History Fridge / Interstellar

* Viewers familiar with chemistry might sneer at Dr. Mann's explanation of his planet's surface, which is supposedly low enough that the chlorine in the atmosphere doesn't reach it[[note]]Chlorine is so heavy that in most atmospheres, it should sink to the bottom rather than remain floating[[/note]]. [[spoiler:It's a hint he's bullshitting.]]
* Quite a few viewers have remarked on this movie's pronounced similarities to ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', to which it could be considered a SpiritualSuccessor. In ''2001'', the heroes were human astronauts, and the primary villain was HAL 9000, a chillingly amoral robot who would do absolutely anything to keep the mission going. In ''Interstellar'', the robots are unfailingly loyal companions, and the primary villain is [[spoiler:Dr. Mann, a chillingly amoral human astronaut who will do absolutely anything to make his mission ''end''.]]

* Gargantua seems a little strange at first, being a giant black hole in a solar system and all, [[spoiler:until you realize that in its center is the physical representation of every point in time of a single bedroom. With a nigh-infinite amount of mass in a small amount of space, you can imagine the power it must have.]]

* TARS tells Cooper "see you on the other side" just before [[spoiler:ejecting himself into Gargantua, which is basically a one-way trip as far as anyone knows]]. This at first sounds like a continuation of his pithy personality, but on subsequent viewings, knowing that [[spoiler:Cooper will follow him into Gargantua]], it's actually a clever bit of foreshadowing, too.
* At the beginning of the movie, Murph is startled by Coop walking into her room. [[spoiler:She says "I thought you were the ghost." Well played, Christopher Nolan. Well played.]]
* TARS is rather savvy about the entire situation and even [[spoiler:takes steps to prevent Dr. Mann from leaving with the ship.]] This makes sense seeing as he was formally a Military Robot, he's supposed to analyze a situation and come up with the best outcome for his fellow troops to ensure their survival.
** His willingness to [[spoiler:take precautions against Mann]] are quite interesting. He doesn't do anything that anyone would actually notice. After all, there would be no need for [[spoiler:Mann]] to dock with the ship solo, so nobody would ever know about what he did, so long as everything went according to plan. His trust setting is set at a good balance: he doesn't make anyone think he's watching them for treachery, but he'll take precautions so long as nobody will know he's taking them.
* The [[spoiler:StableTimeLoop. When Cooper and TARS sacrificed themselves to get the Endurance away from the black hole, ''they saved the human race'' - Thanks to Cooper's sacrifice, Brand was able to set up the colony on Edmunds' planet using Plan B; frozen embryos, exowombs, etc. A couple of aeons later, future humans realize that Cooper was in a unique position to create ArtificialGravity and preserve pre-colony civilization, so they decide to help him. Humanity had no future until Cooper decided to sacrifice himself to save it, and in doing so, he himself was saved in turn. Kind of like [[Literature/LestDarknessFall The Apotheosis of Martin Padway]].]]

* Remember Tom's insistence on keeping his family on the farm, even in the face of massive dust storms and crop failures? There was almost certainly a significant number of people who refused to evacuate Earth for exactly those reasons, leading to a lot of self-selection against particular traits. Probably darker than Nolan intended it to be. It's only through Murph setting his corn on fire that he decides to leave... but what if some people didn't do that?

* It's subtle, but Romilly's [[GoMadFromTheIsolation change in behavior]] is noticeable after the crew returns to the ''Endurance''. He is slightly more socially awkward, with a bit of a NervousTic to boot.

* Chemically minded viewers might sneer at Dr. Mann's explanation of the planet's surface, which is supposedly low enough that the chlorine in the atmosphere doesn't reach it (what with chlorine being so heavy that in most atmospheres, it should sink to the bottom, rather than remain floating at height). [[spoiler:It's a hint he's bullshitting.]]

* The parent–teacher conference leads to a mild bit of fridge horror. The teacher arguing so adamantly against the truth of the Moon landings is named Miss Carlin. In one of the videos to Cooper, a teenaged Tom mentions that he finished second in his class rather than as valedictorian because "Miss Carlin's still giving me Cs" which pull down his grade point average. The implication is that not finishing at the top of the class made him ineligible for college. It appears that Miss Carlin, presumably with her principal's acquiescence, deliberately sabotaged Tom's education just so she could prove Cooper wrong about his son's aptitude.

* The [[spoiler:StableTimeLoop. When Cooper and TARS sacrificed themselves to get the Endurance away from the black hole, ''they saved the human race'' - Thanks to Cooper's sacrifice, Brand was able to set up the colony on Edmunds' planet using Plan B; frozen embryos, exowombs, etc. A couple of aeons later, future humans realize that Cooper was in a unique position to create ArtificialGravity and preserve pre-colony civilization, so they decide to help him. Humanity had no future until Cooper decided to sacrifice himself to save it, and in doing so, in turn he himself was saved. Kind of like [[Literature/LestDarknessFall The Apotheosis of Martin Padway]].]]

%% This isn't Troper Tales or a forum. Refrain from first person entries, speculation, and "replying" to entries. RepairDontRespond is in effect here as much as any other page.

* TARS is rather savvy about the entire situation and even [[spoiler: takes steps to prevent Dr. Mann from leaving with the ship.]] This makes sense seeing as he was formally a Military Robot, he's supposed to analyze a situation and come up with the best outcome for his fellow troops to ensure their survival.

* The reason old Murph is so insistent that her father should not see her die? She's seen how {{Outliving Ones Offspring}} effected her brother. Granted Tom's son died in infancy and she herself was dying of old age, but it still counts.

* No country besides a mixed-flavour {{Eagleland}} is shown and {{America Takes Over The World}} is implied. Meanwhile, the public is lead to believe that NASA was shut down for refusing to bomb starving civilians. Because of The Blight, Earth is running out of food and ''Oxygen''. Also implied is that NASA is funded by what was previously the [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks massive American military budget]] because there are no more wars - in a world where everything is in shortage and governance is barely possible. This means there are three possibilities: all other countries were {{too dumb to live}} to adapt to the state of the world and are thus {{Vestigial Empire}}s at best or {{Anarchy Is Chaos}} at worst; the whole Earth's surface is uninhabitable save the US, which means it is [[LastOfHisKind the last remaining nation]]; finally and most hauntingly, the "bomb starving civilians" happened anyway and is itself a {{deadly euphemism}} for the America's {{combat pragmatist}} style of warfare that relies on performing {{final solution}} on ''[[OmnicidalManiac everyone else]]'' to achieve victory (or even [[IDidWhatIHadToDo just to]] [[TragicVillain manage to survive]]).

* The parent-teacher conference leads to a mild bit of fridge horror. The teacher arguing so adamantly against the truth of the moon landings is named Miss Carlin. In one of the videos to Cooper, a teenaged Tom mentions that he finished second in his class rather than as valedictorian because "Miss Carlin's still giving me Cs" which pull down his grade point average. The implication is that not finishing at the top of the class made him ineligible for college. It appears that Miss Carlin, presumably with her principal's acquiescence, deliberately sabotaged Tom's education just so she could prove Cooper wrong about his son's aptitude.
* This only goes for certain definitions of "horror," but... The ''Endurance'' includes a number of human embryos in "artificial wombs" for recreation of the human race. If they had actually had to fall back on that plan, imagine what Cooper, Amelia, Romilly and Doyle's lives would've been, with like ''50 babies each'' to be personally responsible for, and no hope for ''at least'' a decade of any help ''from'' said kids.

* In the Hans Zimmer soundtrack, the only time percussion plays is when there is a time crunch for some reason. The tempo is usually slow and deliberate, except when on Miller's Planet, the percussion plays at nearly twice the speed, since outside clocks would seem to run faster from an observer on the planet. This isn't the first time Zimmer has used music tempo to illustrate an altered state of time, either; the entire soundtrack for ''Film/Inception'' is based around this concept.

* In the Hans Zimmer soundtrack, the only time percussion plays is when there is a time crunch for some reason. The tempo is usually slow and deliberate, except when on Miller's Planet, the percussion plays at nearly twice the speed, since outside clocks would seem to run faster from an observer on the planet.

* TARS is rather GenreSavvy about the entire situation and even [[spoiler: takes steps to prevent Dr. Mann from leaving with the ship.]] This makes sense seeing as he was formally a Military Robot, he's supposed to analyze a situation and come up with the best outcome for his fellow troops to ensure their survival.

** The parent-teacher conference also leads to a mild bit of fridge horror. The teacher arguing so adamantly against the truth of the moon landings is named Miss Carlin. In one of the videos to Cooper, a teenaged Tom mentions that he finished second in his class rather than as valedictorian because "Miss Carlin's still giving me Cs" which pull down his grade point average. The implication is that not finishing at the top of the class made him ineligible for college. It appears that Miss Carlin, presumably with her principal's acquiescence, deliberately sabotaged Tom's education just so she could prove Cooper wrong about his son's aptitude.

* In the parent–teacher conference, the principal and the teacher are dismissive of sending Tom Cooper to college, arguing that the world needs more good farmers, rather than engineers, and explicitly cite Cooper himself as an example of the kind of good farmer they're talking about. It's apparent that, despite disdaining the farming life, Cooper is quite good at it -- however, what we ''also'' see is that Cooper has found many ways of using his engineering skills to help out around the farm; he's built combine harvesters that pretty much drive themselves, uses scavenged drone parts in barns, etc. It's hinted that it's actually these which give him the edge over other farmers in the area. In other words, what the principal and the teacher clearly don't realise is that Cooper is a good farmer ''because'' of his college education.

** The base speed: 60 beats per minute.

** Saturn's orbit is where the Monolith was in 2001: A Space Odyssey as well (in the book only; in the movie it was Jupiter).

* NASA sent the crew up using a rocket to conserve resources for the mission. This allowed them to start the journey with an almost full fuel tank.
* Chemically minded viewers might sneer at Dr. Mann's explanation of the planet's surface, which is supposedly low enough that the chlorine in the atmosphere doesn't reach it (what with chlorine being so heavy that in most atmospheres it should sink to the bottom rather than remain floating at height). [[spoiler: It's a hint he's bullshitting.]]
* Quite a few viewers have remarked on this movie's pronounced similarities to ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', to which it could be considered a SpiritualSuccessor. In ''2001'', the heroes were human astronauts, and the primary villain was HAL 9000, a chillingly amoral robot who would do absolutely anything to keep the mission going. In ''Interstellar'', the robots are unfailingly loyal companions, and the primary villain is [[spoiler: Dr. Mann, a chillingly amoral human astronaut who will do absolutely anything to make his mission ''end'']].
* In the parent-teacher conference, the principal and the teacher are dismissive of sending Tom Cooper to college, arguing that the world needs more good farmers than engineers, and explicitly cite Cooper himself as an example of the kind of good farmer they're talking about. It's apparent that, despite disdaining the farming life, Cooper is quite good at it -- however, what we ''also'' see is that Cooper has found many ways of using his engineering skills to help out around the farm; he's built combine harvesters that pretty much drive themselves, uses scavenged drone-parts in barns, etc. It's hinted that it's actually these which give him the edge over other farmers in the area. In other words, what the principal and the teacher clearly don't realise that Cooper is a good farmer ''because'' of his college education.
* How could they land on the ocean planet and ''not notice the giant waves from space''? Remember the timescale on the planet was 7 years for every hour on the planet. Those waves would be barely moving when viewed from space, and by the time they were close enough to see they were concerned with landing.
* The school teaching that the Apollo Missions were faked. At first glance this just seems to be a way to get kids to care less about science. Then you realize: they needed to explain away the fall of the Soviet Union as something other than that country's people wanting more national autonomy and consumer goods, given the current state of world society (unified world government, subsistence-economy). So, they claimed the Soviet Union was bankrupted by its Space Program.
* In the Hans Zimmer soundtrack, the only time percussion plays is when there is a time crunch for some reason. The tempo is usually slow and deliberate, except when on Miller's Planet the percussion plays at nearly twice the speed, since outside clocks would seem to run faster from an observer on the planet.
* Gargantua seems a little strange at first, being a giant black hole in a solar system and all, [[spoiler: until you realize that in its center is the physical representation of every point in time of a single bedroom. With a nigh-infinite amount of mass in a small amount of space, you can imagine the power it must have.]]
* Coop says his wife was the calm one, seconds before he chews his daughter's teachers out without raising his voice. Who do we know who's trained to remain calm and suppress their emotions? [[{{Foreshadowing}} Oh, yeah]], [[ChuckYeager pilots]].
* TARS tells Cooper "see you on the other side" just before [[spoiler:ejecting himself into Gargantua, which is basically a one-way trip, as far as anyone knows]]. This at first sounds like a continuation of his pithy personality, but on subsequent viewings, knowing that [[spoiler:Cooper will follow him into Gargantua]] it's actually a clever bit of foreshadowing too.

* Even with multiple ships like that seen in the finale en route to Saturn, it's hard to imagine that more than a few million people made it off the planet before the end. Or maybe they got everyone, and a few million humans were all that was left. Given that at one point a character finds the idea that there used to be 6 billion people on Earth unbelievable, this is definitely plausible.
* Remember Tom's insistence on keeping his family on the farm, even in the face of massive dust storms and crop failures? There was almost certainly a significant number of people who refused to evacuate Earth for exactly those reasons, leading to a lot of self-selection against particular traits. Probably darker than Nolan intended it to be. It's only through Murph setting his corn on fire that he decides to leave...but what if some people didn't do that?
* Donald comments on how much he wants a hot dog at the ballgame, saying that eating popcorn is a travesty. Remember that every other crop has failed due to the Blight, and the farmers are struggling to grow enough to feed everyone. It seems unlikely that any livestock are still being raised for meat. Also notice the meal that Older Tom's family sits down to eat consists entirely of corn-related foods. This aspect is never addressed directly in the film, but subtle touches like that really let you know the extent of the Blight.