YMMV / Back to the Future: The Game

• Accidental Aesop: The ending of Episode 5 is sort of the logical conclusion to the entire series and films. Meddling with the timeline keeps wrecking things til you have three older Marty's begging young Marty for help, all from different timelines. At that point, Doc just shrugs and tells Marty to ignore them. Now is important. It's actually brought up several times throughout all five episodes.
• Broken Base: There is a certain friction that occurs between those who are longtime fans of the Back to the Future franchise and those who are longtime fans of the Telltale Games company.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game:
  • Many non-gamers have taken interest in the game strictly for the Back to the Future story line — much to the chagrin of the more avid gamers who are, overall, disappointed with the game play of the series.
  • Coinciding with the Updated Re-release of the game in 2016, IDW Publishing put out a comic book adaptation titled Back to the Future: Citizen Brown, giving the non-gamers exactly what they wanted.
• Fanon Discontinuity: To some die-hard fans of the original trilogy, this game might as well not exist. Many other fans are fine with it, though. Being an example of No Problem with Licensed Games (and getting many of the original actors back) really helps. It's also the first thing in the series to really utilize Jennifer as a character, and both Edna and Trixie serve to balance out the series' mostly male-dominated cast. Telltale has stated that the game doesn't necessarily have to be considered canon.
• Jerkass Woobie: Even after everything, it's hard not to feel kinda bad for 1931 Edna when Marty breaks her up with Emmett.
  • And then Alternate 1931 Edna. Humorous insanity aside, it's hard not to pity exactly what The Slow Path, guilt, and loneliness have done to her.
• Just Here for Godzilla: With the 30th Anniversary Edition of the game having Thomas F. Wilson as the voice of Biff Tannen, there may be some fans collecting that version for that reason, even if they already owned the original.
• Moral Event Horizon: In Episode 3, Edna Strickland could have passed for an extremely obnoxious Well-Intentioned Extremist until she has her husband, Citizen Brown, tortured and brainwashed.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: The heavy involvement of Bob Gale and the film's cast makes this a definitive BTTF game to most.
  Bob Gale: [This] Back to the Future game is the only game that deserves to be called Back to the Future.
• Player Punch:
  • Citizen Brown's possible Face–Heel Turn.
  • Seeing Citizen Brown both die and fade out after being ran over by Edna.
• Retroactive Recognition: A.J. Locasio, who voiced Marty in this game, would later be better known for voicing Prince Lotor in Voltron: Legendary Defender.
• That One Achievement: In Episode 1, one achievement is to perfectly in one go complete the rocket fuel mini-game, which is already one of the most frustrating parts of the game, but the added restriction of doing it with zero mistakes when the time needed to move to the next place for an instruction can be incredibly short means most people going for 100% Completion never actually finish the first episode.
• The Woobie: The Citizen Brown timeline in Episode 3. While not as severe as some dictatorships, everyone seems on the verge of a nervous crackup due to the Dystopia of alternate Hill Valley, Marty seems like he's panicking about 86% of the time, and the only halfway normal person is a Delinquent who would probably be a child psychologist's field day. Even Citizen Brown himself comes off as a Tragic Hero, considering he genuinely believed he and Edna made a better Hill Valley and that everyone was happy.

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