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Martin Seamus "Marty" McFly is a fictional character, the lead character in the Back to the Future motion picture trilogy, played by actor Michael J. Fox in the three films and voiced by David Kaufman in the the Animated Series.
Marty was born in 1968 in Hill Valley, California. He is the youngest of three children to George and Lorraine McFly. He has a brother Dave, sister Linda and girlfriend Jennifer Parker. His best friend is mad scientist Dr Emmett Brown, whom Marty (and Jennifer) calls "Doc". There is a slight impression that Marty is slightly embarrassed by his family and does not spend much time at home, preferring to hang out with Doc, Jennifer or the guys in his musical band, The Pinheads.
Marty is an easy going adolescent most of the time. He is not the best student academically but his grades are fairly good, although he does have a tendency to be late for school. He plays lead guitar with The Pinheads and likes listening to Huey Lewis and the News and Eddie Van Halen. He is also a talented skateboarder.
When faced with danger, Marty is always brave and can be very resourceful and clever. His only major character flaw is his persistent desire to show others that he isn't a coward, which sometimes causes him to take unnecessary risks. However, by the end of Back to the Future Part III, Marty has realized that he doesn't need to constantly prove his bravery and avoids one of the greatest tragedies in his life, a collision with a Rolls-Royce limo that would have ruined his ability to play the guitar.
Pre-Back to the Future
Little is known about Marty's life prior to the first Back to the Future film, except for the fact that he set the living room rug on fire when he was 8. How exactly Marty and Doc met has never been explained, although a draft script for the first film states that a couple of years ago Doc turned up at Marty's garage one day and offered him $50 a week, plus free beer and use of his record collection, to clean his garage. This explanation is not accepted by most fans, however, as it contradicts the characterizations of Marty and Doc we see in the finished film. Co-writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale say they once considered expanding on their relationship, but decided against it, reasoning that children and adolescents are often attracted to eccentric or mysterious neighbors.
Back to the Future
By the time of the first film, it is 1985 and Marty is 17 years old. On the night of October 26, 1985, at the request of Doc, Marty meets him at the Twin Pines Mall parking lot where Doc demonstrates his new invention - a time machine built into a DeLorean. The demonstration is interrupted by the arrival of a group of angry Libyan terrorists. The Libyans had provided Doc with the plutonium to build a nuclear weapon for them, but Doc instead used it to provide the DeLorean with the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity needed for time travel.
Marty attempts to escape from the Libyans in the DeLorean, only to find himself transported back to November 5, 1955, where he accidentally interferes with the first meeting between his future parents. Using the alias "Calvin Klein" (his teenaged mother sees the name printed on his underwear and assumes it is Marty's name), Marty meets up with the 1955 version of Doc and enlists his help. Marty must try to get his parents to fall in love, or they will never marry and Marty will never be born. This is no easy task, as his mother has a crush on him and his father is too scared to ask her out.
On the night of November 12, 1955, Marty takes his mother to the Enchantment Under The Sea dance. He and his father have agreed to a plan that will allow George to win Lorraine's heart by "saving" her from Marty's staged aggressive behavior. Unfortunately, Marty has made an enemy of high school bully Biff Tannen, and Biff shows up at the dance looking for revenge. When George comes to "rescue" Lorraine, he finds that instead of having to pretend to save her from Marty, he now has to really save her from Biff. George punches Biff, standing up to a bully for the first time in his life, and George and Lorraine fall in love.
His future existence assured, Marty joins the dance band onstage and plays Johnny B. Goode before heading back to 1985. Arriving back in 1985, Marty discovers that his family's lives have turned out very differently because George learned to assert himself by standing up to Biff. They are more confident, richer, and Marty even has his own Toyota Hilux truck.
Back to the Future Part II
In the second film, Marty and Doc head to 2015 to save Marty's future son Marty Jr, from going to prison. Marty pretends to be Marty Jr in order to stand up to Griff Tannen, grandson of Biff. In this film we are introduced to Marty's "chicken" problem - whenever someone calls him a chicken, he gets offended and feels he has to prove he is not afraid. Marty succeeds in preventing his son from going to prison, and acquires a Hoverboard, which is essentially a futuristic version of a skateboard. It comes in handy in this and the following movie.
We discover a bit about Marty's life after 1985. In 1985, the day after he arrived back from 1955, Marty was involved in a car accident after auto racing a classmate, Douglas J Needles, on a "chicken" dare. Marty broke his hand and was sued by the driver of the Rolls-Royce he crashed into. He had to give up a career in music and spent many years feeling sorry for himself. He married Jennifer Parker in the 1990s in the Chapel O' Love, and his parents were the only witnesses. The couple had 2 kids - daughter Marlene, and son Martin Jr (born 1998). By 2015, Marty and Jennifer are living in Hilldale, a planned community established in 1985 which had deteriorated over the last 30 years in similar fashion as Lyon Estates had between 1955 and 1985. They are having marriage difficulties, and Marty is stuck in a dead end job at Fujitsu Enterprises, where his supervisor is his former classmate Needles.
The 1985 version of Marty, visiting 2015, does not find out any of this, but the 1985 Jennifer does. This future version of Marty falls victim to another "chicken" dare from Needles, who convices Marty to go along with some shady in-company deal. However, the supervisor above Needles had been listening in on the pair making the deal by video-phone, and fires Marty for co-operating with Needles. The 1985 Jennifer does not witness all of this exchange, but does acquire a copy of a printout sheet with the words "YOU'RE FIRED!' on it, as the higher-up supervisor apparently commanded every printing medium in the 2015 McFlys' home to print out the phrase.
Doc and Marty head back to 1985, only to find that an elderly Biff Tannen, in 2015, had stolen the time machine and gone back to 1955 with a sports almanac, which he had given to his younger self. As a result, Biff knew the results to all future sports events for the rest of the century. Using this knowledge, Biff was able to bet on the winner everytime, becoming a millionaire. As a result, Hill Valley has become a corrupt, crime-ridden city ruled over by Biff. Additionally, he learns his father is dead, Biff is now his stepfather, and that he "has been attending" a boarding school in Switzerland. Marty had apparently attended, and been thrown out of, other boarding schools in the past.
After confronting Biff about the almanac, Biff reveals how he obtained it, as well admitting to murdering Marty's father. Marty must now steal back the almanac in 1955, so he and Doc quickly head back to put history back on track, whilst avoiding their younger selves from the first film. They eventually succeed (meaning Marty's father is saved and Hill Valley is back to normal), but the lightning storm that struck the clock tower arrives, and strikes the DeLorean in mid-air while Doc is inside alone, scrambling the time circuits and sending Doc to the year 1885. At that very moment, a letter from Doc in 1885, which has been in Western Union's possession for 70 years, arrives for Marty, explaining everything that has just transpired. Determined to rescue his friend, Marty rushes off to find the 1955 Doc, who is just sending Marty from the first movie back to 1985.
Back to the Future Part III
Marty finds 1955 Doc Brown celebrating his success in sending his counterpart back to 1985 the first time. He shows Doc the message his counterpart sent him and they find the DeLorean buried in a mine. After the DeLorean is fixed, Marty heads back to September 2, 1885 to find Doc and bring him home. Marty, now using the name "Clint Eastwood", finds Doc, but the time machine once again needs repairing. When Doc starts romancing Clara Clayton, Marty gets weary of his friend's companion and tries distracting Doc from Clara so he can fix the time machine and they can go home.
Once again he encounters a Tannen, this time it is Biff's great grandfather Buford 'Mad Dog' Tannen. Buford calls Marty "yellow" and Marty ends up facing Buford in a duel. His great great grandfather Seamus McFly tells Marty the story of his brother, also named Martin, who was stabbed in Virginia City whilst trying to prove he was not a coward. Marty manages to overcome his complex and tells Buford that he does not care what anyone thinks about him. But Buford doesn't give up easily without a fight. Marty uses a Clint Eastwood trick from A Fistful of Dollars and defeats Buford in combat.
Marty manages to get back to the future and finds out that everything is back to the way it was after the first movie. Upon returning, the time machine is destroyed by an oncoming train, just as Marty leaps from the vehicle. He picks up Jennifer and they go out in his new truck. At an intersection, they meet Needles who challenges them to a race. It isn't clear if Jennifer realizes that this is the car accident that ruins Marty's life but she does encourage him to say "no". Marty appears to be ready to race Needles but, when the light turns green he shifts into reverse and Needles goes forward narrowly avoiding hitting a Rolls-Royce, the car accident is avoided. Marty apparently learns his lesson and Jennifer's future changes to a supposedly better but unknown future. The movie ends with Marty and Jennifer returning to the scene of the DeLorean's wreckage, where Doc and Clara show up in a new time machine fashioned from a locomotive. He tells Marty and Jennifer nobody's future is written yet and that they should make the best of it.
The Animated Series
Although the animated series is not considered canon by many Back to the Future fans, it does reveal that Marty and Jennifer end up in Hill Valley College after graduating from the high school. In the series, Marty is not as smart as he is in the films, and spends a lot of time visiting the Brown house where Doc, Clara and their sons now live. He accompanies the family on many of their time travel adventures.
The animated series reveals that Marty still has his "chicken" problem, even though he had apparently overcome it in Back to the Future Part III. Bifficus Antanneny taunts Marty into a chariot race by calling him the Latin word for "chicken".
One episode set in 2091 establishes that Marty's music becomes famous to Elvis-like proportions, as there are Marty impersonators mimicing his act on stage. However, a quote from his great-granddaughter Marta ("If only my great-grandfather was still alive to see that his music continues on...") suggests that the fame surrounding his music may not materialize until some point after his death.
Back to the Future characters | Fictional time travelers | Fictional Irish-Americans | Fictional Californians | Fictional teenagers | Fictional musicians
"Marty McFly"