Back to The Future/Fridge

Fridge Logic

 * At the very end of the game,
 * When Marty returns to 1985 at the end of Btt F and finds out that his entire family is different... Where the hell is 1985' Marty? Btt F 2 and the telltale games establish that each version of 1985 has a Marty that is doing stuff (run out of town, run out of town again, camping, what have you), but won't they eventually return? And if they somehow vanish when original!Marty appears, he isn't getting the new memories of those timelines, so even when he finally gets back to 1985', his life could potentially be very different, and he wouldn't know what he should. - User:Alphacat
 * At the end of BTTF, Marty returns to see the "new" Marty leave in the time machine as Doc is shot at by the Libyans. Where that Marty went at that point is subject to Wild Mass Guessing.

Fridge Brilliance

 * When Marty first shows up at 1955 Doc Brown's house in the first installment, he's testing a thought reading device. He makes a series of guesses as to why Marty is there, ending with noticing Marty's jacket and asking if he's looking for donations for the coast guard. Running gag, OR, did Doc actually pick up the memory of Marty being asked if he's with the coast guard earlier in the day?
 * He sure did. "You come from a great distance?" refers to how Marty traveled 30 years from 1985 to 1955. Next, "You want me to buy a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post?" refers to how Marty uses a newspaper to verify that he's in the past. Lastly, "You want me to make a donation to the Coast Guard Youth Auxiliary?" refers to both the woman who wanted donations to save the clock tower in 1985, and the fact that a few people in 1955 (Lou the cafe owner, Skinhead the gang member, and Stella Baines) thought Marty was a sailor judging from his vest.
 * On the other hand, Doc is touching Marty's vest before he says the stuff about the coast guard, so he clearly isn't getting this one from his machine. Later, he himself says that the Time Machine is his first invention that actually worked.
 * To be fair, after Marty explained what happened, Doc says that the thought-reading device "doesn't work at all!" Maybe Doc considered it one of his few working inventions in Twin Pines' 1985!
 * Why does the the Delorean lack a rear-view mirror? Not only because vision the back is blocked off by the time machine engine, but to avoid reflecting the light of the flux capacitor into the eyes of the driver. (Theres a label on the glass which warns of blinding light.)
 * If the Libyans knew jack squat about building a nuke, they never would have gone to Doc Brown in the first place.
 * Doc Brown burned down his house, wasted his family fortune, and spent 30 years trying to invent his time machine. In 1985, he is reduced to living in his former garage next to a Burger King, driving a shady truck advertising "24 HR Scientific Services," and hanging out with ignored and insecure high school kids, all the while being treated as an outcast by his community (even Strickland calls him a "real nuttcase"). It's plausible that Doc has cultivated black market connections in order to make some money and get the raw materials he needs for his experiments and inventions. These connections probably helped him get in touch with the Libyans and even corrupt officials at the nuclear research center in order to get the uranium he needed for the time machine.
 * Also in the first film, regarding Marty only setting a few minutes' worth of lead time in returning to the past: Keeping in mind that Marty didn't want to screw up the timeline worse than it already was (he knew he couldn't run into himself in the future/present), he gave himself as little time as possible to screw things up in. Also, he wasn't expecting the Delorean to fail on him.
 * Alternatively, Marty simply has "no concept of time". Marty could have wasted his only opportunity to go back to the future because he felt he needed to change his clothes. Moreover, at the beginning of the film, he arrives late to school for the fourth day in a row. Granted, the Doc set his clocks back 25 minutes on the fourth day, but why was Marty late the other three days? Maybe he's just a habitually late person. The reason he only gave himself ten minutes to warn the Doc was because Marty completely underestimated the amount of time required to tell him, with or without the car.
 * Another in the first film: Doc says he's calculated the exact time Marty has to start to hit the cable the instant the lightening hits. Marty misses the start time, but still gets there in time. Why was Doc wrong? He miscalculated the Delorean's more advanced acceleration compared to the contemporary cars he was familiar with.
 * Worth noting the Delorean hits 88 miles an hour well before it hits the cable.
 * In Part II, why did Biff never get suspicous about the flying DeLorean he saw in 1985? Because at some point after that, flying cars become widespread, so he must have assumed it was a prototype.
 * Also, the car accident that messed up Marty's life happens as a direct consequence of him fixing his family in the first movie, because in the unchanged timeline Biff wrecked the car, so Marty couldn't have drag raced anyone. The sudden appearance of Marty's chicken problem may also be directly linked to him now trying to live up to the high standard set by his overachiever father, instead of struggling with the poor self-confidence learned from his unaltered father.
 * I agree with the theory about him not really being suspicous about the flying Delorean. He even acknowledges that memory in 2015: "A flying DeLorean! I haven't seen one of those in...30 years"
 * I always assumed that he WAS suspicious, but had no idea what could possibly have caused it. Eventually just filed it away in his mind as a memory that had occurred AFTER flying cars became common.
 * In the second and third movies Marty suddenly seems to have a problem with being called "chicken" (or "yellow, whatever). Although it seems to come out of nowhere, but in the first film no one calls him chicken, they may call him a lot of things but no one really questions his bravery.
 * It may also be that after the events of the first movie, Marty's father now has a reputation for bravery and standing up to bullies, that Marty may feel now obligated to live up to.
 * The whole "chicken thing" may actually be from the original timeline. Remember Marty originally never like'd being compared to his father becuase he thought of his old man as a coward. Even after the timeline was changed, that habit still lingerd.
 * He had 5 minutes with his new dad before doc picked him up. My guess is that it's the ripple effect. In the ideal 1985, Marty has grown up with his cool dad and has become abit cocky about it, and his new traits are slowly replacing his old ones of original 1985.
 * In the Telltale game, Marty makes a reference to the Mario brothers. This gets really interesting when you consider that Super Mario Bros., the game most people know Mario from, came out in North America in March of 1986 - about two months before the game starts. It's likely it was on Marty's mind because it had just come out and he was currently obsessed with it (much like how Wild Gunman would have come out less than two months before the time Marty came from in the movies).
 * Alternately, Marty could've been referring to the earlier Mario Bros. game, which was released in North America in 1983.
 * Regarding the Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory in the first movie; Marty's actions in 1955 caused his brother and sister to be completely erased, then remade, in time. However, he himself was only partly erased before being brought back. This would explain why he kept his old memories, whilst still having some personality changes (e.g.; the "chicken" problem, deciding to send his demo tape into the record company after all), even though the rest of his family are now completely different.
 * The end of Part II. Seems to be a bit of silly movie magic that the mailman arrives exactly on time, doesn't it? But this is a letter that they'd been holding for a century, a package that would have been increasingly the topic of conversation as the time drew nearer. They had a betting pool going as to whether or not this "Marty McFly" was even going to be there. They likely had some debate over who would actually deliver it. If you had the opportunity to confirm or debunk a one hundred year old urban legend (even if it's only an urban legend around the office), wouldn't you take an almost extreme amount of precautions to ensure that you got there when you were supposed to?
 * But why is he alone?
 * It's late at night when he delivers the letter, chances are he's the dumb schmuck who got stuck having to stay an extra four or five hours to do the job while everybody else who works there went home. After all, their manager is probably a sensible enough man to know that sending a mob of Western Union reps to make a single delivery could be pretty intimidating (and bad for business!) and he wouldn't want to have to pay them ALL overtime. Either that, or Doc just told them not to go out of their collective way when the time came.
 * Rule of Drama
 * Or maybe he was the only one who didn't bet in the pool, so is the only one who could be trusted (how easy would it be to either "forget" to show up and say there was no one or throw the letter into the bushes and say "Yeah, I gave it to him!"
 * Except, if I recall correctly, he said that he lost the bet.
 * Maybe they drew straws within the betting pool, and he just happened to be the poor shmuck who drew the short one.
 * The Telltale game again, episode 2 this time. If you examine the bug zapper in 1986 before Biff and his brothers show up, Marty wonders when they got it, implying that it wasn't there in the alpha timeline and came about as a result of the alteration. Considering the only net major change made to the timeline was Kid Tannen's non-arrest and the resulting skyrocketing of crime in Hill Valley, you'd think doing something about the bugs on the front porch would be the farthest thing from the McFlys' minds. So what's the connection? When I saw Marty exploit its presence to KO the Tannen gang, a theory came to mind: the bug zapper was deliberately put there as a Tannen trap. The "past" Marty, being the clever little punk he is, had it hung there and perhaps upped its voltage for the primary purpose of using it to shock the Tannens into giving up the fight whenever they came to collect, much like the "present" Marty did. Small wonder the Tannens had to run the "past" Marty out of town...
 * It seems it's time I defended my logic. The bug zapper's still there in Episode 3, even though Hill Valley's now run by Citizen Brown instead of the Tannens. It's simply there for the proper purpose of a bug zapper in this particular timeline (if dust mites are sufficient to get a whole house quarantined, of course they'll take the bugs on the front porch seriously). In fact, maybe the bug zapper's preservation is an example of how time likes to keep its alterations minimized whenever possible. "The universe eats paradoxes for breakfast" sort of deal. I don't know how to explain it better.
 * As a matter of fact, there's a trope for that.
 * Another one for the Telltale game, this time for Episode 3.
 * It's made clear that Hill Valley is kinda crummy and pretty inconsequential. But Marty and Doc are very lucky that this is the case, because it makes it the perfect testbed for time travel. No matter how much they alter Hill Valley's history, it won't greatly affect the rest of the world, which makes messing up history less catastrophic, and makes it safer to alter history for the better (e.g. Marty's family, Marty's kids and Clara Clayton). This is explicitly stated in the Telltale game, in which changes that could potentially affect the world fail to to do so miserably; in Episode 2,, and in Episode 3,.
 * The Telltale game episode 3. "X11" is . X11 seems like kind of a random letter-number combination, doesn't it? Not exactly. It's not X11, it's XII-- the Roman numeral for twelve. This is in perfect keeping with the clock motifs that tend to haunt Time Travel stories.
 * The ending.
 * In Back to The Future Part II, after Biff returns the time machine, he seems to be in pain or dying, getting out of the deLorean. I could never understand this. Was he having a heart attack? Did he hurt himself with his cane after getting it stuck and breaking it? And what was the point in even including that scene? But in rare example of a deleted scene actually being worth watching, one on the DVD reveals all.  The only question I have now is why they took that scene out... They said that test audiences didn't understand it, but surely that explains what is otherwise a very puzzling scene, and adds a touch of brilliance to the movie. -komodosp
 * It's probably because it highlights one of the plot holes: if Biff "erased" himself by going back in time, then surely the same thing should happen to Doc and Marty. Or they should be replaced by new versions of themselves. Or Marty should have disappeared just as fast in the first movie. Etc. I think cutting the scene was a good idea - it challenges your suspension of disbelief.
 * But there's the brilliance: in either of the timelines from the first movies, Biff doesn't have sufficient funds or opportunities to afford all his vices. Hence he probably doesn't have the money to do, say, very hard drugs or alcohol for decades on end. But once he has the almanac, he does. The problem being that, given he can now afford all his vices, the odds are good he's going to die of a drug overdose, or heart attack, or whatever -- he's not going to make it to the old age when he would have originally seized the almanac. Hence he does a quick fade-out and dies when he returns to the future -- by giving himself the almanac, he's taken several decades off his own life.
 * Actually, if Biff was to adhere to the same rules as Marty and Doc, he probably could've lived on, but wouldn't have jumped back to the same timeline where Marty and Doc are (at Marty's future house). He'd have jumped back along the new timeline where he's a rich asshole. Marty and Doc would've been stranded in 2015. Of course, much of the time mechanics they use don't make sense anyway.
 * The reason why they decided to cut that scene is simple: had Biff disappeared, so would have the piece of his cane he dropped in the time machine! The scene where Doc finds it and shows it to Marty would have made no sense.
 * Word of God suggested that Biff of the alternate 1985 ended up pushing Lorraine a little too far, and she shot him dead some time in the 90s, hence his disappearance when he returns to 2015. The test audiences could hardly be expected to guess this without further clarification, and without it the situation was too ambiguous, so they removed the scene.
 * Going back to the fact that Biff was erased much quicker than Marty, there's actually a simple answer to this too. The only reason Biff was erased so fast is because he went into the future past the point of no return. Marty still had time to save himself in 1955. If Marty had gone straight to 1985 without fixing his parents, he'd be gone in a blink just like Biff. My point being, Biff probably would've survived for the duration necessary to save himself, but instead opted to jump ahead giving himself no time and resulting in his immediate death.
 * Also from Back to The Future Part II: How is 2015 Biff able to use the DeLorean Time Machine the way he does? Simple: He's a bit of a gear-head. In 1955, his '46 Model Ford has a special trick to starting it; a trick that only Biff knows. After Marty's changes to 1985, Biff has an auto detailing business set up - a business he still dabbles in by the year 2015. By then, I'm sure he's worked on a few cars with hover conversions. Combine that with the memories of seeing the flying DeLorean in 1985 and his eavesdropping on Doc and Marty's conversation in the alley, then you get how he's able to operate (to the best of his abilities [he is old, you know]) the time machine. -what0080
 * Also, here's the logic to why Biff disappears fast and Marty didn't. Marty was fading out of existence slowly mainly because he was still before the point in time that would've ensured his birth. If Marty didn't get his parents back together by that moment and just left for home he would've been erased just as fast as Biff was because like Biff he wouldn't have logically existed in the time he was in and time would've caught up with him. Take this into account, when Biff is in the past giving himself the almanac he's perfectly fine. This is because Biff (like Marty) is preceding his point of non-existence and therefore technically still had time to correct the mistake which would lead him to inevitable death. Honestly, it's surprising test audiences didn't get it cause it'd be pretty easy to figure out without anything having to be explained that what he did in the past erased his own personal future. Also, since the cane top and the bag had been left away from Biff's person they didn't fade with him, kinda like how the guitar didn't disappear with Marty. I hope that clears up a couple of things. - rockysamson
 * Here's an example from the original Back to The Future I never thought of until I saw it for the umpteenth time: Marty's father's explanation for why he was in the street to get run over by Lorraine's father? Birdwatching. Well, he was packing binoculars, but that's not the only reason it's appropriate. He was there looking at Lorraine. What's 50's slang for an attractive young woman? A bird. He was, so to speak, literally bird watching.
 * From BTTF 2, I always though that the police woman telling Jennifer to "be careful in the future" was a very strange, generic way of referring to the time they occupied as The Future. Only after about 15 viewings did I realize that Jennifer was still suffering from the wooziness of Doc's knockout gas, and (correctly - she is in her personal future) misinterpreted what the officer said. What would have been less awkward was "Be more careful in the future", ie, don't let that happen again.
 * This one's really minor, but I didn't notice until I watched BTTF 2 for the Nth time that when A-Biff shows the Almanac it wears a plastic cover. The reason is obvious: Biff lost the original paper cover in 1955 when Strickland took the Oh-la-la magazine from him.
 * In the same scene, why does it take so long for Biff to follow Marty when his Mooks come out of the elevator? His gun holds 5 bullets, all of which he uses before Marty exits the lounge. He had to go back for more bullets!
 * Lastly, why did Marty go to the roof? Having the doc show up on the side of the building was the plan all along. Notice how Marty looks down and swears.
 * As a longtime fan of the series, I always found it odd that the third movie would begin with a slow panning of Marty, just, sleeping. It wasn't until just now when I realized why- the poor guy spent the entire previous movie running around solving problem after problem, with no breaks in between (unless you count getting knocked unconscious). With all that in mind, it's very satisfying to see him gets the rest he so very deserved!
 * Not to mention that, if you do the math, he'd been awake for over 24 hours straight (excluding the "almost 2 hours" of the KO), with a significant amount of tiring physical activity, much of which takes place in the last three of those hours.
 * If you extend this further, Marty has had a hell of a couple of weeks. Week or so in the past, get back, go to sleep, wake up, see the new 1985, go to the future, go to bad!1985, go BACK to 1955, run around, go to the wild west for a week, and then back to 1985 again. Marty just can't catch a break. - User:Alphacat
 * Also, Marty and Jennifer don't get their weekend down at the lake. Both have spent the whole weekend time travelling and/or passed out.
 * The first movie makes mention of Marty's uncle Joey who is perpetually in prison for one reason or another. Once he goes back to 1955 he sees his uncle as a baby who is always sitting in his crib and his mother (Marty's grandmother) says that he just cries whenever they take him out so they just leave him in there and move the crib around the house. It wasn't until years later that I realized Joey feels insecure without the bars and most likely suffers from some mild form of mental illness and thus commits crimes to get into prison and thus feel "safe." In the altered timeline George has enough money to get him the help he needs.
 * Why does Old Biff choose to go to November 12, 1955 to give his younger self the almanac? Because he remembered betting on a game that had a sudden reversal for an unexpected outcome on that date, and that would hopefully prove to his dim-witted younger self that the almanac was real.
 * After seeing Part II again just now, I laughed when Doc Brown says "If only the postal service was as reliable as the weather service", because at the end of the movie,
 * That was Western Union that held the letter, not the USPS.
 * So in the first movie, Lorraine falls in love and later marries George after he is involved in a car accident because she feels sorry for him. In the second movie, it is implied that Jennifer marries Marty because she feels sorry for him after he is involved in a car accident. Can't believe it took me so long to realize that.
 * At the end of Part III, Marty avoids the car accident that otherwise would have happened.
 * Working this out in a vacuum... (Shut up; some of us who didn't grow up with the internet don't realize that pre-internet subjects are scrutinized by anyone on the internet.) I always assumed that doc was just crazy and had set all of his clocks wrong, not that his house being non-synchronous was an earlier experiment... until the umpteenth rerun.


 * And I've assumed that Marty had always been vulnerable to coward-adjectives: complete immunity to ripple effect still inconclusive.
 * Okay, this troper has watched Back to the Future (the first one) for the 50th time and this plot point occurred to me. Why does Doc Brown continue to insist not letting Marty tell him about his death? And then it hit me. It wasn't just because he didn't want to know what's going on, but from the sequence he saw when he saw the Oh Crap moment on the video he watched, he figured out that he would die. And because he knew of his death, he didn't want Marty to worry about his own death. At least this troper thinks so.

Fridge Horror

 * Biff attempted to rape Lorraine in 1955. In the 1985-A of Part II, they're married and there's obviously no love lost between them. When Lorraine-A tries to leave, Biff-A threatens her kids, which means he's been holding that over her head. In other words, he's been raping her since they got married.
 * Also, Lorraine-A says to Marty "Oh, they must've hit you hard on the head this time", making us realize how particularly horrible Marty-A's childhood must have been in this time.
 * To take this one step further: don't forget that the Biff of 1985-A . It's entirely possible that Lorraine witnessed this, and was finally coerced into marrying Biff (and prevented from reporting him to the police) by the threat that either she or one of her children may be next. What a charming guy.


 * After Marty learnt his lesson in the past in Part III, he decides not to race with Needles just because he called him "chicken", and thus prevents the accident that would ruin his life. Nice aesop about ignoring jerks who can get you into trouble, right? Until you realize that, according to Marty's mom in 2015, Jennifer probably married Marty just because she felt sorry for him after the accident, which can mean that in this new timeline Marty jr. and Marlene could as well never have been born...
 * Or Jennifer could have a higher respect for Marty and his own change. Or her knowledge of time travel and having kids in the future influencing her decision to marry him.
 * Fridge Brilliance: It's like how George and Lorraine met. Originally, Lorraine only fell in love with Marty's father because he was run over by a car, but in the end she falls for him anyways even though he was never hit.
 * Or that Marty becomes a Rock God.
 * Yes, Jennifer felt sorry for the Marty who constantly pitied himself after the accident, but she genuinely loves the Marty we know who doesn't race with Needles.
 * The Telltale game implies
 * In the directors commentary of the first film it was up to Lorraine not Marty to stop the near squicktastic Oedipal canoodling between them while they were in the car before the prom. That means if she kissed Marty and it didnt feel like it was "kissing her brother", Biff never approached the car for the attempted rape, and George never came over to the car either Marty would have (willingly mind you) gone into some serious Philip J. Fry levels of "Pastnastification" in which 2 things could have happened.
 * He suddenly has a older brother/sister he never had before or
 * He's his OWN FATHER in a unwitting Stable Time Loop
 * Fun Fact: The only reason this didn't even remotely happen in the film is that Disney was one of the film's main producers.
 * O.K., here's a pretty good one I noticed after my 9000th viewing of Back to The Future. You know how people ask if "You kiss your mother with that mouth?" when you swear? Well, early in the first movie when the Mcflys are eating dinner Marty's brother lets out a loud "Damn!" when he realized he was late for work. His mother then proceeded tell him not to swear and then asked him for a kiss on the cheek. --
 * The "lithium mode on" scene in BTTF 2. Marty activates it and blames his kids for turning it off. From this article on The Other Wiki, we can infer that "lithium mode" consisted in dissolving lithium salts into the household water supply, which Marty used to treat himself. His kids did not need it, but they were forced to drink lithiated water anyway, which affected their brain chemistry and turned their behavior into what we see in the movie. They deactivated lithium mode because they wanted to snap out of it and be normal, but their father won't let them because he only thinks about his own needs.
 * Or its pumping lithium, an anti-depressant, through the air-conditioning. Given how crappy Future!Marty and Jennifer's lives are (Jennifer herself is often "tranqued") you can see they'd need it.
 * In Back to The Future, when Marty returns to 1985 a lot of things are different than when he felt, including his girlfriend's appearance. The meta explanation for this is a simple case of The Other Darrin. However, it becomes horrifying when you consider a possible in-universe explanation. What if his own parents weren't the only teenage couple who's meeting Marty disrupted? Maybe, during the chase with Biff or the Johnny B. Goode recital, Jennifer's parents were in the crowd and were too busy watching Marty to meet each other? Than, at a later time, one parent or the other got married to someone else and had a daughter named Jennifer with them. So the reason Jennifer looks different when Marty gets back is that she has one different parent than before, and is essentially a completely different person.
 * But they both happen to look just like Claudia Wells?
 * Or Elisabeth Shue?
 * There are fully armed Libyan terrorists freely driving around America. Fully armed Libyan terrorists planning to build a dirty bomb and who were in no way defeated by the end of he movie.
 * Here's the REAL Fridge Horror - Remember that scene where Biff is trying to date rape Marty's (future) mom? And George is supposed to stop it? Remember Biff tells him to shut the door and walk away? Okay, now remember the only reason he comes back is because Marty told him to fight for his woman? So what do you think happened in the original timeline when he was still a wuss? I thought of this AFTER I saw the movie back in the 80s, and why I can't watch it even now.
 * Rest easy. In the original timeline, Marty wouldn't have been there to stage a groping, and Lorraine wouldn't have been parking in the first place. She'd have been inside with George, surrounded by other students, while Biff would still have been outside. Even if she WAS in the car, Biff didn't even see her at first; he was only after Marty, who was again not there in the original timeline. Crisis averted.
 * In the second movie, after Marty and Doc have returned to their drastically altered future, where Hill Valley is overrun with crime, Marty places Jennifer on the porch of her house. Before leaving, he comments that there are bars on her windows, something that probably wasn't there before. We later find out that Marty's house is no longer owned by his family. So why would Jennifer's house still be owned by her family in this timeline? For all we know, Marty just put her on the front porch of a house full of serial killers and date rapists. Who knows what happened to her in between the time they dropped her off and came back.
 * Marty has kind of an "oh shit" moment regarding this in the movie. Whatever happened, she was still on the porch and asleep and unharmed by the time Marty came to pick her up. Considering that only a few minutes had passed for her, and that the timeline had caught up with her across the transition from Hell Valley '85 back to it's proper state, nothing happened because whatever horrifying things would have happened to her were averted before they could actually transpire. What WOULD have happened, if Hell Valley had gone along unchecked, is probably better left to terrifying fanfiction.
 * When Marty accidentally prevented his parents from falling in love, they probably would have both gone off to marry other people, meaning that Marty erased at least two other children from time itself in order to ensure his own existence.
 * During the course of the Telltale games, This means that Marty is the only original human being left in time. (We can be generous and say the rest of the world wasn't terribly affected, but given that, and the lengthy span of time involved, not affecting anything outside of Hill Valley becomes less likely.) Technically, nobody is exactly who he knows anymore... And how the hell is he supposed to know what his timeline-native self did up to the point he returned. I don't know about anyone else, but this is pretty horrifying. - User:Alphacat
 * 2015 has no lawyers. Yes, its a funny joke about the legal system, but think about it. Marty's son got a life-sentence for being caught breaking and entering. Suddenly 2015 looks a whole lot less fantastic when you realise you can get arrested for practically anything and worst of all, even if you are innocent you have NO chance of being either defended or acquitted.
 * Made far worse. Sure Griff's a major butthead, but petty vandalism, coupled with destruction of a historic monument as its the Courthouse-Mall window's he went through? What was HIS sentence?! Did he deserve that fate?