Trivia for
Back to the Future (1985) More at IMDbPro »

• Michael J. Fox had always been the first choice for Marty, but he was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts with his work on "Family Ties" (1982). Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty but he disagreed with the rest of the cast and crew about the tone of the film. After a few weeks of filming, Fox was asked to replace Stoltz. Fox worked out a schedule to fulfill his commitment to both projects. Every day during production, he drove straight to the movie set after taping of the show was finished every day and averaged about one or two hours of sleep. The bulk of the production was filmed from 6pm to 6am, with the daylight scenes filmed on weekends.
  
  
• Musician Mark Campbell did all of Michael J. Fox's singing. He's credited as "Marty McFly".
  
  
• Michael J. Fox was allowed by the producer of "Family Ties" (1982) to film this movie on the condition that he kept his full schedule on the TV show - meaning no write-outs or missing episodes - and filmed the (majority) of the movie at night.
  
  
• Michael J. Fox had to learn to skateboard for the film.
  
  
• Bob Gale explains that, to find a coordinator for the skateboarding scenes, he went to Venice beach and approached two skateboarders. One turned out to be European skate champ, Per Welinder, and the skater he was with became the stunt double for Eric Stoltz, but was recast when they recast the role of Marty McFly in order to match Michael J. Fox's height.
  
  
• The "Back to the Future" series (including Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part II (1989), and Back to the Future Part III (1990)) ranked at #9 on IGN's Top 25 Movie Franchises of All Time (2006).
  
  
• Was the top grossing release of 1985.
  
  
• The picture of Mayor Red Thomas on the election car in 1955 is set decorator Hal Gausman.
  
  
• Michael J. Fox is only ten days younger than Lea Thompson, the actress who plays his mother, and is almost three years older than his on-screen dad, Crispin Glover.
  
  
• The time machine has been through several variations. In the first draft of the screenplay the time machine was a laser device that was housed in a room. At the end of the first draft the device was attached to a refrigerator and taken to an atomic bomb test. In the third draft of the film the time machine was a DeLorean, but in order to send Marty back to the future the vehicle had to drive the DeLorean into an atomic bomb test.
  
  
• The DeLorean was deliberately selected for its general appearance and gull wing doors, in order to make it plausible that people in 1955 would presume it to be an alien spacecraft.
  
  
• When the DeLorean goes back in time for the first time, it stops by crashing into a barn, which we soon learn belongs to a farmer named Peabody. We know this because as the DeLorean speeds off the property to escape being shot, we see buckshot shatter the mailbox bearing his name. Farmer Peabody's son is named Sherman. Sherman was the name of the little boy time traveler in each of the "Peabody's Improbable History" sections of Jay Ward's cartoon show, "The Bullwinkle Show" (1961). The dog who "owned" Sherman and the time machine was named Mr. Peabody. In another reference to that show, the first character to travel through time is the dog, Einstein.
  
  
• The device originally considered for use as the time travel machine was a refrigerator. Director Robert Zemeckis said in an interview that the idea was scrapped because he and Steven Spielberg did not want children to start climbing into refrigerators and getting trapped inside.
  
  
• According to the Universal Studios back lot tour, the clock tower is the same one that is seen in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). The area is referred to as Mockingbird Square, and it is a stone's throw away from other famous filming locations, such as the exterior of the Psycho (1960) house and the "Red Sea".
  
  
• The "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Converter", which is sitting on the DeLorean when Doc returns from the future, is made from (among other things) a Krups coffee grinder.
  
  
• The script never called for Marty to repeatedly bang his head on the gull-wing door of the DeLorean; this was improvised during filming as the door mechanism became faulty.
  
  
• The school that served as Hill Valley High was Whittier High School in Whittier, California just outside of Los Angeles. It's Richard Nixon's alma mater.
  
  
• The Twin Pines Mall is, in fact, the Puente Hills Mall in City of Industry, California. Today, JCPenney is no longer an anchor there.
  
  
• In the film's script the word "gigawatt" is spelled "jigowatt". Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis had been to a science seminar and the speaker had pronounced it "jigowatt".
  
  
• The device in Doc Brown's lab that Marty plugs his guitar into is labeled "CRM-114", which was the name of the message decoder on the B-52 in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), and the serial number of the Jupiter explorer in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), both directed by Stanley Kubrick. Also in A Clockwork Orange (1971) a 'Serum 114' is used.
  
  
• A marketer hoped to get a prominent placement for California Raisins somewhere in the film. He suggested putting a bowl of raisins on a table at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. He had also told the California Raisins board that this would do for raisins what E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) did for Reese's Pieces. Bob Gale informed him that a bowl of raisins would photograph like a bowl of dirt. The only thing that appears in the film is Marty jumping over Red, sleeping on a bench that is advertising California Raisins.
  
  
• Wendie Jo Sperber, who played Linda McFly, was in fact three years older than Lea Thompson, who played her mother, and six years older than Crispin Glover, the actor who played her father.
  
  
• The newscaster on TV in the opening sequence is Deborah Harmon, who appeared in director Robert Zemeckis' Used Cars (1980).
  
  
• The license plate on a car outside the band audition (which says "FOR MARY") is a tribute to Mary T. Radford, personal assistant to second unit director Frank Marshall.
  
  
• Doc Brown's "man hanging off a clock face" is an homage to the famous scene in Harold Lloyd's film, Safety Last! (1923). This movie is also alluded to in the opening sequence of the film: one of the many clocks is a Harold Lloyd alarm clock, and depicts Lloyd (Harold, not Christopher) hanging from the minute hand.
  
  
• The mall where Marty McFly meets Doc Brown for their time travel experiment is called "Twin Pines Mall". Doc Brown comments that old farmer Peabody used to own all of the land, and he grew pines there. When Marty goes back in time, he runs over and knocks down a pine tree on the Peabody's property. When he comes back to the mall at the end of the film, the sign at the mall identifies the mall as "Lone Pine Mall".
  
  
• The dialogue where Lorraine says that when she grows up she'll let her kids do anything they want was cut. That dialogue is re-inserted in Back to the Future Part II (1989) when the second Marty creeps past the car the first Marty and 1955 Lorraine are in. Lorraine states she'll let her kids do anything, Marty replies, "I'd like to have that in writing."
  
  
• Another deleted scene shows Marty peeking in on a class in 1955 and seeing his mother cheating on a test.
  
  
• The scene where Marty asks if he and Jennifer become "assholes" in the future was re-shot for television, with the word "assholes" replaced with "jerks."
  
  
• When Doc Brown first sends Einstein "one minute" into the future, the time elapsed between when the DeLorean disappears and reappears is actually 1 minute 21 seconds, just as the reappearance occurred at 1:21am, and the flux capacitor required 1.21 jigowatts of electricity.
  
  
• The DeLorean time machine is a licensed, registered vehicle in the state of California. While the vanity license plate used in the film says "OUTATIME", the DeLorean's actual license plate reads 3CZV657
  
  
• The chime of the Clock Tower in 1955 is intentionally the same as the chime in the 1960 movie The Time Machine (1960) based on the story by H.G. Wells.
  
  
• The space alien gag first appeared in the screenplay's third draft, with the primary difference being that it was to be done to Biff.
  
  
• When Robert Zemeckis was trying to sell the idea of this film, one of the companies he approached was Disney, who turned it down because they thought that the story of a mother falling in love with her son (albeit by a twist of time travel) was too risqué for a film under their banner. In fact, Disney was the only company to think the first was risqué. All other companies said that the film was not risqué enough, compared to other teen comedies at the time (e.g. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Revenge of the Nerds (1984), etc).
  
  
• Character name of Emmett comes from the word "time," spelled backwards and pronounced as syllables (em-it).
  
  
• Doc Brown's middle initial is "L" but no name was ever actually given. Bob Gale, the film's writer, was asked about this and gave him the name "Lathrop" (almost "portal" backwards - see above).
  
  
• A very brief scene was cut in-between the scenes of the McFly family dinner and Marty being woken up by Doc's phone call. It involved Marty preparing to send his demo tape to a record company. Marty decides not to do it, and leaves the empty manila envelope on his desk. In a scene that remains in the film, he goes to breakfast with the manila envelope sealed, suggesting he decided to send it in.
  
  
• The house used for Doc Brown's home is the Gamble House at 3 Westmoreland Ave., Pasadena, California. It was the home of the Gamble family until 1966, when it was turned over to the University of Southern California. It is now a historical museum.
  
  
• Earlier versions of the script had the time machine getting the required power from a nuclear test in the Nevada desert. The scene was considered too expensive to film, so the power source was changed to lightning.
  
  
• Canadian pop singer Corey Hart was asked to screen test for the part of Marty.
  
  
• When Marty is trying to re-start the DeLorean in 1955 as he prepares to return to 1985, the car's headlights flash the Morse Code for "SOS".
  
  
• The opening sequence with the ticking clocks is a direct lift from The Time Machine (1960).
  
  
• The DeLorean used in the trilogy was a 1981 DMC-12 model, with a 6-cylinder PRV (Peugeot/Renault/Volvo) engine. The base for the nuclear-reactor was made from the hubcap from a Dodge Polaris. In the 2002 Special-Edition DVD of the BTTF Trilogy, it is incorrectly stated that the DeLorean had a standard 4-cylinder engine.
  
  
• C. Thomas Howell was considered to play the role of Marty McFly.
  
  
• Apparently Ronald Reagan was amused by Doc Brown's disbelief that an actor like him could become president, so much so that he had the projectionist stop and replay the scene. He also seemed to enjoy it so much that he even made a direct reference of the film in his 1986 State of the Union address: "As they said in the film Back to the Future (1985), 'Where we're going, we don't need roads.'"
  
  
• In the opening sequence, all of Doc's clocks read 7:53 (25 minutes slow) except for one clock. It is on the floor next to the case of plutonium and it reads 8:20.
  
  
• Alan Silvestri's orchestra for the score of the film was the largest ever assembled at that time.
  
  
• When Lorraine follows Marty back to Doc's house, she and Doc exchange an awkward greeting. This marks the only on-screen dialogue that Christopher Lloyd and Lea Thompson ever have, though they have appeared together in five movies and one TV movie.
  
  
• Billy Zane makes his first on-screen appearance in this film as "Match", one of Biff's cronies.
  
  
• When Claudia Wells temporarily dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, Melora Hardin was briefly cast as Jennifer, but had to be replaced when it was discovered she was taller than Michael J. Fox.
  
  
• In the original script, Marty's playing rock and roll at the dance caused a riot which had to be broken up by police. This, combined with Marty accidentally tipping Doc off to the "secret ingredient" that made the time machine work (Coca-Cola) caused history to change. When Marty got back to the 1980s, he found that it was now the 1950s conception of that decade, with air-cars and what-not (all invented by Doc Brown and running on Coca-Cola). Marty also discovers that rock and roll was never invented, and he dedicates himself to starting the delayed cultural revolution. Meanwhile, his dad digs out the newspaper from the day after the dance and sees his son in the picture of the riot.
  
  
• The prefix "giga" was formerly more commonly pronounced as jiga, just as Doc Brown pronounces it.
  
  
• In the French version, when Marty wakes up in 1955 in his young mother's bed, she calls him Pierre Cardin instead of Calvin Klein. In the Spanish and Italian versions, she calls him Levi Strauss.
  
  
• When this movie was previewed for a test audience, Industrial Light and Magic had not completed the final DeLorean-in-flight shot, and the last several minutes of the movie were previewed in black and white. It didn't matter, as the audience roared in approval of the final scene anyway.
  
  
• Universal Pictures head Sid Sheinberg did not like the title "Back to the Future", insisting that nobody would see a movie with "future" in the title. In a memo to Robert Zemeckis, he said that the title should be changed to "Spaceman From Pluto", tying in with the Marty-as-alien jokes in the film, and also suggested further changes like replacing the "I'm Darth Vader from planet Vulcan" line with "I am a spaceman from Pluto!" Sheinberg was persuaded to change his mind by a response memo from Steven Spielberg, which thanked him for sending a wonderful "joke memo", and that everyone got a kick out of it. Sheinberg, too proud to admit he was serious, gave in to letting the film retain its title.
  
  
• John Lithgow and Jeff Goldblum were considered for the role of Doc Brown.
  
  
• The two red labels on the flux capacitor say "Disconnect Capacitor Drive Before Opening" (at the top) and "Shield Eyes From Light".
  
  
• When Marty pretends to be Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan, he plays a tape labeled "Van Halen" to scare George out of his sleep. It is an untitled Edward Van Halen original written for a movie called The Wild Life (1984) which featured Lea Thompson.
  
  
• Voted number 7 in channel 4's (UK) "Greatest Family Films"
  
  
• The inspiration for the film largely stems from Bob Gale discovering his father's high school yearbook and wondering whether he would have been friends with his father as a teenager. Gale also said that if he had the chance to go back in time he would really go back and see if they would have been friends.
  
  
• There are only about 32 special effects shots in the entire film.
  
  
• The production ultimately used three real DeLoreans.
  
  
• It took three hours in make-up to turn the 23-year-old Lea Thompson into the 47-year-old Lorraine.
  
  
• Playing at the Hill Valley cinema is Cattle Queen of Montana (1954) starring Barbara Stanwyck and Ronald Reagan; the latter of course was the President of the United States in 1985, the year the film was made.
  
  
• The "Tales From Space" comic book reappeared in at least two episodes of the television series "Oliver Beene" (2003) and in a commercial for McDonald's Mighty Kids Meals.
  
  
• Though the film Marty (1955) won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1955, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale say in the DVD QandA session that they were not aware of this fact when they named their main character Marty.
  
  
• The coincidences with the film Marty (1955) are not limited to the name of the protagonist; note that in both films, the cafe-owner's name is Lou.
  
  
• The lion statues in front of the Lyon Estates subdivisions were inspired by two like statues in the University City Loop in St. Louis, where writer Bob Gale grew up.
  
  
• Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal Pictures, requested many changes to be made throughout the movie. Most of these he got, such as having "Professor Brown" changed to "Doc Brown" and his chimp Shemp changed to a dog named Einstein. Marty's mother's name had previously been Meg and then Eileen, but Sheinberg insisted that she be named Lorraine after his wife Lorraine Gary.
  
  
• Marty's guitars used throughout the movie: - Erlewine Chiquita ("big amp" sequence) - Ibanez black Strat copy (scenes of Marty's band performing in the 80s) - Gibson 1963 ES-345TD (Marty performing at the dance)
  
  
• Doc's phone number in 1955 is Klondike 54385. The letters "K" and "L" are both on the digit 5; thus, the number still begins with the 555- prefix, indicating a fictional number.
  
  
• When the McFly family is sitting down for dinner before Marty travels back in time (early in the movie), Michael J. Fox is seen drinking a can of a very prominent soda that he was a major endorser of back in the '80s and '90s.
  
  
• Director Robert Zemeckis used the same beginning as The Time Machine (1960) as a homage to that film. Having the destination timeframe, current timeframe and recently departed timeframe readouts on the panel in red, green and yellow LEDs respectively was a nod to the time machine from that film having red, green and yellow lights on the top of its console.
  
  
• Christopher Lloyd based his performance as Doc Brown on a combination of physicist Albert Einstein and conductor Leopold Stokowski.
  
  
• According to the 'Making of... ', in the original script , Marty was sent back to the year 1985, with the radiation of a nuclear bomb. But the scripted sequence was too expensive for the budget so the idea was scrapped.
  
  
• In the shot of the clock tower of 1985, after Doc Brown sent Marty into the future (with a flying-by helicopter), you can clearly see that the piece of the ledge under the clock dial is broken off. It was broken off by Doc Brown in 1955.
  
  
• In the movie Marty is sent back to 1955, which is the year that Albert Einstein died. Coincidentally, the dog in the movie was named Einstein.
  
  
• When Marty is being judged at the band auditions at the beginning, the judge who stands up to say he is "just too darn loud" is Huey Lewis, whose song, ‘The Power of Love’ features on the movie’s soundtrack. Also, the song Marty auditions with is actually by Huey Lewis.
  
  
• "To be continued" was inserted into the end of the VHS release Back to the Future (1985), and was omitted from the 2002 DVD release.
  
  
• The sound effect used for the wind-up toy car in Doc's demonstration to Marty was the same sound effect used for the time machine in the movie The Time Machine (1960).
  
  
• In the French version, the clothes worn by Marty are not Calvin Klein, but Pierre Cardin. Oddly enough, Pierre Cardin's first collection dates back 1953 (so may have been known even in the US), while Calvin Klein first business started in 1968.
  
  
• Co-writer Bob Gale confirmed that for wide shots, the wind during the storm at the Clock Tower was created by using a McBride, which was described by the writer as "basically a airplane engine on a huge cherry picker" and was placed a good fifty feet away from the actors. The McBride was so loud that all of the dialog said by actors Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd had to be re-recorded later. However, the McBride also had an effect on Fox's health: while filming the sequence where Marty yells up at Doc at the Clock Tower to tell him about the future, he coughed up blood after filming those scenes.
  
  
• According to Back to the Future Part III (1990), the clock in the clock tower started running at 8:00 p.m. on September 5, 1885. The date is provided by the caption on the photograph that Doc Brown gives Marty at the end of Back to the Future Part III. The time is provided by the mayor in 1885 in Back to the Future Part III, who starts it. The lightning strikes the clock tower at 10:04 p.m. on November 12, 1955. This means that the clock tower operated for exactly 70 years, 2 months, 24 days, 2 hours, and 4 minutes.
  
  
• 'Ron Cobb (I)' was originally hired to design the DeLorean time machine but left for another project and was replaced by Andrew Probert.
  
  
• Marty McFly's mimics famous rock stars during the later part of his performance during the school dance in 1955 when he starts playing heavy metal. His kicking of speakers (The Who), playing the guitar while lying down (Angus Young of AC/DC), hopping across the stage with one leg kicked up (Chuck Berry) and his solo (Jimi Hendrix/Edward Van Halen).
  
  
• Doc's distinctive hunched-over look developed when the filmmakers realized the extreme difference in height between Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox; Fox is 5' 4½" while Lloyd is 6' 1". To compensate for the height difference, director 'Robert Zemekis' used specific blocking where the two often stood far apart at different camera depths. For close ups, Lloyd would have to hunch over to appear in frame with Fox. The same approach was used in the two sequels.
  
  
• When Marty McFly leaves Doc Brown's garage because he is late for school, co-writer Bob Gale mentioned in a commentary that the Garage was actually a flat put next to a Burger King restaurant in Burbank. As part of their agreement with Burger King, the studio wasn't given any money from the restaurant for their cameo, but Burger King did allow the crew to film their scenes for free and allowed them to park there.
  
  
• Ranked #10 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Sci-Fi" in June 2008.
  
  
• When 1955 Doc Brown sees the videotape of himself explaining the need for 1.21 GW of power, he goes to an adjacent room and is seen talking to a picture frame that he refers to as "Tom". When he returns the picture to the mantle we can see that is was Thomas A. Edison he was speaking with. Also on the mantle, left to right are Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, (Thomas Edison), and Albert Einstein - presumably his inspiration for invention of a time machine.
  
  
• Executive producer Steven Spielberg initially had some reservations about hiring composer Alan Silvestri, having been unimpressed by Silvestri's score for Romancing the Stone (1984). During a preview screening in which the film was accompanied by a temp track that only used part of Silvestri's score, Spielberg commented to Robert Zemeckis that a particularly grand cue was 'the sort of music the film needed', unaware that it was indeed one of Silvestri's cues.
  
  
• The set for Hill Valley is the same one used for Gremlins (1984). Both movies were filmed in the Universal Studios backlot.
  
  
• In the original script, Doc Brown and Marty sell bootleg videos in order to fund the time machine.
  
  
• The man driving the jeep that Marty hangs on to at the beginning of the movie is stunt coordinator Walter Scott.
  
  
• After the film's release, body kits were made for DeLoreans to make them look like the time machine.
  
  
• The set for the Courthouse Square is the same one used for Bruce Almighty (2003). Both movies were filmed in the Universal Studios backlot.
  
  
• There was an edit by the TV studios that screened Back to the Future (1985), in 2002 for the scene with the Libyans, for fear of offending Middle Eastern Americans after the recent 9/11 attack.
  
  
• The date Marty travels to, November 5th, is the same date that H.G. Wells travels forward to in Time After Time (1979).
  
  
• Leonard Nimoy was considered for the job as director before Robert Zemeckis took the job. Nimoy was unable to direct Back to the Future (1985), because he was starting work on the story for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).
  
  
• The new Honeymooners episode, "The Honeymooners: The Man from Space (#1.14)" (1955), being watched by Marty's grandparents was actually not aired until December 31, 1955. The real episode that aired November 5th 1955 was "The Honeymooners: The Sleepwalker (#1.6)" (1955).
  
  
• The elaborate, Rube Golberg device automatically making Doc's breakfast in the opening scene bears a strong resemblance to a similar set of devices invented and used by Professor Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). A third version of the 'automatic breakfast maker' can be seen in Flubber (1997).
  
  
• On June 2, 2008 a massive fire broke out in the back-lot destroying two archive video vaults and the New York set used for Spiderman 3, which is right across from the Hill Valley Clock tower, which was minorly scorched by the time the fire was out.
  
  
• After seven long years of the original DVD release of the trilogy as a boxed set, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale finally broke down and set the second release date for the latest DVD version on February 10, 2009. This includes a double disc set for Back to the Future, including footage from the Back To The Future The Ride attraction that had been closed down two years prior. For Parts II and III, they are both on single discs.
  
  
• While filming the "parking" scene with Marty and young Lorraine in the car, the production crew decided to play a practical joke at Michael J. Fox's expense. The scene called for Fox to drink from a prop liquor bottle filled with water and do a spit take when he sees Lorraine with a cigarette. For a specific take however, the prop liquor bottle was switched for one which contained real alcohol inside. Fox, unaware of this, performed the scene and drank from the bottle, only to discover the switch after-the-fact. The full gag is featured on the "Outtakes" section of the DVD.
  
  
• Christopher Lloyd always wanted to do one more movie, in which Marty and Doc Brown time-travel back to Ancient Rome.
  
  
• The "jigowatt", is actually a gigawatt: one billion watts of electricity.
  
  
• When Doc Brown is fretting about producing so much electricity, he takes a framed picture from the mantelpiece and asks, "Tom how do I generate that kind of power?" He is talking to a picture of Thomas Edison, who patented a system for electricity distribution in 1880, and established electrical power stations throughout North America.
  
  

• SPOILER: In the opening scene of the movie, as the camera pans across the clocks, one clock in the foreground has a small figure of Harold Lloyd hanging from the minute hand - a foreshadowing of the story's climax, where Doc Brown clings to the face of the clock tower while trying to reconnect the cable.
  
  
• SPOILER: The cliff-hanger ending of the film was not originally intended to set up a sequel, but rather just as one last joke. It was admitted by the writer that had they originally intended the following two sequels, the ending would not have had Jennifer get into the car with Doc and Marty. This is why Jennifer was almost immediately knocked unconscious at the beginning of the second film.
  
  
• SPOILER: According to Marty's supposed age of 47 (by 2015), he was born in 1968; thirteen years after leaving his parents-to return to "his" present.
  
  

Related Links