Question: I have a question, I don't know if it's true or not but I have heard about this for years after Part III was released. Had Crispin Glover decided to do the sequels, would he have had the role of Shamus McFly in Part III, or once Glover turned down the sequels, then it was decided that Michael J. Fox would play the part of Sheamus once Part III was greenlit? Or was it always going to be Fox playing the role of Sheamus regardless if Glover came back for the sequels or not?
Question: On the movie timeline website it says that on November 6 2012 America elected a female President, and that this fact comes from Back To The Future Part III. Where in the film is this mentioned?
Answer: It's actually mentioned in Part II, when Marty and Doc are reading the newspaper. If you look at the headlines on the left side of the page, one of them reads, "President says she's tired of..." As this is in 2015, pending changes to US election dates, she must have been elected on November 6th 2012.
Question: Why does Jennifer at the end never seem surprised or even question Marty over why he is dressed as a cowboy (even though Marty's family does and Dave even comments on it)?
Answer: Not sure why it's suggested that Jennifer knew about Doc and Marty's time-traveling. She immediately wakes up and tells Marty that she "Had the worst nightmare," and then in the truck, she starts saying, "That dream I had seemed so real. It was about us, and you got fired." She then asks Marty to confirm if it was a dream. Marty only had to inform her and show her the remains of the DeLorean because she still had the "You're Fired" paper in her pocket, neither of which Marty or Doc knew she had. At that point, it would've confirmed to her that she wasn't dreaming.
Answer: Jennifer was already aware of Doc and Marty's time-traveling, while his family knew nothing about it. She'd been to the future with Marty and Doc, and previously saw Doc wearing futuristic clothes. There's no reason she should be surprised, and Marty quickly updated her about everything soon after.
Question: What is the name of the music that plays right after the mayor gives his speech at the clock dedication?
Answer: The song is called "Battle Cry Of Freedom" written in 1862 by American composer George Frederick Root during the American Civil War.
Chosen answer: The song (right after the mayor's speech) is actually "Nearer, My God, to Thee" of Titanic infamy, but with an upbeat tempo. This plays the moment the clock is engaged and ends after the photograph is taken.
Question: When Seamus is telling Marty that he'll take him to the train station the next day and give him a new hat, it shows Maggie doing the 'Sign of the Cross'. Was she unhappy with Seamus helping out a "stranger"?
Answer: She was blessing Marty because, by wearing one of those hats, it was basically a giant "kill me" sign for Mad Dog. When Mad Dog first enters the saloon, he mistakes Marty for Seamus based on Marty's "dog-ugly hat".
Answer: It's not about Marty. Maggie is angry because Seamus constantly buys hats, which she considers wasteful and frivolous when they have so little money. Religious people will make the sign of the cross when they feel they need "forgiveness" for thinking angry or unkind thoughts or asking God to help them control their temper.
Question: Why does the bartender tell Doc "you know what happened last 4 of July" when he offered him a shot of whiskey if he's only been there 1 week?
Answer: In the letter Marty gets, Doc says he's been living in 1885 for the past 8 months. It's dated September 1. Marty in 1955 finds out that Doc dies one week after he wrote the letter (Sept 7th), not one week after he got to 1885. Marty then goes to Sept 2, 1855, one day after Doc wrote the letter.
Question: Doc is a scientist right? The DeLorean had a ruptured fuel line and needed gas which, as Doc pointed out, was unavailable at the time. Surely he knew how to distill booze to make ethanol? (There was plenty of whiskey around at the time). I mean, they've used it to power cars in Mexico for ages. Why didn't Doc suggest this?
Answer: They did try it. Doc ran the engine with the strongest thing the bartender could find them and it blew out the engine. It takes all the power a heavy car like a DeLorean has to get up to 88 MPH. It wouldn't be able to get that much power running on ethanol, in addition to the damage caused to the engine.
Answer: Putting to the side for a second the possibility that he either did not know how to do this, or simply didn't think of it... a quick Google search says that the entire process to produce ethanol would take about a week. They had about 3 days because they were trying to leave before Doc got killed.
Question: Why does Doc send Marty back to September 2nd? Doc gets shot on the 7th, so this is a very short timetable to work with.
Question: If Doc doesn't have a gravestone in the end, how is Marty from the beginning of the movie aware that he must go save his friend in 1885 instead of jumping straight to 1985?
Answer: The BTTF universe establishes time and again that time travel does not change the existing timeline, but rather creates alternate timelines. So even if Marty changes the past, it creates a new timeline independent of the one he left. So he can erase the gravestone that led him to 1885 without causing a paradox.
Answer: Even if the other answer is true, he wouldn't have needed to know that his friend died to go back and get him. Before you say Doc wouldn't have wanted to go back because he had settled in 1885, he only settled because he found that he couldn't fix the Delorean.
Question: In 1955 when Doc and Marty are in the outdoor cinema and Marty is accelerating to 88mph to jump back in time to 1885, doc shouts something to him in celebration as Marty Drives past him, he also fires his gun in the air... Do you know what he shouts? The subtitles just say "shouts something in Spanish" but id love to know what he said and what it means?
Answer: The subtitles are wrong! I always heard him shout "to the ends of the Earth " A reference to Jules Verne (keeping that theme running all through the third movie) and to Marty's adventures. Not only is this what I've heard every time I've watched this film, but it makes much more sense.
This is incorrect. He does in fact yell "Vaya con dios." The scene is available on Youtube and he can be seen and heard saying it at the 2:47 mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV9udBGZio4.
Question: I don't know if this is true or just an urban legend, but did Michael Jackson body double (from the waist down) for the moonwalk/dance moves that Marty did during the scene where Mad Dog Tannen shot at his feet?
Answer: There appears to be purely an urban legend. While the repeated use of lower-body shots does suggest that Michael J Fox didn't perform the moves himself, there's no evidence that indicates that it was Jackson himself who stepped in. In the end, the moonwalk is not actually a particularly complicated dance move; if Fox didn't do it himself, it would not have been difficult for the production to locate somebody with a matching build who could do the steps.
Question: At the end of the film, which Clint Eastwood is Dave McFly referring to when he tells Marty "Who are you supposed to be, Clint Eastwood? Was he referring to the real Clint Eastwood or to 1885 Clint Eastwood? (Marty's alias in 1885).
Answer: Since Marty is dressed the same way Clint's character in the spaghetti westerrns was, I pretty sure he was referring to the real Clint Eastwood.
Answer: The joke is that Marty as Clint Eastwood has become a historical figure, known probably only in their town. His clothes are probably most remembered, so Dave thinks he is impersonating him.
Question: Doc Brown shows up at the end of part three with his wife Clara, his two boys, and a time-traveling, hovercraft-converted train. How did he build it? There was nothing in 1885 that could even begin to help him build another time-machine! And don't tell me that he used Marty's 'hoverboard' as parts, because that doesn't wash.
Chosen answer: Time machines don't actually exist, so who are we to say whether or not the parts to build another time machine are available? Doc Brown is an inventor. Doc had the knowledge of how to build a time machine having built the original machine into a DeLorean, Doc also appears to have had a few years to come up with a way of building a time machine into a train, given that he now has children who appear to be around 5 years old. Plus, remember that the fridge in Doc's shop was much bigger than a modern fridge, and a steam train is way bigger than a DeLorean.
Answer: Doc's consistent problem was finding high-energy power sources for his inventions. But, actually, materials and technology did exist in the late 19th Century to construct extremely high-energy components. If Doc Brown had contacted electrical geniuses of the day (such as Nikola Tesla, who was already working in high-energy physics, radio and and X-ray technology in the 1890s), he could have certainly acquired the materials to reconstruct the Flux Capacitor and back-engineer hover pads for his time-travelling locomotive. As we saw earlier in the film, he was quite capable of back-engineering 1980s electronics using 1950s components (when he repaired the DeLorean).
Question: Why does everyone say that using parts of the DeLorean that Doc had buried in the abandoned mine could create a time paradox? Firstly, that is never stated in the actual movie. Secondly, if say Marty and Doc use the part on the buried DeLorean to fix the DeLorean that broke due to the explosion caused by the extremely strong alcohol and then again try to run the DeLorean using alcohol that's not so strong, the 1955 Doc would be able to obtain the missing piece of the buried DeLorean. So, technically, there's a plot hole. Why then does everyone say that that's not possible?
Answer: If they dug up the buried DeLorean and stripped it for parts to repair the other one, then it would become non-functional. As such, with no replacement parts being available in 1955, Marty would not then be able to use it to come back in time to rescue Doc - which he's already done. There's your paradox.
Answer: But it's not a paradox is it. They blew the fuel injection manifold which Doc says would take him a month to rebuild, that's using 1885 technology and parts. Simply swap out the manifold off the buried car, put the broken one on the seat, and 1955 Doc would inspect it and figure out that it needs repairing (which would take far less time using 1955 technology and parts). They could also go to Western Union and change the letter to read that the fuel injection manifold needs a repair as well. If they stole the DeLorean' engine then yes they'd be a paradox as the very earliest replacement wouldn't be available until 1974. But stealing parts that would be available in 1955 would not cause any paradox as they could simply replace them.
Question: When they discover they have no gasoline for the DeLorean, they go through all sorts of trouble to get it up to 88mph. Now it's obvious things fade away and into existence in this movie, as it did with the newspapers and matchbook. Wouldn't it have made more sense to go to the mine where the time machine was buried and write on the wood, "Bring can of gas"? Wouldn't a can of gas then materialize in the trunk of the DeLorean and they could go home?
Chosen answer: There's already been enough meddling with the timeline without deliberately resorting to that sort of thing. If they can get the car up to speed with the stuff they've got available to them in that time period, it's the safest option to take.
Question: Why did Clara go mental at Doc for saying he was from the future? He'd dropped a few hints! He'd told her he has an interest in science, he had a huge refrigerator in his building, he had another big thing covered up under a sheet, he said he read Jules Verne when he was a boy despite it only been recently published. Was she not even a little bit curious? Doc could have easily stopped her during her rant saying he can prove it but didn't.
Answer: Because she thought he didn't like her and was making a bizarre excuse to avoid her. Come on. 'I'm a man from the future, so we can't be together ' sounds like a pretty flimsy excuse.
Question: Doc gets Marty back home. Then seconds later Marty appears again. He shows Doc the letter he wrote. So Marty goes back to 1885 to save him. They make a big deal of having to repair the DeLorean that was buried in the cave. But why can't they use the DeLorean that Marty just used to get back to 1955?
Answer: Because Marty didn't "just" arrive, he was already there, having come back from the alternate 1985 with Doc in the previous film. The DeLorean they used to get to 1955 is the one that is struck by lightning while Marty's on the ground, and sent Doc to 1885. He cannot repair it with the resources available in 1885, so he hides it in the cave with instructions that his 1955 self will use to fix it.
Question: When towing the car across the desert, why did Marty keep checking the speedometer? Did he really expect a horse to gallop at 88MPH?
Answer: At that point in the film, Doc and Marty were looking for any possible means to move the DeLorean regardless of how fast it could actually go; while using horses may have been an unlikely option, Doc and Marty were just grasping at straws at that point and were willing to try anything.
But then Doc says that even the fastest horse in the world could only run at 35 mph so why even try it.
Answer: They were using the horses to get the DeLorean from the cave to the town. Why not test the speedo at the same time?
Question: Marty tells Doc that they are out of fuel as the fuel line ripped on the car. Wouldn't it have made more sense for them to uncover the DeLorean that Doc buried, put a piece of paper on the seat with a note saying something like... "Oh Marty, I forgot to mention in my letter that the car needs some extra fuel. Keep a can of gas with you in the car at all times" - Hey presto, Marty would have arrived with extra fuel! Now obviously I hear you shouting "continuity" and "It would be an alternate timeline like in part 2" - But that didn't stop Biff taking the car back to the 2015 Doc and Marty were in, despite Doc later saying if they travelled into the future it would be the rich Biff reality.
Answer: Although Biff in part 2 is its own set of problems, the answer to your question actually doesn't have anything to do with continuity or alternate timelines. They can't risk disturbing the Delorean that Doc burried in any way. It has to remain exactly as it is, otherwise at best Marty is stuck in 1955, or at worst they create a paradox that destroys the universe. It is best to ignore the buried Delorean, any attempts to get to it could lead to it being damaged, or even worse could lead to it being discovered in the 70 years it has to remain in that mine.
Answer: It would have been easier for Marry and Doc to go down to Western Union and ask for a second letter to be delivered with the first. The letter would say "Ignore the comment in the first letter about not going back to 1885, please come to 1885 and bring some extra fuel with you"
Answer: In an interview, actor Jeffrey Weissman (the actor who replaced Glover as George McFly) mentioned Glover was slated to play Shamus since Lea Thompson, who played Lorraine (Marty's mom) also played Maggie (Shamus' wife). So it made sense the Mom and Dad would play the great-Grandparents. However, without the heavy makeup and prosthetics to look like Glover, the film makers thought having Weissman playing the role would look too unrecognizable that the audience wouldn't know who he was. In a side note, the scene of elderly George hanging upside down in BTTF 2 was written with Crispin Glover in mind as payback.
Bishop73