Back to the Future Part III movie corrections

When Doc's about to send Marty back to 1885 from 1955 at the open air cinema, you can see the shadow of the camera sticking out from the shadow of the building - it moves as the camera tracks Doc over to the car. See more...

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The automatic breakfast maker that cooks the eggs and the bacon, was designed and created by Simon Wells, great-grandson to the author of "The Time Machine" H.G. Wells, and director of the 2002 remake. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

Back to the Future Part III (1990) - 62 corrections

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Christopher Lloyd, Elizabeth Shue, Lea Thompson, Mary Steenburgen, Michael J. Fox, Thomas F. Wilson (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Sci-fi, Western

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

Corrections

In the opening scene when Doc wakes up he turns on the TV to hear "Hey kids, what time is it? It's Howdy Dowdy time." Doc, on the phone, says the time is 7 o'clock AM. Any smart baby boomer knows that Howdy Dowdy aired at 5:30 PM EST. [Look at the mass of electronics on top of the television. It's likely that Doc has constructed a recording device and is using a recording of Howdy Dowdy as an alarm clock (remember his facination with the modern video camera in Part 1). We also know from the beginning of Part 1 that Doc has an obsession with setting alarm clocks.]

Corrected by BocaDavie Time

The gravestone as seen by Marty and Doc in 1955 is in the same mint condition as when we later see it being made in 1885. Given that it has remained outside for 80 years, shouldn't it be more weather beaten or damaged? [Not really; I've visited dozens of graveyards and seen thousands of tombstones. Solid granite tombstones hold up very well in dry areas, like the setting of the graveyard in the movie. Tombstones in climates that have a regular change of seasons have more weathering damage.]

Corrected by BocaDavie

When Marty suggests taking Clara back to 1985 with them, Doc refuses, saying that it would disrupt the spacetime continuum. Since she was supposed to die in 1885, she's not even supposed to be there. Taking her back to the future would fix the problem, not make it worse. [She was supposed to die, period. Taking her to the "present" would disrupt the space time contimuum for the "future". She'd affect the world of 1985 in ways it wasn't meant to be affected thereby altering the timeline. Since she didn't die, the most logical "place" for her is her own time.]

Corrected by Phixius

When the Doc enters the destination time into the time circuits when he is sending Marty to 1885 from 1955, the time/date etc. go in as he's typing it. However, in the previous films and later in the 3rd film, the enter button must be pressed before anything appears for the destination time. [Yes but Doc had recently had to rennovate the car after it had been abandoned for seventy years. This could likely have included repairing the electrics. One result of this could quite plausibly be the change you mentioned.]

When Marty and Doc first discover the gravestone in 1955, watch closely as Marty puts his hand on it. It wobbles slightly, revealing that it's a prop made of lighter material as opposed to actual stone. [Old gravestones may wobble.]

Corrected by Phixius

Throughout the films, the time jump occurs at the end of the flaming skid marks. But, when Marty crosses the bridge near the end, the flames go right across the incomplete section even though the DeLorian has already gone at the start of them. [This is just wrong. For a start, the very first time jump we see in the first film ends up with Marty and the Doc slap bang in the middle of them. If the car disappeared at the very end of them, they'd have been run over. See: http://www.hhcc.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/Back_to_the_Future.jpg.]

Corrected by Gary O'Reilly

Once Bueford went to jail, there was no hurry to get back to the future; as they did not have to leave before one of them got shot. Bearing that in mind, why did they chase after the 8 o'clock train? They didn't have much time to do that, which made it extremely difficult. They could've easily just used a train on a later date, one with plenty of time to plan out the experiment. [Just because the known danger has passed certainly does not mean that all danger has. That uncertainty would be more frightening to me than knowing the exact moment of my death. They only knew that Doc wasn't going to die until such and such date. Now that they've changed that, who knows what could happen. Rattlesnake, stray bullet, etc. It's best to get back as quickly as possible.]

Corrected by Phixius

In the scene when Doc enters the saloon after having his heart broken by Clara, he is approached by a barbed-wire salesman. It appears that the salesman is wearing hearing aids. Obviously impossible for that time period. [There is nothing like a hearing aid visible in his ear.]

When Marty is sent to 1885, he arrives at September 2nd, 1885. Then, Doc has to meet Clara at the station the next day, September 3rd. But when Doc and Marty are figuring out a way to reach 88 miles an hour with the DeLorean, the calendar shows "September 4th" and they still haven't met Clara. [Marty arrived on September 2nd, but he didn't meet Doc until the 3rd (he spent the night at the Mcflys' house). That means the mayor came by to see Doc on the 3rd about meeting Clara on the 4th, which is the day Doc saves/meets Clara.]

Right toward the end of the movie, a split second before the Train crashes into the Delorean, underneath the Car you can see that a fireball bursts, causing the effect. [This is already listed as a mistake.]

Back in 1985, Marty dives out of the DeLorean seconds before a train hits it. He lands on his front, then turns over to see the smash. In the next shot he is crawling on his front. [Marty sits up to see the crash. So then he would be able to lean forward from a sitting position and put his legs behind him to crawl on his front.]

When Clara and Doc are hanging off the train barely, Marty lets the hoverboard go so Doc can save himself and Clara, which he does. When he pulls away from the train, the camera is shooting from Marty's P.O.V. and it shows Doc pulling ahead of the train and past the Delorean. He would slow down if anything, not speed up, especially holding Clara. [There is no way to know how a hoverboard from the future is supposed to perform when accelerated to 80+ mph from a moving object, as it's limitations and/or functions are never revealed to the viewer.]

Corrected by Jazetopher

When The car and train go past the windmill, Marty yells to Doc they are going over 60 and he'll never make it back in time. But about a minute later Marty looks at the speedometer and it just then passed 60. [Once the train reached it's top speed, it was up to the "logs" to make it go faster. This was not done by a steady acceleration, but rather a burst that increased the DeLorean and the train's speed, which remained at that speed until the next log. If you will notice, after the log blows that accelerates them to just over 60 mph, the car remains at that speed until the last log blows, so the speedometer in the shot you referenced should still be reading just over 60mph even a minute after Marty tells Doc they just passed 60mph. Not a mistake.]

Corrected by Jazetopher

When Doc and Marty are in the old mine looking for the Time Machine they bust open the sealed entry and find it. The entry is too small to get the Time Machine out. Even if we assume that they made the entry larger, how did the 1885 version of Doc get the Time Machine into the room through the smaller entry back in 1885? [In Doc's letter to Marty he said he had been living happily there for several months, which is plenty of time for a man of the Doc's abilities to strip the car down and rebuild it in the mine shaft.]

When Jules, Marty's son, comes out of the train at the end, look at his expression. He looks like he is about to burst out laughing. [First of all, he's Doc's son, not Marty's. And second, there is no reason why the kid should not be laughing. Maybe he is excited about travelling through time, maybe he finds the 1980's surroundings funny, or maybe his brother had just told him a joke. There are a thousand possible explanations to this.]

Corrected by Twotall

Doc wrote the letter (which was read by himself at the start of the movie) and it mentioned the name Clara. Marty went back to 2nd Sept 1885, and met Clara by the cliffs later on. But that letter was written 1st September 1885, before Marty arrived. How is this possible? [The letter never mentioned Clara. They didn't find out about her until they saw the gravestone.]

Corrected by Xofer

When the DeLorean is destroyed by the train at the end, why does the train smash through it, instead of just pushing it back down the tracks? Even if Marty had put on a parking brake (which we don't see him doing) it doesn't seem like it would be strong enough to withstand the force of the train. Even cars that are sitting perpendicularly on railroad tracks get pushed along by fast-moving trains, so why not a car that's specially designed to move on the tracks? [There's no telling what structural changes Doc had to make to turn the car into a time machine. Doc even says in Part II that Biff's car would "tear through [the DeLorean] like tinfoil." If a Ford would do that, I think the train's damage was about right.]

Corrected by Phixius

How come the Native Americans aren't surprised at all when a racing Delorian appears from thin air in front of them, in dazzling futuristic lights? [Who's to say they weren't? Anyway, these appear to be warriors, who would likely consider it dishonerable to show fear of the unknown.]

Corrected by Phixius

When Doc and Marty are in the blacksmith shop, Doc reads the picture tombstone: Shot in the BACK for a matter of $80. Even Buford emphasises this in the previous scene; "one day you gonna get a bullet in your back". However, in the festival scene when Buford is about to shoot Doc, Doc is facing FORWARD. If Marty had not been there to stop the bullet with the frisbee, Doc would have been shot in the chest, not the back. [You're not thinking fourth dimensionally. If Marty had not gone back in time, he and Doc wouldn't have saved Clara. If Clara hadn't been at the dance, Doc may well have not been at the dance. Biff would then have shot him somewhere else and in the back. Marty being there messes up the whole time continuum.]

Corrected by Zwn Annwn Time

In the second film, we learn that Marty's future was drastically altered by a car accident with a Rolls Royce, the driver of which apparently suing Marty for damages. When we see the accident, Marty was meant to be racing down a highway, with the Rolls failing to give way coming out of a side street. This means that it was actually the Rolls Royce's fault, and the driver can't have sued Marty. (He would still have broken his hand, but his financial situation would have been much better off in the future). [Marty's taking part in an illegal street race - had he ultimately participated he'd have been traveling considerably above the speed limit and without anything resembling due care and attention. As such, some if not all of the blame would be attached to him, leaving him completely open to being sued.]

Corrected by Tailkinker

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Back to the Future Part III (1990) - 62 corrections

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