Fans of Back to the Future will know that in Part 2 a big part of the plot sees Doc and Marty head from 2015 to 1985, only to find that it is not at all as they remember. Doc has been committed to an asylum, and George McFly has been murdered so that an all-powerful supervillain version of Biff who is now mega rich can marry Marty’s mother.
We also learn from Biff that Marty is supposed to be sent away to Switzerland to study, but also so that he would be out of Biff’s hair.
All this happens in what is referred to as the bad timeline. Doc explains it in the movie himself.
The question is, with the Marty from the original timeline turning up in the bad version of 1985, what happened to the version of Marty that was in Switzerland?
And also what happened to the version of Doc who is in the asylum?
The series of films makes it a little unclear of what would happen if two versions of the same person overlap in being in the same time as one another.
At times we have seen two Martys on screen and two Docs and two Biffs on screen.
So it would stand to reason that the versions of Doc and Marty who lived in the bad time line in Switzerland or the asylum would still be there right?
Well maybe not.
With this in mind, at the end of the original Back to the Future, we see Marty’s parents are successful, his dad an author and Biff is a loser.
You could consider this the good timeline. It was better than the one that Marty originally came from at the start of the first film.
And when Marty first arrives in the good timeline he sees a version of himself that is about to time travel just as he did. He then meets the Doc who knows that he was going to be shot by the Libyan terrorists and seemingly remembers Marty having time travelled to meet him in the past.
So, how does time travel work in these films?
Is it that there could be another version of Marty who was sent to study in Switzerland, and if so, is he still there?
Or is it that the version of Marty that we see arrive in the bad version of time replaces the Switzerland Marty?
And if so, why doesn’t the Marty we follow have any memory of what Switzerland Marty would have done?
Because there is a contradiction of why the Doc that wears a bullet proof vest and survives getting shot would then remember interacting with the Marty the audience has been following. Shouldn’t he be a totally different Doc just as Biff and his parents are different versions?
The alternate timeline aspect of Back to the Future Part 2 does make it seem like the movies use what in modern films would be referred to as the multiverse.
So, does this mean that at the end of Part 1, the main Marty was just content to be in an alternate dimension? Does it mean that in the version of 1985 that we see at the start of the first film, Doc is still dead, and Marty simply just vanished never to be seen again?
Which brings us back to Switzerland Marty and asylum Doc.
In Back to the Future 2, the rich version of Biff says that Marty is supposed to be in Switzerland, and maybe he still is.
The end of Back to the Future 1 shows Marty see himself time travel, and all throughout Back to the Future 2, we see both 1985 and 2015 Marty and Jennifer, two Marty’s and two Docs back in 1955, and we even get both 1985 Doc and 1955 Doc,
and 2015 Biff and 1955 Biff talk to each other.
So, it stands to reason that there would be another Marty in the bad version of 1985 who is in Switzerland who would later feel the wrath of Biff for stealing the Sports Almanac!
But here’s an alternative line of thinking.
With Marty and his siblings disappearing in the first film, could it be possible that the version of Marty who was in Switzerland in the bad version of 1985 would just disappear?
Quite possibly.
Every other time we had two of the same character in the same time, it was because one of them had time travelled back or forward into where a past or future version of themselves was. In the case of Switzerland Marty, he wasn’t from another point in time to the Marty we were seeing and was in fact just an alternate version.
Even though it was a deleted scene, we do get insight into what would happen if an alternative version of a character would go into the time they came from with old Biff. He gave young Biff the sports almanac and upon returning to 2015 he disappeared as the changes to the past erased him. With the Marty we see in Back to the Future 2,
it’s possible that his arrival may have erased the alternate Switzerland Marty.
And likewise the security at the asylum would have figured asylum Doc had escaped somehow.
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