It has kept me up at night for years, and after what now must be around 100 viewings, I would still wonder how the heck a high school kid and a mad scientist came to be best of friends. Back to the Future co-writer Bob Gale came across this question at Mental Floss and gave us the actual origin story, I can rest now:
“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. And that’s the origin of their relationship.”
It’s solved! What do we do now? Watch BTTF again of course.
