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Back to the Future (1985)
(aka: Back To The Future 1)

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  • 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.
  • Allegedly Optimistic 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. The novelization tries to smooth it over by describing how Marty upon returning can suddenly remember growing up in the new timeline and his memories of both timelines forming some kind of stable amalgam.
  • 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. That being said, this would only apply in the original timeline, as in the revised timeline, he would already know that it works because of Marty telling him in the past.
    • In the altered timeline Doc lays motionless for a few minutes before getting up and revealing his Bulletproof Vest. Was Doc Playing Possum to ensure the Libyans wouldn’t try a headshot? Did he do it to ensure the Lone Pines Mall Marty would think he was dead and take the Time Machine, to prevent there from being two versions of Marty in one timeline? Or was Doc genuinely knocked unconscious from the force of an AK-47 hitting his protected chest?
    • Was 1985 Lorraine lying when she said she never did things like go parking with a boy, or was 1955 Lorraine lying to seem more grownup when she said she had? The former interpretation would mean she was a hypocrite. The latter interpretation would explain her changed attitude in the new 1985; this version of Lorraine did indeed go parking with boys as a teen, and is consequently more relaxed about her kids exploring sex at the same age.
  • Alternative Joke Interpretation: When Marty tells 1955 Doc Brown that Ronald Reagan is the president in 1985, the latter makes a quip about Jane Wyman being the First Lady during his rant about how ridiculous it would be for an actor like Reagan to become the president. However, Wyman had been divorced from Reagan since 1948 and Reagan remarried to Nancy Davis in 1952. Is this a writing mistake, is Doc ignorant about celebrity culture, or is he implicitly saying that Wyman being the First Lady would be as ridiculous as Reagan being president in the first place, considering that he also mockingly suggested Jerry Lewis being Vice President and Jack Benny being Secretary of the Treasury?
  • 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.
    • Between the 1940s and 1970s, many Americans truly believed that a newly-revitalized Japan created low-quality electronics, when compared to well-established American brands such as Magnavox, RCA, and Zenith. It was only in the 1970s, when Sony, Panasonic (Matsushita), and other Japanese hi-fi companies began gaining traction in American homes, and Japanese cars (Toyota, Nissan, and Honda) started to show their production and economic value against American brands such as Ford, GMC, and Chevrolet, that American attitudes toward Japanese-made products flipped from "junk" to "high-quality". Now, even in the 2020s, many Japan-made electronic and digital products from the 1960s to the 1990s are either still in working order, or are seen as extremely high quality and durable, when compared to comparable contemporary (or newer) products from China, Korea, or Malaysia.
  • And You Thought It Would Fail:
    • The film was passed on by practically all the major studios for not having raunchy enough humor note , while Disney passed it on for being too raunchy by their standards note . 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.
    • At the time, time travel movies were widely regarded as box office poison, the assumption being that the concept was too far inside the Sci-Fi Ghetto to appeal to mainstream audiences.note  This view was backed up by the perceived financial failures of recent movies that had featured time travel, such as Time After Time, The Final Countdown, Somewhere in Time, and Time Bandits. 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.
  • Audience Awareness Advantage:
    • A common internet "plot hole" is that George makes no comment about his third child looking like his high-school rival for Lorraine's affections, resulting in either him reasoning out that "Calvin Klein" was his time-traveling sonnote  or falsely concluding, such as in this Family Guy skit, that Marty is actually the product of an affair between "Calvin" and Lorraine. Except, Marty obviously didn't come out of the womb looking like "Calvin". George and Lorraine would have watched him grow up and gradually grow more to resemble his 1985 self and at the point where Marty's looks catch up, George is nearly 50 years old and has probably met countless people, making it unlikely that he would remember the exact facial features of a guy he met for a few hours here and there over the course of a week 30 years prior. Not to mention that Back to the Future Part III shows that two of George's ancestors, who could very well have still been alive in George's and, in the case the younger of the two, possibly even Marty's lifetime, looked exactly like Marty. Taken together, it makes sense that he doesn't find anything suspicious.
    • In fact, a real plot hole could be that in 1955 George (and Lorraine for that matter) never makes any comment about Marty looking similar to either of them (being parents and son), a form of Viewer Myopia that ignores this fact because the audience knows the actors aren't related to each other and don't share strong resemblances.
    • Another retroactive plot hole could be that 1955 George also doesn’t find it weird that Marty is the spitting image of George's grandfather William and great-grandfather Seamus in their youth, but out of universe, that wasn’t established when the first film was made.
  • 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.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Modern viewers aren't as charmed by George McFly due to him being a voyeur and, as an adult, allowing the guy who he knows sexually assaulted Lorraine to be in proximity of his wife and kids, while others like him for being a Lovable Nerd who learns how to stand up for himself.
  • 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.
    • After several setbacks that jeopardize Marty's chances of getting back to 1985 happen all at once, Doc works like crazy to keep the plan from failing. The payoff is Marty gets back home and Doc - who in 1955 was just a bungling inventor - has his first real success. And as the sequels demonstrated, far from his last.
  • Common Knowledge:
    • The terrorists drive a blue and white Volkswagen van. For some reason a lot of people misremember the vehicle as a brown or white Toyota van.
    • There seems to be confusion on what Marty's goal is. It's often described as him going back in time to ensure his parents meet (it's actually him going back by accident and causing them not to meet, then having to fix it). Others believe that his very act of traveling back in time caused him to start erasing his existence, and many have suggested it makes no sense that he doesn't disappear immediately instead of gradually fading, forgetting that it's his accidentally taking his father's place in history, causing his mother to fall for him instead, that threatens to wipe out Marty's existence, not doing so immediately because no one has yet taken an irreversible action.
    • John Mulaney has a routine that uses a bunch of these misconceptions, and creates some more, including the idea that Marty is interested in having sex with his mother (it's the other way around, as Marty's mother originally fell for his father due to the Florence Nightingale Effect after her father hit him with his car. When Marty traveled back in time, without knowing what was meant to happen, he pushed his father out of the way of the car and got hit instead, with him taking his father's place as the object of affection for his mother, who was unaware of their true relationship to each other. Marty himself is, quite understandably, very much Squicked out by this development) and that it has Marty "write" Johnny B. Goode (something that many claim is a Plot Hole due to its implication of a Stable Time Loop, which runs counter to how time travel is depicted as working in the films), which is really just Marty playing it based on his memories, and having Chuck Berry hear a snippet of it and evidently realize it's the "new sound" he was looking for. Chuck still writes the actual song himself, though. In addition, by the time Chuck is able to hear what is playing, Marty has mostly shifted into his improvised Eddie Van Halen-esque rock solo, so Chuck wouldn't have heard enough of the song from the performance, suggesting he still came up with it on his own.
    • It's been stated in several places that Marty's parents, at least in the original timeline, don't approve of his Intergenerational Friendship with Doc. In fact, aside from a scene when 1955 Lorraine briefly interacts with Doc when she asks Marty to the dance, Marty's parents never make any acknowledgment of Doc at all in the movies. Strickland is the one who tells Marty that Doc is a nutcase, while original 1985 Lorraine disapproves of Marty's relationship with Jennifer, so perhaps the misconception is the result of people conflating the two interactions.
    • One of the more iconic aspects of Marty, one that many will tell you is what starts the trouble with Biff once he is stranded in the past, is his overreaction to being called a "chicken", causing him to immediately try and prove that he isn't one. The problem is that this aspect of his character made its debut in the first sequel, and while it becomes a major plot point for him, both the trouble it gets him in and how his learning to overcome it affects his future, not once in Part I does anyone call Marty, or anyone else, a chicken. Marty gets on Biff's radar by sticking up for George and attracting Lorraine's attention (Word of God Handwaved this; Marty had a more privileged upbringing since changing the past, and a greater feeling of entitlement).
  • Covered Up: Many younger people are first exposed to "Johnny B. Goode" and "Earth Angel" through this movie, unaware of the originals.
  • Easily Forgiven: While Biff in the altered timeline appears to have become a harmless, eager-to-please Gentle Giant who is barely recognizable as the bully he used to be, both George and Lorraine seem to be remarkably grudge-free about him trying to kill their friend and rape Lorraine.
  • 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.
  • 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 that 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 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 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. And while Marty does do the famous Vulcan salute, he was wearing thick rubber gloves and kind of messes it up.
  • 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 darn 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 Barack Obama as its first black president, and re-elected him in 2012.
  • 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 realize 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 traveling 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 and the creature he transforms into is nicknamed "Martinfly", which sounds pretty similar to "Marty McFly".
    • In a deleted scene, Doc Brown saw a copy of Playboy from the future. In October 1985, the month the present day scenes take place in, 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 gigawatt?!", pronounced with a soft-g, is oddly appropriate now that the hard-g pronunciation has cemented itself as the preferred pronunciation. What was meant to be an example of Marty being Book Dumb is now something that even more knowledgeable people might say and instead makes it sound like they’re discussing some sort of fictional Applied Phlebotinum.
    • 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 (a parody of Vader) in Spaceballs. Furthermore, Christopher Lloyd appeared in Season 3 of The Mandalorian.
  • 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.
  • It Was His Sled: Marty's actions in the past resulting in his family being in a better position mentally and financially. While originally a shocking twist, it has since become common wisdom even among those who haven’t seen the film on account of how many times the film's ending has been homaged and parodied.
  • 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 bulletproof 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 and Laserdisc 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, Blu-ray, 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."Explanation
    • ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIGAWATTS!?Explanation
    • What the hell's a gigawatt?!Explanation
    • November 12, 1955. NEVER FORGET.Explanation
    • "It's your cousin Marvin Berry!"Explanation
    • "Great Scott!"Explanation
    • 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."Explanation
    • "Oh my God! They found me. I don't know how, but they found me. Run for it, Marty!!!"Explanation
    • "I guess you guys aren't ready for that, but your kids are gonna love it."Explanation
    • "Hey, I've seen this one!"Explanation
  • Moral Event Horizon:
  • Most Wonderful Sound: Just the way Doc says "everything will be fine". Many fans have pointed to that one line helping them get through some tough moments.
  • 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.
  • Padding: As memorable as the "Johnny B. Goode" sequence is, the scene doesn't actually serve any purpose for developing the characters or moving the plot along. In fact, the studio executives even wanted the Bobs to cut the scene and only relented because of the positive response from the test audiences.
  • 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 Line: The very last line of the film ("Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.") has become by far the most iconic line in the trilogy. No doubt bolstered by Ronald Reagan quoting it during one of his State of the Union addresses.
  • Signature Scene:
    • The very first time travel experiment, in particular Doc & Marty looking back at the fire trails running between their legs after temporal displacement and the OUTATIME license plate violently spinning on the asphalt after having been left behind.
    • 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*; upon closer examination, rather than the entire hand fading away, it instead appears that a hole is appearing in it. The way his hand is unnaturally angled compared to his shoulder further indicates that it was a composite shot.
    • The green-screen shots of the flame trails not burning Doc and Marty are pretty obvious nowadays. You can even slightly see through Marty's legs in the 4K release.
  • 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.
    • Lorraine describing her kiss with Marty feeling like she's kissing her brother. While intended to be metaphorical and abstract, the fact that she has brothers who are all prepubescent can strike a nerve.
  • 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.)
    • Doc then nearly forgets about the fact that when the car arrives at the moment in time it was aiming for, it will retain the position and velocity it had when it left, i.e. about to run over the spot where he and Marty are standing.
    • 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.
    Doc: Well, I figured...what the hell?
  • Values Dissonance:
    • In the DVD Commentary, it's mentioned that some European audiences were put off by how the "improved" McFly family had simply become wealthier and more materialistic, as exemplified by Marty getting the truck seen earlier in the film, rather than kinder and more respectful. 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. Still, this was a Reagan-era movie, and materialistic wealth is still a somewhat common ideal in the US (although the real point arguably is to demonstrate how George's vast increase in self-confidence has improved his station in life without flat-out having him announce it to the audience).
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • George McFly treating Biff like his own personal handyman who he happily intimidates and talks down to is somewhat uncomfortable, even with Biff's past as a massive jerk and attempted rapist. While their arrangement is treated as jovially as possible in the film, it unintentionally comes across that bullying is fine as long as the victim "deserves it." Reportedly, even George's actor Crispin Glover was displeased with that message.
    • 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?".
      • The situation is 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 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 fact that Doc Brown was willing to work with terrorists (to rip them off) is treated relatively lightly in comparison to how it almost certainly would have been viewed post-9/11, is jarring to a 21st-century audience. While it comes with predictably brutal consequences (but still gets better), demonstrating why messing around with terrorists is a bad idea, Marty seems much more shocked that the time machine is nuclear-powered, and that Doc Brown had to illegally acquire plutonium to power it, than the precise details of how Doc Brown aquired the plutonium in the first place.
  • 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 behavior 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.
  • 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.

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