented as a happy ending but this means that Marty doesn't remember the events of this timeline and his parents and siblings are basically strangers to him. Furthermore, the Marty that actually grew up in this timeline has seemingly been erased.
• Fair for Its Day: While the film does indulge in the Uncle Tomfoolery and Magical Negro tropes in its depictions of Goldie Wilson and Marvin Berry & the Starlighters, the upfront depiction of the racism Black people like them faced in the 1950s was very progressive for the time, as most popular works about the time period before and around the film's release focused more on the decade's popular culture while ignoring the various political and social issues.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: It's a small moment overall, but most fans find the extended version of the scene where a cop inquires if Doc has a permit for his "weather experiment" to be hysterical and wish it hadn't been trimmed down.
• Fourth Wall Myopia: Various internet lists detail "plot holes" such as George McFly not getting suspicious of his son Marty looking just like the Marty he met back in 1955 and/or recognizing the names of the planet "Vulcan" or "Darth Vader" from Star Trek and Star Wars that came out years later.
  • For the resemblance to Marty from 1955, his son ends up looking like 1955 Marty exactly 30 years later, long after he would have forgotten the exact facial details of someone he had met for a few hours over the course of a week when he was in high school. While the audience is exposed to only the characters shown on screen in the film, George would have met and/or seen thousands and thousands of people since he was in high school. Finally, while Michael J. Fox and Crispin Glover look nothing alike (because, Doylistically, they're played by different actors), presumably there are some shared facial features visible to the characters that leaves little doubt that Marty looks like his father. In addition, the third film shows that shows that George's great-grandfather and grandfather also looked like Marty, and given that he probably would have seen pictures of them, plus his grandfather would likely have still been alive into George's adulthood, he would more likely notice Marty resembling them than he would "Calvin Klein".
  • For the science fiction references, fans tend to forget that while they clearly hear names they are already familiar with, George has just been woken up from a deep sleep (doesn't wake up from a guy putting head phones on him) with screamingly loud music being blasted into his ear drums, and in his state of being partially awake and filled with terror hears an "alien" mention a couple of names he's never heard before. It's not like Marty repeated himself or allowed him to take notes, so, while he is shown remembering the names the following day, likely because it's fresh on his mind, he would be unlikely to recognize those names a week later, much less one or two decades later. Plus, Vulcan is, in fact, a Roman god and was proposed as a planet name in the 19th century, so a planet called "Vulcan" had some precedent well before Star Trek anyway.
• Genius Bonus: Biff's goons are very intimidated by the Starlighters, saying "We don't want to mess with no reefer addicts." To many viewers, knowing that marijuana does not cause violent behavior, this may make them seem like cowards. Those familiar with the time period, though, will know that it was the era of Reefer Madness and the goons had just bought into the propaganda. May double as a Parental Bonus.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • At the start of the movie, a newspaper clipping is visible indicating that Doc Brown's mansion from the 50s burned down and he wound up selling the land to developers. In 2008, Christopher Lloyd's home in California, which he was selling at the time, burned down in the Tea Fire.
  • Huey Lewis' cameo as the band judge, complaining about Marty's band being "just too loud" can be a tad winceworthy now as Huey Lewis announced he has developed hearing loss.
  • Before he was going to travel 25 years into the future by himself, Doc mentions that he'd get to find out who'd win the next 25 World Series. Then in Part II, we see the horrific results of someone using future sports knowledge, as Biff becomes a Corrupt Corporate Executive who turns Hill Valley into a nightmarish Dystopia. Plus, going ahead 25 years would put him smack in the middle of the US recession...not exactly a time to visit to give you optimism for the future. At least Doc was never going to use the sports knowledge for his own gain.
  • The use of Middle Eastern terrorists as non-serious, throwaway villains in a family movie. Doesn't seem so innocent now, does it? Tellingly, they're Adapted Out from the musical adaptation.
  • It's hard to watch Marty fading away and losing the use of his hands without thinking of Fox's Parkinson's disease, which he would be diagnosed with about 6 years later.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Goldie Wilson overcame racism to become Hill Valley's first African American mayor. In 2008, America elected its first black President.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Who's on First? scene in the café. Given that Pepsi Free was rebranded "Caffeine-Free Pepsi" just two years after the film came out, and Tab dwindled in popularity before being discontinued in 2020, it's entirely possible for modern viewers to not realise those were actual drinks in 1985 and end up just as confused as the vendor!
  • Biff, frequently calling Marty "Butthead", as Jason Hervey is in the movie playing one of Lorraine's younger brothers, and will later use that nickname pretty frequently himself, in a TV series that is also about nostalgia for the past (albeit the sixties, rather than the fifties).
  • In the "Making Of" documentary, Michael J. Fox expresses interest in travelling back in time to become a cowboy. Then, in Part III, he really does. He even lampshades this in the behind-the-scenes special for Part III.
  • Doc says his DeLorean is electrically powered (albeit referring to the the time circuits; the car itself runs on gasoline). Fast forward to October 2011 when the DeLorean Motor Company announces the DMCEV which actually is electrically powered. It runs on batteries instead of a 1.21GW nuclear reactor, though.
  • The shopping mall in pre-time travel 1985 is named the Twin Pines Mall.
  • One movie BTTF beat at the box office was Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider. In Back to the Future Part III, the 1885 Hill Valley was shot at the same location used for Pale Rider and has Marty use the alias "Clint Eastwood".
  • Originally, Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty, while Jeff Goldblum was considered for the role of Doc Brown in the first film. In the following year, Goldblum had an iconic eccentric scientist role of his own named Seth Brundle in The Fly, which spawned a sequel The Fly II which starred Stoltz as Seth's son Martin Brundle.
  • In the film, Doc Brown saw a copy of Playboy from the future. In October 1985, one of the people in that month's issue was John DeLorean.
  • In the first draft of the script, the time machine was a refrigerator and needed to go to a nuclear test site, but Steven Spielberg had this changed because he didn't want kids mimicking the scene and it was too expensive to film. Fast forward to Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and a certain infamous scene involving a refrigerator.
  • Doc's initial dismissal of Marty's family photo as a fake has become all the more relevant with the ubiquity of Photoshop.
  • "What the hell is a jiggawatt?!" is oddly appropriate now that the hard-g pronunciation has cemented itself as the preferred pronunciation.
  • In one scene, Marty tries to convince George to invite Lorraine to the school dance by pretending to be an alien named Darth Vader. In the French dub, Marty is voiced by Luq Hamet, who later on became the voice of Dark Helmet in Spaceballs. Furthermore, Christopher Lloyd was cast in season three of The Mandalorian.
  • The name of Marty’s band at the beginning? The Pinheads.
• Hollywood Homely: Marty's older sister Linda in the original 1985. Though not a model by any means, she's relatively cute and certainly not somebody you'd expect to have too much trouble finding a boyfriend.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • Dixon steals Lorraine from George at the dance and George starts to walk away. Unfortunately for Marty, this causes him to start fading out of existence. Luckily, George returns, shoves Dixon to the floor and kisses Lorraine, ensuring the timeline is fixed and also ensuring the existence of Dave, Linda and Marty.
  • Marty tries to send himself back to the future early enough to warn Doc he will be shot by the Libyans. When he gets there, the DeLorean stalls on him and he has to make the journey to the mall on foot. He gets there moments too late and Doc is shot and seemingly killed again. But, as it turns out, Doc came prepared by wearing a bullet-proof vest, having taped Marty's letter back together.
• Mandela Effect: A number of fans swear they saw the "To Be Continued" card in the movie during its theatrical run, even though that was only added to the home VHS release in 1986, after the movie proved to be a big enough box office hit for sequels to get the green light. The card was removed again in DVD and streaming releases, specifically because Spielberg and Zemeckis wanted it to match the original theatrical presentation.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "If My Calculations Are Correct, when this baby hits 88 miles-per-hour, you're gonna see some serious shit."^ExplanationDoc's introduction of the 88 mph threshold for the DeLorean to time travel.
  • ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIGAWATTS!?^ExplanationA reference to the amount of energy needed to power the Flux Capacitor to time travel, and Doc's hammy delivery when he finds out in 1955.
  • What the hell's a gigawatt?!^ExplanationA reference to Marty's ignorance of what a gigawatt actually is.
  • November 12, 1955. NEVER FORGET.^ExplanationThe date of the lightning strike that damaged the Hill Valley clocktower. Becomes a plot point as Doc plans to use the lightning to fuel the DeLorean so Marty can go back to 1985.
  • "It's your cousin Marvin Berry!"^ExplanationHe's calling his cousin Chuck so he can hear Marty's cover of "Johnny B. Goode".
  • "Great Scott!"^ExplanationThis is usually what Doc says when he sees or hears something surprising.
  • Become "Nom de Zeus!" (literally "Zeus' name" but more akin to "Zeus dammit") in the French version.
  • "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."^ExplanationDoc's closing line from the first film, before revealing the DeLorean can now fly.
  • "Oh my God! They found me. I don't know how, but they found me. Run for it, Marty!!!"^ExplanationDoc when he's cornered by the Libyan terrorists he swindled the plutonium from.
  • "I guess you guys aren't ready for that, but your kids are gonna love it."^ExplanationMarty's line after treating the Enchantment Under the Sea dance to A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll". Used for anything that is considered to be Vindicated by History.
  • "Hey, I've seen this one!"^ExplanationMarty recognizing a rerun of a show, only for his kid uncle to point out this is actually the episode's premiere. Used for when History Repeats or a Popularity Polynomial appears.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Biff crossed it when he tried to rape Lorraine in 1955 and then attempting to break George's arm when he tries to intervene.
  • The terrorists cross it when they try to shoot Marty, a minor, just to Leave No Witnesses.
• Narm Charm:
  • Marty almost fading has some bad green-screening, but it's still tense and terrifying to see him almost fade out of existence.
  • Marty's Big "NO!" when Doc gets shot by the Libyans. It's very over-the-top, but just imagine seeing your best friend killed in cold blood, twice, and not being able to do a damn thing about it in either case.
  • Marty's ridiculous performance at the dance is considered silly, but it getting the expected response from the 1950s teenagers led to one of the most hilarious moments in the movie.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: There are several bad video game adaptations based on the classic, but the 1989 Nintendo Entertainment System game is the most infamous. While it does follow the film in Broad Strokes, the game is a mish-mash of an overhead autoscroller and capturing specific scenes from the film via minigames. One level is the Cafe minigame where you have to defeat fifty of Biff's goons in one go and they come by quickly. Failing to do so sends Marty back a level.
• Retroactive Recognition: Match, one of Biff's goons, is played by Billy Zane.
• Sacred Cow: Regardless of people's opinions of the later movies, the first is widely regarded as one of the best time travel movies of all time.
• Signature Scene:
  • The climax, with Marty barreling the DeLorean down the street as Doc desperately attempts to reconnect the cables before the lightning strikes. There's a reason why this scene was included in all three movies.
  • Marty's rendition of Johnny B. Goode.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The Bobs were never thrilled with the effect used to show Marty's hand fading from existence^*Sid Sheinberg requested that the movie be ready for release by the July 4th weekend instead of August and so ILM was forced to rush through the effects shots in post-production, with the fading hand being done last and given the begrudging approval of "acceptable"; upon closer examination, rather than the entire hand fading away, it instead appears that a hole is appearing in it.
  • The green-screen shots of the flame trails not burning Doc and Marty are pretty obvious nowadays.
• Squick: Behind the scenes: the idea that every studio except Fox and Disney thought that this film, which features a boy's mother falling in love with her son, was not risque enough.
• Strawman Has a Point: Mr. Strickland. He tells Marty that Doc Brown is dangerous and a bit of a nutcase, scolds him for being late, and states that no McFly ever amounted to anything. While he is undoubtedly a jerk about it, his assessments on Doc and Marty are not entirely inaccurate:
  • Doc scams terrorists for their stolen plutonium, creating a fake bomb for them.
  • Doc performs risky time-travel experiments.
  • Doc stands in front of a car approaching 90 mph, and drags Marty in front as well. (If his calculations were incorrect, they would have been in serious shit.)
  • It's often difficult to get through to Doc Brown about a critical, life-threatening issue:
    Marty: "Your life depends on it!"
    Doc: "No!"
  • Marty had already been tardy three times before the scene in the movie and while his lateness on the fourth day is justified by the fact that all the clocks were 25 minutes slow, he seemingly had no excuse for the other times.
  • Marty in Part II's future turned out pretty much as Strickland predicted. George, not so much.
• Tear Dryer: Near the end of the film, Marty arrives too late at the parking mall to save Doc Brown after the latter's refusal to hear Marty warning him about his eventual fate back in 1955, and witnesses the terrorists shooting down his friend again. After the chase between the other Marty and the terrorists, he rushes to Doc's body, and breaks down in tears believing he lost him for good. But suddenly, the Doc blinks, slowly wakes up, Marty turns around and realizes he's still alive, the Doc then reveals that he's been wearing a bulletproof vest, and that he did read Marty's letter warning him about his death, having taped it back together.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In the DVD Commentary, it's mentioned that some European audiences were put off by how the "improved" McFly family had become more materialistic, as exemplified by Marty getting the truck seen earlier in the film. According to Crispin Glover, he also disagreed with showing this materialism, arguing that this contradicted the message that The Power of Love made the McFlys' lives better. This was a Reagan-era movie, after all.
  • Also to modern audiences, the implication that Chuck Berry, one of the pioneering African American musicians, was inspired to write one of his most famous songs by hearing a white kid play it seems problematic. Although Marty only knew it because Chuck Berry played it because he still wrote the song in the timeline Marty came from and since the film doesn't run on Stable Time Loop, that suggests he would still have come up with it on his own.
  • Despite an apparently anti-racist message in showing Goldie Wilson rise up from being treated as a lowly black laborer to eventually becoming mayor of the town (and impressively standing up for himself when his boss at the diner pooh-poohs the idea of a black mayor), his bug-eyed, exaggerated mannerisms look pretty cringey by today's standards. Similarly, we're meant to sympathize with the black musicians at the dance when a member of Biff's gang refers to one of them as a "spook," but ultimately the musicians are a mere plot device to help Marty.
  • The fact that the film, a mainstream, widely-popular and heavily beloved/referenced movie, involves incest not only as a major plot point, but Played for Laughs.
  • The fact that even after he tried to sexually assault Lorraine on the night of their first kiss, George apparently hires Biff to tend to his car thirty years onward; one would think George, Marty and especially Lorraine might take some issue with Biff being anywhere nearby after that harrowing encounter. Not to mention, George and Lorraine once saw Biff try to murder Calvin Klein with his car while he was still a high school student. Yet George and Lorraine regard him with a begrudged affection, almost like he's family.
  • Doc and Marty's plan to subject Lorraine to a staged Attempted Rape in general.
    • In a Deleted Scene, Marty is worried that the psychological fallout might turn him gay. This 1) implies that being gay is a bad thing, in the tradition of many other 80s movies; 2) completely disregards any potential trauma Lorraine might suffer from the encounter (Doc isn't any better in this regard, given that he winks when he describes the staged assault as taking a few liberties with her); and 3) is not how being gay works. This is slightly lessened by the fact that the intended punchline is that the 1955 Doc doesn't know that the word "gay" has a different meaning by 1985, asking "Why shouldn't you be happy?".
    • Things are slightly better in the final cut where it comes across less like Marty doesn't care about Lorraine's mental health and more like he didn't fully think the plan out. He wants to pretend to try hitting on Lorraine against her will so that George can come in and "rescue" her, but as soon as he parks the car and is alone with her, Marty realizes that he has to actually hit on his own mom, and can't bring himself to do it. There's also the fact that Lorraine reveals that she's not a completely innocent teenager and isn't afraid of sex, turning the whole scenario on its head. Plus, she had a huge crush on Marty, so any sexual advances he would've made on her would've been reciprocated by her, so it's odd that he thought she wouldn't want him before she actually kisses him and gets turned off, saying it feels like kissing her brother.
  • The film also shows George being a peeping tom, when modern films would use that to mark a character as a creepy pervert who wouldn't be treated in a sympathetic light. For some context, Back to the Future came out in the wake of films like Porky's, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Revenge of the Nerds. By the standards of your average '80s teen comedy, spying on a girl in her underwear is downright tame! The musical tones this down slightly by having George admit in his song that he knows that this isn't the best way to go about his crushing.
  • The fact that the Doc was willing to work with terrorists (albeit to rip them off) is treated relatively lightly by comparison to how it almost certainly would have been post-9/11 is jarring to a 21st-century audience. Whilst it comes with predictably brutal consequences (it gets better), demonstrating why exactly messing around with terrorists is a bad idea, Marty seems much more shocked that the time machine is nuclear-powered and the Doc had to (illegally) acquire plutonium to power it than the precise details of how.
• Values Resonance:
  • Marty telling a young Lorraine that she shouldn't drink or smoke. While it came from Marty literally knowing that these things would contribute to making her a bitter alcoholic and nicotine addict later in life, it was definitely a forward thinking lesson to teach. This is in stark contrast to most teen movies from the 1980s which relished in their characters liberally doing drugs without thinking about the consequences.
  • Biff's bullying behaviour towards George and possessive tendencies towards Lorraine culminating in an attempted sexual assault are certainly bad enough by the standards of The '80s, but in The New '10s and The New '20s, when toxic masculinity and harassment of women and young girls have become prominent social issues, they make him come across as even more villainous.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: A non-romantic version. Many have wondered that why exactly would George let Biff, who bullied him and tried to rape his wife years earlier, so close to his house in the improved 1985.
• Woolseyism:
  • Biff's line of "How about you make like a tree and get out of here?" was changed in the French dub to "Tu fais comme dans l'infanterie, tu t'tires ailleurs" ("You do like in the infantry, you get lost"). "Tire ailleurs" is phonetically very close to "Tirailleur" (a skirmisher). Several French military units since the Napoleonic era, especially those drawn from the African colonies, have been called "Tirailleurs". Biff mangles the joke by saying "tu te casses ailleurs" (same meaning, but completely losing the pun).
  • Lorraine assumes Marty’s name is "Calvin Klein" due his underwear brand − since the brand wasn’t as well known in France in the 80s, the French dub changed it to Pierre Cardin instead… which, ironically, would be much lesser known than Klein to young French audiences in the 21st century.