Inception/Trivia

"inception — n. the beginning, as of a project or undertaking"

"I've been asked the question [about the ending] more times than I've ever been asked any other question about any other film I've made... What's funny to me is that people really do expect me to answer it."
 * Actor Allusion:
 * As in The Dark Knight Saga, Christopher Nolan makes Cillian Murphy wear a bag on his head.
 * Cobb mentions in one scene that extradition between America and France is a bureaucratic nightmare. In Catch Me If You Can, one of Leo's previous roles, he played an American conman who was extradited from a French jail. Leo also encounters his love interest early on as she stands by a railing and contemplates suicide.
 * Leo also washes up on a beach shore, as mentioned below.
 * Marion Cotillard was cast as Mal. She also won an Oscar for playing Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. Edith Piaf, by the way, was the French singer who performed the song "Je ne Regrette Rien", also known as the music which the crew played for the kick.
 * All-Star Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elliot Page, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, and Tom Berenger. And Pete Postlethwaite, one of his last roles.
 * Allusion: In The Bridge on the River Kwai there is a Japanese man named "Saito" who is filled with regret over the actions of one of his subordinates in regard to the building of a structure that at first crumbles because its foundation is built on mud in the midst of a jungle where there is no escape.
 * Beam Me Up, Scotty: "Inception" has now become the term for whenever one object is placed inside an identical object, referencing the "dream within a dream" plot. "Inception" actually refers to planting an idea in the person's subconscious -- the "dream within a dream" plan was just a method of performing the inception.
 * "We need/have to go deeper" is used in Image Macros and as a meme of the movie despite not appearing in the film.
 * Doing It for the Art:
 * This film was Nolan's baby, his decade-long dream project. You can see how much he loved what could have been an action-heist film, and how much enthusiasm the cast and crew had for him and the story. It's a real life heartwarmer, showing that there is a place for New Hollywood-style, auteur-driven projects. That said, making an art film after making a hundreds of millions of dollars for your backers with The Dark Knight is more likely to work than coming in off the street. In fact, Inception is the reason Nolan took on The Dark Knight Saga to begin with. When working on the drafts for Inception, he realized he could not do it on a small-scale budget, and needed to get some experience with large-scale films, as well as every mainstream film he did that succeeded financially would make it that much easier for a studio to back whatever budget and resources he would need.
 * To add to that, Nolan tried as far as possible to film the spectacular effects in-camera, opting to use CGI to edit and enhance as opposed to entirely create. Massive props have to go to Chris Corbould, the special effects supervisor on the film who had to figure out how to achieve all the things (that had such a high Holy Shit Quotient) with practical effects. For example, the scene in the hotel bar with the slanting water levels was achieved with a hydraulically-controlled set that could tilt at a 25-degree angle, while the camera was anchored to the ground. Similarly, the zero-gravity fight in the hotel corridor was achieved with a rotating set, while the camera was kept level relative to the set. The effect was so amazing that the film's editor, Lee Smith, admits to being stunned and disoriented the first time he saw the footage. Also, the snow-fortress-hospital was built full-scale in the Canadian Rockies and blown up for real - along with a smaller scale model built in the studio parking lot. The atomizing streets of Paris were done with air cannons and rigs on an actual Paris street and the water flooding Saito's castle at the start of the film was accomplished with air cannons creating high-pressure jets of water.
 * The Penrose steps Arthur shows Ariadne? No CG trickery, they built the staircase then used the precise scaling angle for the camera to show off the optical illusion.
 * Also, he refused the studio's wish to have the movie converted to 3D as he isn't satisfied with the image quality of 3D.
 * Enforced Method Acting: If this is to be believed.
 * Fake Nationality: Cillian Murphy, an Irishman, playing the Australian (judging by his passport) or American (judging by his accent; he could well be of mixed heritage) Robert Fischer. Presumably this applies to English actor Pete Postlethwaite (who plays Fischer's father) and Elliot Page as well, but their characters don't have their nationalities stated outright. Another possible example is Indian American Dileep Rao, who plays a vaguely Arab character called Yusuf.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!:
 * Jack Dawson, who dropped Rose for John Dillinger's girlfriend Edith Piaf.
 * ... and then, judging by the first scene, survived the Titanic sinking to wash up in Japan... breaking both space and time...
 * Apparently, Brendan Frye stayed in the private eye biz after high school; but it's too bad what happened to The Pin...
 * In fairness, The Pin did get the carpet wrong....
 * Hey, it's that Criminal Minds UnSub from the first two episodes.
 * Ra's Al Ghul, Alfred, Scarecrow.
 * Juno is doing all right for herself.
 * Tom Hansen got over Summer and is now following his dreams.
 * Annabelle Fritton certainly grew up and filled out well, hasn't she? Unless you remember her as Miss Evangelista from the Library two-parter.
 * Kitty Pryde has gone from walking through walls to bending Paris.
 * Dr. Max Patel/That fortune-teller who called forth a demon goat.
 * Keyser Soze's lawyer Kobayashi is the father of the Scarecrow.
 * And Barnes is his right hand man.
 * Friar Lawrence says: Our Romeo hath not been in bed tonight. (Yes, but he still dreamt a dream tonight... That dreamers often lie.)
 * Did Shinzon just call Tommy "darling"?
 * Miles's granddaughter is also the Damsel Scrappy's daughter. Oh my god: Alfred is Jack Bauer.
 * That one guy who gave Arthur so much trouble in the hotel corridor? Private Mailer.
 * Jossed: If Sir Michael Caine is to be believed,
 * More than a few fans have been resorting to Death of the Author on this matter.
 * Magnum Opus Dissonance: This film was Nolan's dream project and it did pay off and became highly successful and appreciated...it's just that The Dark Knight Saga still overshadows it when it comes to Nolan's résumé.
 * Name's the Same: Nolan previously used the name Cobb in his first film Following.
 * Shout-Out: Has its own page.
 * Shrug of God: Basically Nolan's entire stance on the ending.


 * In his own mind, though, the ending is real, but he feels this shouldn't be everyone's interpretation.
 * Throw It In:
 * "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." According to an interview with Tom Hardy, he was supposed to use Arthur's name and "darling" just slipped out. Nolan liked it, so it stayed, even getting trailer time. And the slashers rejoiced. One assumes that was unintentional.
 * Also with Arthur kissing Ariadne. Apparently this wasn't in the original script, so one wonders what inspired Nolan to give it a shot...
 * Nolan likes toying with shippers, of both the slash and het varieties, apparently.
 * Viral Marketing: In the Nolan tradition, there's several campaigns up and running, including anti-Mind Crime posters marked with QR reader marks containing links to viral websites.
 * What Could Have Been: James Franco was originally cast as Arthur, he had to back out because of scheduling conflicts. Nolan's first choices for Ariadne and Browning were Evan Rachel Wood and Don Johnson, respectively, but both declined.
 * Word of God: It would seem that the costume designer (of all people) may have inadvertently revealed Nolan's intended ending. Here be spoilers:
 * Michael Caine as well.
 * And finally, Nolan himself. He claims that, as far as he's concerned, Cobb is in the real world, but that the real meaning of the scene is that Cobb has left his totem behind and that it no longer has any meaning for him. ...Of course, that doesn't really clarify anything. However, he himself does admit he's biased toward the "real world" ending since he's a father himself, and points out that interpretation of the ending may fall along those lines. And the fact that the guy who wrote and directed the movie only has an interpretation of the ending just serves to underscore that there's no definitive answer to the question of whether the top was going to stop spinning or not.
 * Word of Saint Paul:
 * When interviewed about his role, Michael Caine asserted that any scene that included him was one guaranteed to be in the real world. This either explains the film or makes the Mind Screw even more confusing.
 * A costume designer stated that the last scene showing Cobb's children in fact used different children from an earlier scene and they were wearing slightly different shirts, which suggests that the final scene isn't a dream.
 * X Meets Y
 * The Escapist pegs it as "If Freddy Krueger was James Bond".
 * Paprika or eXistenZ meets Ocean's Eleven.
 * A quote that is used prominently in TV spots called it James Bond meets The Matrix, pulled from Peter Travers's review in Rolling Stone.
 * Nolan says, it's James Bond meets Dark City.
 * Ocean's 11 / Catch Me If You Can meets Dark City.
 * According to CollegeHumor: The integral of (The Departed + The Matrix)^2 x (Minority Report + Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind + Shutter Island + The Dark Knight) + Juno = Inception
 * Ocean's Eleven meets Psychonauts.
 * The role of an Architect is like playing a mix of Psychonauts and LittleBigPlanet.
 * It's a heist movie...written by Philip K. Dick.
 * James Bond meets Ghost in the Shell
 * Ink and The Matrix.
 * All of the above with a dash of Silent Hill 2.
 * Mal herself is the mix of Agent Smith and Pyramid Head.
 * Plus some Edith Piaf in the mix.