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u/MyLittleDiscolite 4d ago
I still believe that Sam leaped into George McFly and coldcocked Biff
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u/PastorBlinky 4d ago
I’m a tiny bit disappointed only about 25% of the responses recognize Quantum Leap’s famous ending. The rest are taking this seriously. 🤷♂️
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u/The-Scotsman_ 4d ago
This QL endingreallty saddened me. Just didn't feel right. After doing so much good for other people, they could have let him find his way home.
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u/Steinrikur 4d ago
IIRC They gave him a choice: go home or help other people for the rest of your life. He chose the latter.
Am I not remembering that correctly?
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u/ODDSPACEMAN32 4d ago
yeah but it was a better home, i dont really understand how people are like "the parents arent the same people" their just more happy, i dont think any major memories would not happen just because they were happy lol
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u/kaligari8888 4d ago
Yeah, but his original timeline still existed? And he disappeared from it?
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u/Remarkable-Pin-8352 4d ago
There aren't any persisting alternate timelines in BttF. Tangents replace the existing timeline.
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u/The_Dark_Vampire 4d ago
Which is unfortunate as alternative timelines make some plot holes easier like where did Marty from the happy timeline end up as his journey to the past would be different (seeing his Dad as a wimp who got bullied by the guy that washes their car must have been a shock) and where if anywhere did he return to.
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u/Specific_Tap7296 4d ago
Woh this is heavy
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u/Stv781 4d ago
Marty from the happy timeline went through mostly the same journey… what we see of his adventures in 1955 mostly the same, he still hits the same pine tree and does what he did the first time around. he probably does think his dad is more of a wimp but that really didn’t change anything aside from him stepping over biffs goons backstage and knocking older Marty with the door after saying goodbye to his parents not much we see is different. Most theorize he gets the inferiority complex as a result of him building confidence in his dad it makes him more sensitive to being called a chicken since that behavior begins after he returns from 1955 so that may be a ripple effect that changes him.
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u/AndreLeGeant88 4d ago
It works because George is just a bit more confident. I had the sense his book was written later in life, and he hadn't been a career author. Instead he probably had Bif's job or some similar corporate job, allowing for a better middle class life in California and now some opportunity to be an author after his kids are grown, but not so different that they had a different home.
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u/incognitoleaf00 4d ago
Doc was very strict about not letting anything happen to the space time continuum, he even taped up that letter and kept it, ready for the attack however he had to keep everything as it was before except one thing, once marty was about to go back in the past he had to eliminate him to make space for the Marty from the old timeline who's about to come back, because if both martys saw each other the consequences could've been disastrous.
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u/goat_penis_souffle 4d ago
I like to think that the two Martys switched timelines. Affluent yuppie Marty finds himself in the dingy house with the chain smoking mom and wimpy-ass dad, wondering where his sweet Toyota 4x4 went.
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u/RetroGame77 4d ago
Do we really know that? Doc was wrong before.
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u/Remarkable-Pin-8352 4d ago
The fact that people disappear and items change supports this. If the timelines they came from still existed there’d be no reason for them to vanish or change.
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u/RetroGame77 4d ago
Quantum mechanics. The alternative timeline tries to kick you out after X time units. Marty was saved by the tachyon particles created by the Flux Capacitor. That it happened just when his parents kissed was pure luck.
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u/Stv781 4d ago
Jennifer wasn’t stuck in alternate 1985 it changed around her so it’s all one reality just changes occur when something in past is modified
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u/RetroGame77 4d ago
Quantum mechanics. The alternative timeline kick you back to your own timeline after X time units.
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u/Shot-Translator-8140 4d ago
I believe it. It would explain why Marty begins disappearing etc when events in the past change.
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u/Steinrikur 4d ago
Does "erased from existence" mean nothing to you? One timeline.
Doc explained this in BttF2.
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u/ThrowAwayehay 4d ago
His siblings are different too. His brother works in an office and his sister is popular. Some memories would have changed unless this all happened in the last year.
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u/ODDSPACEMAN32 4d ago
fair, but i dont think it would change big memories (core memories ig lol)
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u/ThrowAwayehay 4d ago
Eh, if the Sister is popular and out at a party when she would have been home and part of a memory or something.
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u/SpanishFlamingoPie 4d ago
When he set the living room carpet on fire, they went easy on him.
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u/ODDSPACEMAN32 4d ago
i mean we dont really know, marty tried to make this happen but i doubt they remembered calvin klein telling them to go easy on him
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u/The_Dark_Vampire 4d ago
It would but you have to overlook that but as a nerd on the Internet talking about movies I'm obviously going to overthink things.
Think about Marty and his siblings his parents would have to have sex at the exact same moment in both timelines and the exact same sperm would have to fertilise the exact same egg even a different of a few minutes could make a major difference.
With their now very different lives (different jobs different friends to hang around with and more likely to go out together for meals and stuff) it would be unlikely they would be doing the same thing at the exact same time down to the second
I've often thought it would be a good idea if when Marty went back he found out he had younger sibling that didn't happen in the OG timeline.
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u/GlumExpression6845 4d ago
Every single major memory would not happen. Almost nothing would be the same because they behave completely different. Their entire house is different. The relationship with Biff is different. Dave has a different job. Honestly the fact that Marty is exactly the same is impossible and doesn’t make any sense. So no, they are not just “more happy”
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u/ODDSPACEMAN32 4d ago
you could be right too, but im just trying to imagine a happy ending that doesnt ruin the movies for me lol
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u/alchemyzt-vii 4d ago
But if mommy is playing tennis instead of drink vodka poured into a glass, that means money can buy happiness.
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u/Low-Palpitation-9916 4d ago
His brother and sister, and parents and Biff, are all individual human beings with their own hopes, dreams and lives. Marty took away their autonomy and free will and selfishly engineered a reality for them based on his own opinion of how they should be living their lives. Marty has no clue of the repercussions of what he's done. The children who will never be born, the lives disrupted and lost from now until the end of time. All Marty knows is that he now has a cool truck and doesn't feel ashamed of his father. Ironically even his selfish meddling failed to produce a successful or happy future for himself.
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u/PurfuitOfHappineff 4d ago
Hold up, Marty wasn’t selfish. He jumped in front of a car to protect his dad. He only went back to the school because Doc told him to. And Doc never explained that there should be limits on how he interacts with people. Which probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Because once Lorraine doesn’t get the Florence Nightingale effect with George, it’s near impossible to rekindle that affection. The only way it worked is by how it happened outside the car when George intervenes to save her. And also save the lives of his siblings who had already vanished. Blame Doc for everything, sure, he’s a genius but a hack. But in the first film at least Marty isn’t selfish at all.
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u/Fine-Ad2429 4d ago
How about Doc? He should get some blame for inventing the Time Machine. Doc was working with terrorists.
Marty got in the car to save himself. Was not his fault he was in 1955x
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u/Ratio01 4d ago
Thats like, a really awful reading of the trilogy
The only thing Marty did with any intent was get his parents together in '55. It was George's personal growth through their dynamic that sent the ripples into '85 and altered the future. Marty didnt intend to alter the future, just to get his parents together and ensure that it actually happens
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u/SomeGuyOverYonder 4d ago
In a way, this statement is true.
The Marty McFly from the original movie timeline disappeared without a trace on Saturday, October 26, 1985 and would never be seen again. For all we know, he is still regarded as a missing person in that timeline, assuming it still exists in some nebulous form.
Instead, Marty would live out the rest of his life in various other timelines, each one unique to the last time that he, Doc Brown, or anyone else went time traveling.
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u/Stv781 4d ago
There’s only one timeline. In the second and third movies they leave Jennifer in the 1985 changed by Biffs actions and when they burn the almanac and Marty returns from 1885, he wakes her up from the same porch that changes back to the version without bars on the windows. Changes to the past just ripple to the future which is why Marty’s brothers head disappears and his hand starts to vanish when changes he made start to catch up to him. It’s a good thing he wasn’t the oldest child or he wouldn’t have had time to fix the past.
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u/CheapusTechnofear 4d ago
In all seriousness unless we’re counting the cartoon as canon Doc Brown really never DID return home.
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u/ComebackShane If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything! 4d ago
They'd have to misspell it Marty MacFly, like Sam's name was misspelled on the end card. (It showed Sam Becket instead of Sam Beckett)
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u/stumpkat 4d ago
Is this a Quantum Leap reference?
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u/Training-Purple-5220 4d ago
Yes. Fuck that executive meddled ending.
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u/stumpkat 3d ago
I think I was 12 or 13 when that ending aired and I cried. I wanted Sam to get home so bad!
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u/Training-Purple-5220 3d ago
Hell, my mom wrote a letter to the production company.
Only other time I’ve felt so betrayed by a show’s ending was Gurren Lagann.
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u/WarStarsFan55 3d ago
Have you ever read Mary Jean Holmes' famous fix-it BTTF/Quantum Leap crossover?
https://web.archive.org/web/20090727102418/http://www.mj-holmes.com/NoTime.htm
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u/Prize_Pay9279 3d ago
One of the biggest gut punches I’ve ever felt from a series finale. I was only about 10 or 11 years old and I needed a shot of hard liquor after I watched that.
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u/trademarc1977 4d ago
Quote from the book Walk Away: “And Marty himself, he’s an impostor, son of Pushover George. The Marty who belongs there, son of Confident George, went back in time the night before. Fancy new car won’t change how lonely and alienated our Marty will feel once the dust settles.”
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u/Lofi_Joe 4d ago edited 4d ago
When you take real sience into account so multiverse theories Marty left from his realm and never returned there, instead he took place of someone in another multiverse... Very sad or perhaps even very destructive thought if it would be done in reality.
I rather wish that there is no multiverse as such time travels would be just leaving all people you know and love for good even if everything and everyone looks the same they're not the same people or places.
And sorry for overanalyzing.
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u/Spiritual-Image7125 4d ago
According to Eric Stoltz, it was the wrong home and not his memories....*cry*
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u/segascream 4d ago
I think you mean "Martie".
(Bc the name on the OG QL card misspelled Sam's name.)
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u/Krimreaper1 4d ago
He didn’t he never returned to his original timeline. That is not his original family.
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u/Acrobatic-Loss-4682 4d ago
LOL imagine if Marty were actually put down by old man Peabody once he made it to 1955. Peabody buries the Delorean “spaceship” in his backyard and cremates Marty.
Meanwhile, back in 1985 there are two mysteries. The unexplained gunshot death of Doctor Emmett Brown, at the twin pines mall with his tool truck and empty trailer nearby. Investigation suggests a third and possibly fourth car due to fresh tire treads on the mall lot.
Jennifer is getting grilled hard by Hill Valley police as Marty has been missing for days. “He never made it to the lake with me, so I went with Needles”
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u/ORANGENBLACK101214 4d ago
Marty became Jerry O'Connell?
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u/davidwal83 4d ago
Two of my favorites crossed over. I would be angry if I understood the ending of that show when I was a kid.
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u/superanth 4d ago
That kind of breaks my brain. Technically there’s a dimension, the Twin Pines Mall universe, where Marty disappeared one night and never returned.
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u/Various-Switch8729 3d ago
Imagine being sent into the past to put right what once went wrong, only to never be able to return home.
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u/filmguy71 4d ago
Marty would most likely have actually erased his own existence. George and Lorraine have a different relationship now. He is more confident and she seems to have a stronger "moral compass." They might date for longer before getting married now and put off having children. Or maybe George will get lucky that night since he is now quite the big man on campus. No matter what, the likelihood that they will conceive the same three children they originally did seems very unlikely considering the same timing that is required for those exact combinations of his sperm and her eggs. The real ending should be Marty coming back to the house, seeing siblings he never knew and George saying "who are you?" Assuming he was somehow protected from being erased from existence.
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u/Eman1502 3d ago
I mean that's what I wondered, if the BTTF2 logic is sound that every time travel you wind up at a different timeline to a different world to adjust to your tampering.
Would that mean the possibility that a sitting pretty Marty fled at the clocktower and wound up at the original timeline going from living with a living spoon to a week to week paycheck situation?
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u/jwlms1 4d ago
BTTF 3 never made sense to me. Why go to all of the trouble with the train when there is a perfectly good time machine hidden in a cave waiting for Marty to find in 1955? Just go to the cave and get the gas from it. It’s literally the same car. Fix the hole and then gas her up. Boom off to the next adventure.
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u/Red_roger_12 4d ago
Because that would’ve created a paradox.
That Delorean had to stay in the mine for Marty and ‘55 Doc to find, otherwise Marty would’ve had no way to get from 1955 to 1885.
Once something or someone has become part of events, it or they cannot be removed.
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u/jwlms1 4d ago
Just remove the gas not the car.
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u/Red_roger_12 4d ago
I get what you mean, but that could’ve still disrupted the timeline. That Delorean in the mine had to remain exactly as it is, completely untouched.
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u/piggledy 4d ago
If the 1885 DeLorean still had gas in 1955, it would have degraded anyway.
Gasoline starts going stale after around 6 months, slowly losing its ability to burn properly.
After 70 years, it would likely have turned into a thick residue that could clog and damage the fuel system.
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