Back to the Future Part III

Corrected entry: When the DeLorean travels forward through time at the beginning of the first movie, the car gets covered in ice. During all other subsequent time travel, this does not happen.

Correction: Actually, it does. It looks like steam coming off the car.

Corrected entry: There are two Time Machines in the Old West (1885). One is with Marty and the Doc. The other is in the mine where Doc put it. It has to be there because if it's not, Marty and the 1955 Doc could've never got it, repaired it, and sent Marty to 1885 to save the Doc of 1985. 1985 Doc and Marty could've saved themselves a LOT of trouble by going to the Time Machine in the mine (in 1885) and transporting the gas from it into the other Time Machine (and, of course, repair the fuel line).

Correction: This has already been corrected. The Time Machine in the mine will have had all its fluids (fuel, brake fluid, etc.) removed as it is placed in long term storage. Furthermore, if they go messing around with the Time Machine, which Marty will then use to return to 1885, they could create a paradox by doing irreparable damage to it. It's far too big a risk to take, especially with Doc being as cautious as he is.

Corrected entry: Isn't it strange that Doc didn't destroy all his stuff in the blacksmith's workshop before going back to the future? Clara goes back to the workshop and finds the model of the railroad and the Delorean, clearly labeled "time machine."

Correction: It's a small wooden model of a strange horseless wagon that says it has "magical" properties. Who would believe it was anything but a toy, or some crazy old man's imagination running wild?

Twotall

Corrected entry: This would only be noticeable to the true movie geek, but when Doc and Marty are looking at the map to plan their trip back to 1985, Clara is standing in the background waiting for Doc to pick her up as he promised he would do. Since he doesn't show, she apparently rents a wagon herself and. . . well, the rest is history.

Nicki

Correction: Clara's presence in the scene is (a) blatantly obvious and (b) the whole point of the scene. Hardly something only for true geeks.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: A device created by Doc makes a hen lay an egg. The egg breaks and falls in a salad dish then the white and yolk of the egg fall in the frying pan. But where are the shells of the eggs?

Correction: You can see the salad bowl has two holes in it, a bigger one at the end where the egg falls in, and a smaller one at the opposite side. The egg falls through the big slot and breaks. The bowl is tipped and the egg slides out the smaller hole. The shell is too big to follow and thus stays in the bottom compartment.

Corrected entry: Regardless of whether or not Doc is surprised to see Marty in 1885 (and there's nothing to indicate that he is), he should not be surprised to see his tombstone in the picture. He learned of his own death in 1955.

Correction: No he didn't. Doc found the tombstone because of Marty's time-travelling, which means the original Doc has no knowledge of it because time-travellers' memories are unaffected by changes in the timeline. This is consistent throughout the franchise.

Corrected entry: When Marty leaves for the future at the beginning of Part II, Biff is in his red tracksuit about to wash their cars and Marty's black truck is in the garage. Then in Parts II and III, Marty and Doc make plenty of changes in the past and Doc staying in 1885 would greatly change things on Marty's return to 1985. But when Marty's returns to 1985 at the end of Part III, Biff is still in his red tracksuit about to wash the cars and the same black truck is still in the garage.

Gavin Jackson

Correction: But bear in mind that Doc left 1985 at the same point as Marty, so any effect he's had on history up to that point will remain, despite eventually going back to 1885. The ravine name changes, but nothing else world-altering happened.

Corrected entry: In the last scene in 1885 where Marty, Doc, and Clara are on the train racing toward the bridge, Marty keeps yelling at Doc on his walkie talkie to tell him the gauge readings. But after Doc sees Clara on the train, he tries to rescue her and Doc is no longer holding his walkie-talkie. Doc is holding on to the train with one hand while reaching for Clara with the other. Doc's walkie-talkie is no longer anywhere in sight. Marty sees all this but he nevertheless keeps yelling into his walkie-talkie right to the end as if that is how Doc could hear him. Marty does this even when he is facing forward all by himself in the DeLorean. Who is Marty talking to on the radio? It can't be Doc.

Correction: Would it not be possible for Doc to have put his radio in his pocket?

Corrected entry: Doc's tombstone was placed by his "beloved Clara". However, that was discovered (and carved) before Marty went back and changed the past by him and Doc rescuing Clara. So how did Doc meet Clara without Marty being there, given that the ravine was already called Clayton ravine, meaning that by definition she must have fallen in? Bit of a paradox, methinks. Even assuming he met her at the station, then after that her carriage fell into the ravine, the timings just don't work at all - she couldn't have fallen for him in minutes, and/or couldn't have had her name on the gravestone given that she fell in the ravine before Doc was shot.

Correction: There are 3 different timelines: 1) Doc never goes in 1885, Clara hires a carriage, she falls into the ravine and it's named after her. 2) Doc goes to 1885, he is sent to the station to pick up Clara and they fall in love (notice that the ravine's name in this timeline is "Shonash Ravine" [Doc: "It must be an old Indian name for it..."], we know the "Clayton" name by Marty when he is already in 1885). 3) Doc does go to 1885 and is asked to pick up Clara, but he forgets about it trying to find a way back to 1985; Clara hires a carriage and is about to fall into the ravine, but she is saved by Doc and Marty, Doc falls in love, etc... Notice the "Eastwood ravine" sign in 1985.

Corrected entry: When the 1955 Doc sends Marty back to 1885 he points to a cave where to hide the DeLorian left of the track that Marty takes (directly towards that cinema screen). In 1885 then, Marty takes a U-Turn to flee from the Native Americans. Assuming a 180 degree turn, the cave to hide the car must be on the right hand side. However, the cave appears directly in front of him.

Correction: It is very possible (being way back in the 1800's) that it was a cave-filled area at the time and there was a cave where the Doc pointed out in addition to the one Marty hid the Delorean in. It is also possible, since the Doc hadn't been to the old west yet, that his calculations of where the cave actually was were slightly off.

Corrected entry: Marty smashes his head on the fence not long after he arrives in 1885 at 8:00 am. When he wakes up Maggie tells him he's been asleep for nearly 6 hours, so it could only be about 2pm at the latest, yet it is dark outside and they eat dinner soon after that. (00:21:26)

Correction: It is possible that Maggie and her family did not have an accurate timepiece and thus could only guess at how long Marty was out cold. Also, farm families, true then as it often is now, wake at or before dawn, so 8 a.m. wouldn't seem as early in the morning as it would to us, which could also make it difficult for her to judge the time.

Corrected entry: Doc said to Marty, after they rescued Clara 'I wish I had never invented this infernal machine, it causes nothing but disaster' and he never wanted to change the future (the space time continuum) Why then did he make another time machine with the locomotive?

Correction: Because he had to tell Marty he was all right and had to come back for Einstein.

Corrected entry: There really should have been no reason for Marty to risk going back to 1885 to rescue Doc. Obviously, 1985 Doc being killed by Tannen, did not negate his eventual existence (as evidenced by 1955 Doc still existing). It's understandable Marty would want to prevent his friend being murdered, but when they learned of this fact in 1955, this event had already happened 70 years ago. 1955 Doc surely would have realized the pointlessness of Marty going to rescue his future self in the past when 1955 Doc would eventually become 1985 Doc again through the natural course of time. In light of this, surely 1955 Doc would have explained to Marty there was no reason to go back and possible cause more damage to the Space-Time Continuum.

Correction: You're missing the point; if Doc is killed in 1885, there will be a paradox. 1955 Doc wouldn't know that he went back to 1885 yet, so wouldn't know he could be killed, so wouldn't think to warn Marty in 1985. Besides, Seamus would have been killed because of Doc's influence in 1855, so Marty never would have existed either. There were plenty of valid reasons to go back to 1885.

rswarrior

Actually there wouldn't be a paradox. First, even though Doc is killed in 1885, the 1955 version is his younger self and not warning Marty of anything. He doesn't warn him of anything actually. Second, Seamus wouldn't have been killed because of Doc's influence. Where does that even come in? There really isn't a reason for Marty to risk going back there other than wanting to help his friend.

Corrected entry: Doc Brown can build a time machine but is unable to figure out how to build a still to extract pure ethanol from Whisky in order to use as fuel for the DeLorean. He stated to Clara that he is a "student of all science" so this should include chemistry. Chemists know how to build a still. Doc, however, tried to fuel the car with strong Whisky without distilling it.

Acteon

Correction: He needed a quick solution and thought the whiskey would work. Apparently his expertise does not include the workings of internal combustion engines or he never would have tried it. Pure ethanol would also probably not have worked in the DeLorean.

BocaDavie

Correction: They did not have time to build anything, they were in a hurry to leave before Doc gets killed.

Correction: He would with no problem be able to get that thing to run on ethanol, just a different air fuel ratio bigger injectors so just make bigger holes in the ones you have. Just to run it one time would be no problem.

Corrected entry: Freeze frame is recommended when trying to catch this one. When Clara rides out of the stable her hat falls off, however in the next shot of her turning the corner you can see the silhouette of the brim, indicating that it has returned to her head.

Correction: Freeze frame isn't recommended - it is required. This posting is invalid, per the rules of this site.

Corrected entry: Right toward the end of the movie, a split second before the Train crashes into the Delorean, underneath the Car you can see that a fireball bursts, causing the effect.

Correction: This is already listed as a mistake.

Corrected entry: When the DeLorean is destroyed by the train at the end, why does the train smash through it, instead of just pushing it back down the tracks? Even if Marty had put on a parking brake (which we don't see him doing) it doesn't seem like it would be strong enough to withstand the force of the train. Even cars that are sitting perpendicularly on railroad tracks get pushed along by fast-moving trains, so why not a car that's specially designed to move on the tracks?

Krista

Correction: There's no telling what structural changes Doc had to make to turn the car into a time machine. Doc even says in Part II that Biff's car would "tear through [the DeLorean] like tinfoil." If a Ford would do that, I think the train's damage was about right.

Phixius

Corrected entry: After the DeLorean is destroyed by the train, Marty goes to get his truck, picks up Jennifer, almost races with Needles, and then finally returns to the scene of the accident. Isn't it odd that a car was hit by a train, yet there are no emergency vehicles anywhere around, or that the train didn't stop afterward?

BGraz

Correction: There are two reasons why there are no emergency vehicles - one, the train driver wouldn't have noticed the car (trains are usually too fast to notice), or the train driver assumed that Marty (as he escaped) would report the accident. As for the train stopping, it was probably going too fast to stop quickly (more than likely it would have stopped much further down the track if it did).

Andy Benham

Corrected entry: When the locomotive crashes from the bridge, there is a huge explosion (may have been added digitally in a later version). However, there are no explosives in a steam-engine, only water and wood.

Correction: High pressure within the boiler causes the large explosion of the locomotive, like Doc previously said about the whole boiler going to explode after hitting 2000 degrees.

Corrected entry: Why didn't Doc Brown think of getting the gasoline he needed from the DeLorean he had hidden in the mine?

Correction: He said in the letter that he sent to Marty that he took it out. He could have used it for experiments or just thrown it out.

Correction: Gas loses its combustibility when it sits for a period of three to six months of not being used.

Factual error: Though extremely modest on today's standards, the dress worn by Clara to the hoedown shows far too much cleavage for the time. No schoolteacher would ever wear a dress like that in the 1880s.

More mistakes in Back to the Future Part III

Doc: Marty, the idea that I could fall in love at first sight! It's romantic nonsense. There's no scientific rationale for it.
Marty: Come on, Doc. It's not science. You meet the right girl it just hits you. It's like lightning.
Doc: Marty, please don't say that.

More quotes from Back to the Future Part III
More trivia for Back to the Future Part III

Chosen answer: Yes. A "googol" is the number 10 raised to the 100th power, or a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. A "googolplex" is an even larger number - 10 raised to the power of a "googol", or represented as 1 followed by a "googol" zeroes.

BGraz

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