Corrected entry: At the end of BTTF, Doc, Marty and Jennifer take off for the future. In BTTF2, they arrive 30 years later and see themselves. Impossible! They would have been inside the time machine (as far as those left behind are concerned) for 30 years. Marty and Jennifer were gone from 1985 to 2015 as far as he and everyone else knows. I can prove this by using the first movie. When Einstein goes into the future one minute, he was gone for a minute as far as Doc and Marty were concerned, even though the trip was instantaneous to Einstein.
Charles Austin Miller
27th Aug 2001
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
24th Sep 2018
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Corrected entry: When Marty first uses his talkie talkie he is holding it backwards. Microphone slats are at the back not front, and the antenna is on the left not right. In later scenes he is holding it correctly.
Correction: It's a running gag in the BTTF movies that Marty is comically ignorant of operating both past and future technology; he futilely attempts to twist the cap off a pop bottle in 1955, for one example, and he has no idea how "one size fits all" clothing works in 2015. His mishandling of the walkie-talkie may also be attributed to this ignorance; however, his walkie-talkie should function properly no matter how he holds it, as long as he pushes the transmit button with the microphone a few inches from his mouth.
27th Aug 2001
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Plot hole: If Old Biff changed his past and went back to 2015, he goes back to HIS future, not the bad future, but Doc later tells Marty that if he were to go to the future to stop Biff from taking the almanac, he'd go to the bad future, so Old Biff technically shouldn't have been able to return to "his" future at all.
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Suggested correction: The effects of the past being altered may not have happened immediately. It is possible that it took time for the timelines to adjust to the changes of events, meaning enough time would have passed to change 1985 when they return, but not enough time could have passed to change 2015. By the time Doc says if they went back to 2015 they would be going to an alternate future, some time has passed, so the effects of the past being altered and taking ahold in 2015 and altering it are more likely to have occurred by then.
Here is what you say: "perhaps it took time for the time lines to adjust." What kind of time would timelines take? Time is time, it doesn't take time to change the timeline. That doesn't make any sense. Some people claim it was the DeLorean itself that came back to its own original timeline and only then reset itself in the new one, but then the new timelines being erased later on wouldn't have happened either. So its a genuine plot hole.
It's established in the first film that it takes time for the changes to take effect. Marty and his siblings slowly disappear from the photo, rather than instantly. Although the scene in BTTF2 was deleted, it was filmed showing Biff dying and slowly fading away after his return to his present.
Yet they were restored instantly without any outside influence at the end of the movie. There are a lot of things wrong with this movie and the first one. Old Biff disappearing should mean that Marty and Doc should slowely disappear as well, even the DeLorean. But they didn't, that doesn't make any sense. The point is there is a plot hole, somewhere. To know where all you can do is look at it logically and then you automatically come up with Old Biff going back to the future but not the alternate future. If he did there wouldn't have been a movie, but that's the plot hole.
The timeline didn't change until he made his first bet which was some years I think after receiving it. He immediately travelled forward after giving the act, meaning he will still jump forward to the original future.
The timelines would instantly change, and Old Biff couldn't possibly have returned to "normal" 2015. It's just a poorly-thought-out time travel plot hole (or a deliberate error to expedite the storyline).
Suggested correction: In context, Doc was saying that they couldn't return to 2015 to stop Biff from stealing the time machine, because Biff didn't steal the time machine in the alternate 2015, he only stole it in the original 2015. Marty and Doc didn't stay long enough in 2015 after Biff returned, and that's why they didn't see any differences. Also, though they were unaware of it, Biff was dead in the alternate 2015, so the disasters he caused might have reverted back after his death.
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Correction: Wrong - the reason Einstein is completely gone for that minute is because he never goes back to the time he left. While Marty, etc. go 30 years into the future, they will eventually go back to 1985 and live the rest of their lives, therefore he can exist in the future.
The whole point and premise of BTTF is that Time is very surely linear, such that altering the past changes the future in such a way that time travellers can even erase themselves from existence. The BTTF story is not about alternate timelines, it's about the pitfalls of travelling in linear Time.
Charles Austin Miller
The way time travel works in the BTTF trilogy is that time jumps don't happen until we actually see them happen. Marty and Jennifer have not yet returned to 1985, so they obviously could not yet have lived out their lives to 2015. Also, the Marty we see in 2015 had his accident with the Rolls Royce, and when Marty finally does return to 1985 he avoids that accident, meaning that the Marty we see in 2015 can't possibly be from the timeline where Marty returned to 1985.
The original correction is correct. Everything happens simultaneously, for the time machine time doesn't matter whether it's the past of future. So the fact that Marty and Jen go back is important. Because going back makes it likes the travel to the future never happened. Because, and I want to make this absolutely clear, them returning means they travelled back in time again and that has more impact than only going to the future (which is what we are all doing all the time).
lionhead