# Everyone gets this wrong **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted, movies\ **Created:** [June 3, 2025, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166 "2025-06-03T15:48:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 131
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/131 "2025-06-05T17:54:34Z")
> [@Time Travel in fiction](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/19): > > The biggest unsolved mystery is, what happened to “other Marty”? The one that grew up with cool parents, had a Toyota in his garage, and probably knew how to drive? He probably didn’t wreck the Delorean by driving into a barn. So, where (when?) is he?\* And can he return? Did Doc have extra plutonium in the car? He knew what was coming. Bringing it back to the OP, this is a common criticism of BTTF that, fittingly, a lot of people get wrong. There’s only one Marty in the movie. When Marty changed the past so his parents didn’t get together, it took “time” (somehow) for the change to propagate all the way down the timeline and erase him from existence. When he fixes things, it sets off another change propagating down the timeline. It will, eventually, catch up to Marty, rewriting his memories so that he remembers “always” having the cool family. But there’s never a “second” Marty - there’s just the one that hasn’t been acclimated to the revised timeline yet. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166)._