Emmett Brown - Character Background

Character Background

Emmett refers to himself as "a student of all sciences" and is depicted as a passionate inventor. His homes in 1985 and 1955 are shown to contain various labour-saving gadgets, and he tests an intended mind-reading device on Marty, during the scene in Back to the Future when the latter visits him in 1955.

He appears to be heavily influenced by scientists of previous eras, naming successive pet dogs Copernicus and Einstein, and having portraits of Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein in his laboratory. He also states in Back to the Future Part III that his favorite author is Jules Verne, and reveals to Marty that his family name was originally von Braun, possibly an allusion to the real-life and contemporary rocket scientist Wernher von Braun.

Emmett is shown as absent-minded at times, and various statements by other characters inhabiting Hill Valley, the fictional setting of the series, indicate that he is regarded as strange, eccentric, or insane. He often enunciates his words with wide-eyed expressions and broad gestures—"Great Scott!" being one of the character's well-known catchphrases—and tends to be logorrheic in his delivery, referring in one case to a school dance as a "rhythmic ceremonial ritual".

No film in the trilogy shows Emmett having any friends besides Marty and Jennifer, Marty's girlfriend. The films do not depict how Doc and Marty originally met, however production notes and word from creators Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale have stated that they met several years prior to the events of Back to the Future, when Marty sneaked into his lab after being warned by his parents to stay away from Doc. Happy to be revered as 'cool', Doc hired Marty as his part-time lab assistant.

Back to the Future alludes to Doc being involved with illegal and criminal enterprises—albeit as a means to obtain items for his inventions he could not purchase legally—but he shows naïve obliviousness to the consequences of his actions, excitedly telling Marty how he cheated Libyan terrorists out of stolen plutonium, saying "they wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and, in turn, gave them a shoddy bomb casing full of used pinball machine parts!"

The character begins the trilogy somewhat innocent, and very enthusiastic about the possible applications of his time machine, initially actively trying to alter the past or future of the principal characters, in efforts to improve their lives. However, events throughout the story, particularly in Back to the Future Part II, lead him to conclude that time travel is too hazardous, and that the time machine should be destroyed. In Back to the Future Part III, after realizing he has unwittingly altered history by preventing the death of Clara Clayton in 1885, Doc expresses regret for inventing the time machine at all, remarking that it has "caused nothing but disaster."

However, after being left behind in 1885 when Marty departs in the DeLorean for 1985, Doc starts a family with Clara. He creates another time machine and builds it into a steam locomotive, which he uses to return to 1985 (to collect his dog, Einstein) after having traveled to an unspecified point further in the future; the locomotive is shown at the end of Back to the Future Part III with a "hover conversion" akin to that of the DeLorean. The trilogy ends with Doc and his family departing 1985 to an unspecified destination.