The truth about the movie "Back to the Future", after which it will never be the same (10 photos)

Start the engines of your DeLorean, because it's time to talk about one of the greatest movies ever made: Back to the Future.





In 1985, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale created a beloved time-travel adventure that has evolved into a beloved franchise with three films, a video game, and even a successful musical.

Back to the Future tells the story of Marty McFly, a teenager living in Hill Valley, California, who finds himself in a difficult situation after his friend, Dr. Emmett Brown, invents a time-traveling machine.



From there, Marty accidentally travels from 1985 to the 1950s, where he meets his young parents, disrupts the space-time continuum, and must find a way to restart the time machine before it's too late.

Back to the Future has gone down in history as a true classic, earning a place in pop culture history.

Despite its popularity, there's probably a lot more to Back to the Future than you already know. Read on to learn about the surprising details of Back to the Future that will make you never look at it the same way again...

The movie's time machine was originally intended to be a refrigerator





When people think of Back to the Future, they think of the DeLorean. The time-traveling car is one of the most iconic vehicles in movie history, right up there with the Batmobile and the Ecto-1.

After all, Doc himself says it in the first film: "I figured if you're going to build a time machine that looks like a car, why not do it in style?" While the DeLorean is now synonymous with Back to the Future, it wasn't always Marty and Doc's first choice for travel.

Back to the Future was written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale in 1980 after their first film together, Used Cars, became a massive hit. These early versions of the film were very different from the Back to the Future we know and love today.

One of the biggest differences was that the time machine wasn't a sleek, mobile DeLorean, but a sci-fi ray tube attached to a lead-lined refrigerator that Marty had to climb into.

While that was an interesting idea, we were lucky that it was eventually replaced with a stylish car.

Marty was replaced shortly after filming began



Michael J. Fox was born to play Marty McFly and has since become a pop culture icon for his incredible performances in the role throughout the trilogy.

Although the filmmakers claimed that they always wanted Fox to play Marty, another actor was originally cast. For the first six weeks of filming, Marty was played by actor Eric Stoltz, who is now better known for his roles in Something Wonderful, Pulp Fiction, and Glee.

While everyone involved with Back to the Future agreed that Stoltz was a fantastic actor, as filming progressed it became clear that he lacked the boyish charm and sense of humor needed to play Marty properly.

During an interview for the documentary Back in Time, Robert Zemeckis himself commented on why he decided to replace Stoltz with Foxx as Marty. He said, "Eric is a really good actor, and I made the decision to use him in the film, but it turned out that his instincts and the type of comedy in the film we were making didn't really work."

This decision temporarily marred the production of Back to the Future, as many scenes had to be reshot and many days of work were wasted.

But the final version lived up to all expectations.

This film could have had another strange title: "Astronaut from Pluto"



It's not uncommon in filmmaking for a project to receive several different titles as it develops and grows.

For example, Ridley Scott's 1979 horror classic Alien was originally going to be called Star Beast, and Spielberg's favorite film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at one point used the title Boy's Life.

So it's no surprise that even a film as appropriately titled as Back to the Future had some trouble finding the perfect title for its time-travel flick.

According to an excerpt from Michael Klastorin's book Back to the Future: The Complete Visual History, although Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale were quite happy with the title they eventually chose, one of the producers had another idea that he was pushing on the team.

Sidney Sheinberg, who was running Universal Studios at the time, didn't like the title Back to the Future and kept suggesting changing it to Spaceman from Pluto.

Apparently, this was also a reference to the film's plotline in which Marty pretends to be an alien from the planet Vulcan named Darth Vader, but fortunately, the writers ignored Sheinberg's less-than-stellar idea.

Ronald Reagan Liked a Joke About Him



Back to the Future is full of references to 80s culture. Much of the humor in the film comes from the culture shock that Marty McFly faces when he is transported back in time to 1955, and the countless funny moments as he tries to fit in.

Many of these jokes are more visual, such as when he is constantly berated for wearing a jacket that looks like a life jacket or underwear that says "Calvin Klein," but one of the most frequently quoted moments in the film is political.

In Back to the Future, Marty finds Doc Brown in the past and desperately tries to convince him that he is from the future. To prove where he is from, Doc asks Marty who was president in 1985, but the answer doesn't help much since it was former '50s movie star Ronald Reagan.

Doc continues, "Ronald Reagan? An actor?!" "Then who's the vice president, Jerry Lewis?" is one of the funniest lines of dialogue in the entire film, and even earned the admiration of Ronald Reagan himself.

Reagan found the scene so funny that he asked the projectionist to rewind the film so he could watch it a second time. The president even mentioned the film in his 1986 State of the Union address.

Steven Spielberg Saved the Film



Back to the Future is widely considered one of the best films ever made, and has spawned a respectable franchise since 1985. It's nearly impossible to imagine a world where someone wouldn't make Back to the Future, but that's exactly what creators Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale faced when trying to sell the first film.

On paper, the script for Back to the Future seemed a bit daunting to the various producers Zemeckis and Gale approached before 1985.

It was difficult to convince the producers that their script would be a hit with audiences. It was only thanks to Steven Spielberg that Back to the Future received the recognition it deserved.

When they pitched the idea to Steven Spielberg after the success of their other film Romancing the Stone, he loved it and championed their idea in negotiations with Universal.

Crispin Glover Hated the Ending



In the film Back to the Future, changing the timeline due to actions in the past is a major part of the plot. Marty McFly gets stuck in 1955 and inadvertently jeopardizes his own existence by preventing his parents from falling in love.

The plot revolves around Marty helping a younger version of his father, George McFly, ask his mother to a dance so they can be together. While the plan worked, Marty's influence on the youth he was raised with in 1985 led to unforeseen (but positive) consequences.

While this ending was well received by viewers, some had issues with the moral message behind what happens to Marty's parents. Chief among the detractors is Crispin Glover, the actor who played George McFly in the first film.

Glover is a notoriously eccentric man with strong opinions, so he has never hidden his disdain for the ending of Back to the Future. When Marty returns to the future, he is surprised to find that his house is much more luxurious than before, and his entire family appears to be much wealthier.

This is emphasized by the fact that he now has the massive SUV he dreamed of at the beginning of the story, a kind of cosmic reward for Marty's efforts to better his parents.

In a 2013 interview, Glover explained why he was against the moral message of this ending. He said, "I thought it wouldn't be very nice if our heroes were to receive monetary rewards because that essentially makes the moral of the film that money equals happiness."

He added, "The reward should be love."

Michael J. Fox didn't actually sing



Marty McFly has some key character traits that make him more interesting and relatable to viewers, as he has virtually no flaws. The most important and noticeable thing about Marty is that he is a musician and loves to play guitar and sing songs with his band.

Towards the climax of Back to the Future, Marty is forced to play guitar in Marvin Berry's band so that his parents can finally kiss (and thus save him).

Thanks to his success, he gets the opportunity to play another song of his choice, which turns out to be Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode". This absolutely iconic scene in film history is especially interesting because it's not Michael J. Fox who's actually singing it, but Mark Campbell of Jack Mack and the Heart Attack.

The movie was supposed to end with a nuclear explosion



Just as the DeLorean was a refrigerator in earlier versions of the script, Back to the Future was supposed to have a nuclear bomb explode at its climax.

The original ending had Marty McFly driving a truck toward an impending nuclear explosion at a military testing site, with the time machine casually strapped to the back of the truck.

At this point, the time machine could only run on nuclear fusion, which prompted Doc to plan this crazy nuclear option.

In the original film, the time machine still runs on electricity, but uses plutonium to start the reaction. To send Marty back in time, they use knowledge from the future to plan a devastating thunderstorm and direct lightning into the flux capacitor.

While Back to the Future didn't include the mushroom cloud scene, it's actually referenced in another Steven Spielberg film: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In that film, Indiana Jones survives a nuclear blast by locking himself in an LED refrigerator set in a test area filled with lifeless dummies.

What are your favorite Back to the Future moments? Share them in the comments!