Marty accuses Jennifer of cheating on him with a classmate named Kelp after hearing a rumor about the two planning a date followed by seeing them talk to each other. Jennifer is angry that Marty passed judgment without hearing her side and pushes him in the fountain. Meanwhile, the Brown family becomes stranded in Salem, Massachusetts on September 23, 1692. Doc sends Marty a scratch-and-listen post card asking him to bring spare parts. Marty and Einstein arrive in Salem. While Doc fixes the time train, Marty and the family attend a social gathering. Marty is hit on by Mercy Tannen whom Marty rejects because of her surname. Out of revenge, Mercy starts a rumor that Marty is a witch. He is arrested, tried, and sentenced to the swimming test. While Marty is underwater, Doc and Jules save him, and they and Clara,Verne, and Einstein head back to the future. Meanwhile, the townspeople believe Marty drowned, expressing remorse over having accused an innocent person of witchcraft. Back in Hill Valley, Marty goes over to Jennifer’s to apologize.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Artistic License – History:
- The Puritans didn’t burn witches at the stake. They threw them in jail or hanged them.
- By September of 1692, the hysteria surrounding witches died down and public opinion turned against the trials with the last trial in May of that year.
- The swimming test is not a lose-lose situation in which the victim dies regardless of he sinks or floats. During the Swimming Test, a victim would have a rope tied around their waist so they could be pulled out before they could drown if they sunk.
- It’s a bit of an oversimplification to say the Salem Witch Trials were about people being swept by a rumor and accusing others left or right. The Puritans accused others of witchcraft because of a combination of disputes between neighbors, ergot poisoning, dispute of church privileges, religious beliefs in witchcraft, and the belief women were more susceptible to sin than men were.
- False Rape Accusation: Downplayed; Mercy claims Marty made "inappropriate advances" towards her to get back at him for rejecting her affections. Actually, she made advances towards him; the most he did was take an interest (before he realized she was a member of the local bully family).
- Hypocrite: Marty is angry at Jennifer when he believes she went behind his back, but when he meets Mercy, he falls head-over-heels for her and agrees to go on a moonlight stroll with her. It’s only because she is a Tannen that he decides not to not because of loyalty to Jennifer.
- Papa Wolf: Goodman Tannen becomes enraged when he thinks Marty sexually harassed his daughter Mercy.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: When Doc asks him how the trip went, Marty implies that the roughness of the DeLorean's manual mode caused him to lose his breakfast. However, the results luckily don't appear.
- Woman Scorned: Mercy accuses Marty first of harassing her and then of being a witch after he spurns her advances.
