Back to the Future: 40 incredible facts for movie classic’s 40th anniversary (Image: UNIVERSAL)
Back to the Future Day is today and in 2025 it’s a very special year celebrating the original film’s 40th anniversary. Since the movie is this writer’s favourite movie of all time, here are 40 incredible facts about the franchise for your reading pleasure.
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Marty meets 1955 Doc (Image: UNIVERSAL)
1. Back to the Future was rejected by Disney due to the incest plot with Lorraine falling in love with her son Marty.
2. Doc Brown’s Time Machine was almost a fridge instead of a car.
3. Michael J Fox was the first choice for Marty McFly, but was tied up with his sitcom Family Ties
4. Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty and spent several weeks filming before director Robert Zemeckis fired him for not being “screwball” enough. Instead, the filmmaker arranged for Fox to shoot at night and weekends, sleeping in a van to and from the filming locations.
5. Stoltz’ Marty is still in the final cut. You can see him in certain scenes, like when Biff is punched by Marty at Lou’s Cafe.
6. Johnny Depp and Robert Downey Jr were considered for Marty.
7. Jeff Goldblum, John Lithgow, John Cleese and Gene Hackman were considered for Doc Brown.
8. Jennifer was recast with Claudia Wells as the female crew asserted that Fox’s Marty couldn’t be shorter than his girlfriend.
9. Fox’s first day on set was meeting his mother, Lorraine in her bedroom.
10. The clock tower and town square are on the Universal Studios Lot to this day and can be visited on a special VIP tour.
Marty McFly arrived in the future 10 years ago (Image: UNIVERSAL)
11. George McFly star Crispin Glover refused to follow blocking, much to the frustration of the crew.
12. Billy Zane and Tim Robbins were considered to play Bill Tannen.
13. Biff was inspired by Universal Studios executive Ned Tanen, whom Back to the Future creators Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis found unpleasant.
14. The 107 day shoot finished on April 26, 1985 ahead of a July 3 opening that had been brought forward after an extremely positive test screening.
15. Ronald Reagan loved the scene where 1955 Doc Brown cannot believe that he would be president in 1985 so much that he told the White House projectionist to wind it back to view the scene again.
16. The studio told producer Steven Spielberg the movie should be retitled Space Man From Pluto (referencing Marty’s dream appearance to George). Spielberg countered this by replying what a funny joke the suggestion was and Back to the Future stuck.
17. Back to the Future’s script was rejected 44 times before being green-lit.
18. The two Bobs have asserted there will never be a Back to the Future 4 in their lifetimes, nor a remake or reboot.
19. Zemeckis has revealed he pitched a film adaptation of Back to the Future the Musical to Universal, but they weren’t interested.
20. Gale was inspired to write the script after finding his father’s high school yearbook and wondering if he would have been friends with him as a teenager.
Doc and Marty in 1885 (Image: UNIVERSAL)
21. The DeLorean was chosen as the Time Machine as it would look like an alien spaceship to people from 1955.
22. The original script had Marty going back to the future via a nuclear explosion, but this was considered too expensive, so the clock tower scene was filmed instead.
23. Back to the Future made $389 million on a budget of $19 million, becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1985. That’s a $1 billion movie in 2025 when adjusted for inflation.
24. Doc’s pet dog E,instein, was originally supposed to be a chimp.
25. Elijah Wood is one of the kids at the arcade machine in 2015’s Cafe 80s.
26. Back to the Future’s storyline continues beyond Part III in the early 1990s TV cartoon, which ran for two seasons. The timeline also continues in the video game and comics.
27. The two sequels were shot back-to-back, and Claudia Wells’ Jennifer was recast with Elisabeth Shue, as Wells had to look after her sick mother.
28. George McFly was recast and killed off in alternate 1985 because Glover refused to do a sequel.
29. Tom Wilson coined Biff’s catchphrases “make like a tree and get outta here” and “butthead” through improvisation.
30. Fox only knew he was going to do a sequel when he saw “to be continued” at the end of the VHS version of the first film.
Watch the trailer for Back to the Future
31. The 2015 newspaper Marty reads references Queen Diana.
32. In Back to the Future Part III, Fox was accidentally made unconscious in the hanging scene when lynched by Mad Dog Tannen.
33. Clint Eastwood allowed Marty to be called by his name in 1885 and was amused at the idea.
34. ZZ Top played the 1885 town band after hanging out on set.
35. Wilson did all his horse riding stunts and lasso tricks as Mad Dog.
36. The three old cowboys in the saloon were veteran Western film and TV actors
37. Reagan was approached to play the 1885 mayor, having just ended his two terms as president in 1989.
38. Clara Clayton star Mary Steenburgen had already played a time traveller’s lover in Time After Time.
39. Back to the Future regularly features near the top of polls of the greatest films ever made.
40. Despite the fact that Marty is a perfect protagonist with zero character development needed, Back to the Future’s script is studied as an example of a near-perfect movie script.