History Film / Inception

* EverythingsBetterWithSpinning:
** Cobb's spinning top.
** Possibly the single most awesome fight scene ever to appear in anything ever, when Arthur takes on the man in the spinning ''corridor''. Made even cooler with little CG necessary for said fight. The hallway was a giant rotating set, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did all of his own stunts in the sequence.

* HallwayFight: The film features a hallway fight between Arthur and a nameless mook. Because they are inside the dreaming mind of a person in a rolling vehicle, the two men end up grappling as the [[EverythingsBetterWithSpinning hallway rotates]] and they flop this way and that.

* UpToEleven: It appears that even a two-level dream setup is tricky and reserved for only the most important missions. Cobb wants to go ''three'' levels.

* BeyondTheImpossible: It's clearly stated that two levels deep is the maximum ''stable'' level. This means anything deeper would send you into Limbo. {{Subverted}} the first time: The group uses AppliedPhlebotinum to tweak the rules and reach a third. For the fourth, they just go for it. Overall {{justified}}, because Cobb disagreed with other dream experts and was a pioneer in the technology.

* IncomprehensibleEntranceExam: Cobb interviews Ariadne for the role of team architect entirely without warning and without actually telling her what the job is, reasoning that he has to know she can actually do it before he can give her the details. Over the course of the impromptu test, he challenges her to draw a maze in one minute that he can't solve in one minute. She gets it right [[RuleOfThree on the third try]].

* OutsideTheBoxTactic: Shown during Ariadne's audition. Using a pad of graph paper, she has to design a maze in two minutes that Cobb can beat in one minute. Cobb beats all her mazes too quickly until she turns the pad over to a blank surface and designs a circular maze instead of a square one.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: If Cobb were just more honest with the people around him about his unresolved guilt and trauma surrounding Mal's death and would learn to forgive himself and let her go, she would stop appearing in their dreams and ruining their plans.

** [[spoiler:When Cobb is in Mombasa, He goes under to test the new sedative. He is then interrupted by Saito after he "Wakes Up" from his dream. However, he drops his Totem, Picks it up, and Doesn't spin it afterwards. It's very possible that he could still be in that Basement.]]

* ExoticBackdropSetting: Mombassa. There are no named Kenyans.

** The mooks tend to die this way. In particular, the baddie Arthur combats in free fall in Level 2. The gun falls into his hand, he shoots at the mook who dies while jumping at Arthur.

* InstantDeathBullet: The mooks in the opening caper drop dead instantly after getting shot by Cobb. Also the EliteMook that Arthur shoots in the second level.

** In Mombassa, after Eames points out that he's being followed, Cobb asks Eames to distract the tail to give him a chance to get away, and Eames obliges.

* {{Fauxshadow}}: Ariadne's and Arthur's totems.

* AdultFear: Dom is forced to flee his home and his country, leaving his very young children behind, possibly forever. There's also the horrific situation when he was forced to watch his beloved spouse succumb to mental illness and suicide--and that he's lived with the knowledge that it was his fault.

* OnceMoreWithClarity: The final scene with Saito as an old man. Indeed, this scene makes absolutely no sense when it is first shown in the film, and it is only at the end that we understand.

* BackToCameraPose: [[https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/inception_movie_poster.jpg One]] of the posters sees Cobb stand with his back to the audience as he looks out at a skyscraper-filled city being flooded, hinting at the epic and amorphous nature of the dream worlds.

* BackToCameraPose: One of the posters sees Cobb stand with his back to the audience as he looks out at a skyscraper-filled city being flooded, hinting at the epic and amorphous nature of the dream worlds.

** [[spoiler: Cobb actually expecting Mal's evil projection to stay in the chair he tied his rope to in the opening to keep it weighed down even though he should know not to trust her by that point.]]

* IdiotBall: In the opening caper, Cobb seats his nemesis Mal in a chair which he uses as an anchor for the rope he's using to climb out the window. WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong

* GoneHorriblyRight: [[spoiler:Cobb's first inception was on Mal, the idea being to convince her to wake up from being stuck in Limbo. Mal accepted the idea, never realizing it had been induced. However, the idea to wake up from the dream consumed her, such that she was perpetually driven to wake up from what she perceived to be a dream no matter how illogical it seemed. She ended up jumping to her death, and just to twist the knife, she ruined Cobb's life before doing it in a misguided attempt to help him do the same.]]

-->''How did you get here? Where are you right now?''

** They manage to avert actually uttering the line, but they come darn close. Subverted in context, in that dream injuries, regardless of circumstance, never reflect upon the dreamer. In fact, death is the easiest way to escape from a dream. In the climax, the characters are so heavily sedated that dying doesn't kick them out of the dream but instead drops them into Limbo, which isn't fatal but is effectively the same as being rendered comatose [[AndIMustScream while being trapped inside your own mind for near-eternity]]. Played straight with pain, for it is a function of the mind anyway.

* ZigZaggingTrope: The film initially subverts the typical "[[YourMindMakesItReal if you die in a dream, you die in reality]]" idea, but then plays it straighter later on, as [[spoiler:if you are very deeply sedated, dying in the dream means you lose your mind in real life due to being [[AndIMustScream trapped]] in a LotusEaterMachine for what might seem like eternity, and then subverts it again as it is possible to escape from said LotusEaterMachine very easily if you know how, and if you're willing to, which is, of course, much harder when you don't know that you're in the dream world, or just plain refuse to leave.]]

* AccidentalSuicide: [[spoiler:Mal and Cobb spent an entire life in Limbo together, growing old together, only to wake up back in the real world where it was just a few minutes. This distorted Mal's perception of reality so bad that she became convinced that they were still dreaming, despite both of them being very much awake. She decides she and Cobb need to wake up and since in dreams [[DeathIsTheOnlyOption the only way out is through death]] if your sedative hasn't run its course, she leaps out of window and plummets to her death. While she did intend to kill herself, she didn't think doing so would actually mean she'd be dead given the logic of dreams.]]

* AirVentPassageway: {{Exaggerated}}. In the final maze, there were air vents large enough for a full-grown man to stand upright, and bypassed the maze completely. [[{{Justified}} Makes sense in the dream]]; they were only there because Eames deliberately had Ariadne install them.

* AvengersAssemble: Cobb travelling around the globe to recruit Ariadne and Yusuf as new members for his "Inception team".

* BloodlessCarnage: There is almost no blood at all in the entire movie. The notable exception is [[spoiler:Saito]], whose injury is a critical moment in the plot and for a fatal wound it's still just a very small hole that barely bleeds. In the snow level [[spoiler:Fischer and Mal]] get shot, but show only a small red dot on their white jackets to show that they have been hit. Like so many other tropes, justified by the fact that most if not all characters have never been in an actual firefight and would only know them from movies, so that's how they'd expect gunshot wounds look.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The people in the Mombasa basement who come every day to share the dream, because the dream has become their reality. After a while it starts to sound like they're people addled with drug addiction or alcoholism, trying to escape from the real world.

* DreamApocalypse: There are two or three variations: To a lesser extent, the projections who attack any foreign entity in the dream when the host starts to realise he's dreaming; played much straighter, however, is [[spoiler: Cobb's projection of Mal, particularly at the end within limbo]] and inverted with [[spoiler: the real Mal, who was convinced that what Cobb thinks is the real world is a dream, and that she needed to die to return to "reality."]]

* DreamWalker: Technically any one in the film's universe can do this if they have access to the technology. But obviously all of the members of TheTeam who go into Fischer's dream are this.

* EldritchLocation: The dreams, especially the second dream Ariadne entered where she plays with the laws of physics there by tilting a portion of the town and messed up the gravity. Cobb's deepest dream level also qualifies here.

* TheFaceless: Cobb's kids. Justified, since they are the projection of Cobb's memory -- specifically, his last memory of them, when they didn't turn around to look at him. He vehemently refuses to make them turn around in the dreams, because when he sees his children again he wants it to be for real. [[spoiler:In the end, Cobb finally sees his children's faces. [[MindScrew Or does he?]]]]

** Ariadne realising that Cobb can't build dreams any more, because if he knows the dream layout, he could bring Mal in and sabotage the mission. Acts as both a CallBack to the ActionPrologue, but also foreshadows [[spoiler:Mal appearing in the third dream layer and shooting Fischer, forcing Cobb and Ariadne to follow Fischer into Limbo to rescue him.]]

*** Taken into context with Mal and Cobb's repeated projections of her that's revealed later, this line suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.

* GoneHorriblyRight: [[spoiler:Cobb's first inception was on Mal, the idea being to convince her to wake up from being stuck in Limbo. Mal accepted the idea, never realising it had been induced. However, the idea to wake up from the dream consumed her, such that she was perpetually driven to wake up from what she perceived to be a dream no matter how illogical it seemed. She ended up jumping to her death, and just to twist the knife, she ruined Cobb's life before doing it in a misguided attempt to help him do the same.]]

** Near the end of the film Eames manages to pull a copy of the PASIV, about the size and shape of a metal briefcase, out of a tiny first-aid-kit.

** The "characters" do it all the damn time, as per RealLife lucid dreaming. Except as they're doing it to ''other'' people's dreams, the more they do it, the more likely that "projections" who populate the dream will notice the discrepancies, then hunt down and kill the intruding dreamer.

* HollywoodGlassCutter: In the opening caper, we see Cobb gaining entrance to a building via cutting a hole in a window.

* ImprobableAimingSkills: Played straight-ish. Cobb's crew can fire from uncomfortable positions and awkward locations and still drop plenty of mooks... in dreams, where they can also produce grenade launchers out of thin air. It's possible their aiming skills have more to do with skill at dream-manipulation and preconceptions as to how hard it is to hit a target than actual ability with firearms. Something similar probably explains how the basement-dwelling chemist is adept at driving in a high-speed chase through a crowded, rainy city, and how the crew happens to be skilled at rappelling down an icy mountainside.

* IntangibleTheft: A crew of thieves steal ideas for a living. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], since they do this by reading the subject's mind. In a situation like that, ''all'' you can steal are ideas.

** Saito could be a case of this as well, as Saito is actually more popular as a Japanese last name than first name, at least for men. In addition, in Japan, unless you know the person really well, it's much more common for people to use the last name in addressing you.

** Every aspect of the dream sharing technology is kept purposely vague. There are [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEItJLwvsF0 a few interviews online]] that [[AllThereInTheManual set up the plot]]. Cobb's father-in-law is noted as the inventor of the technology. Apparently, the technology was outlawed or regulated some time ago because of some unspecified incident.

* PutDownYourGunAndStepAway: Played straight and then promptly subverted in the beginning. Cobb puts the gun down when Arthur is brought in at gun point, then makes a grab for the gun to snap Arthur out of the dream.

* RewatchBonus: '''So much''' of the early movie, especially the scenes with Mal, makes far more sense once you have more information about the universe and rules of dream-travel and know the big twists.

** Limbo. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope Or not]] -- since you are a PhysicalGod there, it's far from suffering; Mal and Cobb didn't seem to mind it. It's not so much Limbo as it is the ''effects'' that Limbo has on the mind. Since, once there, you are a PhysicalGod, you have decades worth of time in a single afternoon... Limbo is, in a way, a LotusEaterMachine version of the perfect world, one that bends to the will of the people experiencing it. Leaving it is likened to a drug-addict off their fix... you can't just up and leave, you'll always want to go back. You'll ''"need"'' to just to have some sense of feeling. And that is the grand fear of limbo, because once you tasted it... you never want to leave, even if the door is right in front of you.]]

-->''...It seemed neater.''

-->No creeping doubts? Not feeling persecuted, Dom? Chased around the globe by anonymous corporations and police forces, the way the projections persecute the dreamer? Admit it: you don't believe in one reality anymore.

-->'''Arthur:''' And you. What the hell was that?\\

** [[http://inception.wikia.com/wiki/Somnacin Somnacin]], the drug that enables dream-sharing. Side materials note that it was was first created for military applications as a training simulation. However, the PASIV Device which administers it is a SchematizedProp.

* MyParentsAreDead: Ariadne nonchalantly ask Arthur if Cobb and Mal are still together and is stunned when hearing about her death.

* ParanoiaGambit: Cobb pulls one of these halfway through the film that involves telling Fischer that his mind has been infiltrated and posing as the true head of Fischer's subconscious security detail. Doing so with the hope that it would turn Fischer's subconcious against itself as it did not know who or what to fully believe.

* RuleOfSymbolism: [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality With in-universe justification]], no less - that's how dreams work. For example; why is Fischer Sr. lying on a hospital bed inside a ''bank vault'' inside an ''Arctic fortress?'' Because he has a big secret, of course. Indeed, for a typical extraction, the architect will place a vault in the environment. The dreamer's subconscious will instinctively hide all important/secret information there. Then you just need a good team to extract it. Think of the other things can be added to the environment to aid or hinder a heist and it's easy to see why Nolan thinks the movie has potential as a game.

* FirstNameBasis: We never find out the surnames of Arthur, Ariadne, Yusuf or Saito. However, given Japanese naming conventions, it could be [[OnlyKnownByTheirLastName Saito's first name we never learn]].

* TheTeam: Cobb has to assemble one for the inception.
** Cobb is TheLeader who is directing and coordinating the entire project, has the most experience with entering dreams, and has the most at stake since whether or not he's successful will determine if Saito will help him get the charges of murder against him dropped in the US so Cobb can return and see his family again.
** Ariadne is [[TheChick the only woman in the group]] and based on her team role as the Architect, i.e. the imaginative one who is tasked with building the complex world of the dreams, she can be TheSmartGuy. But narratively, she serves as TheLancer: she is the only one to see just how bad Cobb's [[spoiler:Mal projection]] has gotten and the only one to push Cobb on the issue rather than silently acquiesce. She was not supposed to go inside the dream as a promise Cobb made to her professor, but she insists telling Cobb that someone in there needs to know the truth in order to know when and why things would go south. She even gives Cobb an ultimatum: let her join or tell Arthur. Cobb chooses the former, cementing her in this role.
** On the team, Arthur is TheLancer as he often serves as Cobb's second in command; he was the only one Cobb didn't have to recruit because he was already working with him. Narratively, however, he plays much more like TheSmartGuy, given the particularity he has over words, his MrExposition role regarding Ariadne, his job as main researcher for the team, and for his ThoseTwoGuys relationship he has with...
** Eames, who as the GentlemanThief with [[TheGadfly a big personality]] that brings the [[{{BFG}} big guns]] and takes on an entire team of mook single-handedly, is a BoisterousBruiser version of TheBigGuy. He and Arthur are contrasted before they are even shown on screen with each other, with Eames ridiculing Arthur's LackOfImagination, and the two share a [[VitriolicBestFriends playful and rivalrous back-and-forth]] for the majority of the film.
** As the chemist, tasked with concocting all of the sedatives and sleeping agents to put the team under, Yusuf can be thought of as TheSmartGuy or TheMedic, but narratively he's not as easily definable given his limited screentime and interaction with the rest of the team members.
** Saito is the SixthRanger who was not meant to be on the team, but insisted to be as the bankroller for the project in order to ensure things run smoothly.