Spoilers alert for the three of you out there who've never seen Back to the Future (or BTTF as us fanboys refer to it).
At the end of BTTF, Marty returns in time to see "himself" avoid the terrorists and go back to 1955. Then he wraps things up with Doc ("you're alive!") and goes home to find his parents are successful, healthy and, oh by the way, they got him a bitch' 4x4. Nice ride, McFly!
But wait! That's not the family he remembers. That's not his life. On the other hand, the Marty he just saw escape the terrorists and depart for 1955 at Lone Pine Mall presumably lived that life. That Marty remembers the successful parents. His parents didn't meet and fall in love when Lorraine's dad hit George with the car. They met through "our" Marty and fell in love when George laid out Biff.
Let's pause for a second and assign the Martys names for clarity's sake. "Our" Marty, the one we follow throughout the movie, will be Marty-Prime (or Marty-P). The "other" Marty we'll call Screwed Marty (or SMarty).
So what happens to SMarty? As his name implies, he gets screwed. The way I see it, since he arrives in 1955 with a different set of memories and a different history, his actions would also be different. In his version of BTTF, things go badly.
For starters, when he arrives at Peabody's ranch, he drives well enough to avoid hitting the pine tree. Well, that's nice. It keeps the name Twin Pines Ranch and, later, Twin Pines Mall. But here's where shit goes south: SMarty does not stop George from getting hit by the car. Maybe he showed up a split second too late, maybe he chose not to follow George, maybe he went to a different phone booth to find Doc's address and never made that stop at Lou's Cafe thus never meeting his young dad.
This means George gets hit by Lorraine's dad's car. She falls in love with him due to the "Florence Nightingale Effect." George never learns real self confidence. He spends the next thirty years still being picked on by Biff. Lorraine hates her life and becomes a drunk. SMarty has, in effect, created the shitty timeline that Marty-P comes from(!).
None the wiser (because his photograph wouldn't be fading), SMarty meets up with 1955 Doc, they do the experiment at the clocktower a week later and send Marty back to 1985. SMarty returns in time to see "himself" avoid the terrorists and go back to 1955. Then he wraps things up with Doc* and goes home to find... his parents are losers, his dad's a tool and his mom is a drunk. And he doesn't even have a bitchin' 4x4. THE SAD END.**
Now I can expand on the philosophical implications of Marty-P and SMarty actually creating each other's timelines. But that's best saved for another day. In the meantime, he's a little chart to show you what the hell I was talking about:
*For you REAL time travel nerds: Doc can survive in both timelines. See, he's smart like that. He used a bulletproof vest and played dead to survive the terrorists. In this way, he makes both Marty-P and SMarty assume he's dead. Both Martys will then warn him about the terrorists on their respective trips to 1955. You can also take this pre-destination paradox a step further and say that in both timelines Doc became friends with Marty because he knew he would.
**An even sadder ending suggested by my fiancee: SMarty arrives at Twin Pines Ranch after escaping the terrorists but doesn't avoid Peabody's shotgun shell to the chest ("take that you mutated sonabitch!"). SMarty's dead so he doesn't run over the pine, nor is he around to stop George from getting hit by the car. Thus he still produces Marty-P's timeline... just in a much more tragic way. And he's still screwed.
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