Back to the Future
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Continuity mistake: While Marty is admiring the new truck, Jennifer walks onscreen. Once the angle changes, Marty's left arm is resting on an entirely different part of the door. (01:49:50)

ryguy_1983

Continuity mistake: Lorraine throws Joey's cake on the table and a close-up shows nothing next to the tray. When the angle changes, a Pepsi can has appeared right by the middle of it.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: As Marty drives the DeLorean towards the clock tower, if you look carefully you can see that he drives past the 'Bluebird Motel' billboard at least 3 times (which is where he started from) and drives past that small building with the slanted grey roof in the square about 4 times.

Continuity mistake: After Doc accidentally unplugs the cable and is sending Marty back, he unplugs the cable 15 seconds later and it shows Doc, and the clock's hand change. A split second later the clock's hand changes again.

Continuity mistake: While being chased by Biff, after Marty knocks down a man and a woman, the man stands up and helps the woman stand up, but a frame later he is rolling on the floor with the woman on top of him.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When the wind unplugs the cable connected to the tower and Doc runs towards it, the position of the cable changes between one shot and the other in barely half a second.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Marty is running through the car park you can see a person in the background in one of the shots but they disappear in the next shot, then re-appear again.

Continuity mistake: Just as Marty is going to be set back to 1985, the camera keeps showing shots of Marty, and the lightning poles coming closer and closer to him. Now Marty is supposed to be going 88MPH and mostly every shot just as the lightning is about to strike is basically the same distance from the lighting poles to the car.

Back to the Future mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Marty tells George how to flirt with Lorraine, they both enter the diner and Marty sits on the back of the counter but disappears between shots, only to reappear later on. Also, the extras around him change, although they're all dressed in similarly colored clothes. Check a man in a plaid jacket next to the blonde girl in pink, who disappears when Marty trips Biff. This continuity havoc was due to the combination of Eric Stoltz scenes and new Michael J. Fox reshoots.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: At the very end of "Earth Angel", after kissing Lorraine, George waves to Marty on stage, who waves back and flexes his right hand, holding it up. It then switches to a wide shot for the end of the song, and Marty's right hand is down on the guitar again.

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Continuity mistake: When Marty is holding on to the back of the truck, Biff attempts to hit him with his car. Marty quickly pulls himself to the side of the truck to avoid being hit but in the next shot, he is holding on to the back of the truck.

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Continuity mistake: After the DeLorean disappears with the dog inside, flames appear underneath Marty and Doc. In the close-up of their legs, a shot later, the road is spotless and the flames reappear a second later.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Marty is up on stage "disappearing" and yells "George..." (wanting for George to resume the dance with Lorraine and ultimately kiss her), this exact shot of Marty shows him slumping over and appearing very weak, almost on his knees. A split second later showing that same scene (right when George finally walks back to Lorraine) only from the "crowd view", Marty is still standing upright, not slumped, maintaining his composure.

Continuity mistake: In the scene at the beginning of the film where Marty cranks up his giant amplifier, the resulting explosion blows Marty into a shelf which tips over, spilling all of its contents on top of him. In the next shot, despite the shelf having been emptied in the previous shot, papers and file folders continue to fall on Marty.

Continuity mistake: When the 1950s clock chimes and Marty stares at it, a huge scaffolding structure is reflected on a glass billboard, which is nowhere to be seen in subsequent shots of the place.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: After the DeLorean with the dog in zooms in between Doc and Marty's legs, all of the angles show that there is no license plate anywhere around. Suddenly it appears spinning in front of them, as if it had been there all the time.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: After Marty exits the cafe to make himself a skateboard out of two wooden crates, the crates are half a meter apart from each other, but close in the next angle. Also, the chubby kid holding his friend's crate swaps to holding his between one frame and the other.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: After Marty is looking in awe at the 1950's records store, his hair swaps from messy to brushed backwards right when he walks backwards on the grass.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: After Doc Brown sends Einstein one minute into the future, the rest of the scene until he returns is played out in real time. There are no scene cuts, and any camera angle changes are accompanies by continuous audio which negates any possibility that time has been stretched or compressed. However, it takes Einstein 1 minute 21 seconds to return.

Back to the Future mistake picture

Other mistake: The car that almost runs Marty over has the vehicle registration plate of 6S 48405. Later on, when Marty is hit by Sam, Sam's car has the same plate. (00:35:49 - 00:42:02)

apikachu68

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Trivia: In the battle of the bands scene, when Marty introduces The Pinheads, Huey Lewis, who provided "The Power of Love" for the film's soundtrack, plays the second judge from the left, and is the one who eventually says, "You're just too darn loud." (00:07:40)

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Question: Right when Marty gets back to Doc before he goes back to 1985, he's praising his dad's actions of the night. One line that's bothered me ever since I can remember is "My dad laid out Biff. He's never stood up to Biff in his life." And then the Doc pauses for a second and gets a strange look on his face and says, "Never?" To that, Marty says, "No, why?" and the Doc shrugs it off saying, "Nevermind." What's Doc thinking? The best I can come up with is that he's wondering what effects it'll have on the future, but that's a rough guess. If anyone out there knows, I'd be happy to hear it.

DenizenZERO

Chosen answer: I think that is *exactly* what he is thinking. He realizes that by standing up to Biff, George may have irrevocably changed his personal future, and therefore affected Marty's future as well. This is exactly the sort of thing Doc was so eager to prevent by refusing to hear any information about the future.

Phil C.

Answer: It would have had to be something that would have happened anyway without the interference, otherwise Marty wouldn't have originally existed.

terry s

Answer: In the novel Marty adds that George is also thinking about college now. Doc says that this might delay Loraine and George having kids for awhile and adds that Marty might find himself like 10-14 years old when he gets back to 1985.

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