BTTF Theories

The Switcheroo

One thing that I had always wondered as a kid was what happened to the Marty from the Lone Pine timeline? I'm sure many people wonder the same thing, so here's my take on it.
    Lone Pine Marty grew up in a much better home environment than Twin Pine Marty did. His parents are in a healthy relationship, his father has a backbone and found success as an author, even his siblings are doing well for themselves. Marty's personality seems mostly unchanged given that his room is exactly the same.
    I think that when LP Marty went back to 1955, everything was mostly the same up until the scene at the diner. The only thing I think he did different was that he didn't run over a pine tree.
    I think that after calling Doc's house, this Marty ripped the page out of the phone book, and just left the diner before he really noticed George was there and before Biff and his gang showed up. Let's just say Doc mentioned to Marty that John F Kennedy drive used to be called Riverside drive as an offhand remark, and Marty remembered it as a neat little fun fact.
    Anyway, the point is: LP Marty stays uninvolved with George and Lorraine. Marty never pushes George out of the way of the car, and George never learns to really stand up for himself. TP Marty's actions created the LP timeline, and LP Marty's lack of action keeps the TP timeline intact. This is really just a long way of saying they swapped places. I'm sure LP Marty would be horrified seeing his new home life be a total trainwreck, but I'm sure he and Doc will figure out a way to fix things.
    (And yes, I am choosing to believe both timeline's versions of Doc would tape up the letter and wear a bulletproof vest. Sue me.)

Citizen Brown Marty

I probably think about the Citizen Brown timeline more than I should, and thus I have come up with this smaller theory that's mostly about Doc and Marty's relationship across time than anything.
    It's established that Marty is always one to push back against authority. He doesn't respect Strickland or Biff or anyone that disagrees with his mere existence as a teenager. Even in the Hell Valley timeline, Biff assumes Marty's there because he got kicked out of another boarding school. It seems like nothing can quell his hotheaded rebellious spirit.
    Except Doc.
    Doc is the only adult that can really get through to Marty. It's because of Doc's guidance that he was able to make the right decision to back out of the drag race and alter his future for the better. Keeping that in mind, it makes total sense as to why in the CB timeline, Marty is a total bootlicker.

How The Hell Does Time Travel Work

(Adapted from and expanded upon a post originally written in August 2020)
Time travel mechanics can be very tricky to figure out, but I think I have a good idea on how to explain the time travel in BTTF. I hope I can explain this in a way others can understand.
    I like to think of the actual act of time traveling as weaving fabric on a loom. Some actions simply change the pattern while others cause the fabric to start unraveling from the opposite end. The more one travels through time, the more fabric they have in reserve.
    In the IDW comics, we see that in the Hell Valley timeline, Doc visited himself in the psych ward and saw that he had been lobotomized in that timeline meaning he never built the time machine. That paired with that timeline's Marty being in several boarding schools meant that Marty never traveled back in time in that timeline. Our Doc and Marty were protected by a sort of bubble and had time to travel back to 1955 and ensure Biff never uses the almanac. To use my metaphor: they had a lot of fabric already woven, so it would take a while for the paradox to unravel it.
    Of course, some actions cause the fabric to unravel at a quicker rate than others. Take George and Lorraine never falling in love vs. Arthur Mcfly being shot at the courthouse. In the former scenario, it took a whole week for Marty to start fading out of existence. In the latter situation, Marty started fading out the very night he served the subpoena to Arthur. It makes sense (at least to me) that ending a bloodline would have more impact than just not falling in love with a particular person.
    "What about when Edna caused the destruction of Hill Valley in 1876?" you may be asking. Well the answer is simple. When Edna's actions catch up to 1931, the environment completely changes around Doc and Marty; instead of standing in the high school parking lot, they're by a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Doc and Marty are unaffected because Edna's arson hasn't caught up to them yet since they're both from 1986 and have done a considerable amount of time traveling to give them extra fabric.
    Now the second part of my theory. What happens when the timeline has been altered to change the present the time traveler returns to? I think canonically, BTTF operates on a single "one at a time" model for the timeline, but I think that's boring so forgive me for making more detailed than it probably needs to be,
    I like to think that every possible timeline exists simultaneously in parallel streams. After a time traveler is done (and their actions have caused significant changes to the time they're returning to), they'll be put in whatever timeline is the most logical result of any changes they've made. I'm stealing this from The Umbrella Academy, but I think of the multiverse as a whole like one giant switchboard constantly moving plugs around.

Why Does Doc Dress Like That?

(Adapted from a post originally written in November 2020)
Whenever we see Doc in the first two movies he’s always wearing a patterned shirt or sweater with varying degrees of gaudiness. They’re not really something one would associate with a nuclear physicist.
    Let’s take a look back to Doc’s youth. When Marty meets Emmett in 1931, he’s wearing a long sleeved button up shirt, a sweater vest, and a bowtie. His hair is slicked back and his appearance is neat and polished (an aesthetic Doc hasn’t really been depicted in before). Sure there’s his more distinguished looks in Part III, but his hair is still wild and frizzy, so he’s not entirely in his Sunday best as it were. Even then, he still incorporates plenty of patterns in what he wears as well as a very tall hat.
    The only pattern Emmett has on him is a small argyle one on his sweater vest, but argyle is a pretty acceptable pattern in professional settings anyway. Which makes sense because he’s working as a law clerk at this time; a far cry from the zany eccentric Doc we know.
    Doc comes from a rich family with a pretty high status in the town seeing as his father was a judge, so it only makes sense that he would have to dress this way even when he isn’t being made to work at the courthouse. He has to keep up appearances or face the consequences.
    When Emmett moves out and lives on his own, he has more freedom. We don’t really see much of Doc between 1931 and 1955, and even when Marty first sees Doc in 1955, he’s wearing a fairly plain shirt, but then when Doc and Marty go to school, he’s wearing one of many button down shirts with an unconventional pattern.
    It's a form of self-expression that he couldn’t really have when he was a child and teenager. It’s his way of sort of living through that teenage rebellion that he never really had. Sure, there were his inventions, but he never had the courage to experiment out in the open until Marty interfered in his life. He's able to fully embrace that he is a misfit, and that's okay.