Hal's father was a big fan of science fiction movies, and named his son after the character HAL 9000 featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey. His father eventually divorced Hal's mother and remarried a British woman named Julie Danziger. Danziger had a child of her own named Emma, and Emma adopted her new stepfather's surname of Emmerich. Hal and Emma became very close, and Emma developed an infatuation. When Hal was a teenager, he was seduced by his stepmother, and they had a brief affair. In 1997, after Hal's father learned of this, he decided to commit suicide by drowning himself in the family pool, dragging Emma in with him. Emma expected her brother to save her, but he didn't know it was happening as he was with his stepmother at the time. Surviving the incident, Emma always claimed to hate her brother.