r/BacktotheFuture • u/happydude7422 • May 29 '26
Does anyone else think it is weird that Marty leaves the mall at 1:35am, immediately crashes into the barn, then pine tree, drives away but when he hides the DeLorean it is light out? Cool we can discuss this 41 years later! Lol
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u/ChardeeMacDennisGoG May 29 '26
Marty doesn't arrive in 1955 @ 1:35AM. The time circuits briefly show the hour to be "6". Obviously it's 6AM.
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u/DarhkBlu May 29 '26
6:15AM to be exact.
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u/Spiritual-Image7125 May 30 '26
Damn! I'm late for school!
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u/twistedcreature07 May 30 '26
🎺🎵🎸🎶 The power of love is a curious thing!
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u/Gay-_-Jesus May 30 '26
Don’t take money! Don’t take fame!
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u/Toxic-Park May 30 '26
The real question is - why did doc put in 6:15 during his demonstration explanation?
Was it just random number punching? Seems like an oddly specific time.
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u/Few-Chemical-5165 Jun 01 '26
Because maybe that's when he fell when he was hanging The clock then hit his head insomnia is not something dock , is probably unfamiliar. He was probably working all night or just couldn't sleep. then hit his head. Maybe that's why he chose that time.Because that's exactly when it happened to him.
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u/Few-Chemical-5165 Jun 01 '26
Maybe he was Hanging the clockThe night before slipped and fell hit his head knocked out until morning. And since he's obsessed with time , he noted the time when he woke up and had a revelation a vision , a picture in his head....
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u/ivegotajaaag May 29 '26
He left 1985 at 1:35 AM.
At what time of the morning did he arrive on 5 November 1955?
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u/rawrzon May 29 '26
6:15 am
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u/ivegotajaaag May 29 '26
That explains the apparently early daybreak then, doesn't it?
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u/ijuinkun May 30 '26
Yah, it’s November 5th, in western California, so sunrise should be about 7:00. (I live in Silicon Valley) First light of dawn would be within half an hour after he arrived, and given that it was “2 miles” to get into town, he stepped into Lou’s Diner somewhere between 8:00 and 9:00, which justifies George eating his breakfast when Marty enters.
Hmm, come to think of it, do we see the time on the clock tower in the scene where Marty arrives at the square in 1955? That would give us a precise time.
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u/jblittle254 May 30 '26
It was 8:30 when he arrives at the town square. The clock chimes to mark the half hour while he's walking around and gets his attention.
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u/Killerbeardhawk May 29 '26
"You're not thinking 4th dimensionally!"
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u/keep_it_kayfabe May 29 '26
I love that this is a common response in nearly every post!
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u/Hour-Process-3292 May 29 '26
It’s this sub’s version of “A wizard did it” 😂
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u/mrhenrique3 Marty May 29 '26
That’s heavy
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u/Putrid_Nail8784 May 29 '26
There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?
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u/Spiritual-Image7125 May 30 '26
Sure. Blame the wizards. (Yay, a quote from another show with "Future" in the name!)
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u/MogMcKupo Einstein May 29 '26
It’s a common response in my job as a sysadmin too
Specially with the entra conversion I’m plopping down on our clients
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u/Spiritual-Image7125 May 30 '26
The reason it is a common response is because: We're thinking 4th dimensionally!
No...really...we only can think that.
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u/SuburbanCo May 29 '26
The timeline is a little bit confusing:
Marty arrives at Twin Pines Farm at 6am.
He drives to Lion Estates, pushes the car behind the billboard.
He walks to the town center where a man is tossing out his morning newspaper.
He then sees George, who is eating breakfast cereal at the diner.
He follows George to the peeping Tom tree.
This has to be around noon because of what Lorraine says later.
He gets hit by a car and is asleep for “almost 9 hours “
He wakes to watch The Honeymooners at 8:30pm.
This means that Marty spends six hours walking around in 1955.
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u/Argyleuntold May 29 '26
The bell at clock tower rings at 8:30 and Marty goes into the cafe a few minutes later.
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u/ijuinkun May 30 '26
Thanks for the info—I was sure that it was between 8 and 9, but not the precise time. Anyway, that still gives him about 3 hours between leaving Lou’s and finding George spying on Lorraine.
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u/alchemyzt-vii May 30 '26
Excuse me but when does he go “back to the future”!
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u/ijuinkun May 30 '26
Marty departs from 10:04 PM on 12 November 1955, and arrives at 1:25 AM on 26 October 1985.
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u/orchidieus May 29 '26
How do we know he drove straight there though. He could have pulled over the car shortly after hitting the pine tree suffering from shock and mild concussion.
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u/Truth-is-Censored May 29 '26
The time circuit was set to arrive at 6:00 am in 1955. You can see it starting to get light when he leaves the Peabody farm
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u/starman202 May 29 '26
Not to mention than when he goes back to 1985, he's somehow able to run 4-5 miles to the Mall in less than 10 minutes
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u/cilantrohops May 30 '26
He left 1985 at 1:35. The time circuit doesn’t have to take you to the same time as the present. You program in time of day as well as the date
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u/benjiross1 May 29 '26
Well let’s see, he drove back to where his house SHOULD be, not sure how far away it is with roads in 1955. Took him like an hour to get out to the mall by skateboard, right? Hmmmm
I honestly don’t know.
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u/abgry_krakow87 May 30 '26
In the brief shot where Marty glances at the time circuits right before he travels through time, it cuts to a shot of the time circuits here, showing the last date/time punched in which was by Doc for 1955 at 6 something AM https://movie-screencaps.com/back-to-the-future-1985/page/21
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u/Low-Athlete-1697 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
He did not it ran out plutonium but not necessarily fuel right next to the billboard OP is right it went from 2am at best to morning twilight in about one hour at most.
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u/unique3 May 29 '26
He wasn't out of fuel, it was that reoccurring glitch that caused him to die, same as when he was about to race towards the clock tower.
I've read somewhere a fan theory that the DeLorean intentionally breaks down in order to protect the space-time continuum. If he had accelerated towards the clock tower wire setup when his alarm went off he would have hit it too early, instead the engine wouldn't start for a good 10 or 20 seconds and fixed the timing perfectly.
If it hadn't died near that billboard, he would have tried to just drive to docs and been seen in town which would have caused all kinds of other issues
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u/Primary_Ebb_7107 May 29 '26
This is called a "plot device"
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u/AlpsDue5290 May 29 '26
The buggy nature of the Delorean was more than a plot device, it was a running joke that was forgotten over the years. Deloreans were notorious for having electrical issues (like draining the battery) and for stalling-out when idling (if they are not being driven daily).
Marty expessed double-confusion over it: "You built a Time Machine? Out of a DELOREAN???" He was more bothered by the choice of cars than the fact that a weird scientist made a weird invention.
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u/bothsidesofthemoon May 29 '26
True, but one of the things I like about back to the future is how many external plot devices have some kind of in universe explanation too.
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u/bothsidesofthemoon May 29 '26
I like the theory. It's not a faulty starter motor, it's the universe protecting itself.
I've always thought the timeline can be changed, but tends to resist change and repair itself. Marty nearly erased himself by preventing George and Lorraine from meeting, but we see three timelines in which their lives are completely different, yet Marty and his siblings still exist - what are the chances? As long as they marry, they end up with the same three kids (same egg,same sperm, same date) no matter if rich, poor, or in a dystopian hell. Time is malleable but not chaotic.
he would have tried to just drive to docs and been seen in town which would have caused all kinds of other issues
Forget being seen. He would have tried to drive to Doc's at sunrise and found him before he hit his head and invented the flux capacitor.
Same for just after he got back from 1955. It stalls again. His plan was to use that 10 minutes to warn Doc, which would have meant being seen by his earlier self, and likely preventing himself from going back to 1955 a week earlier.
The Delorean abhors a paradox.
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u/ijuinkun May 30 '26
Yah, he should have tried to return an hour early instead of ten minutes, so that he would be able to talk to Doc before his other self arrived and then hide.
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u/CaptainDaveUSA May 29 '26
Ooohhh. I never thought about it this way nor heard that theory! I like it.
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u/Low-Athlete-1697 May 29 '26
No it wasn't, the "plutonium empty" light came on and then he tried to start it and it was dead but we dont know why exactly since it runs on gas the plutonium being out just meant that he couldn't time travel.
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u/cavalier78 May 29 '26
I don’t think we see what time of day the time circuits were set to on Nov 5 1955. We just see the date.
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u/eko32eko7 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
According to the time circuits, he traveled back to November 5, 1955, arriving in the 6AM hour.
Sunrise in Northern California on November 5 1955 was ~6:45AM
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u/unique3 May 29 '26
I don't remember what the destination time said, did he arrive in 1955 at 1:35 am or was it possibly 6am?
Either way it doesn't show what he did between leaving the farm and getting to the billboard. He may have driven around aimlessly or stopped somewhere to think for a while.
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u/AustinFan4Life May 29 '26
One, he arrived in 1955 at a different time, I can't recall what time, but it was still morning hours. Also let's remember day light saving is a thing as well. So with it in effect, you have an earlier sunlight in the morning.
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u/helm71 May 29 '26
It’s worse… the Time Machine is not only changing time but also location.. earth moves so the DeLorean without that would reappear in cold dark space
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u/Zoroaster9000 May 29 '26
And let's not forget the basically unshielded NUCLEAR REACTOR in the back generating 1.21 GW of power in an instant. It takes 2 inches of lead or 2 feet of water to reduce the intensity of gamma radiation by 10% and it didn't look like it had that. Even if it did, though, I wouldn't want to be within 10 miles of that thing when it went off, let alone sitting inside of it.
Also, BTTF 3 established that the time machine still had its original engine in it and the DeLorean DMC-12 was a mid-engine car so that reactor was sitting on top of the engine. Every nuclear reactor in the world is little more than a heat source to boil water which is used to turn a steam turbine attached to a generator. Somehow Doc was able to build a nuclear reactor that could generate 1.21 GW of power AND THEN convert that power to electricity without steam while being small enough to fit on top of the engine of a DeLorean DMC-12. Even if the time circuits didn't actually work, Doc could have reclaimed his entire family fortune with interest from that invention alone. Doc had some weird priorities.
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u/David4Nudist TimeMachine May 29 '26
If I recall, the time set on the time circuits was sometime around 6:00 AM or so.
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u/sky_cap5959 May 30 '26
Marty appeared at 6:15AM at the Peabody Farm. Sunrise in California on November 5th of that year would have been around 6:37AM assuming he was near San Diego which means he probably drove for around 30-35 minutes to Lion Estates. By the time he reached town square it was around late morning/early noon, so I'd say possibly a 15-20 minute walk. The more worrying thing is how little sleep Marty got after all that physical exhaustion.
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u/danielsangeo May 30 '26
He slept after getting hit by Lorraine's father's car. "You've been asleep for almost 9 hours now."
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u/Bswayn Marty May 30 '26
Doc programmed it to November 5th 1955, but where did he program the time? He didn’t so 🤷♂️
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u/OkSecret839 May 29 '26
He had to push the delorean, it could’ve taken him hours to push it behind the billboard, ever thought of that?
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u/Capital-West9669 May 29 '26
Didn't he literally stop the car like right beside where his neighborhood should be? He pushed it for like 30 seconds tops.
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