# Back to the Future Part II's 1985A **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 16, 2010, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187 "2010-01-16T10:07:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kidneyfailure](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9f8e36/32.png) [@kidneyfailure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidneyfailure)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/21 "2010-01-17T02:38:36Z")
> [@bienville](#): > > Enjoy your computer while you have it. After the great computer downfall of 2014 it’s going to totally suck faxing sdmb posts to each other. “Oh God…another fax from Curtis LeMay” :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/22 "2010-01-17T03:45:51Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > That’s part of why I think they must merge somehow. In most time travel movies I’ve seen, even though the time traveler remembers his old past, he also remembers the new one. (The only clue we see of this in BttF is that he seems to know how to drive the black truck as if it were his.)… Unless Marty’s memories somehow merged with his counterpart’s George & Lorraine are probally going to end up sending him to a psychiatrist. Not only would all his childhood memories (or those from last week) be off his personallity would be as different as everyone else’s. ---
**Author:** ![DooWahDiddy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@DooWahDiddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DooWahDiddy)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/23 "2010-01-17T03:48:51Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I think he walks by the Delorean and fades. Yeah, that wasn’t cut out. It’s right after Old Biff returns from 1955… he stumbles out of the DeLorean and falls to the ground. The problem, as described on the commentary, is that he’s also clutching his chest as he’s fading, so audiences were confused whether he was being erased from existence or having a heart attack (you have to watch out for those fade-out heart attacks). ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/24 "2010-01-17T04:01:23Z")
> [@DooWahDiddy](#): > > Yeah, that wasn’t cut out. It’s right after Old Biff returns from 1955… he stumbles out of the DeLorean and falls to the ground. It was cut out. I just checked my DVD. He arrives in 2015, staggers out of the car, clutches his chest, breaks his cane, then stumbles out of shot. But we don’t see him fade. I have seen the shot, however. It’s in the DVD extras. ---
**Author:** ![DooWahDiddy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@DooWahDiddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DooWahDiddy)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/25 "2010-01-17T06:12:02Z")
Ah, my mistake. I must be thinking of the deleted scenes. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/26 "2010-01-17T12:57:55Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, he had thirty years… the torn fragments were still in his pocket when he fainted, he could have taped it together at any point after sending Marty back to 1885. You might be right, but I thought he had thrown the pieces up in the air and not pocketed them. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/27 "2010-01-17T15:11:35Z")
> [@MyFootsZZZ](#): > > I thought he had thrown the pieces up in the air and not pocketed them. He did, but apparently retrieved them after thinking, “what the hell.” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/28 "2010-01-17T15:15:32Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > He did, but apparently retrieved them after thinking, “what the hell.” 🙂 I guess While Marty is setting his car back to warn him, he could have picked up the peices. Or the Marty ‘from the future’ told him about it in case. It was quite a storm, I would think it would’ve been hard for Doc to find them all at any point of the movie. ---
**Author:** ![koufax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@koufax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koufax)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/29 "2010-01-17T16:39:05Z")
I wish I could go back in time and NOT open this thread. ---
**Author:** ![BMax](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bmax/32/4267_2.png) [@BMax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMax)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/30 "2010-01-17T16:46:20Z")
> [@MyFootsZZZ](#): > > I guess While Marty is setting his car back to warn him, he could have picked up the peices. Or the Marty ‘from the future’ told him about it in case. It was quite a storm, I would think it would’ve been hard for Doc to find them all at any point of the movie. Wasn’t Doc hanging from the clock tower, struggling to plug in the cable to channel teh lightning bolt while Marty was resetting the car? I popped in the VHS last night after looking at this thread. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/31 "2010-01-17T17:00:06Z")
> [@koufax](#): > > I wish I could go back in time and NOT open this thread. :D:D:D ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/32 "2010-01-17T20:57:16Z")
Well, Marty himself starting to succumb to what could be mistaken for nausea or cardiac trouble as _he_ began to fade out at the climax of the first film. Trouble in Biff’s case is when we see an old guy collapsing, we don’t often assume “temporal nullification.” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/33 "2010-01-17T20:58:43Z")
> [@MyFootsZZZ](#): > > You might be right, but I thought he had thrown the pieces up in the air and not pocketed them. I don’t recall that. I’m pretty sure he tore up the note, then the tree branch fell, disconnecting the cable, Doc yelled “Great Scott!” or something and jammed his hand and the fragments in his pocket. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/34 "2010-01-18T00:22:58Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I don’t recall that. I’m pretty sure he tore up the note, then the tree branch fell, disconnecting the cable, Doc yelled “Great Scott!” or something and jammed his hand and the fragments in his pocket. I see. It’s been a while. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/35 "2010-01-18T04:57:38Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > What this Marty does in 1955 is unclear, at best, since he has no experience with his father’s wimpiness and indeed might not even recognize him, follow him, or keep him from getting hit by that car, which arguably restores the “real” timeline, which recreates a Marty that thinks his father is a wuss, who then tries to protect him in 1955 and creates the sequence of events that gives his father confidence, and back, and forth, and back, and forth… Even in the original, Marty was surprised by how different his parents seemed. New Marty would be just as likely to snafu the car accident and have to get his parents back together… ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/36 "2010-01-18T06:32:07Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I don’t recall that. I’m pretty sure he tore up the note, then the tree branch fell, disconnecting the cable, Doc yelled “Great Scott!” or something and jammed his hand and the fragments in his pocket. Yep… here’s the account: Marty tried to tell Doc a few times during the movie, but something would always interrupt him, or Doc stuck his fingers in his ears adamantly warning him about future knowledge. So, right before the dance, Marty assures Doc the storm will indeed arrive right on time, they exchange some sentiments, and that’s when Marty tries to tell Doc again, but Doc won’t have it, saying they already agreed that any knowledge from the future could have severe and perhaps disastrous consequences (“Even if your intentions are good!”). Frustrated, Marty heads to the cafe to write the letter. He sneaks back when the cop is asking the Doc about his “weather experiment”. While Doc is distracted by the cop, Marty sneaks the note in Doc’s coat, which Doc threw to Marty and was laid over the car in the previous scene. After the dance, and getting his parents back on track, Marty arrives at the clock tower, and Doc goes over the run, and what time he’s sending him back to. That’s when Doc puts his hands in his coat pockets and discovers the note. “What’s the meaning of this?!” Marty tells him he’ll find out in 30 years. “NO!” and Doc tears up the note into eighths. He’s still gripping the pieces, trying to rip it into 16ths, when Marty says, “Then, I’ll just tell you straight out–”. Simultaneously, Doc puts his hands to his ears to block Marty’s words and lightning hits the tree branch making it fall and disconnect the cable. Doc is seen quickly stuffing the remnants of the note in his coat pocket, so he can attend to this new disaster. Marty tries to tell him one more time, when the Doc is on the clock tower, but then the tower bell rings 10:00 and Marty can’t delay any longer. He drives to the Starting line, and hatches his plan to arrive 10 minutes prior to his departure in 1985, and try to save the Doc then. We all know the ending… ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/37 "2010-01-18T06:42:23Z")
Yeah, BttF is a time-travel movie where you can change things (no alternate-dimension here, nosirree!) and there’s only one of you. The reason that people faded was when they caused things to happen such that there wasn’t even that. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/38 "2010-01-18T06:47:16Z")
As to the OP, the paradoxes are never really ironed out. They’re all glossed over. Even in the first movie, it doesn’t make any sense that the effects of Marty pushing his teenage dad out of the way of his grandfather’s car would make Marty’s siblings disappear piece by piece and one by one in descending order of birth.\* And even if you tried to explain that away by using the “time ripple” defense, it doesn’t follow that that picture of the three of them would exist either. It would be a random shot of nothing but landscaping. If they were never born, the picture would have no reason to exist in the first place. In that sense, you would think that as soon as Marty pushed his father out of the way, Marty, the picture, and perhaps even the Delorian would’ve winked out of existence. Yet still, you have an unresolved paradox. If he was never born, than how did Marty come back to push his father out of the way? Classic “Grandfather Paradox”. So, moving on to BTTF2, we’re just mucking around in more of the same. Despite all this, BTTF is still one of my favorite movies ever. Pure magic. \*If George and Loraine never had kids, then all three of them are on equal footing of non-existance. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/39 "2010-01-18T14:33:07Z")
Why wouldn’t the handwave of the time ripple (to be explicit, the idea that changes to the timeline propagate forward at a set speed slower than instantaneous) explain all that? Maybe it would have been more appropriate to have the photograph fade out of existence instead of just the kids, but other than that, it would certainly explain why Marty started to disappear at the dance instead of immediately. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187/40 "2010-01-18T14:50:48Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > Why wouldn’t the handwave of the time ripple (to be explicit, the idea that changes to the timeline propagate forward at a set speed slower than instantaneous) explain all that? Maybe it would have been more appropriate to have the photograph fade out of existence instead of just the kids, but other than that, it would certainly explain why Marty started to disappear at the dance instead of immediately. Once a change has been made sometime in the past, the effects would have no bias as to whether or not certain things happened in a chronological order in the original timeline. If you have to include the ‘time ripple’ effect, then everything that is altered from one key action should start fading in sync. It was a handwave, because it gave the storytellers enough time to sort out the boo boo. OTOH, you could say that what was keeping him around was a probability wave. That the chances of George and Loraine hooking up at the Dance (Rhythmic Ceremonial Ritual), became much lower than what would’ve happened if Marty didn’t interfere, but not a zero chance, so it kept Marty and the picture (and the Delorian) intact, until that actual moment crystalized. So the fading was just a cinematic way of describing the probability wave. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/back-to-the-future-part-iis-1985a/525187.md?page=3)