Quote:
Originally Posted by pig4bill
Speaking of which, these movies are teenage comedies. There has been more time spent here thinking deeply about this aspect of the plot than the writers did about the whole movie.
I gather from this post that you want a deeper dive into the history of Biff’s Pleasure Paradise Casino. Ask and you shall receive:
I started googling the timeline of events. It seems Biff was born in 1937. This makes him approximately, depended on his birth month, 18 when future Biff gifted him the Sports Almanac in November 1955.
BTTF2 states he made his first million on a horse race at the age of 21, so 1958.
According to Futurepedia, Biff DID lobby the California legislature to legalize gambling and they did so in 1979. By 1980, he had converted the old clock tower into Biff’s Pleasure Paradise Casino.
I’m starting to go along with the previously mentioned theory that not only did he get banned from betting elsewhere, he realized he could rig the odds in his own casino to set it up so he wins when others bet, too. And by being the wealthiest man in Hill Valley, he could be the first to build the biggest and best casino in the land once gambling was legalized. And with the cops on his payroll, it quickly became a bastion of lawlessness and corruption which he, no doubt, profited greatly from.
So perhaps it was I who was wrong for assuming Biff was stupid. He certainly was a jerk and stupid in the conventional academic sense, but when given enough resources, he was able to put his street smarts to good use and manipulate the system to his advantage.
I would also venture a guess that Biff really has craved power his whole life rather than money. He constantly attempted to control those around him, though not for financial gain. The way he treated George, Marty, his gang, and Lorraine was all about power and control. So even when he had the wealth, he still felt unfulfilled.
Opening his own casino and taking control of the town was the only way, in his mind, to achieve what he considered to be success.
Furthermore, Biff went so far as to kill George in order to force Lorraine to marry him. His complete lack of empathy and insatiable hunger for control clearly illustrates what a true sociopath Biff was.
