Back to the Future’s Tannensaurus makes for a bizarre bad guy, but a twisted chain of evolution provides a strange insight into the series’ villains.
As strange as it might sound, one Back to the Future joke suggests Biff Tannen evolved from the dinosaurs. In a series like Back to the Future, there’s usually lore thrown in by the creators that embraced the enjoyably absurd possibilities of time travel. Sometimes, a little self-awareness reminds audiences to have a sense of humor and tends to provide some fun insights into the bizarre mysteries that people love to dissect about a franchise’s mythology.
Since the first Back to the Future movie debuted, the Tannen family established themselves as the main antagonists. Often portrayed by actor Thomas F. Wilson, and it seems no matter what era Doc Brown and Marty McFly escape to, there’s always a Tannen around to harass them. However, outside the movies, the comics, cartoons, and video games always suggested a tangled Tannen family tree that extends across time, making for a genealogical nightmare that, in one case, somehow produced a sentient dinosaur jovially monikered as “the Tannensaurus.”
Did Biff Tannen Evolve From A Dinosaur? The Tannensaurus Explained
The Tannensaurus made its first appearance in Back to the Future: The Animated Series and comics based on them. After Doc Brown accidentally prevented the extinction of the dinosaurs, he, Jules, and Verne returned to a world where humans never evolved. While the main cast found themselves fading from existence, they discovered Biff Tannen somehow survived as a tyrannosaurus, making him the strangest Tannen yet. Although seemingly a one-off gag resulting from Doc’s paradox, the series actively acknowledges the Tannensaurus and even hints at a prehistoric origin for the beastly bully.
Back to the Future seemed very confused about the concept of evolution by suggesting that pterosaurs became modern birds and that dinosaurs like allosaurus would evolve into a society of “lounge lizards.” Additionally, considering Doc’s ignorance of prehistory, the writers’ several other inaccuracies, and the recurrence of abnormally large dinosaur species misidentified as a T-Rex, it wouldn’t be surprising that by some strange logic, Biff Tannen evolved from a dinosaur considering the series’ understanding of them. However, it’s likely a tongue-in-cheek joke about how a Tannen shows up in every century, something reinforced by Telltale’s Back to the Future: The Game, where Marty uncomfortably ponders the idea of a “Tannensaurus” terrorizing a caveman.
How Far Does The Tannen Family Go Back?
Dinosaurs aside, the Tannen family is far-reaching and proved within the Back to the Future franchise that some things never change, even when time travel is involved. Surrounding Back to the Future media introduced other members of Biff’s family going at least as far back as 36 AD. Featuring eccentric characters like Bifficus Antanneny, Biffando De La Tanen, and Lord Biffingham, according to Back to the Future: The Animated Series, the Tannen family has been influential in everything from the fall of ancient Rome to the Civil War. Despite the different names and times they all hail from, each Tannen is more or less the same and usually has a bone to pick with the McFlys or Browns.
While it may be ludicrous to imagine the genealogy of the Tannen family and the logistics of it all, it speaks volumes that they’ve established themselves as the definitive villains of Back to the Future. Despite having all of history’s infamous figures to choose from, with nothing more than a bad attitude and worse jokes, Biff Tannen and his family left an indelible legacy as the villains history loved to hate. There’s a certain kind of maliciousness and campy charm surrounding Thomas F. Wilson’s Biff as a literal timeless villain that Back to the Future’s fans will always embrace, whether 1955, 1985, or an alternate timeline populated by dinosaurs.
