History Trivia / BackToTheFuture

** J.J. Cohen was initially chosen to portray Biff Tannen before Creator/ThomasFWilson was cast. However, Cohen was replaced from the role as he wasn't considered physically imposing enough next to Stoltz and was cast as one of Biff's gang members instead. According to Bob Gale, had Creator/MichaelJFox been cast from the beginning, Cohen would've probably won the part, because he was much taller than Fox.

*** Creator/JeffGoldblum, Creator/JamesWoods, Creator/JohnCleese, Creator/JohnCandy, Creator/ChevyChase, Creator/SteveMartin, Creator/GeneWilder, Creator/EddieMurphy, Creator/GeneHackman, Creator/HenryWinkler, Creator/DudleyMoore, Creator/RandyQuaid, Creator/JoePiscopo, Creator/RobinWilliams, Creator/MichaelKeaton, and Creator/DannyDeVito were considered for Doc Brown as well before the casting of Lloyd.

* OlderThanTheyThink: There actually is another movie called Back to the Future about time travel that predates the 1985 film by twelve years! Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyu, translated from Russian to English is Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future. It is about Ivan the Terrible being teleported from 16th century Moscow to 1973 USSR. Not only that but a car used in the film, a 1947 [=ZiS=] 110 B, is identical to a early-to-mid 1940s Packard, the same model of car that Doc drives in 1955.
** Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyu actually literally translates to Ivan Vasilevich Changes Professions, so there's no connection between the two films (coincidental or not) other than time travel.

** Creator/EricStoltz was originally cast as Marty [=McFly=] before Creator/MichaelJFox was hired. While Fox was always the first choice for the role, the production team behind ''Series/FamilyTies'' didn't want him absent from the series during Creator/MeredithBaxter's pregnancy. After six weeks of filming, Creator/RobertZemeckis and [[Film/Interstate60 Bob Gale]] decided that Stoltz was too much of a dramatic actor for a more comedic part. By this stage, Baxter was back fully on the series and the producers finally agreed to let Fox go off to star in the film.

*** Creator/JohnCusack, Creator/JohnnyDepp, Creator/RobertDowneyJr, Creator/RalphMacchio, Creator/MatthewModine and Creator/GeorgeNewbern also auditioned for the role of Marty [=McFly=] before the casting of Fox. When asked about Depp's audition, Bob Gale responded with this.

** Creator/JohnLithgow was the first choice for the part of Doc Brown before the casting of Creator/ChristopherLloyd. However, Lithgow turned down the offer due to scheduling commitments to ''Film/TwilightZoneTheMovie''.

* BannedInChina: The film was banned in China mainland for a while because the notion of time travel "disrespects history". The ban has been lifted by now.

** ActorIllusion (top half: poster)

** TheOtherMarty

* TheRedStapler:
** The [=DeLorean=]. At the time the movie came out the Delorean Motor Company had been bankrupt for almost 3 years and [=DeLoreans=] were considered a failed car. Nowadays there's an active "time machine conversion" community, [=DeLorean=] dealers, and [=DeLorean=] conventions -- all because of ''Back to the Future''. There's apparently even a company in Texas that bought the rights to the design and is making new [=DeLoreans=].
** The skateboarding sequences in this film resulted in a boom in the sport's popularity.
* ScullyBox: Because Creator/ChristopherLloyd is 6'1", much taller than the 5'4" Creator/MichaelJFox, camera tricks were used to avoid using one. For example, the two are rarely in the same shot together and, when they are, one is usually sitting down or much closer to the camera than the other. When Doc Brown is talking, he's often moving around so much that the viewer can't really tell how tall he is. Lloyd also improvised a hunch in his posture that helped give the character more of a MadScientist look.
* StarMakingRole: For Michael J. Fox.
* TropeNamers: These movies named the following tropes:
** CantHoldHisLiquor
** CaughtInTheRipple

** GetBackToTheFuture

** MisterSandmanSequence
** TheOtherMarty

** RippleEffectIndicator
** RippleEffectProofMemory

* QuoteSource: Of CoolCar.

* HeyItsThatPlace: Courthouse Square, on the Universal Backlot, has been in ''dozens'' of productions. The set tragically burned to the ground in 2008. It has been rebuilt, however.

** Supplemental materials for ''Ride/BackToTheFutureTheRide'', [[https://web.archive.org/web/20010619034511/http://www.universalstudios.com/unicity/btf/archive.html once kept]] on Universal Studios' website, included Doc's plans for a "Timeman" time machine suit that is activated when the wearer runs to a speed of 8.8 mph. In the comic, Doc manages to create a time machine suit using a Victorian-era diving suit from 1893, although he still has to reach 88 mph for temporal displacement.

* PopCultureUrbanLegends: Once real-life history got into the decade of the 2010s, pretty much every year there would be a picture claiming that that day was the day Marty went to when he went to the future (with the date being photoshopped to the current date). It's easy to tell the fakes, since the real years in the movies [[ExtyYearsFromNow all end in 5]]. Now that the real date has passed, only time will tell if these fakes will stop being made.

* IAmNotSpock: Actor Creator/ThomasFWilson (Biff). He even [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwY5o2fsG7Y wrote a song about it]]. He also started carrying small laminated cards he'd hand out to fans he'd run into, featuring answers to the most frequent questions he's asked about the movies. Not only is he exactly the opposite of a bully (and Biff) in real life, he drew on his real life high school experiences of BEING bullied in order to play Biff.

** Universal president Sid Sheinberg insisted on several changes, several of them positive. He suggested "Professor Brown" be changed to "Doc Brown", which he felt was less stuffy. He also insisted on Emmett Brown's chimpanzee pet being changed[[note]]his reasoning was that movies with chimps didn't make money; when Creator/ClintEastwood's ''[[Film/EveryWhichWayButLoose Every Which Way]]'' films were pointed out, he retorted "That was an orangutan."[[/note]], which became the dog Einstein, and requested Marty's mother's name go from Meg to Lorraine (his wife's name). One note that was heavily resisted was insisting the title be ''Spaceman From Pluto'' after the comic seen in the film; the Bobs were aghast at the suggestion, but Steven Spielberg used his clout to veto the suggestion by way of faxing Sheinberg and saying it was a "good joke".

** Basically, this is the whole reason why the sequels exist in the first place -- but Sid Sheinberg had insisted on certain changes to be made in the first movie.
** One of Sid Sheinberg's changes, from "Professor Brown" to "Doc Brown", has become integral in ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' culture. (Just how much so is suggested by Michael J. Fox's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O90DliJc6PA repeated bloopers]] in filming ''Film/TheFrighteners'': he called the Judge character "Doc".) He also insisted on Emmett Brown's chimpanzee pet being changed[[note]]his reasoning was that movies with chimps didn't make money; when Creator/ClintEastwood's ''[[Film/EveryWhichWayButLoose Every Which Way]]'' films were pointed out, he retorted "That was an orangutan."[[/note]], which became the dog Einstein, and requested Marty's mother's name go from Meg to Lorraine (his wife's name). The last note is mentioned in the first film's trivia in regards to the title, to which the Bobs adamantly stuck to their guns.

* WorkingTitle: The film was almost titled ''Spaceman from Pluto'' due to ExecutiveMeddling. It took the intervention of Creator/StevenSpielberg to get this resolved.

*** Creator/JohnCusack, Creator/JohnnyDepp, Creator/RobertDowneyJr, Creator/RalphMaccio, Creator/MatthewModine and Creator/GeorgeNewbern also auditioned for the role of Marty [=McFly=] before the casting of Fox. When asked about Depp's audition, Bob Gale responded with this.

*** Creator/JohnCusack, Creator/JohnnyDepp, Creator/RobertDowneyJr, Creator/CThomasHowell, Creator/RalphMaccio, Creator/MatthewModine and Creator/GeorgeNewbern also auditioned for the role of Marty [=McFly=] before the casting of Fox. When asked about Depp's audition, Bob Gale responded with this.

** Creator/EricStoltz was [[TheOtherMarty originally cast as Marty McFly]] before Creator/MichaelJFox was hired. While Fox was always the first choice for the role, the production team behind ''Series/FamilyTies'' didn't want him absent from the series during Creator/MeredithBaxter's pregnancy. After six weeks of filming, Creator/RobertZemeckis and [[Film/Interstate60 Bob Gale]] decided that Stoltz was too much of a dramatic actor for a more comedic part. By this stage, Baxter was back fully on the series and the producers finally agreed to let Fox go off to star in the film.
*** Creator/JohnCusack, Creator/RalphMacchio, Creator/CThomasHowell, Creator/GeorgeNewbern, Creator/RobertDowneyJr, Creator/CharlieSheen, and Creator/JohnnyDepp also auditioned for the role of Marty [=McFly=] before the casting of Fox. When asked about Depp's audition, Bob Gale responded with this.

** Creator/JonCryer and Creator/BenStiller auditioned for the role of Marty in [[https://io9.gizmodo.com/jon-cryer-and-ben-stiller-auditioned-for-a-very-differe-1844544821 a very different version]]. In this draft, a more generic time machine and the aforementioned fridge. However, the time machine required a special ingredient to work: ''Coca-Cola.'' In the finale, Marty sneaks into a nuclear testing site, complete with detailed suburban houses. As the countdown starts, he drops the bottle of Coke, and it shatters on the floor. He panics at first, until he realizes that like any American home in that era, the fridge is stocked with another bottle of Coke. It's also lead-lined, so hiding in there lets him survive the blast. This conveniently gives Marty everything he needs to go back to the future. Also, Marty played the ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'' theme on his guitar while pirating a VHS copy of it in the opening scene.

* FakeAmerican: Marty [=McFly=] -- Michael J. Fox is in fact Canadian. You can hear his accent slip when he pronounces "sorry" as "sore-y."
* HeyItsThatPlace: Courthouse Square, on the Universal Backlot, has been in ''dozens'' of productions. The set tragically burned to the ground in 2008. It has been rebuilt however.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
** The 1985 scenes, by being so current at the time of filming, falls headlong into this. Justified, in that the differences in eras wouldn't be nearly as significant if they'd been downplayed.
** A specific one, that may not be understood by younger viewers, is the significance of the terrorists in BTTF I being {{UsefulNotes/Libya}}ns. In 1985 when the movie came out, Libya under Col. Gaddafi was seen as a big UsefulNotes/ColdWar bogeyman and considered by UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan to be a serious enemy of the United States.
** The [=DeLorean=] itself wound up being a huge flop, and is now remembered solely because of this franchise.

* HandWave: Bob Gale has invoked this with regards to canonicity, saying that the side stories, "Continuum Conundrum," and ''VideoGame/BackToTheFutureTheGame'' are all simultaneously canonical and non-canonical to the franchise, because alternate timelines are a possibility with time travel. (Presumably, this extends to Ride/BackToTheFutureTheRide and [[WesternAnimation/BackToTheFuture the animated series]] as well.)

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: Whenever the characters are not time traveling, they live in Hill Valley in the year 1991. Therefore the series makes references to 1991 like VHS tapes.

* CastTheRunnerUp: J.J. Cohen was originally cast as Biff Tannen. However, he didn't look so imposing against Eric Stoltz, the TropeNamer for TheOtherMarty, so Creator/ThomasFWilson was cast as Biff while Cohen was recast as Skinhead, one of Biff's {{Mooks}}. According to Bob Gale, had Creator/MichaelJFox been cast as Marty from the beginning, Cohen would definitely have landed the role of [[IdenticalGrandson Biff/Griff/Buford Tannen]] instead of Wilson. Creator/BillyZane also auditioned to play Biff before being cast as another one of Biff's mooks, Match.

* TheOtherMarty: The TropeNamer.

** Six weeks into filming, a deal was reached to work Michael J. Fox into the film around the schedule of ''Family Ties''. [[TropeNamer Stoltz was quickly fired]] [[TheOtherMarty and replaced with Fox]], and Stoltz's scenes were reshot with Fox in the role. Stoltz was reportedly ''very'' upset when Zemeckis broke the news, and to this day he refuses to talk about the film. His firing made the rest of the cast very nervous about their job security, with Creator/LeaThompson in particular being dismayed as she was good friends with Stoltz, having previously worked with him in ''The Wild Life''. Despite this, overall mood on the set improved with Fox in the role.