Even with plenty of new sci-fi movies coming in 2026, there are some films that we just can’t stop rewatching. Take Robert Zemeckis’ “Back to the Future” — it’s as much a cult classic as it is an enduring cultural phenomenon. Starring Michael J. Fox, the 1985 film perfectly pairs its sci-fi premise with ’80s charm, humor, and drama. While it’s obviously not the most scientifically accurate sci-fi film out there, it’s a joy to watch from start to finish. But even if you’ve seen the entire trilogy multiple times, you might not be familiar with all the backstory behind the films.
Before Michael J. Fox was cast as Marty McFly, several actors auditioned for the role, including Jon Cryer of “Two and a Half Men” fame. A few years back, Cryer took to X and revealed that the script he read during his audition had some significant differences from the film’s final version.
One of the wilder revelations was that the climactic scene where Marty manages to travel back to the future thanks to a lightning bolt hitting a clock tower wasn’t part of the initial script. Rather, the original plot had Marty traveling from the 1950s to the 1980s by harnessing the power of an atomic bomb to activate a time-travel laser that was attached to a refrigerator, which itself was attached to a truck. In order to shield himself from the radiation, Marty hid inside the lead-lined refrigerator for protection.
“He climbs in,” Cryer wrote, “closes the door behind him, the bomb goes off, the time machine activates,” and he goes back to the future.
The reason why the refrigerator scene wasn’t used in the film
If the ending in the original script sounds a bit convoluted, that’s because it is. But that’s not the reason why the film’s producers opted to change it. Interestingly, they pivoted from a refrigerator to a DeLorean as the main time-travel mechanism because Steven Spielberg, who was an executive producer on all three “Back to the Future” films, was worried kids might mimic the scene and start climbing into refrigerators and getting stuck.
Now, if the concept of a protagonist using a refrigerator to protect himself from a nuclear blast sounds familiar, it’s because that very plot point was used in the 2008 film “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” — a movie Spielberg himself directed. Again, because Spielberg was a producer on the original films, he simply recycled the idea more than two decades later. Apparently his fear of children climbing into kitchen appliances eased as refrigerator safety improved over the years, which fits with his reputation for accurately predicting modern tech.
