History Fridge / Inception

* Most people have already figured out that when the Edith Piaf song (used to alert dreamers their time is almost up) is slowed down, it sounds exactly like the main musical motif of the film. Here's the [[IncrediblyLamePun kicker]]: when the dreamers hear this music, it is severely slowed down since the dreamer experiences time differently. The "Inception" tune that we hear is exactly what the dreamers hear when they are about to wake up.

* It might seem[[ContrivedCoincidence rather convenient]] that Mal's father happens to a professor of architecture. However, that's probably ''why'' she was such a good architect--she already had a family background in building design.

Cobb and Saito seem to form a strong bond throughout the film, and it’s never clearly stated where that bond comes from. Saito seems very interested in Cobb’s emotional problems, and Cobb doesn’t seem surprised by this. This troper had to see the movie four times before she finally realized why they have this bond. It starts right at the beginning, when Cobb and Arthur infiltrate Saito’s dreams, and Mal interferes. ''Saito spoke with Mal.'' This is why Cobb never asks Saito how he knows so much about him.
** If this is the implication, then that in turn implies something about Cobb (as Mal’s shade is, after all, part of Cobb’s subconsciousness). Though Cobb doesn’t like to talk about Mal’s death, he secretly wished he could tell someone. Mal shows up during the mission, bringing back painful memories. Minutes later she vanishes, and reappears later with Saito. Her appearance that time brought up Cobb’s urge to let someone else know of his problems. The second he subconsciously wished that, she vanished from his sight, and was off to tell Saito.

* In the end, [[spoiler: everyone gets what they deserve. Eames, Arthur and Yusuf get the job done and, presumably get their money. Ariadne gets her faith in Cobb renewed. Cobb gets his children back. Fischer, an innocent, gets a new, positive outlook on his life. And Saito, whose motive was greed the whole time, gets decades in limbo to atone for it.]]
** [[spoiler: So, Saito was motivated by greed, and Cobb's team by what? The goodness of their hearts?]]
** [[spoiler: Saito populated his part of Limbo with an army of loyal subjects and a freaking palace. He basically got to live out a lifetime as a king when he was there, he just forgot about the outside world until Cobb reminded him.]]

* This troper never quite understood why Saito would change his mind and decide to go with Cobb's team for an inception. After all, Saito had plainly said, "Your deception was obvious. You have lived up to your reputation Mr. Cobb." And then Nash and Cobb lay it on him that they aren't in Saito's dream, when they are in fact in Nash's dream. For some reason this had a profound effect on Saito's opinion, and I didn't understand why. It wasn't until later that I realized exactly what that meant. Because Nash was the dreamer, the projections were going to attack him, not Saito. The extraction team was putting themselves in danger, not Saito. Any other extraction team would have put the target as the dreamer to make things easier. That's why Saito was so impressed.
** I'm kind of confused. If Nash was the dreamer, then wouldn't those be Nash's projections? And therefore they would attack anyone who's not Nash? At any rate, Saito never said "Your deception was obvious" and "you have lived up to your reputation, Mr. Cobb" in a single line. He said the "reputation" line only after discovering they were still dreaming. He was impressed with the whole dream-within-a-dream thing they pulled and how they almost fooled him into believing they were in the real world.
** Nash was the architect who screwed up the carpet, not the subject, whose projections would fill the dream.

* Lots of comparisons have been made between the concept of making dreams and of making movies. However, while thinking about how an inception video game might play out, it occurred to me that ''The dream levels are a lot like video game levels''. They are limited in size, but designed to feel larger, and or like part of a larger world, often have their own slightly strange rules. Inception's dreams are more like a story FPS (perhaps, or something like Left 4 dead), full of a bunch of spawned, somewhat mindless creatures, attempting to kill the "main characters" entering the world.
** Plus, dying in the dream and waking in reality creates the perfect in-universe justification for respawning. I really want this to happen.
*** Isn't that basically how the animus works in Assassin's Creed?
** Also, Cobb's explanation about how the dreamer's mind fills in details that the architect left out sounds a lot like the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_effect ELIZA effect]], another key concept in game design, in which virtual simulations can appear to be a lot more life-like than they are. It wouldn't surprise me if "Eliza" was one of the names the screenwriters threw around for Cobb's wife before deciding on "Mal."
* It bugged me that, despite being militarized, Fischer's projections were all graduates of the ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy. In fact, the unarmed [[ZergRush Zerg Rushes]] of other people's untrained projections were far more effective. Then I realized that Fischer is just the CEO of some corporation. His subconscious can't hit the broad side of a barn because ''he'' doesn't have any weapons training.
** He also may not be a naturally-aggressive person, despite his attempts to play out his father's role as a ruthless corporate tycoon. This would account for his assuming his dad was disappointed in him, as well as his subconscious projections' poor marksmanship.

* It's also worth noting that trying the drugging agent in Yusuf's basement is the last time we see Cobb try the totem and not see if it worked because it fell off the counter and Saito walked in. If the whole thing really is a dream, it's most likely that Cobb is dreaming in Yusuf's basement.
** Which ties into an above point, where someone puts out the possibility that [[spoiler:all of the movie is part of a ruse to get Cobb to face up to Mal.]] They would bring him to Yusuf to get him to face up, meaning that [[spoiler:quite possibly, none of the final act happened...which brings on FridgeHorror when you realize that, should Cobb be in Yusuf's basement, he might eventually wake up at some point, only to realize he never did get to see his kids again.]]

* Arthur and Ariadne's totems are very similar - both are game pieces (die/chess piece) that work as totems because they are weighted differently (Arthur's die is loaded/Ariadne's chess piece is hollowed out). Why so similar? Could it be foreshadowing their kiss/potential relationship?
** Or because Arthur is the one who explained what a totem was to Ariadne, so she would naturally pattern hers after his.

* I was bothered by the scene where the gang plus Saito are in the dream level planning how to incept Robert Fischer, because I kept wondering why they couldn't just have their meeting in the real world. Then I realised that a busy CEO like Saito wouldn't have had the time to attend their meetings in the real world, whereas they have amples of time in the dream level!
** Also, while they're talking in the dream, [[MundaneUtility it makes it impossible for outsiders to listen in on their conversation]].

* When first watching the movie, I thought it was [[ContrivedCoincidence very convenient]] that Mal's father happened to a professor of architecture. Then I realized that probably why she was such a good architect, because she already had a family background in building design.
** Not to mention Cobb was one of his students, which is (presumably) how he met Mal, and definitely how he got into shared dreaming, which directly led to everything else. In essence, if Mal's father hadn't been who he was, nothing in the movie ever would have happened.

** Not necessarily ''that'' inventive, as his options were limited by the materials available in the hotel.

* A bit of fridge brilliance: some people have accused Mal of not being well-developed. But the thing is, she's ''supposed'' to be that way, because she's just Dom's projection of her, which he said wasn't as complex as a real person.

* In several scenes, Cobb uses Mal's top, but doesn't check it. Why? because it was never his totem. in that case, what was? think about it, what was his driving motivation throughout the series? "i just want to get back to my children, that's the only thing that matters". His totem was his children's faces. whenever the real world vs. the dream world is called into question, what shows up? The projections of his children; but because no-one else knows what their faces look like, he never sees them.
** Actually, his totem was his wedding ring. If you look closely, in all the dream sequences he wore his wedding ring, while in reality he didn't.

* Why Saito is [[spoiler:still sane in Limbo?]] Because he's a respected Japanese man, and he has a promise to keep. Honor and keeping a promise are very important for such a person. A Japanese man keeps his promises- that's why you don't need a guarantee in Japan. [[spoiler: Because of this, Saito enters Limbo with a though that stabilize his mind: "I died in a dream, I'm deeper in this dream, but when I wake up I have to fulfil a promise."]] He was also prepared for this by his earlier conversation with Cobb.

* Robert Fischer has a militarized subconscious that assaults outsiders unprovoked. According to Cobb, this is the sort of training people can receive to resist extractors like themselves stealing information, but it also never showed up in the research like it should have. From the way Cobb talks, it seems that it was an obvious thing to miss, which makes it strange that nothing about it came However, there's another possibility: Robert was never actually trained. His subconscious mind has been militarized like this as a coping mechanism against his upbringing.
** Alternately, Fischer hired someone off the books to train him. Given how extractors are looked down upon and the risks of the dreamscape, and how in the US and Australia, the drugs needed would be heavily controlled (but not out of reach for someone as rich as Fischer), he just hired someone to train Robert's subconscious, but not someone as good as Cobb.

** That can't be completely right though. Mal and Cobb both went deeper and deeper when they were experimenting with only the two of them. If the dreamer can't go below their own dream than they never could have gotten past the first level together [[spoiler: let alone all the way down to limbo.]]
*** There's nothing to say that a host can go into deeper dream levels--they just can't host another dream (because that could create a recursive dream loop). It can be done, it's just... dangerous.
*** You don't need to maintain multiple layers of dreams [[spoiler: in order to reach limbo. Dying at any level sends you there.]]

* Cobb explains that you can tell if a dream is happening because it starts in the middle of everything. The movie starts InMediasRes, and there is no opening title\credits, aside from the studio logos.

* Early on, Cobb immediately vetoes the idea of [[spoiler: making Fisher break up the company out of spite because, he claims, it's easier to make the mind accept a positive idea because people long for catharsis. Easy enough to accept at face value, but once we finally learn his whole story there's another good reason for him to write the idea off; he knows better than anyone just how badly implanting a negative idea can go wrong and wants to make sure that if the implanted idea keeps growing in Fisher's mind it'll be something that bolsters him instead of setting off an avalanche of daddy issues.]]
** Also [[spoiler: Cobb mentions that "We all yearn for catharsis." Guess what he does in Limbo?]]
* The entire movie can be traced to being a metaphor for film-making. Cobb is the director; Arthur is the producer who does research; Saito is the producer with the money; Ariadne is the screenwriter and set designer; Eames is the actor; Yusuf is the cameraman, or special effects director who lures us into the movie; the projections are the audience who can either turn against the movie or endorse it; Fischer serves as the movie theater or projected audience. The parallels are astounding.

** At the very end of the credits, [[spoiler:the last song the ''audience'' hears before leaving the theater and returning to reality is Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien", suggesting that the entire film was a dream from which the audience was intended to awaken.]]

* Why did [[spoiler: Dom's inception of Mal]] work so well? Because he touched her totem to do it, which meant that even if they woke up, she could never be sure.

* At first glance, Ariadne's character might not seem very well-defined. But it's all a dream, and it's ''deliberate''. The only well-defined characters are the ones that Cobb knew from before he and Mal got stuck in limbo. It's established that he's known Arthur for awhile--Arthur has met Mal--and is likewise associated with Eames. It sounds like Arthur and Cobb both knew Eames from working with him awhile back, together, and Arthur is the one who knows that Eames is in Mombasa off the top of his head. Likewise, Cobb's father and Mal are well-defined, because he obviously knew them from before. Though, actually, if you think about it, the father's reactions seem a little too perfect and expected. Other characters like Ariadne, Yusuf, and Saito aren't nearly so well defined. We don't get a hint of their backstories. Ariadne acts almost more like a plot device than a character: her motivations and personality, such as her compassion for Cobb and wanting to keep her mind safe and know what she's getting into aren't stressed as much as they normally would be in a movie, leaving her more defined by how she affects Cobb. Yusuf is vaguely a cheery guy (who, ironically, has a day job running a business for people to go and dream to "wake up") who happens to be able to make just the drug they need. As for Saito, we know that he wants to dissolve Fischer's company, but we don't really know why, and he has a bullet in his chest most of the movie. There's all so undefined compared to the people Cobb already knew because they're projections! The other characters are, of course, also all projections, but Cobb has real people to base them on, so they have more depth and personality. Ariadne, Yusuf, and Saito are somewhat blatant plot-device characters.
** And given the underlying metaphor, they're shallow because they don't really exist. Either because they're projections, or just characters in a film, which amount to the same thing.
** To be frank, this sounds to me like you're trying to squeeze things to fit into the preconceived theory. What exactly makes Arthur, Eames, or Cobb's father-in-law "more defined" other than the vague backstory that they all somehow or other knew Cobb from before the film? We could just as easily tweak Yusuf's introduction around and have Cobb go "hey, I know this kickass chemist named Yusuf who could be useful to us," and that'd be pretty much the same thing as "oh hey, Eames is in Mombasa, and we need to go find him." And as for Saito, we ''do'' know what his motivation is; he's trying to prevent Fischer's mega-corp from monopolizing the world's energy supply, since even his own company is apparently powerless to compete. And then there's Robert Fischer himself. Cobb apparently never head of the guy until Saito approached him, yet he might very well be one of the characters we know ''most'' about in the entire film, second only to Cobb and Mal.
** I'm very confused as to why you think Ariadne isn't a well-defined character. I would argue she's more well-defined than pretty much any other character on the team, except maybe for Cobb.

** Sorry, but this does not explain Saito's guards at the beginning and near the end. It could be they simply manifested in Limbo, but at the same time that would fall under projecting.

* Saito seems to be a bit too trustful of Cobb, a man who was penetrating his subconscious to steal something from him, and Arthur's forgetfulness of [[spoiler: Fischer having been trained against extractors]] sounds fishy... unless it's all a ruse to force him to face the guilt he feels about Mal.
** I have a theory that either Cobb [[spoiler: brought the train through the middle of the dream sequence]] on purpose or that he knew that [[spoiler: Fischer has been trained against extractors]] and found a way to deliberately hide that information from Arthur.

* The relationship between Ariadne and Cobb is like a zillion other movies in which a young talent is recruited by a more experienced mentor, learns from them, realizes their shady intentions, then eventually must surpass them. Only this time, we're seeing it from the mentor's side! Which means, if this story were being told from the usual viewpoint, we'd see that [[spoiler: Cobb was always the villain of the movie, and Ariadne is the hero. Everything Cobb does, up until the very end, is done for selfish motives and endangers everyone around him. Whereas Ariadne selflessly goes along with the team to ensure their safety, and eventually saves them all (by realizing they can go deeper after Fischer is shot).]] Going back to the mentor/student relationship, you realize Cobb & Ariadne are a perfect mirror for [[spoiler: Bruce Wayne and Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins.]]
** Also, Ariadne is a competent, self-reliant, non-love-interest female character in a sci-fi film. How rare is that!?

* Cobb and Saito seem to form a strong bond throughout the film, and it’s never clearly stated where that bond comes from. Saito seems very interested in Cobb’s emotional problems, and Cobb doesn’t seem surprised by this. This troper had to see the movie four times before she finally realized why they have this bond. It starts right at the beginning, when Cobb and Arthur infiltrate Saito’s dreams, and Mal interferes. ''Saito spoke with Mal.'' We’re never told if it was Mal who informed Saito that he was dreaming, or if he’d known all along; but, we can bet that Mal told Saito some other things about Cobb. How did Saito know about Cobb’s situation, being separated from his children? Mal’s shade told him. When Saito asked Cobb to "take a leap of faith," repeating the words Mal once said in life, that was his way of telling Cobb that he had spoken with Mal. This is why Cobb never asks Saito how he knows so much about him.

** Also [[spoiler: Cobb mentions that "We all yearn for Catharsis". Guess what he does in Limbo?]]
** Cobb's idea wasn't negative in and of itself, however. Think ''Film/TheMatrix''.
* After watching the movie (and enjoying it thoroughly) this troper had a conversation with their friends about how the entire movie can be traced to being a metaphor for film-making. Cobb is the director; Arthur is the producer who does research; Saito is the producer with the money; Ariadne is the screenwriter and set designer; Eames is the actor; Yusuf is the cameraman, or special effects director who lures us into the movie; the projections are the audience who can either turn against the movie or endorse it; Fischer serves as the movie theater or projected audience. The parallels are astounding.

*** Ironic, considering how the movie ends.
*** ''Wired'' magazine actually had an article examining the movie from this point of view.

** Christopher Nolan gave an interview in Entertainment Weekly confirming this idea.

* In the movie, Ariadne is "The Architect", the person who builds and navigates the paradoxical puzzle of the dreamscape. In Greek Mythology, Ariadne (creator of Ariadne's String) was a Grecian Princess who could navigate the un-plotable, un-navigatable maze of Daedalus' Labyrinth, as could aforementioned string, leading the Greek Hero Theseus out of the Labyrinth. Unlike her mythological counterpart, the movie Ariadne is not dumped on an island after her usefulness runs out.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ZzYQbIZ_M The message just repeats: "Regret, regret, regret..."]]
** Marion Cotillard played Edith Piaf in ''La Vie en Rose''

** ...which leads to the last piece of Fridge Brilliance, at the very end of the credits - [[spoiler:the last song the ''audience'' hears before leaving the theater and returning to reality is Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien", whimsically suggesting that the entire film was a dream from which the audience was intended to awaken.]]
** [[spoiler: The entire ''Inception'' theme heavily samples the song in slow motion. So, basically, it's always playing.]]

* Near the end of the film, the team [[spoiler:rides up the kicks to get to the first level]]. Cobb said that [[spoiler: since the plane flight was 10 hours, they would stay in the first level for a week]] and that [[spoiler:they would not be able to last a week against Fischer's subconscious]]. And yet, it isn't explained how they get back to [[spoiler: the plane]]. Given, since they have already [[spoiler:performed the Inception, and changed Fischer's mind]], that might explain why they're not [[spoiler: all in Limbo]], but then what do they do with all that time?
** [[{{ToiletHumour}} Find a bathroom for Yusuf]]?

* The dreamworlds are set up to look like real world locations, and are grounded in reality. This makes sense, though, because a dreamworld based in reality would thus have projections who would have real-world weapons and equipment. Setting the dreamworlds in a real place with real-world physics limits the abilities of the projections and thus renders them controllable and predictable.

* Robert Fischer's father might be more on the level than we're lead to believe. We're told the name of the company is Fischer Morrow, but Maurice Fischer's business partner's name is Browning. So the name of the company makes no sense, until you remember that the the elder Fischer's name is ''Mau''rice and the younger Fischer's name is ''Ro''bert. [[strike:(Of course, the only time the film tells us the name of the company is when Eames is impersonating Browning, so this might just be another part of the inception plan.)]] Saito calls Fischer "heir to the Fischer Morrow energy conglomerate" when explaining the job in greater detail, so it's certainly possible.
*** Robert might ''not'' mistrust Browning. The message he got was not "Browning was keeping your father's desire for you to be your own man from you", but "Dad wanted you to be your own man". When he wakes up on Lvl 1, he immediately starts talking about a deeply personal topic with him. ''That'' Robert thinks the whole thing was just a dream during near-death experience, and Browning was kidnapped along with him, so when he wakes up for real, all he really remembers is the idea to break up the company.
** He definitely does mistrust Browning--it was his projection of Browning that admitted he was working with the kidnappers--but it's buried so deeply within his sub-conscience that he doesn't realize it when he wakes up.
*** But the team also worked to convince Fisher that Browning was mistrustful - Eames impersonated Browning and then Cobb planted suspicion during the "Mr. Charles" shtick.

* Arthur and Eames are hyper-badass in the hotel and snow levels, respectively. Of course, they're fairly badass already, but they take it almost up to eleven in those levels. And then it hit me: ''Eames and Arthur are the dreamers for their levels'', allowing them to bend reality around them. No ''wonder'' they're so effective; they're not architect-level {{Reality Warper}}s, but they're still able to twist the rules of the dream around to help them take down the projections in subtle but significant ways.
** The same is true for chemist-nerd Yusuf in his level.

* Your totem tells you whether or not you're in someone else's dream. If the question is, "is it all Dom's dream?", then it's irrelevant whether the top falls at the end.

** It can also be attributed to the fact that [[spoiler:he left the Mal's dream totem spinning in the safe of her mind, so she would be willing to wake up from limbo. However, Mal's totem never stopped spinning after they woke up, which caused her continual doubt of reality that led to her death.]]

* The first time I saw the movie, I was a little disappointed at how Ariadne's character wasn't very well-defined. But, you know, the movie was great and I could get over it. Then, I went and saw it again, a few weeks later, and it hit me (along with a lot of other subtle things). It's all a dream, and it's ''deliberate''. The only well-defined characters are the ones that Cobb knew from before he and Mal got stuck in limbo. It's established that he's known Arthur for awhile--Arthur has met Mal--and is likewise associated with Eames. It sounds like Arthur and Cobb both knew Eames from working with him awhile back, together, and Arthur is the one who knows that Eames is in Mombasa off the top of his head. Likewise, Cobb's father and Mal are well-defined, because he obviously knew them from before. Though, actually, if you think about it, the father's reactions seem a little too perfect and expected. Other characters like Ariadne, Yusuf, and Saito aren't nearly so well defined. We don't get a hint of their backstories. Ariadne acts almost more like a plot device than a character: her motivations and personality, such as her compassion for Cobb and wanting to keep her mind safe and know what she's getting into aren't stressed as much as they normally would be in a movie, leaving her more defined by how she affects Cobb. Yusuf is vaguely a cheery guy (who, ironically, has a day job running a business for people to go and dream to "wake up") who happens to be able to make just the drug they need. As for Saito, we know that he wants to dissolve Fischer's company, but we don't really know why, and he has a bullet in his chest most of the movie. There's all so undefined compared to the people Cobb already knew because they're projections! The other characters are, of course, also all projections, but Cobb has real people to base them on, so they have more depth and personality. Ariadne, Yusuf, and Saito are literally somewhat blatant plot-device characters.

** Or his calm reaction is due to it being a dream. Even before you realize you're dreaming, your reactions to such don't always make sense. Thus, he could have just been feeling unpanicked due to his subconscious sensing he's just in a weird dream.

** The ending can also be thought of in a different light of brilliance: [[spoiler: Upon seeing the ending with the top still spinning, the audience's initial thought impulse is whether it's still a dream or not. However, they do not think that the most important thing is that Cobb, upon seeing his kids' faces, realized it doesn't matter if the top stops spinning or not -- something which he has been obsessive about since the beginning of the film. Him walking away without looking back to check the result is his way of saying it doesn't matter if it's a dream or not; his kids are there and he's happy, and in the end, that's what matters, in this realm of reality or the next. A better ending than any twist.]]
*** I would have bought into this interpretation if it hadn't been for the scene with Mal, where Cobb specifically states that "dream-Mal" is just a pale shadow of the real one and thus doesn't merit staying with her in Limbo. Why should it be different here?
** Chris Nolan actually confirmed this.

* [[spoiler: It does not even matter if Cobb's totem falls or not. Because he no longer uses his own totem he will NEVER be able to truly tell if he's in the dream state or not — he can't be sure what it feels like to spin the top except at the state we see most of the movie. And we never see him use his old one to be truly certain. ]]
** No, it doesn't matter, but not for that reason: [[spoiler: if he ''is'' in the real world, then obviously the behavior of the top is irrelevant, since it will behave according to real world physics and fall down like any top rather than symbolically fall down when certain mental events take place inside his head. So the whole thing is, intentionally or not, a moot point that doesn't prove anything one way or another even if the top ''is'' about to fall. Of course, even ''that'' is moot if you interpret the moment as ''purely'' symbolic....]]
*** It doesn't matter for yet another reason- [[spoiler: Assuming that the entire movie is not a dream, then regardless of whether or not Cobb is in a dream in his final scene, he'll still be waking up in the real world on the airplane eventually. The only thing that's really at stake for him is his mental state when he finally does awake on the plane. Alternatively, if the entire movie is a dream then it doesn't matter how long Cobb spends in any one level, since none of it is real to begin with. ]]

* Whoever hosts the dream world can not go deeper than said dream world, and thus makes them the ideal candidate to initiate the kick for anyone one level further down: Yusuf hosts the van level (his failure to go to the bathroom makes it rain inside this level), Arthur hosts the hotel level (allowing him to use his favored paradox staircase trick), Eames hosts the snow level.
** I want to combine this with a previous idea. If whoever hosts the dream cannot go deeper and [[spoiler: the movie could be a dream, who is hosting it? It can't be Cobb, because he goes deeper. It can't be the audience, we go deeper as well. Missed brilliance?]]
*** [[spoiler: Michael Caine? It did say that he also had experience with this kind of thing. Maybe we're all just figments of Michael Caine's imagination.]]

*** Which is why I proposed the theory that a host can go into deeper dream levels, but can't host another dream (because that could create a recursive dream loop). It can be done, it's just... dangerous.

*** That's just under heavy sedation though.

*** The dream hosts for each level remain at that level to initiate the kick, due to the overly precise timing required to return to the top level as quickly as possible. When Mal and Cobb were experimenting, they didn't need any such kick as they were only riding out the natural length of the dream.
*** Is there any specific reason why it had to be specifically dream hosts staying behind and initiating the kick though?

*** Oh, brilliant! I never thought of the enclosed environment thing!

* The movie has successfully ''incepted'' in its audience the idea that [[spoiler:it might have been AllJustADream]] by the end. As described in the movie, you can't shake the idea, and while some people might think they're being really clever by exposing that theory, in reality it's not their own idea: the movie purposefully set out to give it to them.

* The title itself is pretty clever once you think about it: "Inception" is a word that means "Beginning" and once an idea - ''any'' idea - is Incepted into a person's mind by that one beginning, it will continue to grow, since the whole implication of a beginning hints at forward movement, which is why the Inception is usually so dangerous since it (the idea incepted) becomes the whole of that person's world - essentially, it is their beginning.

* Early on Cobb immediately vetoes the idea of [[spoiler: making Fisher break up the company out of spite because, he claims, it's easier to make the mind accept a positive idea because people long for catharsis. Easy enough to accept at face value, but once we finally learn his whole story there's another good reason for him to write the idea off; he knows better than anyone just how badly implanting a negative idea can go wrong and wants to make sure that if the implanted idea keeps growing in Fisher's mind it'll be something that bolsters him instead of setting off an avalanche of daddy issues.]]

-->'''Saito:''' You remind me of someone... a man I met in a half-remembered dream. He was possessed of some radical notions.

* Robert Fischer has a militarized subconscious that assaults outsiders unprovoked. According to Cobb this is the sort of training people can receive to resist extractors like themselves stealing information but it also never showed in the research which it should have. Cobb was extremely angry over this stating it like this was an obvious thing to miss which brings up an interesting possibility, Robert was never actually trained his subconscious mind is militarized like this due to his home life as a coping mechanism.
** Alternately, Fischer hired someone off the books to train him. Given how extractors are looked down upon and the risks of the dreamscape. In the US and Australia, the drugs needed would be heavily controlled - but not out of reach for someone as rich as Fischer. He just hired someone to train his subconscious, but it was someone not as good as Cobb.
* Some of the characters' names are a bit on the nose (eg. Mal is French for bad), but put all their first names together and you get "DREAMS".
** That only works if we conveniently add certain characters (Why Robert, other than the fact that it adds an R?) and if we forget other characters (Yusuf, and either Ariadne or Arthur, depending on who the A stands for).
*** Robert is a main character. Going by the "Inception is a metaphor for filmmaking" below, it makes sense that Yusuf is the forgotten cameraman or special effects director. Especially apposite if you look at [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/25/oscars-protest-life-of-pi the way the]] ''Film/LifeOfPi'' [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/25/oscars-protest-life-of-pi SFX folks were treated]].
*** Try this one: if you include Fischer's godfather, '''Peter''' Browning, you can get '''D'''(ominic Cobb), '''R'''(obert Fischer), '''E'''(ames), '''A'''(rthur), '''M'''(al), '''S'''(aito), '''P'''(eter Browning), '''A'''(riadne), '''Y'''(usuf). Given the success of the movie, "DREAMS PAY."
* Ariadne may have actually inadvertently ''caused'' the train incident at the first level. Every other time when something Mal related projection showed up it was actually her and/or the children. After Ariadne realizes that Cobb's subconscious is beyond militarized to outright hostile, she give him an ultimatum that someone had to go in knowing the truth. And before they are even finished talking, they literally have to leave for the job. So what was the last thing Cobb actually experienced dream-wise - Mal, the train riddle and the prison of memories. Morally? He chose to take Ariadne in after ''promising'' not to. So other than general worries about Inception, his last conscious and subconscious issues are literally dealing with both Ariadne and Mal. How did he save Ariadne from Mal? Answering the train riddle. ''Hello big huge train fucking up Ariadne's first level'' because Cobb is still panicking and feels even more guilt now that someone knows the truth and he's basically taking them on a subconscious death ride.
* Possibly Fridge Horror. We all know how Mal's time spent in Limbo and the sudden knowledge/remembrance that everything she knew and remembered was in fact a dream led to her believing everything in reality was also a dream. Cobb and her woke up by killing themselves, and in reality this event caused her suicide, as she was thinking that she would simply "wake up" again. Think about Saito. He spent just as long in Limbo, in fact, most likely longer due to how aged he looks, and he suddenly remembers due to Cobb's appearance that it is all a dream. How do Cobb and Saito wake up from this dream? By shooting themselves with the gun that was on the table, presumably. So now Saito has been trapped in Limbo for decades (as he perceives it), shocked with the knowledge that it is all a dream, and killed himself in the dream in order to wake up and return to reality. What happened to Mal after an identical series of events? She thought reality was also a dream, and killed herself again. Just to support this thinking, look at Saito's face in the last few frames he is present.
** However, Mal was ''forced'' to take on the idea that the world wasn't real; Cobb had given her that in an inception, and, as he says, it grew to consume her, define her, control her and eventually destroy her. Saito had no such inception - while he may not be entirely balanced, he won't fall into the same depths of madness that Mal did.
*** Not to mention that Saito had the whole agreement-honoring pledge to anchor his perceptions; he just needed to be reminded of it.
*** A bit of FridgeHorror kicked in after rewatching that scene. Cobb tries to give the "world you live in is not real" line to Saito. ''He almost implanted the same thought that killed Mal.'' Fortunately, Saito focused on the "promise" for the phone call, not the "reality is not real" thought. Cobb ran with it. What's the first thing Saito does upon waking up? Pull out his phone. Cobb pulled off not one, but ''two'' inceptions. Horror, meet brilliance.
*** Simply saying the line is not an inception, for the same reason that they can't simply tell Fisher to break up his father's empire: the mind can always trace the genesis of the idea. Saito listens to him because he remembers Cobb from the real world, and makes the decision that Limbo isn't the real world himself, so there was no danger of him developing the same obsession the way Mal had.

* Fischer has such a blase attitude when he gets kidnapped. Most people when they get kidnapped would be horrified, frightened and desperate. But Fischer blows off the kidnappers easily, calmly offering his money and not caring about what happens. This makes sense if he's been kidnapped before in order to threaten his father. Which begs the question, how often has he been kidnapped before? How many times must a person be kidnapped before they get this blase about it? How young was Fischer when he was first kidnapped? Fridge Horror is clearly in play here.
** Possibly he didn't actually think he was being kidnapped in the first few seconds, he thought he was being ''robbed''. That's why he held out his wallet, expecting they'd grab it (and "Mr. Charles's" too perhaps) and leave.
** He's had training in how to deal with dream invaders, it's very likely that he's had extensive training in "how to behave when you are kidnapped" in real life as well.
** Or he's just acting calmly due to it being a dream. Even before you realize you're dreaming, your reactions to such don't always make sense. Thus, he could have just been acting calmy due to just being in a weird dream

* Someone asked me about the end: Specifically, why [[spoiler: Fischer doesn't just wake up when he's supposed to, think "Oh well, was just a dream" and maintains the family business. Soon afterwards I realized why: near the end of the inception, Fischer walks into the guarded room. You know that it worked because of what was in there - perhaps Ariadne could've built the bed and the safe, etc. etc. but she could not control projections, and Eames said he'd like to know what was in there earlier, thus he was not forging Maurice Fischer. So Maurice being in the room, what Maurice said, and possibly even the toy in the safe meant that they were successful.]]
** One scene, Ariadne tries to tell Cobb about "making the room a hospital, to symbolize Fischer's father." There is no hospital except the one in the vault. She designed the vault and the hospital inside it (very quickly, it seems since it looked like a Holodeck from ''Star Trek''). Everything else was projected in there.


* At the end of the movie, [[spoiler: Cobb's totem starts to wobble. This could either mean he is in the real world, or he has come to accept his dream world as his reality.]]
** The final shot [[spoiler: cuts away just as the top is about to fall-- the viewer gets to be the judge as to whether it does or not, and thus whether he's still dreaming or not. Also, the camera lingers on the top for quite a while, building up whether it was going to fall or not-- and then we never get to find out. It's a big mental douse of cold water, aka ''our kick'', what takes the ''audience'' from the dream world of the film into reality.]]

** At least you know that you may kill yourself if things go really awry, and be done with it. Unless your client and subject suddenly announces that they're using heavy sedation... and then you're screwed.

* If you subscribe to the theory that Inception is about filmmaking, and the projections/marks are the audience, then Cobb's Mr. Charles gambit is {{Lampshading}}. Arthur disapproves because he ''calls attention to the fact that it's a dream'', especially ''strange or incongruent aspects of the dream,'' and on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki the definition of LampshadeHanging is to call attention to something that threatens WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief, rather than trying to hide it. The purpose is to get the mark to trust Cobb - and really, isn't one of the best ways to make a moment in a film seem more meaningful to play up something obviously camp or silly in contrast first?

* Arthur and Eames are hyper-badass in the hotel and snow levels, respectively. Of course, they're fairly badass already, but they take it almost UpToEleven in those levels. And then it hit me: ''Eames and Arthur are the dreamers for their levels'', allowing them to bend reality around them. No ''wonder'' they're so effective; they're not architect-level {{Reality Warper}}s, but they're still able to twist the rules of the dream around to help them take down the projections in subtle but significant ways.

*** I would have bought this interpretation if it hadn't been for the scene with Mal, where Cobb specifically states that "dream-Mal" is just a pale shadow of the real one and thus doesn't merit staying with her in Limbo. Why should it be different here?

* Dream sharing relies on the architect to build the dream and the subject to populate it with their subconscious. This potentially lends itself to all sorts of... interesting applications in every field of business from simple therapy to the oldest profession. Now suppose your target or dreamer has a serious mental disorder or something similar before you go inside now you've just openly unleashed their subconscious and you're trapped inside with it.

** And given the underlying metaphor, they're shallow because they don't really exist. Either because they're projections, or just characters in a film, which amount to the same thing. -- Jonn

*** It's possible that they had arranged a further "kick" to bring them out--since it was a sensation of falling, it could have been something as simple as the pilot pushing down hard on the stick for a second. Although how they'd arrange the timing of that to match when they needed to come out is a whole different question...
** Possibly the flight attendant was monitoring their vital signs throughout the mission, and was under orders to unhook them from the equipment once everyone's heart rates and brainwaves indicated they'd calmed down after the completion of their objective. Cobb and Fischer didn't wake up until the flight ended because both men were just plain ''exhausted'' from the dream's intensity, and badly needed some ''non''-dreaming sleep.