Did You Know?

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. As "Family Ties" co-star Meredith Baxter was pregnant at the time, Fox was carrying a lot more of the show than usual. The show's producer Gary David Goldberg simply couldn't afford to let Fox go. Zemeckis and Gale then cast Eric Stoltz as Marty based on his performance in Mask. After four weeks of filming Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale felt that Stoltz wasn't right for the part and Stoltz agreed. By this stage, Baxter was back fully on the show and Goldberg agreed to let Fox go off to make the film. 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 five hours of sleep. The bulk of the production was filmed from 6pm to 6am, with the daylight scenes filmed on weekends. Reshooting Stoltz's scenes added $3 million dollars to the budget.

Michael J. Fox was allowed by the producer of Family Ties 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 most of the movie at night. He was not allowed to go on Back to the Future promotional tours.

The "Back to the Future" series (including Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III) ranked at #9 on IGN's Top 25 Movie Franchises of All Time (2006).

The picture of Mayor Red Thomas on the election car in 1955 is set decorator Hal Gausman.

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. 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. (See also Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.) The Nevada desert bomb test was left out in order to reduce the budget. 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 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 Twin Pines Mall is, in fact, the Puente Hills Mall in City of Industry, California. Today, JCPenney is no longer an anchor there.

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 who played her father.

Another deleted scene shows Marty peeking in on a class in 1955 and seeing his mother cheating on a test.

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

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, Revenge of the Nerds, etc).

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.

Canadian pop singer Corey Hart was asked to screen test for the part of Marty.

C. Thomas Howell was considered to play the role of Marty McFly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The two red labels on the flux capacitor say "Disconnect Capacitor Drive Before Opening" (at the top) and "Shield Eyes From Light".

Voted number 7 in channel 4's (UK) "Greatest Family Films"

There are only about 32 special effects shots in the entire film.

It took three hours in make-up to turn the 23-year-old Lea Thompson into the 47-year-old Lorraine.

Though the film Marty 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. Both films also have a diner owner named Lou.

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.

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.

Christopher Lloyd based his performance as Doc Brown on a combination of physicist Albert Einstein and conductor Leopold Stokowski. Brown's pronunciation of gigawatts as "jigowatts", is based on the way a physicist whom Zemeckis and Gale met with for research said the word.

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 songs, "The Power of Love" and "Back in Time" are featured on the movie's soundtrack, and also wrote Marty's audition song (which is a re-orchestrated version of "The Power of Love.")

Marty McFly mimics famous rock stars during the later part of his performance at the school dance, 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).

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.

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. To Edison's left on the mantle are Sir Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin, to his right is Albert Einstein, Doc's inspiration for time machine invention.

In the original script, Doc Brown and Marty sell bootleg videos in order to fund the time machine.

After the film's release, body kits were made for DeLoreans to make them look like the time machine.

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 Spider-Man 3, which is right across from the Hill Valley Clock tower, which was minorly scorched by the time the fire was out.

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.

Doc Brown refers to "jigawatts" of electricity. This is the now-obscure but once-standard pronunciation of the word "gigawatt", one billion watts. Nowadays it is usually pronounced with a hard "g" as in "gander" and "gold".

Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale's Oscar-nominated screenplay was actually written just after they'd made Used Cars.

The gas-powered struts that hold the De Lorean's gullwing doors open would fail during the course of filming a take, so crew members had to be on stand-by with hairdryers to warm them up to stop the doors from drooping.

Biff Tanen is named in homage to Ned Tanen, one-time head of Universal, who threw Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis's script for I Wanna Hold Your Hand on the floor in a heated meeting, accusing it of being anti-Semitic. Despite the fact that Bob Gale is Jewish.

Despite Marty and Jennifer crediting Doc as the origin of the repeated line "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything" (Jennifer claims it is something he always says), Doc never says the line once in any of the Back to the Future movies.

While it was planned to use the date, November 5th in the film, which happens to be Bob Gale's birthday as well as Mary Steenburgen's, interestingly enough, based on accurate calenders, November 12, 1955 actually did occur on Saturday.

Lea Thompson was cast as Lorraine McFly because she had acted opposite Eric Stoltz, the original actor cast as Marty, in The Wild Life.

J.J. Cohen originally considered for the role of Biff after Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty. He was replaced by Thomas F. Wilson because Cohen was considered not physically imposing enough next to the six-foot-tall Stoltz. Cohen was cast as one of Biff's gang. According to Bob Gale, had Michael J. Fox been cast from the beginning, Cohen would have probably won the part because he was much taller than the five-foot-four Fox.

A Texaco gas station is shown in both 1955 and 1985. Interestingly, Christopher Lloyd's maternal grandfather was one of the founders of the Texaco oil company.

Alan Silvestri's score begins 18 minutes into the movie, appropriately when the DeLorean time machine is revealed.

The donning of a Burger King uniform by Marty's brother, Dave, may have been a tribute to Lea Thompson's early acting gigs as a Burger King spokesperson.

On 10 November 2010 Bob Gale received a plaque from the principal of Whitter High School, aka Hill Valley High School in dedication of the film. This plaque can be seen by the students of the school near the front end of the building stating that Back to the Future had been shot there.

The owner of the home where the tree that George McFly dangles from is a small time producer who does documentaries and biographies. Just recently he put together a fifteen minute documentary on the tree on Bushnell Avenue that was used in the film, which featured never before seen footage.

Doc's van says, "Dr. E. Brown Enterprises 24 Hr. Scientific Services".

Steven Spielberg gives a nod to Stanley Kubrick in the first few minutes of the film. When Marty is first over at Doc's house looking for him and doesn't find him, he hooks up his guitar to Doc's electrical equipment. The first dial he turns up is labeled CRM 114, which Kubrick used as a reference throughout many of his films.

The comic book "Tales from Space" pays homage to EC Comics, a controversial and influential line of 1950s comics. If you look carefully at the cover of the comic you can see the EC logo in the upper left. Although there was no "Tales from Space" by EC (Their science fiction titles were "Weird Science" and "Weird Fantasy"), there was a comic entitled "Tales from the Crypt." Robert Zemeckis is a fan of the now defunct EC and served as an executive producer of Tales from the Crypt.

According to Bob Gale, on October 26th, 1985, a group of people showed up at the mall used to film the Twin Pines Mall location to see if Marty would arrive in the DeLorean. He, of course, did not.

According to Michael J. Fox on the 2010 DVD/Blu-Ray interviews, the interior of the DeLorean was so tight due to the added props, that every time he had to shift gears, he would repeatedly hit his forearm on the handle that turns on the time circuits and he would also rap his knuckles hard against the time display board. If you pay attention during the car chase with the terrorists, you can hear these hits every time Marty uses the shifter.

As of 2011, the Hill Valley clock tower set has been through three different fires. The first one happened shortly after the finishing of Back to the Future Part II where all the original surrounding buildings burned to the ground by lightning. The second fire in 1994 almost destroyed the structure. In 2008, the fire that destroyed the nearby King Kong ride/set, along with two archive vaults and the New York street, slightly scorched the tower.

According to Bob Gale, in one of the early drafts of the script, Marty's original last name was McDermott, but it was thought to have too many syllables. It was Robert Zemeckis who then came up with naming him McFly.

When Marty is walking down the street to the Soda Fountain in 1955, the music score is the The Four Aces singing 'Mr Sandman'. He passes a record shop with a poster in the window advertising The Chordettes original version of the song.

The Screen Actors Guild can't have two people with the same name on their books. So Michael J. Fox inserted the letter J in his name to differentiate himself from an actor called Michael Fox. In Back to the Future, Marty goes back to the year 1955. His dad is a huge fan of the show Science Fiction Theatre, something Marty uses to his advantage. The original Michael Fox starred in the real Science Fiction Theatre in the year 1955.

Even though you never hear mention of the sports teams played at Hill Valley High, their sports mascot is the Bulldogs.

Deborah Harmon:  newscaster on TV in the opening sequence.

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 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 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."

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.

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.

To be continued" was inserted into the end of the VHS release Back to the Future, and was omitted from the 2002 DVD release. 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 Back to the Future Part II.