Bob Gale, co-creator of the BTTF series, explained the origins of Marty and Doc’s friendship as this:
For years, Marty was told that Doc Brown was dangerous, a crackpot, a lunatic. So, being a red-blooded American teenage boy, age 13 or 14, he decided to find out just why this guy was so dangerous. Marty snuck into Doc’s lab, and was fascinated by all the cool stuff that was there. when Doc found him there, he was delighted to find that Marty thought he was cool and accepted him for what he was. Both of them were the black sheep in their respective environments. Doc gave Marty a part-time job to help with experiments, tend to the lab, tend to the dog, etc.
I believe it! Even though Doc wasn’t cool per se, he made science look damn cool with all the bat shit crazy things he tried to pull off. Any 13-year-old would have loved to work with him. [Mental Floss]
DarthDVD
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 7:16 AMok when i was young watching the movies on…. vhs (god i am old).. the “back story” wasnt a factor.
jasonalex
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 12:59 PMvhs doesn’t really make you old. we used vhs for most of my childhood too, and i’m 18 and certainly wouldn’t class myself as anywhere near ‘old’ (haha, maybe just poor)
Blindwilly
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 11:19 PMVHS!! I remember paying cash money at the movie theatre to see these films! You guys remember film right, and movie theatres, and cash money….
Ronny
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 7:46 AMCool to know. Just finished playing the game so that’s a plus.
Which by the way had a good story, but shoddy animation.
olearymo
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 9:06 AMI always assumed it was something like this. A few times there are characters saying ‘don’t hang around that Doc Brown, he’s a loony!’ and I thought, yep, that’s one way to make Marty want to hang around him!
Also, um, enormous speaker system? Electric guitar playing kid?
Paul
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 9:27 AMI miss the classic movies like this, the original indy, and superman movies….
They just don’t make them like they used to!
David
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 10:02 AMI always assumed they became friends as an effect of the time travel.
Marty, already friends with Doc Brown, went back in time and met a young Doc Brown who didn’t know him. As the worked together, Doc Brown formed a friendship with Marty, helped along by Marty who already saw him as a friend.
Then, when the present comes around, Doc Brown is already friends with Marty (though Marty doesn’t know it yet) so Do Brown forsters a friendship between them, knowing Marty will have to go back in time to met Doc Brown for the first time (from his point of view). See – straight forward from a time travel point of view! ;)
None
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 10:20 AMGood theory, kind of like in The Time Traveler’s Wife where she knows him really well from his future self visiting as she grows up but when he meets her for the first time in the normal time line she knows who he is and from her perspective they are old friends so she has to ‘lead’ in the friend-making.
Either that or your comment just completely lost me!
Dianne
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 11:28 AMAh but that would only happen in the altered/parallel timeline.
In the original timeline, before Marty went back and George knocked out Biff, in that timeline they had to have met somehow :)
Captain Pajama Shark
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 2:34 PMWait… is he supposed to be 13-14 in the movies?
Jeebus!
cayal
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 3:07 PMNo, he just met him when he was 13 or 14.
Chuck Norris
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 2:57 PMBACK TO THE FUTURE RULES
CHUCK AND WILL ARE COOL and they love the back to the future movie
WTFsnacks
Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 12:11 PMI cant wait for Will Smith to remake this with his kid as marty and jakey Chan as doc. oh how my life would be complete!