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Back to the Future

Episode Studies by Clayton Barr

enik1138-at-popapostle-dot-com
Back to the Future: It's About Time Back to the Future
"It's About Time"
Back to the Future: The Game Episode 1
Telltale Games
Written by: Mike Stemmle and Andy Hartzell
Story Consultant: Bob Gale
Directed by: Dennis Lenart
Released: December 22, 2010

 

The inexplicably intact DeLorean time machine shows up in 1986, leading to the mystery of Doc's whereabouts.

 

Read the story summary at Futurepedia

 

Watch the video playthrough by Domstercool at YouTube

 

Notes from the Back to the Future chronology

 

This episode opens on May 14, 1986 and journeys to June 13, 1931.

 

Didja Know?

 

Back to the Future: The Game was a video game produced by Telltale Games in five episodes released from December 2010 to June 2011. The story takes place about 8 months after Marty returns to his own time at the end of Back to the Future Part III.

 

Christopher Lloyd reprises his role as Doc Brown, providing the character's voice. The other characters are mostly different actors than the ones seen in the films. AJ LoCascio does a particularly good imitation of Michael J. Fox's voice.

 

Characters appearing or mentioned in this story

 

Marty McFly

Doc Brown

Einstein

Lorraine McFly

George McFly

Biff Tannen

Jimmy (mentioned only)

Edna Strickland

Stanford Strickland (mentioned only)

Jack (mentioned only)

Diane (mentioned only)

Tiff Tannen (mentioned only)

Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (mentioned only)

Carl Sagan (an alias used by Doc in 1931)

Danny Parker, Sr.

Matches

Cue Ball Donnely

Mayor "Gentleman" Jack Thomas (mentioned only)

Irving "Kid" Tannen

Arthur "Artie" McFly

Judge Erhardt Brown

teenage Emmett Brown

Hampton (Brown family butler)

 

Didja Notice?

 

1986

 

During Marty's dream of temporal experiment number one, the dialog is almost the same, with some additions, to the dialog heard in the original scene in Back to the Future.

 

In the dream, when Doc puts Einstein in the DeLorean and fastens the seatbelt, there is no seatbelt! Doc makes the motions of fastening a seatbelt and the click sound of the buckle is heard, but no belt is seen. I guess seatbelts are expensive to render in CG! Of course, since it's a dream, we can chalk this up to surrealism.

 

In the dream, the Robinson's department store seen in the background at the mall parking lot in Back to the Future is here called Rubarbison's and the JCPenney store is JPPinney.

 

The top of Doc's tool box has a label reading "TOOL BOX" on the top.

 

Doc's notebook has "Emmett Brown" embossed on the cover.

 

Marty has some different posters hanging in his room than he did in Back to the Future: Frankenstein, Weird Science, and Miami Vice. These are all entertainment properties of Universal Studios, which also produced the Back to the Future films. He also has a "Greetings from the Moon" postcard pinned up; presumably it's a novelty postcard, but maybe Doc brought it back from the future and Marty got a hold of it at some point?

 

Marty has several issues of Reference Quarterly (RQ) magazine, a copy of which was seen in Back to the Future.

 

Marty has the framed photo of himself and Doc standing next to the Courthouse Clock in 1885 that Doc gave him at the end of Back to the Future Part III sitting on his nightstand. How did he explain the photo to his family? I suppose he'd tell them it's a novelty photo they took at a studio or amusement park somewhere.

 

Doc's lab has a stack of four volumes of the Collected Works of Jules Verne.

 

The camera pan through Doc's laboratory shows the makeshift model of Hill Valley that Doc made back in 1955, to demonstrate to Marty how his return trip to the future would be carried out, is still in the lab in 1985!

 

The clocks seen in Doc's lab here are a mix of those seen at the beginning of Back to the Future and new ones not seen before. When did Doc have time to modify his clock collection if he's been "gone" since taking off in the time train with his family eight months ago? Also, the giant amplifier that Marty essentially blew up in Back to the Future is also now seen intact! Are we going to learn that Doc snuck back into 1985/6 and cleaned up his lab?

 

The bank is selling off Doc Brown's estate and the city plans to build a parking garage on the land.

 

At the estate sale, Biff tries on Doc's mind-reading helmet, though he doesn't know what it is. He has balanced a couple of beer cans in the framework of the device while he drinks a third. Maybe he is considering modifying it into a beer helmet.

 

Biff is wearing an Adods sweatsuit that is essentially identical to the Adidas sweatsuit he wore at the end of Back to the Future.

 

Marty turns on the TV set in Doc's lab and we hear someone speaking from it in a robotic voice. It is probably meant to be Dr. Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), a world-renown theoretical physicist who spoke on many subjects, including the possibility of time travel. The voice here asks, "Does nature contrive it so that even with a time machine, you can't intervene to prevent your own conception, for example?" This, of course, goes back to Marty's own conundrum in Back to the Future.

 

A printout on tractor-feed paper is seen on a clipboard in Doc's lab. It has capacitor discharge figures on it. The header printed at the top reads:

UC BERKELEY PHYSICS DEPT.

USER: DR EMMETT BROWN

TEMPORAL DYNAMICS MODEL

Doc was seen to be a teacher at CalTech in "Looking for a Few Good Scientists" before being pulled into the Manhattan Project by the U.S. government. Maybe he worked at Berkeley for a time afterward? 

 

Marty finds his Erlewine Chiquita travel guitar in Doc's lab and saves it before it goes up for sale. This is the mini-electric guitar he blew out the giant amplifier with at the beginning of Back to the Future.

 

As Marty is about to play the Chiquita guitar on the amp, Biff laughs at him and says, "Hey, look, it's Chuck Butthead!" He is referring to Chuck Berry, whom Marty emulated when he played Chuck's song "Johnny B. Goode" at the 1955 Enchantment Under the Sea dance in Back to the Future (though Biff doesn't know that).

 

In Doc's notebook, Marty finds a sheet of "to do" notes for the date of October 25, 1985, which was the day Doc was prepping his time travel experiment seen at the beginning of Back to the Future. Included in the notes is "Bullet-Proof Vest!!!"

 

The red sticker seen on the front of the time circuits box is seen here to read "Dr. E. Brown Enterprises" and has "ON" and "OFF" printed at either end to indicate the position of the circuits' switch.

 

After sniffing the woman's shoe found in the DeLorean, Einstein leads Marty to Courthouse Square, where the owner of the shoe, Mr. Strickland's sister, Edna, resides in an apartment next to A1 Liquors on one side and Starbase Zero arcade on the other.

 

Marty wonders if Jimmy has fixed the Wild Gunman video game at the Starbase Zero arcade. Marty played a quick round of Wild Gunman at the Cafe 80s in 2015 in Back to the Future Part II.

 

Edna tells Marty he's making her miss Merv. She is referring to the Merv Griffin Show (often popularly known as just Merv), a talk show that ran in various timeslots throughout its run from 1962-1986.

 

Edna has a copy of 1984 by George Orwell sitting on a table in her apartment, a novel in which a totalitarian, repressive regime rules over most of the world. This is a foreshadowing of the world Edna will propagate with her time alterations later in the game.

 

Even after Marty enters her apartment to return her shoe, Edna continues to yell at young people out the window through her bullhorn. At one point, she yells, "Jack! Diane! I know what you're doing behind that tree!" This is a nod to the 1982 John Mellencamp song "Jack & Diane", which features the lyrics, "Jacky say, 'Hey Diane let's run off--Behind a shady tree--Dribble off those Bobbie Brooks--Let me do what I please." (Bobbie Brooks is a low end brand of women's clothing.)

 

The Tiff Tannen mentioned by Edna may be the Tiffany who makes an appearance (sans last name) in "Continuum Conundrum" Part 1.

 

Valley Video sits on the site formerly occupied by a speakeasy during the Prohibition era. Prohibition refers to the ban on alcohol production, importation, transportation, and sale in the U.S. from 1920-1933.

 

Edna refers to her brother, Vice Principal Strickland, as Gerald, the name he has in the novelization of Back to the Future, but he is generally referred to as Stanford S. Strickland elsewhere.

 

    Edna says that her grandfather, Marshal James Strickland, was gunned down by Mad Dog Tannen over a hundred years ago and Marty remarks that's not how he remembers it. Marty met Marshal Strickland in Back to the Future Part III, and the Marshal was still alive as far as was known when Marty left 1885. The marshal also turns up alive and well in the 1890s in a few of the comic books.

    Edna's photo of her grandfather depicts him in what appears to be a U.S. Cavalry uniform. He must have been an officer in the army before his time as a U.S. Marshal. 

 

Doc used the alias of Carl Sagan in 1931. The name refers to real world astronomer and astrophysicist, Dr. Carl Sagan (1934-1996). The real Carl Sagan told Zemeckis and Gale that he thought Back to the Future Part II was "the best movie ever made based on the science of time travel." This may be why Sagan gets such an homage in the video game. (Later, in "Get Tannen", Doc Brown, after defeating Kid Tannen, even says, "That's what you get for messing with Carl Sagan.")

 

When Marty accidentally knocks over a stack of Edna's collection of every issue of the Hill Valley Telegraph since 1871, the headlines seen on the various copies are all the same! That is, "LOCAL SHOPKEEPER ROBBED BY ZOMBIES"...we see at least six copies of the same issue! The zombie reference seems to be another foreshadowing of the 1984-esque timeline that will be created under the control of Edna in later episodes.

 

Edna appears to like cats, even though we don't see one in her apartment. She wears a sweater with a cat silhouette on it and has three cat trophies for articles written for Cat Lovers Quarterly on a shelf. Cat Lovers Quarterly appears to be a fictitious magazine.

 

Marty sets the DeLorean to take him to June 13, 1931 to rescue Doc from his arrest for arson of a speakeasy.

 

1931

 

The slogan of the Hill Valley Police Department is "Serve and Protect".

 

The license plate on the cop car in 1931 is CA 5A7109. The gangster shooting at the cop car is using a Thompson submachine gun, commonly referred to as a Tommy gun.

 

The cop driving the cop car is Officer Danny Parker, Sr., as revealed later. He will become the grandfather of Marty's girlfriend, Jennifer.

 

In 1931, Marty hides the DeLorean behind a billboard for the "car of the future". It would seem to be the same billboard (with a different advertisement) that he hid the DeLorean behind in Back to the Future, judging by the "Hill Valley 2 Miles" sign next to it.

 

In 1931, the Western Auto store in Courthouse Square is Eastern Auto Sales instead. This is, of course, a fictitious company.

 

Posters for the re-election of Mayor Jack Thomas are seen throughout the Hill Valley of 1931. Possibly, Jack Thomas is the father of later Hill Valley mayor Red Thomas, whose re-election campaign is seen in Back to the Future.

 

At the Town Theater in 1931, the film Frankenstein starring James Clive, Doris Evans, Edward Clark, and David Wright is showing. This is a fictitious version of the film with fictitious actors, though the names are a scramble of the names of the actual actors in the 1931 classic film: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, Dwight Frye, and Edward van Sloan.

 

In 1931, the Elite Barber Shop of 1955 was the O'Malley & Sons Barber Shop. The 1955 site of the Bluebird Motel is the Majestic Arms Inn in 1931, a hostel for the homeless and others who need a place to stay overnight (the comic book adaptation of "Get Tannen" gives the address of the Majestic Arms as 821 Main Street). The Sisters of Mercy Soup Kitchen is seen located where Lou's Cafe will be.

 

The Law Offices of Gale, Zemeckis, and Fine is seen when Edna Strickland approaches Marty in 1931 in the office that will be Ask Mr. Foster in 1955. Gale and Zemeckis are the co-creators of Back to the Future. I am unaware of any connection to a person named Fine with the franchise.

 

Lamont's House of Ermine is seen next to the law offices.

 

Depending on what the game player chooses, Marty uses the alias of Sonny Crockett (from Miami Vice), Harry Callahan (the Clint Eastwood character in the Dirty Harry movies), or Michael Corleone (a mob boss in the Godfather films) in 1931.

 

On the sidewalk, a placard for the Essex Theater advertises Shark coming soon. As far as I can tell, this is a fictitious film, meant to be a nod to Jaws 19 seen playing at the Holomax Theater (formerly the Essex) in 2015 in Back to the Future Part II.

 

Edna works as a journalist for the Hill Valley Herald in 1931. The paper normally seen in BTTF stories is the Hill Valley Telegraph, so the Herald must have been a competitor. Whether the paper still exists in 1986 is not revealed.

 

Hill Valley Stationers has a poster for the Sober Society taped to its front window with the slogan, "LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHERS--STAY SOBER!" The Sober Society appears to be a fictitious organization for the time, likely inspired by the Temperance League (now known as the American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems).

 

Marty enters the Bank, but exits again as he doesn't have any money, nor an account, in 1931. Notice that the front sign indicates it was formerly the Bank of Italy, but "Italy" has been scratched over. The Bank of Italy was an American bank founded in San Francisco which became Bank of America in 1930.

 

Biff's to-be-father, Irving "Kid" Tannen is introduced as a local gang boss in 1931. In 1936, he is known as Thomas Tannen in "Biff to the Future" Part 5. Possibly, he started going by Thomas Tannen after a stint in prison for his crimes here in Back to the Future: The Game, to try to shed his criminal stigma. Maybe his full name was Irving Thomas Tannen, but that is unconfirmed.

 

Marty's grandfather (George's father) is seen to be Artie McFly. He looks and sounds a lot like George.

 

Kid Tannen remarks to Artie that the D.A.'s throwing around subpoenas like Babe Ruth and Artie retorts that he doesn't think Ruth is a pitcher anymore. Babe Ruth (1895-1948) was a major league baseball player who achieved early fame as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox but went on to become a power hitter and outfielder for the New York Yankees. He did some back-and-forth between outfielding and pitching in his career, so it's hard to say that Artie is exactly right here.

 

Marty asks Doc how the DeLorean time machine could exist considering it was smashed to smithereens by a train at the end of Back to the Future Part III. Doc explains that it was a temporal duplicate created when the DeLorean was struck by lightning in 1955 (in Back to the Future Part II). At that moment, the time circuits were in flux (as we saw at the time) and Doc and the DeLorean were sent back in time 70 years to 1885...but a duplicate DeLorean was also sent forward in time 70 years to 2025. Doc discovered this during one of his trips to the future and had to prevent Biff from getting a hold of it and using it to vandalize the timestream. The problem with this explanation is, if a duplicate of the DeLorean was created, wouldn't a duplicate of Doc have been created as well, considering he was inside the car when it was struck? Is there another Doc running around? Was the duplicate Doc killed at some point in 2025, maybe by Biff?

 

Doc tries to reassure Marty that telling teen Emmett how to balance his equation of Ivanov's Conundrum won't mess up the timestream unless it turns out the universe is nothing more than a holographic illusion created by the interplay of subatomic particles on a vast 2-dimensional membrane. Doc is referring to the holographic principle of string theory, which suggests the universe may be only 2-dimensional with the third dimension being only a projection of information inscribed on the surface of its boundary, like the illusion of three dimensions seen in a hologram.

 

The slogan on the Sisters of Mercy Soup Kitchen sign is "Come for the Soup, Stay for the Salvation."

 

When Marty tries to convince teenage Emmet Brown in 1931 that he (Marty) is a scientist as well, Emmett challenges him to tell him a science fact and Marty stumblingly responds, "Um...the leg bone's connected to the thigh bone?" Marty seems to be trying to quote from "Dem Bones", a spiritual song from the early 20th Century about Ezekiel's visit to the Valley of Dry Bones in the Bible. The actual line from the song though is, "Knee bone connected to the thigh bone."

 

The phone number of the Brown residence in 1931 is Klondike 5-1038. In Back to the Future, Doc's number in 1955 is KLondike 5-4385.

 

Teen Emmett is heard to be muttering a scientific equation he is having difficulty with. Doc recognizes it as Ivanov's Conundrum and that young Emmett just needs to recognize that H equals the Hamiltonian operator. Ivanov's Conundrum appears to be a fictitious equation, but Hamiltonian operators are a real concept in quantum mechanics, being the sum of the kinetic energies and the potential energies for all the particles in a system.

 

When teen Emmett mistakes Marty to be someone from the U.S. patent office coming to see him about his rocket-powered drill invention, Marty goes with it and further prods Emmett to finish the prototype drill tonight or the patent will have to be given to a competing inventor named Dr. McCoy. Marty borrowed the name from that of the chief medical officer of the starship Enterprise in the 1966-1969 TV series Star Trek.

 

Teen Emmett worries that if they bother Kid Tannen, Tannen could have them fitted for a Chicago overcoat. "Chicago overcoat" is another slang term for "cement shoes", i.e. weighing a body down with concrete in order to sink it to the bottom of a body of water in order to dispose of the body.

 

Kid Tannen has a stooge called Matches, just as his son Biff will later have a stooge called Match. Is Match the son of Matches?

 

When Matches polishes Kid's shoes, Kid complains that he got Kiwi all over his socks. Kiwi is an Australian brand of shoe polish popular in the United States.

 

When Marty steals Artie's hat from Kid, Kid chases him and winds up stepping in some dog poop. Kid then heads for the shoe shine stand again, calling for Al. Presumably, Al is the proprietor of the stand, though we never see him.

 

Teen Emmett tells Marty he used to play sandlot football, where he was known as "the Streak".

 

When Cue Ball tells Matches he's spicing up the soup at the soup kitchen with his secret recipe, Matches tells him, "Listen, this ain't the Savoy and we ain't here to feed these bozos no fancy soup!" The Savoy is a luxury hotel and restaurant in London, England.

 

Cue Ball refers to his special soup as "scrole ribollita". I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, as it seems to be a simple cabbage soup. "Ribollita" is a Tuscan bread soup.

 

Cue Ball defends his soup with the remark, "All I've got to work with is this two-bit soup-in-a-barrel and a spice rack that hasn't been restocked since the Coolidge administration." Calvin Coolidge was the president of the United States from 1923-1929.

 

Edna mentions various locations in Hill Valley where she delivers soup from the soup kitchen: Hill Valley Orphanage, Saint Francis Xavier Ranch for Unwanted Children, Foggy Mountain Home for the Incurably Insane, and the Shady Acres Rest Home. Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552) was a Catholic priest and co-founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).

 

Marty volunteers to help Enda deliver soup, saying he donates a lot of time to charities like the Mario Brothers. The Mario Brothers are video game characters (plumbers Mario and Luigi) who've appeared in a number of games published by Nintendo.

 

When Marty volunteers to let the Stay Sober Society meet at the Brown residence, teen Emmett exclaims, "What in the name of Thomas Alva Edison do you think you're doing?" Thomas Edison (1847-1931) was an inventor and businessman, producing many electric products, including the light bulb.

 

Teen Emmett remarks that Albert Einstein was a patent officer. This is true. Einstein worked for the Swiss Patent Office 1902-1909.

 

Teen Emmett's rocket-powered drill runs on 190-proof grain alcohol.

 

Valley Bakery, Hill Valley Apartments, and Hill Billiards are seen. The bakery and billiards locations are in the locations where A1 Liquors and Starbase Zero were seen in 1986.

 

Marty tells Artie that he and teen Emmett have come to offer him a subscription to the Accountant Weekly. This is a fictitious periodical.

 

Kid Tannen remarks, "They say rats always return to the scene of the sinking ship."

 

Teen Emmett's lab has a ping-pong table in it on which he's placed some of his experimental apparatus. In Back to the Future, the model of Courthouse Square the Doc builds in 1955 is set up on what appears to be a ping-pong table.

 

In teen Emmett's lab, a 1931 calendar with the image of a helicopter is seen hanging on the wall. In "Double Visions", we can see the calendar was provided courtesy of MacPherson Instruments. MacPherson Instruments appears to be a fictitious company.

 

Teen Emmett uses the epithet, "Sweet fancy Moses!" As far as I can ascertain, this was first uttered in the 1996 "The Little Kick" episode of the 1990-1996 TV series Seinfeld.

 

    A gauge in teen Emmett's lab measures gas in flavens. "Flaven" is not a real world unit of measurement, but does appear in the geek-centric-character films of Jerry Lewis and the Professor Frink episodes of the long-running animated TV series The Simpsons.

    Maybe the gauge was provided by the aforementioned MacPherson Instruments!

 

While distilling the fuel they need for the rocket-powered drill, teen Emmett exclaims, "Eureka!" Eureka is an exclamation derived from Greek representing a personal celebration of having made a discovery. The exclamation is attributed to the aforementioned Archimedes.

 

Teen Emmett has a copy of Modern Inventions Monthly magazine in his lab, with a cover story about the water engine (the title is partially obscured here, but it is seen fully in "Double Visions"). This is a fictitious magazine, though water engines (similar to steam engines, though with less pressure) have been in use for hundreds of years.

 

The exhaust vents of Teen Emmett's rocket-powered drill resemble the vents on the back of Doc's DeLorean time machine.

 

The license plate on the paddy wagon in which Tannen abducts Doc is CA 8T3024.

 

Back to the Future: It's About Time Notes from the comic book adaptation published by IDW

Back to the Future: Citizen Brown #1
IDW
Adapted by Bob Gale & Erik Burnham
Script by Erik Burnham
Based on the Telltale Games video game written by Bob Gale, Michael Stemmle, Andy Hartzell, and Jonathan Straw
Art by Alan Robinson
Colors by Maria Santaolalla
Letters by Shawn Lee
Cover A by Alan Robinson
May 2016

 

Read the issue summary at Futurepedia

 

Additional characters in the comic not present in the game episode

 

Jennifer Parker

Danny Parker, Jr. (mentioned only)

 

Didja Know? 

 

Back to the Future: Citizen Brown was a five-issue comic book adaptation of Back to the Future: The Game. The Citizen Brown title of the series is borrowed from that of episode three of the game.

 

Didja Notice?

 

1986

 

The beginning of the story presented here alters the manner in which Marty finds the errant DeLorean from how it is presented in the game and includes Marty's girlfriend, Jennifer Parker, in the discovery, but does not include Einstein.

 

In the comic, the errant DeLorean arrives on May 15, 1986. In the episode, it was May 14. Also, the LAST TIME DEPARTED display on the time console is operating properly and tells Marty that it came from August 18, 1931. In the episode, that display was not working and Marty eventually learns from Edna Strickland that the date it must have come back from was June 13, 1931, the day the Hill Valley speakeasy burned down.

 

Seeing the DeLorean again, Jennifer tells Marty there's no way she's ever getting into that car again.

 

The labels on the time display of the DeLorean are presented in the red, green, and yellow colors of the three banks of digital readouts. But the labels should be just white lettering on black background.

 

On page 4, Marty visits the Hill Valley Public Library. In "Emmett Brown Visits the Future", Doc visited the Hill Valley Public Library in 2015.

 

At the library, Marty is looking for copies of the Hill Valley Register from 1931, but the library doesn't have them due to a fire in the 1960s. The paper normally seen in BTTF stories is the Hill Valley Telegraph, so the Register must have been a competitor. Whether the Register still publishes in 1986 is not revealed. If 1931 editions of the Register were lost, did Marty check for the Telegraph? Or for the Herald for that matter, the paper Edna tells Marty she works for in the episode??

 

In panel 2 of page 4, a book called The Lost Squad is seen on the librarian's counter. This was the title of a graphic novel illustrated by the artist of this mini-series, Alan Robinson.

 

Marty's narration reveals that Edna was the older sister of Vice Principal Strickland.

 

Edna supposedly has a complete collection of the Hill Valley Register, but the newspaper she pulls out for Marty about the murder of "Carl Sagan" in 1931 is the Hill Valley Telegraph. It seems like the writers of both the game and the comic adaptation were getting mixed up about the name of Hill Valley's major newspaper and it wasn't corrected in all instances.

 

When Marty says, "What the heck is that?" on page 6, Edna tells him to watch his language.

 

Page 7 reveals that Marty got the old clothes he put on before going to 1931 were old clothes of Jennifer's dad's. But, in "Get Tannen!", Marty says he got them at a costume shop at the mall.

 

1931 

 

The car of the future seen on the billboard on page 8 is very different from the one seen in the video game.
Car of the future in game Car of the future in comic

 

Marty uses the alias "Don Corleone" in 1931. Don Corleone was the title of the leader of the Corleone crime family in the Godfather movies. In the game episode, Marty uses the name Michael Corleone, who was the Don of the family in the movies when his father, Vito Corleone, retired.

 

Doc does not tell how the current DeLorean came to be, though he does say it is a temporal duplicate in the episode itself.

 

On page 13, Marty offers to help teen Emmett with delivering the subpoena. But, Emmett never mentioned that he was on his way to deliver one! (In the game episode, Emmett does mention the subpoena ahead of Marty's offer.)

 

Marty tells Cue Ball that he works for Robert DeNiro, implying DeNiro is a gang boss. Robert DeNiro is an Italian-American actor known for his crime roles in several films directed by Martin Scorsese.

 

On page 16, Marty tells Cue Ball that he wouldn't like DeNiro when he's not happy. This may be a bit of a play on the 1977-1982 TV series The Incredible Hulk, based on the Marvel Comics character, in the opening titles of which Dr. David Banner said every week, "Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

 

On page 17, Kid Tannen has a book or magazine called Pulp laying on his desk. This is likely a fictitious title for the time, meant as a reference to the cheap "pulp" magazines and books published from 1896 to the 1950s.

 

On page 19, the menu board at the soup kitchen reads:

Hot Soup

Hot Water

Hot Soup with Water

Hot Water with Soup

 

On page 22, teen Emmett lends Marty his bicycle to get to the jail from the Brown residence. In the game episode, Marty steals Edna's bike when she stops by the jail to interview the chief of police for the newspaper.

 

Memorable Dialog

 

if it ever fell into the wrong hands.mp3

does nature contrive it.mp3

what's a flux catheter?.mp3

why couldn't Doc have invented a dog translator?.mp3

Jack and Diane.mp3

your generation doesn't hold a copyright on moral depravity, you know.mp3

since the day it was founded.mp3

gangsters ruled the town.mp3

the end of the universe.mp3

rocket-powered drill.mp3

holographic illusion.mp3

that's a busy three hours.mp3

Dr. McCoy.mp3

 

Back to Back to the Future Episode Studies