[1] Gale and Zemeckis shared a fascination with the way that the future was often depicted in the wrong way in media and thought it would be cool to write a film in which the character changed history.

Fox was the first choice for Zemeckis when casting the role of Marty McFly in Back to the Future, as he had seen him starring in the television series Family Ties in the part of Alex Keaton.

[19] Fox assumed that his exhaustion would result in a poor performance and damage his career, but instead his anxieties benefited his portrayal of Marty: "I barely knew where I was, and I didn’t really know what I was doing.

He wanted to incorporate all of the mannerisms of his favorite guitarists, including "a Pete Townshend windmill, and Jimi Hendrix behind the back, and a Chuck Berry duck walk".

[35] Marty's carefree attitude results in confrontations with his high school's vice-principal in charge of discipline[36] Mr. Strickland, who calls him a "slacker", comparing him to his father.

For the sequels, Gale said that they wanted to establish a character flaw for Marty that he has to overcome and realised that he is a "hothead", as demonstrated when he quickly becomes involved in a confrontation with the bully Biff Tannen.

[44] After time travelling with Doc Brown in the second film and arriving in the future on October 21, 2015, Marty wears a more futuristic outfit to blend in with the fashion of the era.

[46] In 1985, eccentric scientist Emmett "Doc" Brown invites Marty to join him at the Twin Pines Mall, where he shows him a time machine that he has invented out of a DeLorean.

After inputting the date November 5, 1955, Libyan terrorists arrive and shoot him, as Doc Brown had used plutonium to power the DeLorean instead of building a nuclear weapon for them.

Marty arrives at the Hill Valley clocktower in time to complete Doc Brown's plan to send him back to the future by using a lightning strike as a power source for the DeLorean.

Marty and Doc Brown rescue her while, unbeknownst to them, elder Biff steals their time machine and returns to 1955, where he gives his younger self a sports almanac from the future to use for gambling.

During the showdown, Marty defeats "Mad Dog" and proceeds with their time travel plan, which involves pushing the DeLorean with a steam engine over a ravine.

While pondering over the wreckage of the DeLorean, Doc Brown arrives in a new time machine that he has built from a steam engine, alongside his wife Clara and their children, and tells them to make their future a good one as it has yet to be written, before bidding them farewell.

[47] Released by Electric Dreams, the game involves Marty interacting with other characters from the film and finding objects, while his progress is tracked by a photo of himself and his siblings disappearing.

Another Back to the Future video game was released by LJN in 1989 on the Nintendo Entertainment System and features Marty running around Hill Valley to pick up clocks and avoid obstacles and enemies.

[55] Stage actor Olly Dobson debuted the role of Marty in Back to the Future: The Musical, which premiered at Manchester Opera House on 20 February 2020 and ran for 12 weeks before moving to the West End.

[62] For the same date, on Back to the Future Day, CollegeHumor released a cartoon skit featuring Marty and Doc Brown, which showed how they would react to real life in 2015.

[66] After Marty appeared in Back to the Future Part II where he replaced his skateboard with a hoverboard, the invention of a real levitating board was in high demand.

Rumours that a real hoverboard had been invented were fuelled by Zemeckis in a 30-minute documentary presented by Leslie Nielsen that aired on NBC Friday Night At The Movies, which was designed to promote the film.

[73] Kirk Ellis of The Hollywood Reporter made a similar comparison and described Fox's portrayal as "appealing" stating that he was "easily one of the more intelligent-looking young actors to cross a screen recently".

[75] Ray Loynd writing for Variety enjoyed the "zestful" performance of Fox, describing him as an "Arthurian knight figure" and his rendition of "Johnny B. Goode" as an "audience-grabbing scene".

[87] In a retrospective review, Justin Chang in the Los Angeles Times noted that Back to the Future is in essence Marty's story, specifically his struggle to control his existence, and considered every other character in the film an "afterthought".

[88] Kayla Turner of Screen Rant counted Marty as one of the film characters that defined the 1980s, describing him as a "timeless cultural icon whose influence extends far beyond the decade".

[89] Reflecting on the "Johnny B. Goode" scene in Back to the Future, Jason Lipshutz of Billboard described Marty as "one of the most beloved characters in film history".

The Guardian writer Hadley Freeman attributed much of the timelessness of Back to the Future to his performance commenting, "His bright-eyed charm and, yes, screwball energy give the film a joyful momentum that makes it an enduring pleasure".

[93] In a review, Empire's Adam Smith opined that the film established Fox as "the finest light-comedy actor of his generation" and considered his portrayal of Marty as "the most charming screen presence of the 80s".

[95] Critics have paid tribute to a sequence in Back to the Future in which Marty takes to the stage at the high school dance, grabs a red Gibson ES-345 and leads a version of Chuck Berry's song "Johnny B. Goode" in front of a crowd of 1950s teenagers.

[100] Billboard's Jason Lipshutz commented that the scene defined Back to the Future and epitomised its lead character: "Marty is a freight train, barging into high school gymnasiums and shootouts with terrorists and different dimensions with a hangdog charm and ease of knowing that he can skateboard past his problems.

[107] The Daily Dot reported in 2018 that Marty had become an internet meme, in particular a scene in which he plays heavy rock at the school dance in 1955 and the teenagers fail to appreciate his music.

[110] In the 2023 film The Flash, Marty is referenced as a joke when Barry Allen travels back in time to stop his mother from being murdered and changes history in the process.