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Biff Tannen is a fictional character in the Back to the Future trilogy. Thomas F. Wilson plays Biff in all three films as well as the Universal Studios ride, and voiced the character in the . Aidan Cutler played him in the original West End production of the first film's , and Nathaniel Hackmann plays him in the Broadway theatre production. Biff is the main antagonist of the first and second films, while his great-grandfather, Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (also played by Wilson), is the main antagonist of the third.
Biff is portrayed as a hulking, belligerent, dim-witted bully who obtains what he wants by intimidating others into doing his work for him, or by cheating. He and his family members are shown to misuse in ways that make them appear foolish and comical, despite their intention to insult or intimidate. He frequently calls others "butthead".
In 1985, the still abusive adult Biff is George's supervisor at an unknown company who forces George to do his job for him until George's son, Marty McFly, changes history through his interactions with his teenage father, giving him the confidence to defeat Biff in a fight to save Lorraine Baines, his future wife and Marty's mother. Afterwards, the new 1985 Biff is a servile auto detailer.
In , an aged and physically decrepit Biff steals Emmett "Doc" Brown's time machine in 2015 and travels back to 1955 to give his teenage self a sports almanac chronicling victories from 1950-2000, then heads home to 2015, hoping to gain a happier life as a result of his actions. Consequently, on his 21st birthday in 1958, Biff's younger self wagers money on a horse race listed in the almanac with the victorious steed's name revealed, winning his first million dollars and giving himself prestige and increasingly arrogant confidence. Despite his progressively gaining vast wealth and power through this "fixed" sports-event betting, Biff is still unable to convince Lorraine to marry him; as before, she marries George and starts a family with him. At last, Biff resorts to murdering George in 1973, and uses his money and political influence to cover up any evidence. Without George's supporting her and her family financially, Lorraine reluctantly accepts the well-to-do Biff as her new husband, thus creating a dystopian alternate 1985. The petulant and arrogantly tempestuous Biff never feels content in the marriage since he treats Lorraine as a prize to be won and possessed, and often lashes out verbally and physically; in a deleted scene, Lorraine eventually gets so fed up with Biff's overbearing hostility and abuse, along with finding out that Biff murdered George, that she shoots him dead some time in the late 1990s. This incident explains why the elderly Biff's actions have no visible effect on the Hill Valley of the future and, after returning to 2015, he clutches his chest in pain, sinks to the pavement, and fades from existence. Marty returns to 1955, carefully avoiding disturbing the events from his previous visit, and battles against the teenage Biff, ultimately recovering the almanac and undoing Biff's alternate timeline by burning it.
The alternate 1985 reveals that Lorraine, widowed after the murder of George, ended up marrying Biff in 1973. In a video clip after their wedding, Biff is asked, "How does it feel?", to which he replies, "Third time's the charm", implying that he had two previous wives in this continuity.
shows Biff's father, Irving "Kid" Tannen (voiced by Owen Thomas), as a gangster and bootlegger during Prohibition in 1931. After Doc Brown (under the alias of "Carl Sagan") is falsely arrested for burning down a speakeasy controlled by Tannen, Tannen had Doc murdered on June 13, 1931. After Marty travels back to 1931 to save him, he unintentionally leads Tannen to killing Arthur 'Artie' McFly, his grandfather, after helping to serve him a subpoena to testify against Kid Tannen. After saving Artie, Doc and Marty accidentally prevent Tannen's arrest on August 25, 1931, leading the Tannens (including two previously non-existent brothers to Biff, Cliff and Riff) to control Hill Valley and become the fifth-most-dangerous crime family in California by 1986. After Doc and Marty ensure Kid's arrest by turning his moll Trixie Trotter (who turned out to be Marty's grandmother Sylvia) against him, their involvement accidentally led Hill Valley to become a totalitarian society, controlled by Edna Strickland and that timeline's version of Emmett Brown. After Marty once again travels back to 1931 to repair the timeline, he unintentionally leads Edna (who is revealed to be the speakeasy arsonist) into a loving relationship with Kid after the former is arrested. In dialogue, it was revealed that Biff was conceived after Kid managed to escape prison for three hours in 1936.
As the October 2015 date featured in the films approached, media outlets began noting the similarities between the alternate 1985 version of the character and Donald Trump, who at the time Part II was produced had just purchased the Plaza Hotel in New York City and, by 2015, was in the midst of an ultimately successful run for President of the United States. When the comparison was brought to Gale's attention in an interview, he said, "Yeah. That's what we were thinking about". Both The Daily Beast and Rolling Stone note the similarities of Biff's casino penthouse to Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino; additionally, The Beast points out that in Back to the Future Part II:
Biff uses the profits from his 27-story casino... to help shake up the Republican Party, before eventually assuming political power himself, helping transform Hill Valley, California, into a lawless, dystopian wasteland, where hooliganism reigns, dissent is quashed, and wherein Biff encourages every citizen to call him "America's greatest living folk hero".
The fact checking website Snopes, however, doubts this claim, noting that neither Gale nor Zemeckis mentioned anything about Trump being the inspiration for the character until after comparisons began appearing in social media, and saying that it "appeared to be retrofitted to 2015's current events, not prescience on the part of the filmmakers".
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