Back to the Future II | plot summary

The story continues with Marty McFly and Doc (Emmett Brown) as they now leave 1985 and time travel to the year 2015 to stop Marty’s kids from destroying their lives.

While Marty is in 2015, he finds an antique store selling all sorts of memorabilia from the 20th Century, among which is “Gray’s Sports Almanac 1950s-2000,” containing all sport scores for that time span. Seeing it as a money-making scheme when he returns to 1985, Marty buys the almanac, but Doc catches him and puts it in the trash, berating Marty that he did not build a time machine for such trivialities as making money. The Biff of 2015 overhears the conversation and takes the almanac.

Later, the Biff of 2015 steals the DeLorean and travels to some point in time (1955). He comes back before Marty and Doc return.

Returning to 1985, Marty and Doc quickly realize that their time has been mysteriously altered. Hill Valley is now dilapidated, crime-infested and corrupt. Biff has become a rich and powerful man.

Doc discovers the bag the Gray’s Sports Almanac came in and old Biff’s fist-shaped cane handle, in the DeLorean, revealing Biff had given the book to himself sometime in the past, thus changing his future. Marty confronts Biff to find out when and where he got the almanac, which turns out to be on November 12, 1955.

Marty and Doc go to 1955. Marty, operating incognito, witnesses the scene where the Biff of 2015 gives the teenage Biff the sports almanac.

Hanging onto the side of Biff’s car with the aid of the hoverboard, Marty grabs the almanac. Marty burns the almanac to cinders, thus repairing the future.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | original theatrical trailer }

{ 1885-2015 diagram }

Hello? Hello? Anybody home? | plot confusion

Daedeveriu writes:
The Doc clearly explains after they return to Alternate-1985 that if a person travels back in time, changes something, and returns to the period they left, they will have altered the world as they knew it.

This is quite evident in that when they return, Alternate-Biff is the corrupt ruler of their town–a major change.

However, there’s a slight problem with the events that lead up to this situation.

Old Biff steals the Time Machine (DeLorean), travels back to 1955, and gives his past-self the Sports Almanac. After, he takes the Time Machine and returns to his own time, so that he can replace the car before it’s missed.

The problem with this is that it’s not plausible. If Old-Biff gave Past-Biff the Almanac, that would have instantly begun the series of events that created Alternate-1985. So, when Biff returns to the Future, it would’ve been Alternate-2015… Not the one he left.

xoandre writes:
There are two possibilities that could explain this problem:

1. The time-ripple/delay effect did not happen for BIFF or anyone else until well AFTER Marty and Doc had jumped to Alternate 1985. Think about the time-ripple/delay in Back to the Future 1 with Marty changing his parent’s fate and how slowly time caught up with him there, thus allowing for the possibility of repairing the timeline.

2. Some time between 1985 and 2015, either time repaired itself OR Biff lost it all…

3. IF you watch the DELETED SCENES, you will find one where OLD BIFF actually VANISHES after he returns to 2015 and goes into that fit of pain… As if he had been ERASED from existence in that timeline!

{ Slip-Up Archive }

What happened to old Biff when he staggered out of the DeLorean in 2015?

Our intention regarding old Biff was that upon his return to 2015, he would be erased from existence because he had changed his entire destiny by giving his younger self the Sports Almanac. After old Biff clutches his chest and staggers (the same symptoms that Marty exhibited in Back to the Future when he was beginning to be “erased”), we actually filmed him falling onto the street and vanishing, and we previewed the movie this way. However, the vast majority of the audience did not understand it, so we decided to cut it out, leaving the answer ambiguous, and subject to various interpretations — besides the above explanation, you can believe that Old Biff had a heart attack from the shock of time travel or from flying the car, or from something that happened to him in 1955.

When Doc and Marty are in 1955-Alternate, Doc says they can’t return to the future to stop Biff from stealing the DeLorean, because it would be the wrong future. But if that’s true, how did Old Biff manage to get back to the same future that he left? Shouldn’t he have come back to a different future?

As should be clear from the answer to the previous question, we believe Old Biff DID indeed return to a different future — a “2015-A.”. This would happen AFTER Old Biff returned with the DeLorean. For this reason, we made sure that Doc had caught Jennifer and exited the McFly Townhouse before Old Biff returned. Thus, by the time Marty and Doc are carrying Jennifer back to the DeLorean, there COULD be other residents in that townhouse — or perhaps the McFlys still live there. It is just as believable that the physicality of the neighborhood did NOT change as it is to believe that it did — so we didn’t change it. We decided not to make anything of this idea because this is one of those difficult time travel concepts that general audiences have a real hard time understanding. (Try explaining this stuff to your mother and you’ll see what we mean.) A detailed explanation of it would have slowed down the story, and most of the audience doesn’t ever think about it.

That’s why we made certain things ambiguous and left various things open for interpretation in hopes that the possibility of at least one or two explanations would be better than a “definitive” explanation that you could find holes in.

{ FAQ | Writer/Producer Bob Gale and Writer/Director Robert Zemeckis }

READ MORE >> ideas, showbiz, future, time | December 14th, 2007