Mr. Fusionedit

From Futurepedia, the Back to the Future Wiki

Marty: "Wait a minute, what are you doing Doc?"

Doc: "I need fuel!"

— Marty and Doc while refueling Mr. Fusion with garbage

The Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor was the name of a power source used by the DeLorean time machine. The actual unit was manufactured by Fusion Industries.

Also known as the fusion generator, the Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor converted household waste to power the time machine's flux capacitor and time circuits using nuclear fusion. (It is thought that this is cold fusion.)

We first see the Mr. Fusion when Emmett Brown comes back from 2015. He rummages through Marty's trash can, to find a banana peel, a Miller beer can, and some other pieces of garbage. Which, in turn, suggests that the Mr. Fusion unit can run on pure trash.

Mr. Fusion allowed the DeLorean time machine to generate the required 1.21 gigawatts to travel through the space-time continuum. The energy produced by Mr. Fusion replaced plutonium as the primary power source of the DeLorean's time travel and flight capabilities.

When Marty, Doc, and Jennifer arrive in the year 2015, a few logos are spotted for Fusion Industries on the power generators in the alley they land in. The generators resemble the shape of a very small truck.

[edit] Behind the scenes

Mr. Fusion was based from a Krups coffee grinder and was a parody of the Mr. Coffee line of coffeemakers.

The ending of Back to the Future suggested that in the future, mankind's energy problems would be solved by a device that would convert any matter into energy, and that the "Mr. Fusion" (seen on the back of the DeLorean) could, in theory, someday be a able to power automobiles. However, vehicles seen in Back to the Future Part II don't have a Mr. Fusion, and the Texaco service station in 2015 is still in operation. In Back to the Future Part III, Doc confirms that the fusion device only powered the time circuits, and that the DeLorean Time Machine still had an internal combustion engine that ran on gasoline.

"Mr. Fusion powers the time circuits and the flux capacitor. The engine runs on ordinary gasoline. It always has."

—Doc to Marty