20 Things You Somehow Missed In Back To The Future Part 3
6. Doc Is PROBABLY Related To V-2 Rocket Creator Wernher Von Braun
Early in the film, Doc explains his ancestry to Marty, telling him:
"The Browns didn't come to Hill Valley until 1908. And then they were the Von Brauns. My father changed our name during the First World War."
This might seem like a fairly random piece of character shading until you consider that Bob Gale was more than likely trying to imply that Doc is related to Wernher von Braun.
Von Braun was a German-American aerospace engineer and member of the Nazi Party who helped develop the V-2 rocket for the Germans, and following the war was relocated to the U.S. where he worked for NASA as the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vessel.
The notion that Doc's related to a genius isn't terribly surprising, though plucking such a divisive and polarising figure from real-world history certainly is.