First Time Travel to 1955

Lore & Background

1955 Hill Valley pulses with a neon innocence absent in Marty's greyscale future. But beneath the soda shops and letterman jackets lies a fragile reality: as Lorraine develops feelings for her son instead of his father, physical proof of Marty's existence begins to vanish from his pocket. To survive the timeline collapse, he must manipulate events at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, all while masquerading as a stranger to his own mother.

Reader's Guide

The journey begins when Doc Brown is assassinated by Libyan terrorists at the Twin Pines Mall. Marty escapes in the DeLorean, accidentally traveling back to November 1955 after hitting 88 miles per hour. Upon arrival, he crashes the DeLorean into the shed of the farmer Otis Peabody and flattens one of Peabody's two pine saplings while escaping. He encounters his parents as teenagers: George is timid and bullied by Biff Tannen, while Lorraine is infatuated with Marty instead of her future husband.

Marty tracks down a younger Doc Brown and convinces him that he is from the future. They devise a plan to harness the energy from an impending lightning strike at the Hill Valley clock tower to power the time circuit for the return trip. Simultaneously, Marty must get his parents to fall in love and convince George to stand up to Biff. This culminates in the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, where George and Lorraine share their first kiss while Marty performs with the band.

With the photograph restored and the clock tower struck by lightning at the exact moment Marty needs it, he speeds toward the future. The lightning strikes and sends Marty back to 1985, where the DeLorean breaks down and he runs back to the mall, arriving as Doc is being shot. The impact of this event is profound: in the new 1985 George McFly is a confident and successful science fiction author and Lorraine is fit and happy.

Did You Know?

• The barn Marty crashes into sits on the Twin Pines Ranch property; after he runs over one of the trees during his escape, the sign reads Lone Pine Mall when he returns to 1985.
• Marty plays Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode' at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance in 1955.
• The fading photograph effect used four different photos, one containing the background and one for each McFly sibling, which a mechanical camera cycled through and printed to the film.
• Lorraine calls Marty 'Calvin Klein' because it is the brand of his underwear, and he adopts the name.