Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Adam Project
The dog in The Adam Project is named after one of the world's greatest scientists, but its meaning and connections to its time travel story go beyond just a fun reference. Following his success with Free Guy, Ryan Reynolds reteamed with director Shawn Levy for another sci-fi action movie. Despite recycling familiar time travel tropes, The Adam Project is an emotional and fun movie and has received generally positive reviews since its launch on Netflix. The Adam Project has numerous easter eggs and references to time travel movies and sci-fi in general, but the name of Adam's dog has a deeper meaning.
Set in a world where time travel exists, The Adam Project sees the central character travel back in time to visit a younger version of himself. Ryan Reynolds is Adam Reed, the time-traveling pilot, while newcomer Walker Scobell plays the 12-year-old version of Adam. Together they travel further back in time to meet their deceased scientist father (Mark Ruffalo) in the hope of saving the future from the clutches of Catherine Keener’s villainous entrepreneur. As with all time travel movies, The Adam Project has unique time travel rules. However, it was inspired by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen's real theoretical concepts for time travel using wormholes.
Along with Einstein and Rosen, The Adam Project also pays homage to Stephen Hawking, naming Adam's dog after the famous theoretical physicist. The Easter egg though goes deeper than just referencing the famous scientist, as it's rooted in The Adam Project's concept of time travel. Adam's father (Ruffalo) is a brilliant quantum physicist who wrote the algorithm necessary for time travel. He has doubts though over whether it's actually possible or not. Over his distinguished life (as depicted in The Theory of Everything), Stephen Hawking's theories changed the way scientists view the universe, including whether traveling back in time is possible. With his numerous contributions to the field, The Adam Project's dog name serves as a fitting tribute, considering the movie's subject matter.
Over the course of his career, Hawking theorized that there are tiny tunnels in the quantum world that link separate times and places (Avengers: Endgame used this for its time travel story). However, Hawking didn't think that these could ever realistically be used for time travel. Even if these wormholes could be enlarged, Hawking thought they would create paradoxes and feedback that would destroy the wormhole before a spaceship could enter it. In 2009, Stephen Hawking famously threw a party for time travelers, with the twist being that he didn't announce where and when the party would be until after it had happened. No time travelers showed up though, supporting Stephen Hawking’s position that traveling back in time (as Ryan Reynolds does in The Adam Project) isn't possible. The Adam Project directly references real-world movies such as Star Wars and The Terminator. It, therefore, stands to reason that The Adam Project's world would also have real-world people such as Stephen Hawking in it and that a fellow physicist working on time travel would be inspired to name the family dog after him.
Stephen Hawking was more positive when theorizing on traveling forward in time using gravity, black holes, and the speed of light. While The Adam Project uses wormholes rather than gravity for time travel, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar was inspired by Hawking's (and fellow physicist Kip Thorne's) theories. Though The Adam Project’s concept of traveling back in time doesn’t mesh with Stephen Hawking’s position on the subject, Hawking was nevertheless still a fan of science fiction. In the end, The Adam Project naming the dog after him is a nice way of honoring one of the greatest minds of all time.
