History YMMV / Inception

* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: The chord progression of "Time" sounds a lot like the chord progression in "Candy" by Music/PaoloNutini.

** Fischer Jr. The poor guy doesn't know a damn thing and gets dragged into this dreamy mess just because a rival businessman wants him to split his company. He longs for the respect and affection of his dad whose last words were that he was a disappointment, and then Cobb's team hijacks his mind, injects a completely engineered and probably false solution to his daddy issues and makes him believe what Saito wants him to believe. Plus, what with the seed of doubt the team planted in him for their own ends, he will most likely come to distrust his godfather from now on -- the only family he has left, and who in the real world has shown nothing but genuine care for him.

** After Page came out of the closet, you have to wonder if Ariadne and Arthur's attempt to distract the dream characters with a kiss only failed because Ariadne couldn't sell it. Ditto Mal sensuously asking if she's ever been a lover. Page later said he felt most of his characters were queer, even if they didn't realize it.

** [[BollywoodNerd Yusuf]] is a brilliant chemist recruited by Dominic Cobb to help with the inception of Robert Fischer. Yusuf developed a sedative powerful enough to allow for several layers of dreams, running a business where people come to be kept asleep for most of the day. Yusuf becomes the dreamer of the first layer of Fischer’s dream and when the team is attacked by militarized projections, he is left to protect them while they go into deeper layers. With his quick thinking Yusuf is able to fend off the projections long enough for the team to get the job done before he gives them the kick to wake them up, [[FlippingTheBird flipping off his attackers]] as he does so.

** The two female leads were up against each other for the UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Motion Picture" in the same year: Creator/ElliotPage for ''Film/{{Juno}}'' and Creator/MarionCotillard for ''Film/LaVieEnRose''. Cotillard won, [[spoiler: but Page got his revenge. In ''Inception'', his character shoots Marion's.]]

** After Page came out of the closet, you have to wonder if Ariadne and Arthur's attempt to distract the dream characters with a kiss only failed because Ariadne couldn't sell it. Ditto Mal sensuously asking if she's ever been a lover. Page later said he felt most of his characters were queer, even if they didn't realise it.

** The film opens with Leonardo Dicaprio washing ashore on a beach. ''Film/{{Titanic}}'' ended with Leonardo Dicaprio dying in the sea. Cue plenty of Memetic Mutation about Jack Dawson floating in the ocean for years before making it back to land again, often jokingly portraying him as mad at Rose for ditching him.

** Mal walking close to Ariadne and asking her if she knows what it's like to be a lover (which undoubtedly becomes even stronger in light of Creator/ElliotPage coming out in as a lesbian in real life). ItMakesSenseInContext.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Mal, or at least Cobb's projection of her, can wind up being this to anyone who becomes frustrated with her tendency to cause him to make IdiotBall-level decisions. [[spoiler:There ''is'' the angle that she lost the ability to distinguish between dreams and reality, but she ''chose'' to forget it in the first place, and ends up killing Fischer to force Cobb to stay with her in Limbo, which are the real deal breakers.]]

* SpiritualAdaptation:
** If not for the present-day setting and distinct lack of {{Artificial Intelligence}}s, this movie could easily be a film adaptation of Creator/WilliamGibson's ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'' (and maybe [[DevelopmentHell the only one that we ever get to see]]). A thief who specializes in stealing data with a machine that puts him in lifelike VR simulations? Check. A mysterious businessman who gives said thief {{one last job}} in exchange for erasing the effects of a major screw-up from his past? Check. [[TheCaper An elaborate heist]] in an ornately designed building with [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} weird architecture]] and {{gravity|Screw}}? Check. Scenes where the protagonist is repeatedly visited by the hallucinatory ghost of [[TheLostLenore his dead lover]]? Check. A scene where the protagonist gets trapped in a virtual construct of a surreal seaside locale where [[YearInsideHourOutside time moves at a crawl]]? Check.
** Some people have also considered this a SpiritualLicensee to Creator/PhilipKDick's ''Literature/{{Ubik}}'', as they share similar themes about the nature of reality (as well as recursive levels of {{Reality Warp|er}}ing) and almost identical OrWasItADream {{Gainax Ending}}s. If not for the fact that Creator/MichelGondry (of ''Film/EternalSunshineOfTheSpotlessMind'' fame) has been attached to a film adaptation of ''Ubik'', it would be easy to snark that ''Inception'' is likely the closest we'll ever get to a film of the novel.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Mal, or at least Cobb's projection of her, can wind up being this to anyone who becomes frustrated with her tendency to cause him to make WhatAnIdiot-level decisions. [[spoiler:There ''is'' the angle that she lost the ability to distinguish between dreams and reality, but she ''chose'' to forget it in the first place, and ends up killing Fischer to force Cobb to stay with her in Limbo, which are the real deal breakers.]]

* WhatAnIdiot: In general, anything to do with Mal hands Cobb the IdiotBall.
** The biggest example is Dom demanding Ariadne tell him about the bypass in the snow base. He says there's no time, and demands that she tell him, but he doesn't even relay it to the team; he tells her to tell them. All he's doing is adding a step while she tells him, thus wasting time, and more importantly making sure that Mal knows the bypass as well.
** [[spoiler:Cobb refusing to shoot the evil projection of Mal before she shoots Fischer, dragging him down into limbo, despite having known for years that she is just a projection, making his "How do you know that?" to Ariadne pointing this out to him making him look even more stupid.]]
** [[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.]]

** [[HeartbrokenBadass Dominic "Dom" Cobb]] is the world's greatest "[[DreamStealer Extractor]]", who is hired by [[Fiction500 Saito]] to do the near-impossible job of performing an inception: the act of implanting an idea instead of stealing one within the mind, in exchange for being exonerated for the death of his wife that he was framed for. Assembling the best possible team for the task from all over the world while adeptly avoiding the agents of his internationally connected previous employer, Cobb is able to cleverly maneuver his BadassCrew through the unexpected obstacles that appear within various levels of the target's dreams. After managing to convince their target, Robert Fischer, that he's a projection of his mind along with his crew and getting him to join and aid the group in pulling off the job, Cobb is forced to go into [[LotusEaterMachine limbo]] and confront "[[BigBad Mal]]", overcoming and ending her influence on his psyche before going on to save Saito from the limbo after the inception has been properly inserted, [[EarnYourHappyEnding being last seen finally free to see his children again and able to move on from his wife's tragic suicide.]]