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Dec 24, 2023

Back to the Future Secretly Made Its ORIGINAL Time Machine Canon

Back to the Future famously used a DeLorean as a means to travel through time, with the film's original idea for a time machine debuting in comics! In the seminal time travel film Back to the Future ,

Back to the Future famously used a DeLorean as a means to travel through time, with the film's original idea for a time machine debuting in comics!

In the seminal time travel film Back to the Future, Emmett “Doc” Brown succeeded in making a time machine out of the stylish and temporally conductive car known as a DeLorean. Yet in the original script for the film, the idea of using one (let alone any car) was decidedly not on the table for the filmmakers, with the alternative being a common household appliance that eventually got its second chance at fame after debuting in a Bob Gale-approved Back to the Future comic!

As hardcore fans of the trilogy know, the original Back to the Future script went through more than a few iterations before screenwriters Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis settled on using the DeLorean as Marty McFly’s main mode of transportation into the past. Wanting something that had enough visual style to capture audiences imaginations while also making sense for plot reasons, the comparatively silly idea of making the time machine a literal refrigerator was an early concept that was probably best never used. Flash forward over three decades later, and that same refrigerator made its debut in comic form as the only thing in Hill Valley that could save it from the dark 1985 timeline seen in Back to the Future Part II.

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A vastly different time machine made canon in 2017’s six-issue miniseries titled Biff to the Future, by Bob Gale & Derek Fridolfs and Alan Robinson, it isn’t until the penultimate chapter in a story that recounts the rise of alternate 1985 Biff where Doc, now part of an underground movement to thwart Biff’s dominion, brings the time refrigerator into the spotlight. Telling the gathered citizens of Hill Valley, including franchise alums Goldie Wilson and Mr. Strickland, that this machine allows just a single person to time travel, Doc also lets it be known that 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is needed to make this device work to its fullest potential. But since nothing on hand can produce that amount of energy, Doc reveals they’ll need to tap into the town’s power grid for a much lesser but still serviceable jolt, forcing a hard four-hour time limit to all temporal travelers.

Using a soda can and a rubber band to demonstrate how the time traveler would “snap” back to the refrigerator after their allotted chronal energy is spent, Doc highlights the differences between this new machine and the iconic DeLorean, coming full circle to Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis original idea. Ditching the concept after thinking kids might lock themselves in their fridges and subsequently be injured, the fact that the writers of Biff to the Future found a way to cleverly and officially fit this fridge into their story is a fun nod to the franchise’s roots.

Throwing in a nod to the DeLorean with a drawing of a tarp-covered background object that looks suspiciously like a car, and the tease of Doc potentially making another time vehicle in this alternate 1985 is dashed if only because, by the end of this series, he’s committed to an insane asylum as mentioned in Back to the Future Part II. It's a bummer fans never got to see Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’ original Back to the Future time refrigerator come to fruition in live-action, so it’s good to know it lives on in comic form via Biff to the Future’s inventive story!

Brian is first and foremost a nerd in every way shape and form. He likes to compare himself to a black hole, consuming any and every form of entertainment unlucky enough to get caught in his gravitational pull. It's not uncommon on any given day for him to read a couple comics, settle down with a good book, watch a few movies (inside and out of the theater), catch up on his ever growing but never depleting streaming queue, challenge himself with a few good video games, and of course, write his heart out. He spends every waking moment dreaming up interesting and intriguing concepts and ideas that will hopefully one day inspire and entertain anyone looking for an escape from their daily lives. Graduating from Full Sail University in good old humid Florida, Brian currently lives and works in New York City and lives for the day when all he has to do is wake up and create something unique and new for people to enjoy.