Question: When Marty is walking through 2015 Hill Valley, he sees a billboard from Goldie Wilson III in which he is offering a hover conversion from $39,999,95. Where did Doc get the money from to have the DeLorean converted in the first place? This was also the starting price of a hover conversion, it may have even been more than $40,000 depending on how complex it was to fit it to the DeLorean.
lionhead
17th Dec 2023
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
6th Jan 2005
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Question: Has anyone an idea about what kind of car is this one which almost hits Marty McFly Jr. as he runs out from Cafe 80's? For me it looks like Renault or Mazda, but I'm not sure, though I I can swear it must be some future descendant of the really existing nowadays car. Does anyone recognize any other familiar car in future vehicles? :).
3rd Jun 2022
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Question: Does the trilogy stick to a coherent time-travel-logic or is it "mix-and-match"? While it purports to adhere to the "one universe, many detours" theory (which is why Jennifer is save in bad 1985), it also delivers proof for the multiverse theory, unless it's "explained away" such as: Doc was never killed. He already wore a vest (and brought a gun to the meeting with a teenager) because he was a bit paranoid. Since he never really died, there's no parallel timeline required for him to stay dead.
Answer: It's fairly consistent. Changes to the past affect the future, although the time travellers themselves are afforded a bit of convenient wriggle room, like time changing around them, changes not immediately taking effect, etc, so as ever some suspension of disbelief is needed. The timeline changes - originally Doc was killed, Marty went back, gave him a letter, Doc took precautions. That's not the multiverse, that's just the future being changed by actions in the past.
Answer: Why wouldn't they exist? This is a serious question (maybe I am missing something). In BttF, Marty was disappearing because his parents weren't going to get together for him to even exist. In BttF II, his parents got together (Biff says so - he calls George Marty's father) and he was born, so it is very consistent between both movies. So even with an erased timeline, Biff did not erase Marty and his siblings being born. As for the linear time or multi universal, I think the movie is consistent - only the time traveler remembers things that happened before the time traveling began.
Answer: It's completely mix-and-match IMHO. The movies constantly switch between linear and parallel timelines, either making changes affect the time traveller or not, depending on plot convenience. For example, in the first movie Marty is in danger of disappearing unless he gets his parents back together, and fixes it before undoing all he had done himself, which causes a paradox. But then, when he gets back, his parents and siblings are completely different, but Marty is the same person that supposed lived that new life, unreplaced. That simply doesn't make sense in a linear timeline. In the second movie it is even worse, with Marty and Doc still existing in a timeline erased by Old Biff with the sports almanac, for plot convenience.
31st Dec 2021
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Question: At one point in the film Doc pulls out a case of "emergency money" he's collected from different time periods. When did he have the time to go to all those time periods? Marty went to 1955 and after getting back Doc went to 2015 before coming straight back again to get Marty to go to the future, so when did Doc have the time to go collecting all that money?
Answer: He wouldn't have to travel to the specific time periods to get past money; he could have found ways to procure it in the present (from collectors, museums, banks, etc.) before ever time traveling in the first place.
Answer: He didn't just visit 2015 and came straight back. He had visited more places and spend some time travelling before returning to Marty. He collected all the money in those visits.
Answer: Doc Brown is a resourceful man. Seeing how the bills in his emergency case are pretty crisp and not knowing how many travels he really made, it is only safe to say that he must have found a way to get his hands on those bills. Though his masquerade and "adding of 30 or 40 years to his life" by way of treatment in a rejuvenation clinic may not have been born out of vanity.
16th Jan 2017
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Question: Two questions: something I have never understood about Marty traveling into the future to stop his kid from going to jail. In the first movie when Doc. puts his dog into the time machine and sends him 1 min into the future the car disappears for 1 min and arrives back with the dog in the car. Doc explains that as far as the dog is concerned the trip was instantaneous but to Marty and Doc the dog disappears for 1 min. The question is when Marty travels into the future shouldn't he have "disappeared" for 30 years and not had an older self. The second question is, why is it so important for them to travel 30 years into the future to stop his kid from getting arrested, couldn't he have just as easily told Marty "hey on this day and year, don't let your kid leave the house. You have 30 years to figure out a reason or break his leg."
Answer: In the film, that one event sets off a chain reaction that destroys Marty's family, so it's paramount that they stop it from ever happening. Too many things could go wrong just trying to prevent it. Since Marty Jr. looks like 1985 Marty, the plan is to have Marty Sr. Take his place, rather than try to get 2015 Marty Sr. To ground his son or something. Plus, Doc says it's important they don't know too much about their future, so that's why he can't just tell them what to do in 30 years because he could reveal too much. Of course, if you overthink it too much, you can make it all fall apart, or come up with different ways to accomplish the same thing.
Chosen answer: To answer the first question, it's because Marty ultimately returns to the past and therefore does live his normal life for the next 30 years. Had Einstein traveled back that one minute, he would be there as well. As to the second question, Doc needs to be sure Marty's son doesn't go and can't leave it to chance that Marty will take take care of it after 30 years.
7th Feb 2019
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Question: When Marty suggests (in 1985A) that they go back to 2015 to stop Old Biff from taking the almanac in the first place, Doc says no because it'll be 2015A instead. When Old Biff went from 2015 to 1955 to give himself the almanac, when he came back to 2015 again, it was still the same one he left because Marty and Doc are just getting Jennifer out of the new McFly house when he returns. So what's the difference? If Biff can go from 1955 to 2015, without it becoming 2015A, then why can't Marty and Doc do it from 1985A?
Answer: There is a deleted scene on the DVD that answers this. You will notice that when Biff returns to 2015 it appears as if he is dying, on the deleted scene when Marty and Doc leave 2015 you see Biff vanish which suggests the "ripple effect" of Biff giving the Almanac to his younger self places everyone in an Alternate 2015 which Biff is no alive to see so is erased from existence. I have seen somewhere a suggestion Biff was shot in 1996, chances are with Biff gone by 2015 Hill Valley may have been a more peaceful city again. Hilldale was a run down suburb in the original 2015 and could have been the same in an Alternate 2015, we never saw inside any houses at that point to answer where Marty may have lived in an Alternative 2015 but perhaps in Switzerland.
Answer: The implication is that Biff returned to 2015 before the consequences of his younger self's actions took effect. Biff would have returned to 2015 immediately, as he wouldn't want to risk Marty and Doc discovering that he had stolen the DeLorean. By the time Marty and Doc travel back to 1985, the consequences of Biff's actions have solidified.
Answer: The reason Biff arrives like that is because Lorraine found out that he murdered George and shot him.
Where did you get that from please?
That info is reported to be from the audio commentary to a deleted scene, published on the official DVD. Since the scene has been filmed, it might even be considered canonical (as opposed to ideas from the drafting stage of the script which, ultimately, were abandoned).
Are those tidbits of information, such as this DVD commentary track, considered canonical?
13th Jul 2019
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Question: In Biff's casino Marty is escaping Biff and his goons - he goes into the stairwell and jumps from one stair to another. What I don't understand is how this stairwell works as it seems to be double, with 2 sets of stairs ending up on the same floor parallel to each other, one on one end and one at another but on the same floor. Does this even make sense? Can anyone tell me why a big building would have 2 sets of stairs in 1 stairwell going parallel and end up on the same floors? Any special name for this type of stairwell perhaps? I can't find anything on it.
Chosen answer: Your assumption is pretty much correct. There are 2 staircases spiralling around each other like a double helix. It is a fairly common way of constructing fire evacuation staircases as it allows a greater number of people to use them at the same time.
I see, so it's purely for fire escape reasons or more to handle overflow capacity in general?
28th Feb 2005
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Question: How does old Biff know how to operate the time machine?
Answer: Old-Biff first comments on the flying DeLorean "I have not seen one of those in 30 years", then he sees what he believes to be two McFly Jr.'s and gets even more suspicious, next he spies on Doc and Marty having an argument about the almanach and how Doc is opposed to time travelling for personal gain! What else does he need to know? And lastly: We're talking about a time machine here! Old-Biff could have stolen it, kept it for how ever long it took him to figure out how it works and returned it at leisure. We don't even have any proof for the days he picked to departed from 2015 or to arrive in 1955. The only verified date is his return from Nov 12 1955 06:38 pm.
Chosen answer: He doesn't, but it's hardly difficult to work out - the date setting readout is pretty obvious. Biff presumably set the date, then just accelerated the car until the time circuits kicked in.
Answer: It's a plot hole. Biff couldn't have known or suspected the DeLorean's time-travel procedure, which necessarily included Biff setting the precise 1955 destination with no previous instruction. Biff just suddenly "knew" how to operate a time machine. He also changed the timeline by going back to 1955, so there's no way he could have returned to the "normal" 2015. But he does.
It's not totally impossible that Biff knew how to the time dial worked. He wasn't suspecting what it was, he knew it was a time travel machine and thus knew what the dial was for and possibly being technically educated knew how to use the time dial.
We know from the first movie that Biff, by age 48, was waxing cars for a living in 1985. He hardly had a "technical education" and it's doubtful he acquired a technical education by age 78 in the year 2015. It was established in the first movie that he had become a timid underachiever.
Alright I agree, he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. But he has lived for 78 years by then, till 2015. Even though he has no clue on how the flux capacitor works, he doesn't need to, all he needs to do is work the time circuits, a simple keypad system which even shows which display shows which time. For someone from 2015, it's not so hard to figure out.
Answer: He could have taken however long he wanted to figure it out, as long as he returned it to the exact time he took it from. We don't actually see him time travel with it when he takes it, so, for all we know, he could have taken it to his house and taken the few hours/days he needed to figure out how to use it.
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Answer: Doc probably did the conversion himself, perhaps using parts from scrapyards. Seeing he has money from several time periods, it's quite clear he has been to many places ever since he put the Mr. Fusion on the car. Could have done it at any time.
lionhead