The title card of the Howdy Doody show appears on Doc's television set.
- Buffalo Bob: "Hey kids, what time is it?"
- Children in the "peanut gallery" (audience): "It's Howdy Doody time!"
- — Beginning of the Howdy Doody show
Howdy Doody was a children's television program that aired on NBC in the United States from 1947 to 1960. It starred a marionette named Howdy Doody, from which the show took its title, and an actor in a cowboy outfit named Buffalo Bob Smith.
On the morning of Sunday, November 13, 1955, the program started to play on Doc Brown's television set at his mansion. This alerted Emmett to the time and date, not realizing that Marty McFly had driven him to his house the night before and had fallen asleep watching television. As the first show of the broadcast day, it interrupted the test pattern that was shown on television all night.
Behind the scenes
- The show's Western theme foreshadows Marty's trip to the Old West.
