Micron
15-11-2006, 09:00 PM
Eric Stoltz was originally cast to play the role of Marty McFly, but he was replaced by Fox after several weeks shooting, apparantly because he didn't act enough like a teenager.
Actually,the producers of the film WANTED Fox first after all but didn't anticipate the unexpected break in the shooting of his hit TV show "Family Ties" schedule. When the break did come, they halted shooting with Stoltz and went back to their original choice of Fox. It was a scheduling conflict that originally allowed Stoltz to star but an unexpected break in shooting that allowed Fox to appear in the movie.
In an early version of the Back to the Future screenplay, instead of doc having a pet dog named Einstein, doc has a pet monkey named Shemp. Also in the screenplay Marty's girlfriend is Suzy Parker and not Jennifer Parker.
Michael J Fox grew up in British Columbia, Canada in a city called Burnaby. There is a theatre named after after him there now, called the Michael J. Fox theatre (obviously), which is connected to Burnaby South Secondary School, the 1993 replacement for his old high school, Burnaby North.
Michael J Fox also gives away several art scholarships to students in the Burnaby School District every year.
Crispin Glover, who play's George McFly, the father of Marty (Michael J. Fox), is actually younger than Fox by about 3 years. The father was born after his son!
Crispin Glover did not appear in either of the sequels due to a breakdown in contract negotiations, and this is why the storyline about him being shot in the alternate 1985 was written into the second movie. It was required, however, that his character appeared on the second film because Marty goes back to 1955 again, so the producers used what footage they could from the first film and used a stand-in with a fake nose (!) to shoot scenes they couldn't build up from archive footage. I have heard that Crispin Glover attempted to sue them for using the archive footage but I don't know whether this is true or if it is, what the outcome was.
In response to Rob's trivia, Crispin Glover did attempt to sue Spielberg, and won the case. As a result, SAG (Screen Actor's Guild) added new regulations about using an actor's image onscreen.
The script originally called for the time machine to be a refrigerator, but Zemeckis and Spielberg were worried about kids climbing into fridges and getting trapped. As well as being a refrigerator at one point, the time machine was also scripted as a laser device housed in a room, and also the DeLorean - but Marty McFly had to drive it into an atomic bomb test for it to travel through time.
The Mr. Fusion generator Doc attachs to the DeLorean at the end of the first movie is actually just a coffee grinder.
The DeLorean cars were built in Dunmurry, a short distance south of the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Only 8,583 DeLoreans were manufactured in 1981, 1982, and 1983: 6,539, 1,126, and 918, respectively. Of those, about 6,000 are believed to be in circulation - a few hundred of them outside the United States.
The same set used for the town of "Hill Valley" in BTTF is the heart of Universal Studios in LA. It's also seen as "Kingston Falls" in "Gremlins".
Marty banging his head on the door of the DeLorean (which happened several times) was never scripted, he did it by accident but they kept it in the movie.
The large amplifier Marty plugs his guitar into right at the start of the movie is labelled "CRM-114" which is also the name of the message decoder on a B-52 in "Dr. Strangelove" and the serial number of the Jupiter explorer in "2001: A Space Odyssey".
The clock seen at the beginning of the film with Doc hanging off it is actually a nick-nack clock - it depicts a famous scene from a film called "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock" which in turn is a remake of a silent movie called "Safety Last".
Marty McFly is secretly a librarian! A magazine at the head of Marty's bed is clearly one called "RQ", which is of interest only to librarians!
When Einstein (Doc's dog) returns from the first ever time-travel experiment the time is 1:21am. Is it a coincidence that the DeLorean needs 1.21 Jigawatts to run?
The Chime of the Clock Tower in 1955 is the same as the chime in the 1960 movie The Time Machine based on the story by H.G. Wells.
One of the clocks at the start of the movie --the cat with it eyes moving and tail wagging-- is also seen in another Zemekis movie, "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids". It's in the family kitchen.
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 (all be it by a twist of time travel) was too risque for a film under their banner.
The character name of Emmett (Doc's name) 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)
I thought that this was more of a story point but so many people wrote in to mention it that I thought I'd include it: Marty departs from the Twin Pines Mall. When he arrives in 1955, he accidentally knocks over a pine tree at the Twin Pines Ranch. When he returns to the mall after returning to 1985, it is now called the Lone Pine Mall. -Thanks to the many people who wrote in with that.
During the Twin Pines Mall chase, the Delorean loses 12 miles off the mileometer... Obviously a mistake overlooked in editing. I only spotted this because I have seen the movie so many times!
Crispin Glover's other movies included "Wild at Heart" and "River's Edge". After the success of the Back to the Future films, the quirky man allegedly made an a** of himself on David Letterman, resulting in him seeming to disappear from the movie scene for several years, re-appearing in Charlie's Angels as a hair obsessed villian (yes, you read that right, hair obssessed)
Crispin Glover also had a small role as Matt Lattanzi's buddy in "My Tutor".
Crispin Glover also had a small role in the show "Family Ties" playing a friend to Michael J. Fox's character, Alex P. Keaton, when the show first started.
Crispin's father Brian Glover played the gay Bond villian, Mr. Whint in "Diamonds are Forever" in 1971.
The date Marty Mcfly travels back in time to, November 5, is the same date of time travel in Time After Time (1979)
This was Billy Zane's ("Cal" from Titanic) first movie. He played one of Biff's friends in both the first and second Back to the Future.
Did anyone recognize the second thug? It's none other than Young Guns star Casey Ziemasko.
In the credits they list the guy wearing the 3-D glasses as 3-D.
In a tribute to producer Steve Spielberg, the title sign on the movie theater reads "A boys life, Watch the skies". The sign read exactly the same outside the theater in the beginning of the movie "Gremlins", which was also produced by Spielberg. "A boys life!" and "Watch the skies" were early working titles for the movies that became E.T. and Close Encounters
In 1985, you meet that old homeless man that Marty refers to as "Red". Well, in 1955, Mayor Red Thomas is running to be re-elected. It seems planned to show his fall from grace, but the fact is that Michael J. Fox ad-libbed the name Red for the bum.
Double 80's Movie Legend: Marc McClure played Jimmy Olsen in all five Superman / Supergirl movies and played Marty McFly's brother in the Back to the Future films.
Huey Lewis is one of the judges of Marty's band who ironically does not like Marty's band's take on his song. "I'm sorry, you're just too darn loud," he tells them.
November 5th is coincidentally the birthdate of Bob Gale's father.
Marty's bandmate at the "Battle of the Bands" (the blonde guy w/ the sunglasses) was actually Michael J. Fox's guitar teacher for the film.
There was a scene that was cut from the movie during which George McFly (being the pushover that he is) buys an entire case of peanut brittle from a little girl who was selling it door-to-door. The payoff for that scene is when George is eating peanut brittle for dinner.
Every scene that was shot at the "Twin Pines Mall" had to be shot after Christmas and late at night due to the fact that there were twice as many shoppers, and the mall was decorated with Christmas lights.
A "Black Pride" organization were upset with the creators of BTTF. They claimed that it was wrong to suggest that Marty, a white man, invented rock 'n' roll by playing Chuck Berry's (a black man) Johnny B. Goode before it was even released.
The farm that Marty drives through when he goes back to 1955 belongs to the "Peabody" Family. The son's name is "Sherman". This is a reference to the characters of "Sherman and Mr. Peabody", the time-travellers from the cartoon series, ROCKY & BULLWINKLE.
The guitar used by Marty at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance (1955) wasn't invented until 1957!
In the first scene we are introduced to the Delorean, Doc radio controls the car for the first time travel experiment. When he brings the car to a "smoke show" before releasing it, there's a close-up shot at the remote. Notice that the needle of the battery meter on the remote is on the red - just like if the remote wasn't switched on. When the batteries of these remotes are full charge, the needle goes way to the right when switched on. Unless of course the circuitry was by-passed or tampered for the prop's use in the movie.
In the movie, it can clearly be seen that the DeLorean's speedometer reads a maximum speed of 95 mph. This is clearly an alteration on the car since all DeLoreans built had speedometers that only went up to 85mph (sports cars built between 1981-1985 were only legally allowed to read up to 85 mph)
When Marty first arrives in 1955, it's 1:30 in the morning when he crashes into the barn and it's dark. When he drives off and notices "Lyon Estates", it's daylight. How did anyone not find the time machine hidden behind the huge board? It's not as if it's a packet of peanuts, and surely there would have been construction workers on site before he and doc went back!
Throughout the movie the amount of electrical power needed to run the time machine is said to be "1.21 Gigawatts" (pronounced with a soft 'g' like genesis). However, this should be pronounced Gigawatts (with a hard 'g' like girl) which is equal to 1.21x10^9 or 1,210,000,000 Watts.
Lea Thompson played two different versions of her character-Marty's mother-in both 1955 and 1985. The latter took three hours to apply the make-up to her face and the rest of her body.
I have noticed recently, after watching the 1st and 2nd film one after the other, that in the first film, just after George knocks Biff out and Marty comes rushing through the crowd, the boy and girl standing there who say "who is that guy? George McFly, that's George Mcfly?" are completely different actor and actress in the 2nd film! For a start the girl in the first film was a brunette, in the 2nd film she was blonde. When you saw Marty push through them in the 1st film, he literally shoved them out of the way, whereas in the 2nd film, he just brushes past them!!
The tunnel that was used for both Back to the Future I and II was used as the tunnel to get into Toon Town in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit!"
Michael Balzary (also known as Flea) of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, played the character "needles".
When Doc was sending Einstien through time travel, he wasn't really using a control device. There was a man in a dog suit driving.
When Marty walks from the "soon to be Lyon Estates" in 1955, the sign says that Hill Valley is 2 miles away. Presumably, he drove from Peabody's Farm to that point; yet in the future, it only takes him 10 minutes to run from downtown to "Lone Pine Mall." Did Marty run two 5-minute miles?
When Marty writes the note to Dr. Brown about the day he went back in time,(warning him of his impending death) he signs his name (Marty) and the "y" is different from when Dr. Brown shows him the taped together version after traveling back to the future. The one that he writes in 1955 the "y" has a loop, but when seen back in 1985 it does not. I have seen this movie too many times!
If I remember correctly, in an episode of the animated version of Back to the Future, which is currently re-airing on Fox, Marty meets a rival scientist that reveals Doc Brown's full name to be Emmet Lithium VonBraun. But as the Doc clarified in part 3, it was changed to Brown possibly because of WWII.
When Doc and Marty first go into the future, there is a newspaper heading that says "Florida Beats the Yankees in Game Six in 2003". If you followed this world series, that's exactly what happened this year. And what makes this even stranger is that at the time the script was written, there wasn't even a Florida baseball team, the Marlins are a new team, formed well after the script was written.
In the begining of the movie when Marty and Jennifer walk up the stairs to the high school, if you look closely at the side you can see BOB in graffiti, put there in honor of Bob the producer!
The scene where Marty and George are hanging clothes to dry and talking about the plan for the dance,you can see Marty's flap on his pocket is in, then the next scene that shows him it is out.
One scene that was originally in the movie showed Marty, in 1955, at the high school that his parents attend, and he looks into a classroom and sees his mom cheating on an exam. This is interesting because she, in 1985, is preaching good habits to her children. This scene was filmed to portray that Lorraine wasn't exactly an angel in her teen years, but eventually removed from the movie.
When Marty plugs in the cord (stereo plug) into his guitar, the other end that's plugged into the amp is suddenly a mono plug (tip/sleeve as opposed to tip/ring/sleeve). Furthermore, Marty has already maxed out the volumes and overdrives BEFORE plugging in his guitar. If this truly happened, the amp or speaker would have blown up the instant he plugged the guitar cord into the amp, as the connectors briefly short out (+/-) while plugging them in.
During the filming at the carpark by the mall it was very cold which meant the gas in the door struts would condense causing the doors to fall down by themselves
When marty first meets Doc in the past, he tells him that Ronald Reagan is president. Then Doc says "then I guess the first lady is Jane Wyman..", but Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman were actually divorced in 1949 and he was married to Nancy Davis in 1952.
80s legend C. Thomas Howell was Robert Zemeckis' second choice for Marty McFly.
In the Darth Vader scene in 1955, Marty has a hairdryer is his belt in one shot, in the next shot it is gone, and when it cuts back the hairdryer has returned.
The first voice you hear in BTTF,(the man on the radio talking while the pan of all the radios is being shown)is also the voice of the major toy, Furby and the original voice of Goofy. His name is Tony Pope.
The street where George gets hit by the car is the same that they used when filming Teen Wolf.
The cassette tape that MJF pops in the delorean is the music of guitar great Eddie Van Halen.
In the scene before Marty goes to the dance, where he and Doc are talking, in the back-ground you see a man go by on a bike wearing a hat. In the sequel we see that the man was actually the Doc from the future.
If you look very closely in the scene at the end of the movie where Marty's trying to tell Doc he will get shot, you see a man on a bycicle with a hat on ride by. This was not in the script, but Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis used it in Back to the Future Part 2. After Marty and Doc return to 1955 to get the Almanac, Doc is on a bycicle and has bought a hat for diguise. Now, it makes it look like it was Doc himself that rode by in part 1.
In the scene where Marty jumps into the DeLorean wearing the yellow radiation suit to escape the Libyans, it is actually Eric Stoltz jumping into the car, look carefully!!
The 1950s scenes were shot before all of the 1980s scenes. They first built a perfect looking town for the '50s, then grunged it down for the '80s scenes.
The first idea for time traveling was not by lightning, but by a nuclear explosion. The first script had them go to a nuclear site to be able to time travel. Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis decided that would be too expensive and chose lightning instead.
Michael J Fox is really not playing or singing Johnny Be Good. The music and singing were both pre-recorded. Michael did have to learn the song note for note to make it look like he was playing it. At the end of the film, his character Marty McFly gets credits for singing the song.
You can clearly see in the scene where Doc is hanging from the clocktower that he is wearing velcro shoes. Velcro shoes were not invented in 1955.
The clocktower has been burnt three different times after part three was made.
The serum used for the Ludiviggo Treatment in "A Clockwork Orange" was known as Serum 114 -as was the amp Marty blows up (CRM-114).
The original Air date of the "Classic Honeymooners" ("Man from Space") episode that they are watching at his grandparents family dinner table (after he wakes up from being hit by the car)is December 31, 1955. More than a month after Marty's arrival.
When Marty goes back in time and is chased by Biff's gang, you can see that he is wearing Blue Converse sneakers. However, on the night that he goes back to the future, he is seen pushing the pedal in Nike shoes. Did he bring an extra pair of shoes with him to the past? I doubt it.
When Marty is late for school and hitches a ride (on his skateboard) by grabbing onto the back of a Jeep like vehicle. The driver of the Jeep is none other than Robert Zemeckis.
When "Darth Vader" visits George in the middle of the night, he puts a tape in his Walkman with "Edward Van Halen" written on the label and places the headphones on. I'm pretty sure that was not Eddie playing the music we hear, it's not from any recorded Van Halen album. It sounds like somebody trying to sound like Eddie. Love that scene!
Originally, the studio boss wanted to make certain changes (Professor Brown --> Doc Brown, Chimp -> dog (no movie with a chimp makes a profit), Marty's mom's name from Meg to something else, (incidently Lorainne is his wife's name) including the title of the movie. He was the only one who didn't like the title, "Back to the Future" but the makers stuck to their guns. The alternate title, was "Spaceman from Pluto". The studio boss sent a memo outlining changes to the script for the new title and they didn't know what to do as he was the BIG BOSS of the company. In the end Stephen Spielberg sent a reply saying (paraphrase), "dear Sid, thank you so much for your most humorous memo, we really all got a good laugh out of it!" So the name stuck as Spielberg knew he would be too proud to admit that he had been deadly serious!
When Marty arrives in 1955, and is walking around Hill valley town square, he believes he is in a dream; he picks up a newspaper from a wastebin to check the date. Notice that before he picks the newspaper out of the trash his hair is flat and very messy. After he looks at the newspaper his hair is perfectly tidy and styled!
Marty got a four wheel drive Toyota pick-up truck at the end of the movie. At first it was planned to be a Toyota Supra sports car, but replaced with the pick-up truck because of the changing trends of american car buyers.
Actually,the producers of the film WANTED Fox first after all but didn't anticipate the unexpected break in the shooting of his hit TV show "Family Ties" schedule. When the break did come, they halted shooting with Stoltz and went back to their original choice of Fox. It was a scheduling conflict that originally allowed Stoltz to star but an unexpected break in shooting that allowed Fox to appear in the movie.
In an early version of the Back to the Future screenplay, instead of doc having a pet dog named Einstein, doc has a pet monkey named Shemp. Also in the screenplay Marty's girlfriend is Suzy Parker and not Jennifer Parker.
Michael J Fox grew up in British Columbia, Canada in a city called Burnaby. There is a theatre named after after him there now, called the Michael J. Fox theatre (obviously), which is connected to Burnaby South Secondary School, the 1993 replacement for his old high school, Burnaby North.
Michael J Fox also gives away several art scholarships to students in the Burnaby School District every year.
Crispin Glover, who play's George McFly, the father of Marty (Michael J. Fox), is actually younger than Fox by about 3 years. The father was born after his son!
Crispin Glover did not appear in either of the sequels due to a breakdown in contract negotiations, and this is why the storyline about him being shot in the alternate 1985 was written into the second movie. It was required, however, that his character appeared on the second film because Marty goes back to 1955 again, so the producers used what footage they could from the first film and used a stand-in with a fake nose (!) to shoot scenes they couldn't build up from archive footage. I have heard that Crispin Glover attempted to sue them for using the archive footage but I don't know whether this is true or if it is, what the outcome was.
In response to Rob's trivia, Crispin Glover did attempt to sue Spielberg, and won the case. As a result, SAG (Screen Actor's Guild) added new regulations about using an actor's image onscreen.
The script originally called for the time machine to be a refrigerator, but Zemeckis and Spielberg were worried about kids climbing into fridges and getting trapped. As well as being a refrigerator at one point, the time machine was also scripted as a laser device housed in a room, and also the DeLorean - but Marty McFly had to drive it into an atomic bomb test for it to travel through time.
The Mr. Fusion generator Doc attachs to the DeLorean at the end of the first movie is actually just a coffee grinder.
The DeLorean cars were built in Dunmurry, a short distance south of the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Only 8,583 DeLoreans were manufactured in 1981, 1982, and 1983: 6,539, 1,126, and 918, respectively. Of those, about 6,000 are believed to be in circulation - a few hundred of them outside the United States.
The same set used for the town of "Hill Valley" in BTTF is the heart of Universal Studios in LA. It's also seen as "Kingston Falls" in "Gremlins".
Marty banging his head on the door of the DeLorean (which happened several times) was never scripted, he did it by accident but they kept it in the movie.
The large amplifier Marty plugs his guitar into right at the start of the movie is labelled "CRM-114" which is also the name of the message decoder on a B-52 in "Dr. Strangelove" and the serial number of the Jupiter explorer in "2001: A Space Odyssey".
The clock seen at the beginning of the film with Doc hanging off it is actually a nick-nack clock - it depicts a famous scene from a film called "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock" which in turn is a remake of a silent movie called "Safety Last".
Marty McFly is secretly a librarian! A magazine at the head of Marty's bed is clearly one called "RQ", which is of interest only to librarians!
When Einstein (Doc's dog) returns from the first ever time-travel experiment the time is 1:21am. Is it a coincidence that the DeLorean needs 1.21 Jigawatts to run?
The Chime of the Clock Tower in 1955 is the same as the chime in the 1960 movie The Time Machine based on the story by H.G. Wells.
One of the clocks at the start of the movie --the cat with it eyes moving and tail wagging-- is also seen in another Zemekis movie, "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids". It's in the family kitchen.
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 (all be it by a twist of time travel) was too risque for a film under their banner.
The character name of Emmett (Doc's name) 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)
I thought that this was more of a story point but so many people wrote in to mention it that I thought I'd include it: Marty departs from the Twin Pines Mall. When he arrives in 1955, he accidentally knocks over a pine tree at the Twin Pines Ranch. When he returns to the mall after returning to 1985, it is now called the Lone Pine Mall. -Thanks to the many people who wrote in with that.
During the Twin Pines Mall chase, the Delorean loses 12 miles off the mileometer... Obviously a mistake overlooked in editing. I only spotted this because I have seen the movie so many times!
Crispin Glover's other movies included "Wild at Heart" and "River's Edge". After the success of the Back to the Future films, the quirky man allegedly made an a** of himself on David Letterman, resulting in him seeming to disappear from the movie scene for several years, re-appearing in Charlie's Angels as a hair obsessed villian (yes, you read that right, hair obssessed)
Crispin Glover also had a small role as Matt Lattanzi's buddy in "My Tutor".
Crispin Glover also had a small role in the show "Family Ties" playing a friend to Michael J. Fox's character, Alex P. Keaton, when the show first started.
Crispin's father Brian Glover played the gay Bond villian, Mr. Whint in "Diamonds are Forever" in 1971.
The date Marty Mcfly travels back in time to, November 5, is the same date of time travel in Time After Time (1979)
This was Billy Zane's ("Cal" from Titanic) first movie. He played one of Biff's friends in both the first and second Back to the Future.
Did anyone recognize the second thug? It's none other than Young Guns star Casey Ziemasko.
In the credits they list the guy wearing the 3-D glasses as 3-D.
In a tribute to producer Steve Spielberg, the title sign on the movie theater reads "A boys life, Watch the skies". The sign read exactly the same outside the theater in the beginning of the movie "Gremlins", which was also produced by Spielberg. "A boys life!" and "Watch the skies" were early working titles for the movies that became E.T. and Close Encounters
In 1985, you meet that old homeless man that Marty refers to as "Red". Well, in 1955, Mayor Red Thomas is running to be re-elected. It seems planned to show his fall from grace, but the fact is that Michael J. Fox ad-libbed the name Red for the bum.
Double 80's Movie Legend: Marc McClure played Jimmy Olsen in all five Superman / Supergirl movies and played Marty McFly's brother in the Back to the Future films.
Huey Lewis is one of the judges of Marty's band who ironically does not like Marty's band's take on his song. "I'm sorry, you're just too darn loud," he tells them.
November 5th is coincidentally the birthdate of Bob Gale's father.
Marty's bandmate at the "Battle of the Bands" (the blonde guy w/ the sunglasses) was actually Michael J. Fox's guitar teacher for the film.
There was a scene that was cut from the movie during which George McFly (being the pushover that he is) buys an entire case of peanut brittle from a little girl who was selling it door-to-door. The payoff for that scene is when George is eating peanut brittle for dinner.
Every scene that was shot at the "Twin Pines Mall" had to be shot after Christmas and late at night due to the fact that there were twice as many shoppers, and the mall was decorated with Christmas lights.
A "Black Pride" organization were upset with the creators of BTTF. They claimed that it was wrong to suggest that Marty, a white man, invented rock 'n' roll by playing Chuck Berry's (a black man) Johnny B. Goode before it was even released.
The farm that Marty drives through when he goes back to 1955 belongs to the "Peabody" Family. The son's name is "Sherman". This is a reference to the characters of "Sherman and Mr. Peabody", the time-travellers from the cartoon series, ROCKY & BULLWINKLE.
The guitar used by Marty at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance (1955) wasn't invented until 1957!
In the first scene we are introduced to the Delorean, Doc radio controls the car for the first time travel experiment. When he brings the car to a "smoke show" before releasing it, there's a close-up shot at the remote. Notice that the needle of the battery meter on the remote is on the red - just like if the remote wasn't switched on. When the batteries of these remotes are full charge, the needle goes way to the right when switched on. Unless of course the circuitry was by-passed or tampered for the prop's use in the movie.
In the movie, it can clearly be seen that the DeLorean's speedometer reads a maximum speed of 95 mph. This is clearly an alteration on the car since all DeLoreans built had speedometers that only went up to 85mph (sports cars built between 1981-1985 were only legally allowed to read up to 85 mph)
When Marty first arrives in 1955, it's 1:30 in the morning when he crashes into the barn and it's dark. When he drives off and notices "Lyon Estates", it's daylight. How did anyone not find the time machine hidden behind the huge board? It's not as if it's a packet of peanuts, and surely there would have been construction workers on site before he and doc went back!
Throughout the movie the amount of electrical power needed to run the time machine is said to be "1.21 Gigawatts" (pronounced with a soft 'g' like genesis). However, this should be pronounced Gigawatts (with a hard 'g' like girl) which is equal to 1.21x10^9 or 1,210,000,000 Watts.
Lea Thompson played two different versions of her character-Marty's mother-in both 1955 and 1985. The latter took three hours to apply the make-up to her face and the rest of her body.
I have noticed recently, after watching the 1st and 2nd film one after the other, that in the first film, just after George knocks Biff out and Marty comes rushing through the crowd, the boy and girl standing there who say "who is that guy? George McFly, that's George Mcfly?" are completely different actor and actress in the 2nd film! For a start the girl in the first film was a brunette, in the 2nd film she was blonde. When you saw Marty push through them in the 1st film, he literally shoved them out of the way, whereas in the 2nd film, he just brushes past them!!
The tunnel that was used for both Back to the Future I and II was used as the tunnel to get into Toon Town in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit!"
Michael Balzary (also known as Flea) of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, played the character "needles".
When Doc was sending Einstien through time travel, he wasn't really using a control device. There was a man in a dog suit driving.
When Marty walks from the "soon to be Lyon Estates" in 1955, the sign says that Hill Valley is 2 miles away. Presumably, he drove from Peabody's Farm to that point; yet in the future, it only takes him 10 minutes to run from downtown to "Lone Pine Mall." Did Marty run two 5-minute miles?
When Marty writes the note to Dr. Brown about the day he went back in time,(warning him of his impending death) he signs his name (Marty) and the "y" is different from when Dr. Brown shows him the taped together version after traveling back to the future. The one that he writes in 1955 the "y" has a loop, but when seen back in 1985 it does not. I have seen this movie too many times!
If I remember correctly, in an episode of the animated version of Back to the Future, which is currently re-airing on Fox, Marty meets a rival scientist that reveals Doc Brown's full name to be Emmet Lithium VonBraun. But as the Doc clarified in part 3, it was changed to Brown possibly because of WWII.
When Doc and Marty first go into the future, there is a newspaper heading that says "Florida Beats the Yankees in Game Six in 2003". If you followed this world series, that's exactly what happened this year. And what makes this even stranger is that at the time the script was written, there wasn't even a Florida baseball team, the Marlins are a new team, formed well after the script was written.
In the begining of the movie when Marty and Jennifer walk up the stairs to the high school, if you look closely at the side you can see BOB in graffiti, put there in honor of Bob the producer!
The scene where Marty and George are hanging clothes to dry and talking about the plan for the dance,you can see Marty's flap on his pocket is in, then the next scene that shows him it is out.
One scene that was originally in the movie showed Marty, in 1955, at the high school that his parents attend, and he looks into a classroom and sees his mom cheating on an exam. This is interesting because she, in 1985, is preaching good habits to her children. This scene was filmed to portray that Lorraine wasn't exactly an angel in her teen years, but eventually removed from the movie.
When Marty plugs in the cord (stereo plug) into his guitar, the other end that's plugged into the amp is suddenly a mono plug (tip/sleeve as opposed to tip/ring/sleeve). Furthermore, Marty has already maxed out the volumes and overdrives BEFORE plugging in his guitar. If this truly happened, the amp or speaker would have blown up the instant he plugged the guitar cord into the amp, as the connectors briefly short out (+/-) while plugging them in.
During the filming at the carpark by the mall it was very cold which meant the gas in the door struts would condense causing the doors to fall down by themselves
When marty first meets Doc in the past, he tells him that Ronald Reagan is president. Then Doc says "then I guess the first lady is Jane Wyman..", but Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman were actually divorced in 1949 and he was married to Nancy Davis in 1952.
80s legend C. Thomas Howell was Robert Zemeckis' second choice for Marty McFly.
In the Darth Vader scene in 1955, Marty has a hairdryer is his belt in one shot, in the next shot it is gone, and when it cuts back the hairdryer has returned.
The first voice you hear in BTTF,(the man on the radio talking while the pan of all the radios is being shown)is also the voice of the major toy, Furby and the original voice of Goofy. His name is Tony Pope.
The street where George gets hit by the car is the same that they used when filming Teen Wolf.
The cassette tape that MJF pops in the delorean is the music of guitar great Eddie Van Halen.
In the scene before Marty goes to the dance, where he and Doc are talking, in the back-ground you see a man go by on a bike wearing a hat. In the sequel we see that the man was actually the Doc from the future.
If you look very closely in the scene at the end of the movie where Marty's trying to tell Doc he will get shot, you see a man on a bycicle with a hat on ride by. This was not in the script, but Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis used it in Back to the Future Part 2. After Marty and Doc return to 1955 to get the Almanac, Doc is on a bycicle and has bought a hat for diguise. Now, it makes it look like it was Doc himself that rode by in part 1.
In the scene where Marty jumps into the DeLorean wearing the yellow radiation suit to escape the Libyans, it is actually Eric Stoltz jumping into the car, look carefully!!
The 1950s scenes were shot before all of the 1980s scenes. They first built a perfect looking town for the '50s, then grunged it down for the '80s scenes.
The first idea for time traveling was not by lightning, but by a nuclear explosion. The first script had them go to a nuclear site to be able to time travel. Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis decided that would be too expensive and chose lightning instead.
Michael J Fox is really not playing or singing Johnny Be Good. The music and singing were both pre-recorded. Michael did have to learn the song note for note to make it look like he was playing it. At the end of the film, his character Marty McFly gets credits for singing the song.
You can clearly see in the scene where Doc is hanging from the clocktower that he is wearing velcro shoes. Velcro shoes were not invented in 1955.
The clocktower has been burnt three different times after part three was made.
The serum used for the Ludiviggo Treatment in "A Clockwork Orange" was known as Serum 114 -as was the amp Marty blows up (CRM-114).
The original Air date of the "Classic Honeymooners" ("Man from Space") episode that they are watching at his grandparents family dinner table (after he wakes up from being hit by the car)is December 31, 1955. More than a month after Marty's arrival.
When Marty goes back in time and is chased by Biff's gang, you can see that he is wearing Blue Converse sneakers. However, on the night that he goes back to the future, he is seen pushing the pedal in Nike shoes. Did he bring an extra pair of shoes with him to the past? I doubt it.
When Marty is late for school and hitches a ride (on his skateboard) by grabbing onto the back of a Jeep like vehicle. The driver of the Jeep is none other than Robert Zemeckis.
When "Darth Vader" visits George in the middle of the night, he puts a tape in his Walkman with "Edward Van Halen" written on the label and places the headphones on. I'm pretty sure that was not Eddie playing the music we hear, it's not from any recorded Van Halen album. It sounds like somebody trying to sound like Eddie. Love that scene!
Originally, the studio boss wanted to make certain changes (Professor Brown --> Doc Brown, Chimp -> dog (no movie with a chimp makes a profit), Marty's mom's name from Meg to something else, (incidently Lorainne is his wife's name) including the title of the movie. He was the only one who didn't like the title, "Back to the Future" but the makers stuck to their guns. The alternate title, was "Spaceman from Pluto". The studio boss sent a memo outlining changes to the script for the new title and they didn't know what to do as he was the BIG BOSS of the company. In the end Stephen Spielberg sent a reply saying (paraphrase), "dear Sid, thank you so much for your most humorous memo, we really all got a good laugh out of it!" So the name stuck as Spielberg knew he would be too proud to admit that he had been deadly serious!
When Marty arrives in 1955, and is walking around Hill valley town square, he believes he is in a dream; he picks up a newspaper from a wastebin to check the date. Notice that before he picks the newspaper out of the trash his hair is flat and very messy. After he looks at the newspaper his hair is perfectly tidy and styled!
Marty got a four wheel drive Toyota pick-up truck at the end of the movie. At first it was planned to be a Toyota Supra sports car, but replaced with the pick-up truck because of the changing trends of american car buyers.