Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future is one of the best feel-good movies of the 1980s that continues to enthrall audiences today. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) are a couple of fascinating characters who have rightfully become fan-favorites over the years. Dr. Brown, or Doc, as he is more commonly called, is a brilliant scientist who creates a time machine out of a DeLorean, which eventually gets destroyed in the ending of Back to the Future Part III. The special technology for the car makes it impossible to run on fuel, though.

Back to the Future has the slightest exposition in the form of a monologue by Doc early in the film. He explains that the car requires a nuclear source of power to accelerate to 88 miles per hour, which is the speed threshold for it to begin traveling through time. 2.21 gigawatts of power need to be generated for the car to reach this unprecedented speed, and the only feasible source is nuclear, which is why he uses illegally-sourced plutonium to fuel the DeLorean vehicle.

A Small Detail Explains How Doc Brown Avoids Getting Caught With Stolen Plutonium In Back To The Future

The Film Opens With A Hint

Back to the Future begins with Marty skating into Doc’s house, where breakfast is being automatically prepared by machines while the morning news plays on the TV. A newscaster mentions that the originally reported theft of plutonium from the vault of the Pacific Nuclear Research Facility has now been dismissed as rumors by the officials working there. They say that it simply went missing.

To explain the missing plutonium, officials from the Pacific Nuclear Research Facility have suggested that there was a clerical error that caused it to momentarily disappear. The newscaster points out the fact that a Libyan terrorist group had originally claimed responsibility for the theft. The FBI, who are supposedly looking into the matter, have offered no comments on the speculations.

Since viewers know nothing of the time machine or the use of plutonium in running it, this detail is easily missed. However, when Doc brings out plutonium while introducing his time machine, it is clear that he probably lucked out from the Pacific Nuclear Research Facility’s attempts to broker peace. It is possible the company never realized the plutonium had been stolen and genuinely chalked it up to a clerical error, but the more likely explanation is that they stopped openly searching for it to protect their reputation, indirectly saving Doc from the possibility of incarceration.

Doc Brown’s Backstory Immediately Before Back To The Future Is A Fascinating Missing Chapter

The Actual Manufacturing Of The Time Machine And The Acquisition Of The Plutonium Remain Unexplored

The only things that Back to the Future reveals about Doc’s past are that his family had a mansion that got burnt down, leading to the sale of their estate, also hinted at in a tiny detail in the opening of the film, even before the news report, and that he got the inspiration for the time machine’s flux capacitor after bumping his head into the washroom basin. However, a more immediate backstory would not only have fleshed out the character more, but would also have given us the opportunity to see the great man at work.

Watching Doc turn a DeLorean into a time machine would be great. However, the most fascinating part of his immediate backstory involves the acquisition of the plutonium for his car. He did get the plutonium from the Libyans, who he fooled into thinking he was making a bomb for, and who in turn kill him before Marty accidentally takes himself back to 1955. Discovering how the terrorists got hold of him, how he convinced them the fake bomb would work, and how he escaped with the plutonium would add to the character’s already intriguing background.