X

Great sites

Anything Hollywood

Atomic Popcorn

Banned in Hollywood

Bits & Pieces

Blockbuster Buzz

Book mistakes

CanMag

The Daily Column

Daily Stab

Defamer

Double Viking

EHOWA

The Evil Beet

Film Drunk

Filmofilia

Filmspotting

Foundry Music

Game mistakes

Geek Tyrant

Gone Hollywood

Hollyscoop

Hollywood Outbreak

I Am Bored

I Love Bacon

Joblo movie news

Movie Banter

Movie Buzz

Movie spoilers

Movie timeline

Other crap

Screenjunkies

Sky movie reviews

Something Really Funny

Tengossip

Trailer Addict

Unreality Magazine

Virtually Existing

Quotes

Sam Baines: Stella! Another one of these damn kids jumped in front of my car! Come on out here and help me take him in the house!

See more...

Trivia

Eric Stoltz was the original Marty. After filming quite a few scenes they realised he was being a bit too dramatic, so they cast Michael J Fox. See more...

Picture

Movie Mistakes blog

Popular blog posts:

Top 15 biggest Harry Potter film mistakes

The biggest mistakes in the Harry Potter movies

15 biggest mistakes in Titanic

The 20 biggest Friends mistake pictures

10 Twilight mistakes in pictures

Update alerts | Exclude type?

Back to the Future (1985) - 184 mistakes

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson, Michael J. Fox, Thomas F. Wilson (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Sci-fi

Mistakes
Trivia
Pictures
Quotes
Corrections
Questions
Submit
⇑
⇓

Continuity: After Doc send Einstein back in time it shows fire trails on the pavement. Marty's leg is right in a flame, yet he doesn't seem to feel any pain at all.

Edit Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: The time machine is gone for 1 minute and 20 seconds - not just 1 minute.

Edit Submitted by Jacob La Cour Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: After the shelves fall on top of Marty, the rubbish on top of him changes between shots.

Edit Submitted by Blibbetyblip Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: When Marty is using the phone to call Doc while he is in the diner, his watch (which is on his left arm) starts beeping and the guy behind the counter gives him a strange look. Marty rips out the phone book page and asks the guy behind the counter where XXX Riverside Drive is. Marty is no longer wearing the watch which he just had on seconds earlier.

Edit Submitted by AidanN Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: Just as Marty is going to be set back to 1985, the camera keeps showing shots of Marty, and the lightning poles coming closer and closer to him. Now Marty is supposed to be going 88MPH and mostly every shot just as the lightning is about to strike is basically the same distance from the lighting poles to the car.

Edit
⇑
⇓

Continuity: Near the beginning, right after Einstein time travels, Doc walks up to the time machine and says it's cold. He then opens the door and greets Einstein. In this split second you can see Einstein's stopwatch has a non-illuminated LED display, but in the next shot the face has changed to the bright red numbering.

Edit Picture Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: When George and Marty are talking outside the diner and George opens Marty's coke bottle for him, George's hair is all stringy and hanging down in his face. But when it cuts to another angle, it's neatly combed over to one side.

Edit Submitted by Krista Time
⇑
⇓

Revealing: When Marty first arrives in 1955, right after Mr. Sandman starts playing, you can see a truck directly behind him. If you look closely you can see that the logo on the truck looks like a Miller Beer logo. That's because it *is* a Miller Beer logo. The "Y" is actually a stylized twirl off the "R".

Edit Picture Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: When Marty puts the letter in Doc Brown's jacket pocket he puts it in the right one (from the way the pocket is slanted, plus we see the buttons right next to it) but when Doc pulls it out it is in the left one.

Edit Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: When Marty is filming the Doc in the parking lot, Doc says that he needs '1.21 gigawatts' to power the time machine. Marty then says 'Doc, you don't just walk into a store and buy plutonium.'. However, when Marty and the Doc of 1955 are listening to it on his TV, the Doc keeps talking after he says '...of electricity I need'.

Edit Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: After Einstein comes back Doc Brown is demonstrating to Marty how to set the time machine. He simply pushes the buttons on a key pad. To set it for July 4, 1776 he punches 3 buttons. To set it for December 25, 0000 he punches 6 buttons. To set it for November 5, 1955 he punches 12 buttons. Later, when Marty is resetting the time machine to go back 10 minutes early he punches 7 buttons (all not including the ENTER button on the keypad).

Edit Time
⇑
⇓

Deliberate "mistake": The 45's advertised as new releases on the record store sign actually came out at different times throughout 1955. A true selection of new releases from early November 1955 would have most likely included minor hit singles that 80's moviegoers wouldn't have recognized. The songs listed were some of the biggest hits of that year and were obviously chosen for their ability to help set the musical tone of the time.

Edit Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: After Doc accidentally unplugs the cable and is sending Marty back, he unplugs the cable 15 seconds later and it shows Doc, and the clock's hand change. A split second later the clock's hand changes again.

Edit
⇑
⇓

Continuity: When Biff is grousing to George about who will pay his cleaning bill (for spilling beer on his jacket when he wrecked George's car), there is a picture frame on a stand in the background. It's initially facing fairly rightwards, but in the next shot of the argument, it's facing more towards the camera.

Edit Picture Time
⇑
⇓

Revealing: When Doc is using a remote control to drive the DeLorean, they show a close-up of the controller. The controller's power meter (the dial with a needle in the middle) shows no power - it's right over to the left. How's he driving with no battery?

Edit Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: Inconsistent mileage progression on the DeLorean at the beginning of the movie has already been noted. However, mileage when Marty is going back to the future is also inconsistent, both in those scenes and with the beginning of the movie. As Marty is driving toward the cable, the mileage is shown as 33051. Just as Doc begins to slide down to reattach the cable, the odometer is visible again and shows 33044. These scenes were obviously filmed out of sequence, and were filmed before the beginning scenes (32994, 32064, etc) of the movie.

Edit Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: When Lorraine gets George's book out of the package, the bracelet she is wearing on her right arm is down by her wrist in the close-up. In the next shot as George takes the book from her, that bracelet has moved up her arm and is hidden under her sleeve, so when she puts her arm down and then places her arm around George's waist we see that the bracelet has slipped back down to her wrist. (It doesn't disappear, it changes positions between shots.)

Edit Picture Time
⇑
⇓

Revealing: At the end, the DeLorean hits the left dustbin and comes to a halt - you can easily see that it's not Christopher Lloyd driving, it's someone with a much bigger build, wearing an awful white wig.

Edit Picture Time
⇑
⇓

Revealing: When Marty McFly is being chased around the town square by Biff and his buddies in the black convertible, the car starts out as a 1946 Ford. In the shots where the car comes dangerously close to Marty, the front end of the car is a 1947-48 (parking lights on the '46 are rectangular and just to the inside of the headlights; on the 47-48, they are round and BELOW the headlights).

Edit Picture Time
⇑
⇓

Continuity: After the scene where Marty and his band are rejected from the school tryouts, Jennifer and Marty are sitting down and a lady comes by and asks them for change to save the clock tower. After they attempt a kiss, Jennifer's dad calls for her from the car. In the background, an African-American man is standing looking in the window of a building, and then walking right. In the next shot, he has moved all the way to the left and is walking right.

Edit Time