Film Theory: Does Marty McFly Actually DIE In Back To The Future?

There’s a pretty good chance you just read that title and came here to find out about the missing Back To The Future movie you didn’t know about. The darker, far more grim one that ends on a depressing note with the young hero dead, Biff Tannen victorious and Doc Brown probably carted away to an asylum or arrested for gross negligence of a minor (and several dogs).

But you’d be on a fool’s errand: because the Back To The Future films in which Marty McFly dies are in fact the same ones that have long been considered the most beloved films of the 1980s. You just might not have noticed the fact, because he certainly didn’t. But hell, that’s what time travel in movies is for, isn’t it? Cheating, that is.

Don’t like how your life turned out? Go back in time, give yourself a Sports Almanac and get rich instead. Don’t like how your friend’s kids turn out in the future? Go back in time and tell him that they need to be sorted out for their own good. Basically, if you don’t like something, just use time travel to cheat and change it to something you DO like.

And what if that’s exactly what Doc Brown does - more than once - in both Back To The Future sequels? What if he robs the Grim Reaper of McFly’s soul by using the DeLorean to jump back in time and avoid the things that were supposed to kill him. to give him another go? It might sound far-fetched for someone so apparently committed to not messing with the timeline, but there’s evidence in there. And the only real question here is how many times it actually happens.