DuracellEnergizer said:

But BTTF doesn't show any indication of taking place within an immutable timeline. In fact, the movies go out of their way to show that they take place in anything but an immutable timeline.

Ah, shucks, this is starting to get out of hand ...

TIMELINE-F

PODD

February 20, 2014

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS

On this Earth, it is forbidden to discuss the time travel mechanics of Back to the Future in Internet threads that don't explicitly deal with the Back to the Future films. To prevent the accidental reading of such forbidden discussions, technological hats designed to disable the visual parts of the brain upon exposure to such discussions have been invented and surgically grafted onto all persons who have regular Internet access.

FINAL NOTES

Stop talking about time travel in BTTF!

So are we in that timeline then?

bkev said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

DuracellEnergizer said:But in one timeline Doc gets shot and dies while in another he wears a bulletproof vest and survives ...

We don't see him die at the start of BTTF, we only see him shot. The vest reveal takes place after Marty has gone back to 1955 and after he's returned from 1955 LOL. It's possible that the Doc had the vest all along and the whole thing is just a closed time loop.

The Lone Pine Mall wants a word with you.

I love knowing exactly where this mall is. For some reason I still get really excited about things like this even though I've grown up in LA.

^ Cool beans. I don't think I ever noticed that before :-)

Accidentally stepping into a movie/TV location is a strange feeling all right. Almost like somebody walking on your grave. Had that odd feeling a few times, including going shopping here in London a few years ago...

...it was only after 30 minutes or so that I realised I was in the kind of dank dystopian London glimpsed in 'Resurrection of the Daleks'...

It's all clean, upmarket and buzzing with shoppers now (It was a semi-derelict wasteland when that episode was filmed). Many, many films have shot there (Shad Thames) before and after the regeneration.