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? :).
lionhead
6th Jan 2005
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
27th Aug 2001
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
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.
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.
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).
5th May 2015
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Trivia: The voice of Biff's grandmother was provided by Thomas F. Wilson.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: According to The IMDB website, Charles Fleischer who played Terry the Tow Truck Driver and the old man taking donations in 2015, provided the voice of Gertrude Tannen.
And other sites list Wilson as the voice of Gertrude. Neither men are credited for the role and I have yet to see any site list a source for the information.
Https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0281486/otherworks.
IMDB is not considered a good source. Plus, on that site the information is given as trivia without a source, any crackpot could have claimed that.
Well until you can show me a confirmed source stating it was anyone else, my correction stands.
But IMDB isn't a confirmed source. Here's a site that lists Wilson as the voice actor, so by your logic the trivia entry stands. https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Gertrude_Tannen.
On the audio commentary it is stated that the voice of Grandma Tannen is Fleischer. This is stated right after we hear "her" voice when the outside of her house is being shown.
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.
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.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
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.
11th Feb 2013
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Plot hole: When Old Biff goes back to 1955 to give himself the almanac, he comes back in the Delorean to the version of 2015 that he left, not the other, skewed version in which he is rich. Everything in 1955 should have changed around the Doc and Marty, as the Doc tells Marty everything will change around Jennifer and Einstein later on in 1985, when Marty and the Doc go back to restore normalcy. George is alive in this future, so we know the skewed version hasn't taken hold.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: It is established in the movies that the effects of the timeline being changed are not immediate. For example, in the first movie, in the photo of Marty and his siblings, it takes some time for them to vanish from it. When Doc tells Marty everything will change around Jennifer and Einstein when the timeline is restored, I don't think he meant the future will be restored to normalcy right that second, but more after an ample amount of time has passed for everything to be right. After Old Biff gave the almanac to young Biff, there was ample time for him to return to the original 2015 before it changed into the alternate 2015.
That would mean when they restored the timelines it would have taken time for it to adjust again, but it didn't. The new timeline was created but the old one remained because Marty and Doc were still in the original future. However, even though they are not in their original timeline it doesn't make sense for them to still be there, the timeline should have been erased or else old Biff wouldn't be erased either. Again though, a copy of another plot hole, which one is the oldest and original?
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Answer: I was able to recognize the grey one that almost hit him. It is a late 1980's Ford Probe. There is also a jeep that flies down that Marty grabs a hold of.
Toolio
The Jeep is a 1987 Wrangler.
lionhead