Back to the Future: The Game: Difference between revisions

** A guard in Episode 4 is seen drinking from a can of soda named Alt (as opposed to Tab).

** In Episode 5, {{spoiler|Marty's hoverboard has an "Attell" logo on it.}}

* [[Blown Across the Room]]: Same scene as the first movie, this time Biff does it. Marty tries it again in Episode 4, but it doesn't have the expected effect.

* [[Brainwashed and Crazy]]: (Episode 3) {{spoiler|The "Citizen Plus" program makes people physically incapable of bad behavior (they become nauseous if they even think about alcohol, violence, etc); they can also be turned into mindless drones acting on Edna's orders, as Biff demonstrates.}}

* [[Burger Fool]]: Soup kitchens never went out of style in alt-1986. Marty's rival for love, Leech, works here as an attendee.

* [[But Thou Must!]]: Episode 4: {{spoiler|There's no way to avoid telling Citizen Brown that Edna will be sad and lonely in the true timeline.}}

* [[Call Back]] / [[Continuity Nod]]: Episode 1 begins with the first time travel trip of the DeLorean from the first film, recreating it line by line before ominously deviating from the film. The player can still alter some of Marty's dialog during this sequence.

** Though you miss [[One Hundred Percent Completion|a Trophy]] if you do this.

* [[Catapult Nightmare]]: Marty awakening in bed after the prologue.

* [[Changed My Mind, Kid]]: Despite expressing his dread of "Scary Mary", {{spoiler|1=Willie McFly}} turns up to rescue Marty and Doc at {{spoiler|Crazy!Edna}}'s shack, grabbing her shotgun barrel before she can fire.

* [[Chekhov's Boomerang]]: The {{spoiler|paddy wagon tire iron}} from Episode 1 and the {{spoiler|speakeasy panic button}} from Episode 2 both make surprise reappearances in Episode 3.

** Marty's guitar briefly shows up as part of a quickly-forgotten puzzle in Episode 1. It pops up again in Episodes 3 and 4.

** It should be noted, he only did this as a child. Though he did do it more than once.

** And it should be also noted that back as late as in the early 20th century it was normal for little boys to wear dresses.

* [[Curiosity Is a Crapshoot]]: As shown in Episode 1, Doc ends up in jail in 1931 after being knocked out during the speakeasy explosion. The whole reason he traveled back to 1931 was to figure out who started it, to satisfy his curiosity. {{spoiler|And also to find information on Marty's grandmother, who he figured he'd find in that era, for a scrapbook.}}

* [[Curse Cut Short]]: Suspecting Marty of being a snitch, Alt-1986 {{spoiler|Jennifer}} threatens to shove her spraycan up...somewhere.

* [[Downer Ending]]: {{spoiler|Episode 3, "Citizen Brown". Even for a cliffhanger, it's pretty dark. And there's Episode 4.}}

* [[The Dragon]]: Biff to Citizen Edna, against his will.

* [[Dressing as the Enemy]]: Marty dressing up as a diminutive gangster and (later) in riot gear.

* [[Dumb Blonde]]: Trixie Trotter, Kid's moll.

* [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]: {{spoiler|After repeatedly altering history, creating worse and worse timelines up to the point of causing Hill Valley to cease to exist, the final timeline at the end of Episode 5 [["Close Enough" Timeline|mirrors the state of things at the beginning of the series]] for the most part, and the noteworthy differences cause those involved to be better off.}}

* [[Embarrassing Old Photo]]: Principal Strickland as a baby.

* [[Exty Years From Now]]: Partly subverted; it's Exty-''Five'' Years From Now. Marty travels back 55 years to 1931 throughout Episodes 1 and 2 {{spoiler|and it's hinted that he'll travel forward 25 years to 2011, the year of an episode's release. There are, however, 80 years from 1931 to 2011. Then you have 1876, which is nine years before 1885, the time of ''Part III''.}}

* [[Face Heel Turn]]: {{spoiler|In Episode 4, Citizen Brown voices his dissatisfaction with Marty's plan to "fix" time since it means Edna ends up a [[Crazy Cat Lady]]. Episode 5 shows that he blames science and not Edna for the Orwellian 1986, and he teams up with 1931! Edna to try and sabotage Marty's efforts and his own younger self's interest in science to ensure that he married Edna after all. He kidnaps his younger self and traps him inside a bathysphere while Edna gets Officer Parker to shut down young Emmett's booth and try to arrest Marty.}}

* [[Fictional Counterpart]]: There is a "Soupmo" in alternate 1986 in Episode 3.

* [[Foreshadowing]]: For example, there's a ''[[Frankenstein (1931 film)|Frankenstein]]'' poster in Marty's room in Episode 1.

* [[Game Breaking Bug]]: A nasty one in Episode 5. {{spoiler|Giving the recording to Officer Parker ''before'' doing the Glass House results in Marty being stuck in the Glass House with no exit and no way to do the puzzle.}}

** {{spoiler|Although this can be fixed by reloading the game's auto-save before entering.}}

* [[Gilligan Cut]]: When Marty and Doc take Arthur into an alley near the new speakeasy in Episode 2.

* [[Good Ol' Boy]]: Willie McFly.

{{quote|'''Crazy!Edna''': [sobbing] "I'M A '''HOOLIGAN'''!!"}}

* [[Heel Face Turn]]: Cue Ball in Episode 4.

** {{spoiler|Not that it mattered much, as he was already to starting to fade out of the timeline.}}

* [[Heroic BSOD]]: {{spoiler|In episode 3, Citizen Brown goes through one after he discovers the truth about Edna and the dystopia he helped her create.}}

* [[Hoist by His Own Petard]]: Marty ignites a barrel of Kid Tannen's own moonshine to smoke him out. Double points for using the handgun lighter, swiped from Tannen's crime family in alt-1986.

{{quote|'''Marty:''' "[[Bond One-Liner|Place your bets!]]"}}

* [[Hope Spot]]: Episode 3, Marty convinces Citizen Brown he really is a time traveler trying to set the timeline right. {{spoiler|Citizen Edna has no intention of letting that happen.}}

** Episode 4, Marty goes off to help Young Emmett with his invention and finally fix the timeline. The ending shows {{spoiler|Citizen Brown wanting to foil Marty's plans in order to help Edna.}}

* [[Identical Grandson]]: Continuing in the grand tradition of the movies. George and Biff are both the spitting image of their fathers, Arthur McFly and Irving "Kid" Tannen, respectively. Also, Jennifer's father clearly takes after his own father in the looks department. All in all, [[Justified Trope|a very clever excuse]] to re-use character models.

** Lampshaded in Episode 4, when Marty sees a picture of a seemingly random man, only for him to point out that he looks pretty much the same as all the other Tannens, concluding that he must be an ancestor.

* [[Idiot Ball]]: (Episode 1) One moment the Doc is incredulous when he thinks Marty interacted with his grandfather, the next he urges Marty to work with Young Emmett, who isn't even an inventor yet, to get him out of prison. [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?]] (Although to be fair, they have little choice in the matter.)

* [[I'm Mr. Future Pop Culture Reference]]: This time, both Marty and Doc use it. And when Marty does, you can choose the name yourself.

** Gets a brief lampshade in Episode 4 when Marty confuses Citizen Brown by telling him he's supposed to be "Carl Sagan".

{{quote|'''Brown''': "The "billions and billions" guy?"}}

*** Both {{spoiler|Edna}} and Doc [[Lampshade]] this during their argument under the chandelier in Episode 5.

* [[Ink Suit Actor]]: Played straight with Doc Brown, but subverted with Marty; he ''looks'' the same (heck, even ''sounds'' the same), but it isn't [[Michael J. Fox]].

** Played with in the case of {{spoiler|Citizen Brown}}, who more closely resembles Christopher Lloyd (i.e. bald head and spectacles).

* [[Ironic Hell]]: {{spoiler|Crazy!Edna}} lives in a shack in 1931-A, surrounded by the "pure simplicity" she sought to preserve - {{spoiler|a desolate wasteland where Hill Valley no longer exists}}.

* [[Just the First Citizen]]: Done literally with {{spoiler|Citizen Brown}}. Subverted when he turns out to be a [[Decoy Leader]] to {{spoiler|Edna, his wife}}.

* [[Large Ham]]: Trixie Trotter. She's not bad, but the fact that she's quite obviously quoting the script word-for-word makes it seem like she's being overly poetic about the whole thing.

* [[Licked by the Dog]]: Edna Strickland is snobbish, controlling, mean-spirited, annoying, and {{spoiler|becomes a maniacal dictator in a bad future}}. However, {{spoiler|the Emmett Brown of said future likes her, even after her older self tortures and tries to brainwash him, so she can't be all bad...or can she?}}

** {{spoiler|The ''second'' example, though, is straight-Edna Tannen walking Einstein, who doesn't mind the arrangement.}}

** Early in Episode 4, if Marty asks his father to override the security systems, George responds that this isn't a science fiction movie. He's right; it's a computer game ''based'' on a science fiction movie.

* [[Legitimate Businessmen's Social Club]]: "Speakeasy?? You're mistaken, officer! This is [[Implausible Deniablity|an ice cream parlor]]."

** When talking to Citizen Brown about the DeLorean time machine, Marty says "You built a time machine... out of a DeLorean!" identically to the way he said it in ''Back to the Future'' (and subsequently Episode 1's opening), emphasis and all.

*** Not to mention that Marty tries to restate what Doc meant to tell him about the DeLorean's steel frame being perfect for time travel, also from ''Back to the Future''... except he doesn't know ''exactly'' what that is.

# Episode 4:

** Jennifer notes Marty is wearing Calvin Klein underwear.

{{quote|'''Matches''': "Don't. Even. Blink."

'''Marty''': ''(puts his hands up)'' "It's not a real gun, it's not a real gun, I swear!" }}

** In Episode 1:

*** The ''[[Weird Science (film)|Weird Science]]'' poster on Marty's wall.

*** Doc has the alias [[Carl Sagan]] in 1931. Additionally, the TV in Doc's garage plays a clip from ''[[Cosmos]]''.

*** Edna screams out the window, "Jack! Diane! I know what you're doing behind that tree!", a reference to the song ''Jack and Diane''.

*** Doc mentions having hidden the DeLorean in a [[The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police|DeSoto]] lot, keeping it safe because no one is buying cars in the Depression-era economy.

*** When trying to get into the speakeasy, Marty can say that he's "selling these [[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade|fine]] [[Monkey Island|leather]] [[Lucas Arts|jackets]]."

* [[A Storm Is Coming]]: A thunderstorm rolls in during Marty's premonitory dream in Episode 1.

* [[Super Multi-Purpose Room]]: Kid's concealable speakeasy.

** In addition, the voice actor just wasn't able to get the voice of Needles down, but could handle Leech properly.

* [[Take a Third Option]]: Episode 4. {{spoiler|Citizen Brown doesn't want Edna to end up old and alone, which hints at his [[Face Heel Turn]].}}

* [[Taking the Bullet]]: When Edna carjacks the DeLorean, a fading {{spoiler|Citizen Brown}} shoves Marty out of the way. The camera [[Bloodless Carnage|cuts away]], revealing that he's been fatally struck by the car.

* [[Tall, Dark and Bishoujo]]: Young Edna is a short-haired variant.

* [[The Tape Knew You Would Say That]]: Doc's tape in Episode 1 and the billboard PA in Episode 3.

* [[That Didn't Happen]]: Check the You Didn't See That entry below.