Back to the Future has surely got to be one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time. It’s got it all there in spades; comedy, action, peril, great characters and most importantly, a time-bendingly off the wall plot.
To watch them all once is to like them; to watch them twice is to love them; to watch them five times is to adore them…maybe a little too much. Then we arrive at me.
I’ve watched the Back to the Future movies in their entirety so many times in my twenty-six years on Earth; I love them so much, that I almost want to kill them.
And therein pretty much lies the purpose of this article.
I noticed…something niggling about the plot, on a recent watch through this year. I wasn’t even sure it was a plot hole at first but the more I thought about it, the more erroneous and potentially all life destroying a problem I could see it being for someone who travelled through time.
The inconsistency is this (and this is based on the series’ own logic): when someone travels through time, a copy of that person is left in the period they departed from, presumably in an ever repeating time loop.
This tenet of time travel is basically laid out for us in simple terms in Back to the Future II, when Marty travels back to 1955 to secure the Sports Almanac from Biff and he must avoid himself from the first movie, who’s busy trying to hook his folks up.
There’s a lot of time travelling going on through the Back to the Future Trilogy and that got me to thinking: just how many of these copies are littered about time?
And surely, if the fabric of time and space is as fragile as the good Doc. Emmet Brown would have us believe, surely left unchecked this time duplication effect could have some pretty serious implications for the state of the Universe.
Let me just make something clear at this point. I’m no theoretical physicist and so this article is based entirely on my own observations of the rules of time travel laid out in Back to the Future.
So without further time wasting, double check the time circuits, hold onto your hoverboard, we’re about to go back in time to figure out just how many versions of the same characters are created throughout the Back to the Future trilogy.
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11 Comments
I think you’re over looking a much simpler explanation for what happens whenever someone travels through time in the series, which is that it creates a new timeline/universe.
If that’s the case then why did Marty run into another version of himself in 1955 in BTTF Pt. 2?
I surely enjoy most of WC posts. This BTTF article makes 0 sense. A version of Marty does not remain in the past. He travels back to the future. So there would be only 2 Marty’s for the first movie revolving infinitely in the space time continuum.
I think you’re leaving something out though. Nothing is left behind when they travel through time. At the point in which they travel, they cease to exist from that point forward. They still exist in the past, but not the future.
The fisrt example of multiple personalities in the same time period is probably the easiest to explain. Marty returns from 1955 to 1985. At that point, there are indeed two Martys. But.. that only lasts until one goes back to 1955 (again). At that point, there is only one Marty in 1985 to continue going forward.
The same applies to the sequence in BTTF II. One Marty exists (messing up and then bringing together his parents), and then there are two, but only until the lightening bolt hits the clock and one goes back to 1985. Now there is only one Marty in 1955 – not two. The only way there would be more would be for Marty to travel back to the exact same time period in 1955. Even then, you would have three Martys only up to the point that they begin to leave.
Since they are constantly coming and going in time, the instances of multiple personalities occupying the same time period are never longer than the longest overlapping visits.
The biggest plot hole is when Marty and Jennifer go to the future. In order for the older versions to exist, they would have had to return to the past again at some point. And in doing so, know that their younger selves would arrive in the future when they got older.
This is yet another shining example of the decline in quality on this site. I don’t know what happened, but after the change from OWF to this something did. How many ’5 Reasons…’, ’10 Things…’ can you come up with? A format helps, but damn. This article was not thought through, why print it? Is it really just a matter of quantity over quality with you guys? Or in some cases, a faux controversial opinion to hook the readers? I used to come here for fun, now for laughs. And not in the good way. I wanted to contribute reviews and such to this site, but….
5 Reasons Why Whatculture.com Isn’t What It Used To Be
1 That infernal ‘Next” button. Stop it. Just stop it. We all know why it’s there, but it really is annoying.
2 Articles aren’t thought through (anymore).
3 Some ‘opinions’ and features are oddly similar to those of other sites.
4 Stop trying to hook readers with an overtly construed controversial heading, when in the same article the controversial point can’t be substantiated, explained or even hinted at.
5 Seriously, two articles (review and explanation) on Prometheus is enough. Quality over quantity guys, just saying.
Venting is a beautiful thing.
That said, you guys are still better than most of the sites I visit over here (Netherlands) so all is not lost.
Thanks, I guess?
Considering you claim to love these films and say you have watched the countless time, you really do not understand them at all. There is only ever 1 Marty and he exists in different timelines.
Seriously, you think when he leaves 1955 he stays there???
What the hell is wrong with you?
there would be a version of himself to avoid in each time period he/they travelled to yes, but that wouldn’t end the universe …
… but there IS a MASSIVE plot hole in BBTF2 ….. Biff uses the car to go back to 1955 and tell himself to make the betsin the book … SO, when he comes back to 1985 he SHOULD have landed int the futeure Marty and the Doc travel to next, LEAVING them with no car and probably a scrambled memory of where ther are any why.
It’s the only plot hole, but it’s HUGE!
Reading this through made me notice something that I’d not thought about before.
In BTTF 2, Jennifer meets her future self and they both faint. This after Doc has waffled on about paradoxes.
Later in the film Marty goes through great effort to avoid meeting his past self.
And yet Biff can get the almanac, travel back in time and hand it to himself following a prolonged conversation, and there are no consequences.
Why is that?
Everything was bang on in continuities & consistencies except for 1 obvious part when the future Biff goes back to 1955 & gives his past counterpart the almanac then arrives back in the same future? wouldn’t the future have been altered otherwise?
Yeah, as some other commenters have pointed out, this article is total nonsense. You clearly don’t understand the films.
Yes, Marty does exist in 1955, but only for 1 week. He vanishes from 1955 and appears in 1988 as the same person, just in the same way in which he originally disappeared from 1985 in order to travel back to 1955. There is no copy left behind when he moves from period to period, just like there’s no copy of you left behind as you naturally move forward in time. I understand what you mean about him existing in two different periods, but thinking of those periods as existing simultaneously doesn’t make sense. You also exist in two time periods simultaneously: you exist in 2012 and you exist in 2002 (for example). You weren’t left in the past though, you moved into the future.
The same applies for all the other characters you claim are duplicated throughout time. You say they’re trapped in endless loops in whichever time period they found themselves. I can see why you say this: at the end of film 1, we see Marty watch his past self (relatively, that is) speed off into 1955, starting the loop again. This is not exceptional though. Everyone else in 1955 is ‘trapped’ in that loop. And so is everyone in every other conceivable period of time.
It’s a shame you misinterpret the continuity so badly, because there are actually very few plot holes in these films that it’s astounding! They stand up so well even now as great films.