A video pirate hero, a refrigerator time machine and a Nevada atomic explosion. Ah, what so nearly could have been.

When producer Bob Gale and writer/director Robert Zemeckis first dreamed up their concept of a time-travelling 17-year-old who hops decades and meets his parents as teenagers, the phrase ‘tricky first draft’ springs to mind.

Luckily, the final print of their trend-setting and imminently quotable dramedy became – somewhat ironically – a timeless classic when it was released in 1985.

This year, Back To The Future blasts back onto the big screen, a befuddling 25 years after it first introduced us to Doc Brown, Marty McFly, and the wacky, history-flirting world they inhabit.

But as Marty quickly discovers in his adventures, the course of history never did run smooth. Mass studio rejection and three years of fruitless peddling lay ahead of Gale and Zemeckis when they penned their first draft of the script in 1981.

How did it ever get made? Let’s go back to, well, you know…

Next: 1980 - "Great Scott!"