Trivia / Back to the Future Part II

• Acting for Two:
  • Michael J. Fox plays Marty McFly, his future self from 2015, his past self from his first trip to 1955, Marty McFly Jr. and Marlene McFly.
  • Biff Tannen (as well as his past and future selves from 1955 and 2015, respectively) and Griff Tannen are played by Thomas F. Wilson.
  • Elisabeth Shue plays Jennifer Parker as well as her future self from 2015.
  • Ditto for every major cast member from the first Back to the Future film (except for Crispin Glover) who played the 1985/1985A versions of their characters, as well as their 1955 and 2015 selves.
• Author's Saving Throw: Doc mentions that he left Einstein in a suspended animation kennel in 2015 while he went to pick up Marty in 1985. The DVD Commentary explains that this was to address the minor continuity error in the original film where Einstein was present with Doc when he traveled into the future, but absent when he came back to get Marty.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Skinhead and Lester were voiced by a very young Demián Bichir at the time.
• Creator Backlash: Flea stated in an interview that he was not happy with the film or his performance as Needles and referred to the film as "a multi-million dollar piece of trash".
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Robert Zemeckis called this his favourite of all the films he's made and certainly the strangest.
• Defictionalization: Real life 2010s have caught up with some of the movie's very '80s designs for its 2010s future, though of course not in the ways life has evolved in its timeline.
  • The Instant Infant display became a real cardboard stand up released in 2003, no actual baby, just a cardboard stand up.
  • Marty Jr.'s hat became an actual piece of merchandise.
  • In 2008, Nike released 1,000 pairs of (rather pricey) "Air McFly/Nike Mag" sneakers. And in 2011, they released 1500 more. The '11 versions light up. But, neither version self-laces, though.
  • In 2010, Nike patented the self tightening shoes Marty wears in 2015. They actually came on the market in the real-life year of 2015, with the first pair going to Michael J. Fox. And it is awesome.
  • After a hoax in 2013 made the idea seem too good to be true, a KickStarter project has presented the world with the first real hoverboard. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have been a success as of 2022.
  • In 2015 Lexus released a YouTube video of a functioning, superconductor-based hoverboard. It does really hoverbut it only works on the specially built skatepark that has magnetic rails buried under the concrete. It took the pro-skaters in the video 6 months to get even remotely proficient at using it and it's not gonna be on the market. Then, in 2021, a film-accurate one was made.
  • In honor of the 30th Anniversary of the franchise itself, Universal released a trailer for "Jaws 19". Also, Pepsi announced the release of Pepsi Perfect.
  • The Chicago Cubs made the 2015 Major League Baseball playoffs, but were swept by the the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series on October 21, 2015. They did, however, win the World Series the next year. Given their opponent was the Miami Gators, the Miami Marlins unveiled some memorabilia featuring that logo in 2015, and used it on social media.
  • There's a real life version of Mr. Fusion, but it's merely a prop replica.
  • On the real October 22, 2015, USA Today released its print edition with the front page from the film. The headline about Queen Diana was replaced with one about 3D billboard on account of the real Diana's death in 1997, but the rest of the film's headlines were retained. Among the new headlines to cover up for what wasn't seen on screen, one has three in-jokes (Robert Zemeckis wants to adapt George's book, which already had a version in 1989, and hopes to get Christopher Lloyd as the star), and another says the audience is gullible enough to believe "a USA Today copy with fictional articles and studies, many of them inspired by Back to the Future Part II".
  • Even Jaws 19 was defictionalized; though the franchise was already dead in the water due to Jaws: The Revenge having bombed financially and been labeled one of the worst movies ever made by the time Back to the Future Part II was released, Jaws 19 was actually made! Though don't expect to find Steven Spielberg's name or Universal's logo anywhere in it, because it is an unofficial independent film from Russia with production values that would make Edward D. Wood Jr blush and special effects that even a baby couldn't be fooled by. Depending on who you are, it's either complete trash or so bad that it's good.
• Deleted Role:
  • Marc McClure filmed a cameo as Dave McFly as a drunk in the alternate 1985 that was cut. Wendie Jo Sperber was unavailable to portray Linda and they felt it didn't make sense to not include both of Marty's siblings.
  • In another deleted scene, Will Hare reprises his role from the first film as Old Man Peabody.
• Deleted Scene: Most of which concern 1985-A:
  • Old Biff in 2015 gets into an argument with the elderly Terry, the mechanic who fixed Biff's car in 1955 and asked Marty for a donation, who specifically mentions November 12, 1955. This would've explained how Biff picked that date to time-travel.
  • After returning to 2015 from 1955, Biff not only walks away in inexplicable pain, but falls to the ground and vanishes. Word of God is that this is because Lorraine killed Biff in 1996-A.
  • Marty encounters Hill Valley High School, burnt down and fenced off from the rest of the town.
  • Marty meets his brother Dave, now an alcoholic bum. Had Wendi Jo Sperber, who played Linda, not been pregnant at the time of filming, Marty would have met her as a prostitute.
  • There's also an extended version of the dinner scene in 2015, as well as a short scene where 2015 Marty and his kids find 2015 Jennifer passed out.
  • During the return to 1955, there is a deleted scene where Doc returns to the Lyon Estates billboard to get the DeLorean (so he can pick up Marty from the school roof) and runs into Old Man Peabody and a police officer looking for flying saucers. The scene was included in the novelization, but it wasn't included with the DVD bonus features, and only still photographs of the scene remain.
  • In 2010, the full Biff Tannen Museum tape was unearthed by fans, containing extra gags and some differences from the final film: Biff having to repeat his senior year is whitewashed as the school wanting him to play on the football team for an extra season, while Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen is called his grandfather, not great-grandfather.
• Disowned Adaptation: Crispin Glover disowned both sequels but this film in particular for how they repurposed footage from the first film along with a lookalike/soundalike in Jeffrey Weissman along with extensive make-up taken from molds made for the first film to capture his appearance. It was convincing enough that people thought he was still in the film and he thought it was a horrible performance regardless. He famously sued and won for misappropriating his likeness, and union rules were rewritten as a result.
• Edited for Syndication: Netflix briefly used an edited print of the film that shortened the scene involving Biff's dirty magazine, despite it being integral to the plot. Thankfully, the scene was reinstated after the edit was shared on social media.
• Enforced Method Acting: Marty's gasp when Biff kicks him in the gut is real. Robert Zemeckis is apparently big on real reactions, and runs the mantra "Pain is temporary, film is forever" with his actors.
• Hostility on the Set: Lea Thompson had grown quite fond of Crispin Glover, so she did not care for his replacement, Jeffrey Weissman, and felt rather uncomfortable at having to kiss him in the prosthetics. She didn't bother to learn his name, introducing him as "the guy playing Crispin".
• Life Imitates Art:
  • Miami didn't have a pro baseball team when the film was made; they do now. However, it's not in the right league. The Marlins and the Cubs are both in the National League, so they could never compete in the World Series against each other. Plus, the Miami team in the movie had a gator logo, which doesn't fit either Miami's (Marlins) or Tampa Bay's (Rays) teams.
  • The Cubs made a surprise run deep into the 2015 MLB playoffs, only to be eliminated by the Mets. In a sweep. On October 21st. As for the World Series win, turns out the movie was only a year off: the Cubs won it all in 2016 (see Word of God below). If you're a fan of irony, though, the same team won the World Series in both 1985 and 2015: the Kansas City Royals.
  • In a much more subtle example, the Elijah Wood kid complaining about having to use your hands on the arcade machine. In 2010, Microsoft would release and heavily market a hands-free peripheral for the Xbox 360 known as the Kinect; both it and its successor released with the Xbox One, however, would be horribly unpopular and never caught on with the public due to its bad responsiveness and the fact that it more often than not makes the user look just silly when playing games. Still, this was only the first opportunity for hands-free gaming; stay tuned for future generations to try it again...
  • The film's depiction of 2015 has blockbuster 3-D movies. Guess what started becoming popular again in the real-world 2010s? Although they're not holographic 3-D movies, and Max Spielberg didn't grow up to be a famous director (he works in game design, and his father Steven still makes movies).
  • Voice-activated consumer electronics were commonplace by 2015; Apple's Siri came out in 2011 and Amazon's Alexa came out in 2014.
  • A poster in the back-alley advertises "SURF VIETNAM". This was a gag at the time, but it is now possible to go on vacation in Vietnam, which actively courts foreign tourists.
  • Video calls had been commonplace for several years by 2015 in real life; the scrolling personal trivia at the bottom of the screen (favorite foods, sports, marital status, etc.) is reminiscent of the kind of info people put in their Facebook profiles.
  • The movie predicted younger people needing to constantly entertain themselves with personal electronic devices at the dinner table; handheld video games had been around since 1979 and the first Game Boy came out the year the movie was released, but things really took off with the smartphone.
  • A deleted scene reveals that the visor Marty Jr. is wearing at the dinner table is a portable TV; mobile devices that allow you to stream TV shows and movies are now common, though not in goggle form.
  • Widescreen TVs became standard by The New '10s.
  • A background gag has a dog being walked by a flying drone. Such drones are now ubiquitous, although it took until 2020 (and a pandemic) for someone to actually try walking their dog with one.
  • Not precisely how things turned out, but when Marty Jr. comes home and watches TV, he somehow manages to watch six channels at once. How many tabs are open in your browser right now? Although if you have U-Verse cable service, multi-view is an option. Sure it's more just for scrolling through your channels faster but all the programs are simultaneous. Close enough.
  • It should be noted that most of these predictions were made as jokes by the production team, but ended up somewhat of a prediction by the real 2015.
• No Export for You: The Super Nintendo Licensed Game never saw a release outside of Japan.
• On-Set Injury: During a "hoverboard" stunt scene, stuntwoman Cheryl Wheeler-Dixon was accidentally bounced off a pillar before falling thirty feet onto concrete, sustaining serious facial and wrist injuries. The take that happened in is the one that ended up in the final film.
• Orphaned Reference: When Old Biff returns to 2015 after giving his younger self the sports almanac, he is in pain and collapses on the ground. A deleted scene shows that he fades from existence afterwards, with Word of God confirming that in 1996 of the new timeline, Biff's counterpart was killed by Lorraine, likely either because she finally got fed up with his abuse or because she found out the truth about him killing George. While this matches what was happening to Marty in the first film, test audiences were confused about why Old Biff disappeared and there was likely no way to give the explanation in dialogue as Marty and Doc would have no way of knowing about Biff's fate, so the scene was cut. As a result, there's no discernible reason in the final film as to why Old Biff is in pain, and many audience members have assumed he was having a heart attack.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Elisabeth Shue replaces Claudia Wells as Jennifer Parker.
  • Jeffrey Weissman replaces Crispin Glover as George McFly.
  • The Latin American Spanish dub was quite infamous for replacing the entire cast from the previous film, as this one was dubbed in the U.S. in Los Angeles rather than Mexico from the first, something that was kept in the sequel as well, but not in the animated series.
  • In the French dub of the first movie, Jennifer and George were voiced by Martine Regnier and Dominique Collignon-Maurin respectively. In both this sequel and the third movie, they are instead voiced by Brigitte Berges and Philippe Peythieu, again respectively. Also, Mr. Strickland is voiced in this sequel by Jean-Claude Montalban instead of Jean-Paul Tribout.
• Permanent Placeholder: As indicated by the script, Marlene McFly was originally supposed to be played on-screen by Michael J. Fox, and voiced by Elisabeth Shue. However, the "feminine" voice that Fox used on-set for Marlene was deemed convincing enough that the film-makers never bothered having Shue overdub his lines.
• Prop Recycling: All of the futuristic cars were recycled from other films.
• Recycled Set: The tunnel outside Hill Valley is also the tunnel into Toontown from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Said tunnel is found in Griffith Park, Los Angeles.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • As Marty tries to sneak by the car that his other self and Lorraine are in, he overhears the conversation from the first film about Lorraine drinking and there's an extra bit afterwards with Lorraine saying "When I have kids, I'm going to let them do anything they want. Anything at all!", to which his other self comments "I'd like to have that in writing...". This exchange was originally written as part of that scene in the first film, but wasn't included in the final cut.
  • The "Mister Sandman" Sequence in the original movie was almost the "Papa Loves Mambo Sequence", because the producers considered using "Papa Loves Mambo" by Perry Como before deciding on "Mister Sandman" instead. In Part II, it turns up here on Biff's radio while driving to the dance.
  • In an earlier draft of the first film, Marty mentions wanting to get a sports almanac from the past, and then make bets throughout time and become rich. That part doesn't come up in the actual film, but the almanac gets pushed front and center in this film.
• Shoot the Money: The film showcased newly-developed technology that allowed the cast to play past/present/future counterparts of their characters.
• Shrug of God: Bob Gale admitted in the DVD Commentary that he has no idea what "lithium mode" is, and he doesn't know what illicit activities Future Marty was getting into with the card scan. "Lithium Mode" seems to be how the house's powered, since lithium is used in batteries, while Marty seemed to be getting up to some kind of financial scheme considering Needles tried to use his apparent money problems to get him to do it.
• Technology Marches On:
  • The film not only predicted something like today's heavily inter-connected and information-driven society, but assumed it would be based around the fax machine, not the computer. It also assumed that, by 2015, Japan's economy would have completely overtaken America's. It wasn't such an odd concept at the time; Japan was (and still is) a major worldwide provider of technology and electronics. Even so, it comes across as fairly quaint.
  • Talking electronic devices are now commonplace, but they usually use sophisticated speech synthesis or recordings by voice actors instead of the monotone, robotic Stephen Hawking-like voices we hear in the movie.
  • The LaserDisc format will have just gone out of style in 2015.
  • Deliberately over-the-top portrayals of the future might have us wanting our hoverboards and flying cars despite the obvious impracticality of the latter and the physics-bending of both in-universe, but the lack of mobile phones and internet (in favor of landline videophones and fax machines) is jarring in the real 2015. That said, the IDW comic, to its credit, did attempt to mitigate this by showing Doc learning how to use the internet during his first trip to 2015.
• Throw It In!:
  • The scene where Jennifer jumps when future Marty's Japanese boss yells at him was real. Elisabeth Shue really didn't expect it to be so loud.
  • In what nearly became a Fatal Method Acting incident, the stuntwoman for Spike in the hoverboard chase, Cheryl Wheeler Duncan, was badly injured during the stunt where Griff's crew flies through the Town Hall glass entrance. Instead of flying through the stunt glass, Duncan was accidentally launched drifting left, hit the pillar of the building and fell 30 feet to the concrete below. This collision was kept in the movie, with Duncan hitting the pillar on the exterior shot, and then her falling prone body hitting the ground in the background during the interior shots of the other stuntmen landing inside the courthouse.
• Trolling Creator: In a behind-the-scenes interview, Robert Zemeckis jokingly claimed the hoverboards used for filming were real and they just hadn't been sold to the public because of safety concerns. Most people missed the sarcasm and began calling toy stores and companies asking for them to be released.
• Uncredited Role:
  • Donald Fullilove, who played Goldie Wilson in Part I, makes an uncredited appearance as Wilson's grandson, Goldie Wilson III.
  • Mary Ellen Trainor, the then-wife of director Robert Zemeckis, appears as Officer Reese, one of the police officers who brings Jennifer to her future home.
• What Could Have Been: Shares a page with Part 1 and 3.
• Word of God: The official Back to the Future Twitter account explained that the discrepancy of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series a year early was due to the film's version of 2015 being in a universe where the 1994 baseball strike never occurred.
• Working Title: The film was shot as "Paradox".
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The first film's ending was never meant to lead into a sequel, and in particular Zemeckis and Gale have said putting Jennifer in the Delorean with Marty and Doc caused a ton of headaches until they resorted to simply putting her to sleep for most of the movie. Crispin Glover's refusal to return also caused serious writing issues, and see above for just how much trouble coming up with a story was. Though on the flip-side, the inclusion of the DeLorean's Mr. Fusion generator — which was originally just intended as a sight gag — at the end of the first film ended up proving oddly fortuitous, as it eliminated the issue of needing a supply of plutonium.

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