"Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here."
Interstellar - Easter Eggs & Hidden Details
Easter Eggs
References to Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Nolan is a great admirer of Kubrick's film, and Interstellar contains several homages. The design of the robots TARS and CASE, with their monolithic shapes and single red camera 'eyes,' is a nod to the Monolith and HAL 9000. The wormhole being located near Saturn is also a reference to the original novel of 2001, where the destination was Saturn, a detail Kubrick changed to Jupiter due to the difficulty of rendering Saturn's rings at the time.
The ticking clock on Miller's planet
While the crew is on Miller's water planet, a subtle ticking sound can be heard in the score every 1.25 seconds. Each tick represents a full day passing on Earth due to the extreme time dilation. This auditory detail adds a layer of immense tension and underscores the incredible stakes of every second they spend on the planet.
Murph's opening line of dialogue
One of the first things a young Murph says to her father is, "I thought you were the ghost." This line is a direct and clever piece of foreshadowing, as Cooper later becomes the 'ghost' in her room, communicating from the tesseract through gravitational anomalies.
Cooper's name
The protagonist's first name is never revealed in the film; he is only ever referred to as 'Cooper' or 'Coop'. This detail arguably reinforces the idea that in this desperate future, individual identities have been subsumed by one's function—he is a farmer, a pilot, a father.