1985-A (place)

When Biff Tannen stole the DeLorean time machine in 2015 and went back to November 1955, he gave his teenage-self a copy of the 21st century publication Gray's Sports Almanac - a complete listing of sports scores from 1950 to 2000 - in order to change history so that he would be rich and powerful. Once Biff had completed his goal, history - future history - changed and the timeline skewed into a new tangent. When Marty McFly, Doc Brown, and Jennifer Parker returned from 2015 they arrived not in 1985 but in an altered timeline referred to as 1985-A in Back to the Future II.

Hill Valley 1985-A (called "Biff 1985" in the script and "Hell Valley" by some fans) is a much different place than the normal 1985. In the altered timeline Biff began gambling on sports in 1958, making his first million dollars soon after. In the 1970s he parlayed his winnings into a vast financial empire, BiffCo, and was one of the driving forces in toxic waste production. Many women sought after him, but in the end Biff married his high school sweetheart Lorraine Baines-McFly after the untimely death of her first husband George McFly.

By 1985-A Biff had taken over the Hill Valley Courthouse and converted it into his own flashy/tacky hotel/casino, Biff Tannen's Pleasure Palace. Near the entry of the complex is The Biff Tannen Museum, a visitor's complex that explains the history of "The Luckiest Man On Earth" all the way back to his great-great-grandfather, Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen. Smoking is required in the museum.

So obviously things turned out pretty well for Biff in 1985-A. But what of the other Back to the Future characters?

• Doc Brown was committed to a psychiatic ward
• Dave McFly became a drunk
• Linda McFly struggles to overcome credit card debt
• Marty McFly is in a Swiss boarding school
• Lorraine Baines married Biff under duress, became an alcoholic, and got breast implants
• George McFly became an anti-BiffCo protest leader and was murdered by Biff in March 1973
• Principal Strickland is out of a job (due to the high school burning down) and sits in the dark on his porch with a shotgun in case someone steals his newspaper
• Hill Valley itself suffers from pollution, crime, riots, and a poor socio-economic status
• Richard Nixon is seeking his fifth term as president

Thankfully the timeline was restored when Marty and Doc went back to 1955 and stole back the sports almanac. Once the book was burned, 1985 returned to normal.