Inception



""What's the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? [...] An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold in the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood? That sticks.""

- Dom Cobb

Inception, a 2010 film from director Christopher Nolan, works like a heist film in reverse: instead of taking something, the main character must leave something behind.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio) works as a freelance "extractor": using a briefcase-full of Applied Phlebotinum and several allies to help him, Cobb enters his targets' dreams and steals valuable information. Cobb's extraction skills make him a great thief, but they've also made him a fugitive, leaving him unable to return home to his family. When an attempt to extract information from a Japanese businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) goes wrong, Cobb goes on the run from his current employers.

Saito catches up with Cobb and makes the extractor an offer: his status as a fugitive will be wiped clean -- which would allow him to go home -- if he can manage to perform an inception on one of Saito's rivals. Whereas extraction involves stealing ideas or information already in somebody's head, inception involves the insertion of an idea into someone's head in a way where the target believes they independently conceived the idea.

Dom accepts Saito's proposal, even though it has one small catch: nobody has ever pulled off a successful inception.

To attempt the impossible, Cobb assembles a Badass Crew of experts: longtime extraction partner Arthur, dreamworld-building architect Ariadne, expert forger Eames, and chemist Yusuf (who devises the compounds that make extraction possible). Cobb's group works their way into the target's mind, but a complication Cobb failed to warn them about arises: inside the dream world, Cobb's own subconscious makes for a worse enemy than their target's.

Nolan wants to make a game set in the movie's universe. (Obviously, the game will have four levels.)

A-G

 * Action Prologue
 * Actor Allusion:
 * 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.
 * This isn't the first time Leonardo Di Caprio runs away to France in order to avoid being caught by US authorities...
 * Air Vent Passageway: 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 in that they were only there because Eames deliberately had Ariadne install them.
 * Alien Geometries: One of the architect's tasks is setting up Escheresque loops in the dream world, in order to confuse and trap the projections if they become hostile.
 * All Just a Dream: Played with. From the perspective of one level of the dream world higher, whatever happens in each dream layer is All Just a Dream, but things that happen while you're dreaming can have very real results in the real world. Also, one theory surrounding the film is that.
 * Well,, and Word of God vaguely alludes to this as well. But Caine's theory hasn't stopped people from coming up with their own interpretations of the ending.
 * All-Star Cast: Leonardo Di Caprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, and Tom Berenger. And Pete Postlethwaite one of his last roles.
 * Aluminium Christmas Trees: A top actually CAN spin for a really long time, depending on the design.
 * Ambiguously Gay: Eames.
 * Ambiguous Situation:
 * The movie ends with
 * This is also invoked (earlier in the film) by Mal and Cobb, who keep taking opposing standpoints on This Is Reality versus All Just a Dream.
 * Anachronic Order: Not to the level of previous Nolan films, but.
 * And I Must Scream: Limbo.
 * Anti-Hero: Both Cobb and Saito have rather selfish motives for messing with Robert Fischer's subconscious, and all the other team members are motivated by either money, curiosity, the thrill of the challenge, or a combination of all these.
 * Even if you put aside their selfish motives, the team's remarkably deceptive and manipulative methods are morally questionable, to say the least.
 * Anti-Villain: Mal, in a fashion.
 * The Apple Falls Far: Mal's shoe plummeting dozens of stories to the street below
 * Applied Phlebotinum:
 * The dreamshare suitcase containing the apparatuses, wires, and a big yellow button. According to supplemental materials, it is called the Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous Device (PASIV).
 * The yellow sedative to stabilize the dreamer by putting him into a deep sleep. A sleep so deep that all sensory input is just about muted, with the precise exception of their inner-ear sense of falling.
 * There seems to be a wide variety of sedatives that can be used for various purposes. The sedative mentioned here, that leaves inner-ear function intact, is but one example. Another is the sedative used when Cobb and Arthur, that leaves the dreamers able to feel water. The sedative used on the train does not appear to have any sensory gaps, aside from a vague sense of hearing.
 * In the movie it is mentioned that the technology was first created for military applications as a training simulation.
 * Arbitrarily-Large Bank Account: Saito uses his to buy the entire airline for the single airplane they're infiltrating. Purchasing an entire airline in under a month, cash, without attracting attention, would require a staggering amount of money.
 * Arc Number: 528-491. Amusingly, it means absolutely nothing, being just the first six numbers Fischer thought of. As they go deeper and deeper into the dreams, though, Fischer's subconscious starts giving them importance, because hey, he was thinking about those six numbers.
 * Arc Words:
 * "You're waiting for a train..."
 * "... an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone."
 * "We can be young men together again."
 * "...take a leap of faith"
 * "Non, rien de rien / Non, je ne regrette rien..."
 * "This world is not real." or some variant of the word.
 * "You said you dreamt that we would grow old together."
 * Cobb's comparisons of an idea to a virus only really hit home in Act III.
 * Astral Checkerboard Decor: The snow fortress in the third level has floors with this pattern.
 * Audience Surrogate: Ariadne. In a refreshing twist on the trope, she doesn't just sit there and ask questions so that the more experienced characters can provide exposition. She catches on to the idea of dream-sharing rather quickly, and makes an effort to sway Cobb from his self-destructive course. Not to mention that it's her idea to after Cobb and Eames have basically given up. In short, she's a character who behaves exactly as the audience likes to believe they would in that situation.
 * Australian Accent: Quite a few, as the old man Fischer dies in Sydney.
 * Author Avatar: Cobb, if you favor the inception-as-metaphor-for-filmmaking interpretation.
 * Ax Crazy: Mal, to an extent, in the film.
 * Badass Bookworm: Arthur. Cobb mentions that he's in charge of doing the research, and he's smart enough to figure out how to simulate falling in zero gravity. He's also badass enough to pull it off, in limited time, while fighting off mooks. Again, in zero gravity.
 * Ariadne. At least she gives off the vibe. Plus she designs all the dream levels, complex enough that if Mal hadn't showed up to screw everything up, the mission most likely would have gone smoothly.
 * Badass Crew: The Inception team. Especially Arthur and Eames.
 * Badass in A Nice Suit/Sharp-Dressed Man: Practically everyone, though Arthur kicking ass and taking names in his Waistcoat of Style is a standout example.
 * Batman Gambit:
 * "Mr. Charles" -- . This plan would only attract attention from the hostile projections once they become aware they're in a dream, thus increasing the danger for everyone involved. Indeed, it's actually shown that last time this was tried, it backfired horribly for Cobb, Arthur, and their crew.
 * Nolan's plan for getting the film made also seems to have elements of this. Bonus points for actually using Batman in the Batman Gambit.
 * Battle in The Center of The Mind: Quite a few.
 * Bavarian Fire Drill: Cobb pretending to be Fischer's security expert in the bar scene, which leads to Come With Me If You Want to Live.
 * 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.
 * Better Than a Bare Bulb: In-story. The Mr. Charles gambit:
 * Beyond the Impossible: clearly state that two levels deep is the maximum stable level. This means anything deeper would send you into Limbo. The Five-Man Band breaks that rule by using Applied Phlebotinum to tweak the rules and reach a third.
 * There's so many levels in regards to the movie as whole, its hard to tell what level they're on without Word of God. The pages Headscratchers has more speculation about how dreams are supposed to work and whether or not that logic is broken.
 * BFG: The grenade launcher Eames uses in the dream when Arthur fails to hit his target.
 * Bigger Is Better: As Eames demonstrates to Arthur in terms of dream weaponry.
 * Bilingual Bonus: The French song used as a signal to wake up is about letting go of the past. Due to the language's love of double negatives, it could be literally translated to "I regret nothing of nothing:" how can one regret something that only took place in a dream? Also, although that part may not be audible in the film, the song famously goes on to say "(I don't regret) any of the evil/hurt inflicted to me" with the word for "evil/hurt" being... mal. It Gets Better: Marion Cotillard, playing Mal in Inception, impersonated Edith Piaf (singer of the aforementioned French song) in La Vie en rose, the movie that gave her an Oscar (and thus made her known to American audiences).
 * Regarding the "double negative" above: repeating a word (especially an adjective or an adverb) in the "X de X" construction is commonly used as an intensifier. While "I regret nothing of nothing" is a possible (if unlikely) translation for "rien de rien", it's really closer to "I really don't regret anything."
 * Billed Above the Title: Leonardo DiCaprio (makes sense, as he's the lead). In a fair move, the rest of the principal cast (minus Dileep Rao) are all billed in accordance to their screen time below the title.
 * Bizarrchitecture: The further down into the dream world you go, the more bizarre it gets.
 * Black and Grey Morality: No major character is perfectly morally upstanding in these movies. The "good guys" are very manipulative, deceptive, and arguably even downright cruel at times in pursuit of their goals. Then there are the good guys' targets (or "bad guys" if you think they are bad enough to be distinguished from the "good" ones) who are considering maintaining a dangerous corporate monopoly, which is part of what drives the other side to resort to such ethically questionable methods in the first place.
 * Black Box: The PASIV. How it works is never really explained, aside from an large yellow button that needs to be pushed and the IV lines that go into the operator's arms.
 * Black Screen of Death: The ending, which never reveals
 * Blank Book: The papers recovered from the safe that appear white.
 * Blind Alley: Averted. Cobb runs down an alley to try and ditch several agents that are chasing him. They notice him stuck in between the two buildings at the other end of the narrowing alley and he barely escapes them.
 * Blood From the Mouth: . Justified, as he
 * Bloodless Carnage: There is almost no blood at all in the entire movie. The notable exception is, 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 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 never were in actual firefights and would only know them from movies, so that's how they'd expect gunshot wounds look.
 * Bob From Accounting: Cobb introduces himself this way when setting up the Mr. Charles gambit.
 * Bollywood Nerd: Yusuf. A cool nerd, though, and one who can handle himself in the heat of action, which is key considering his dream is the top layer.
 * Book Ends: The final scene with 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.
 * Bond Opening Sequence: The action-packed opener, in which it's left to the audience to deduce what's going on.
 * Brainwashed and Crazy: Mal -- brainwashed in that, and crazy in that
 * Brainy Brunette: Ariadne. And, in the past,
 * But He Sounds Handsome: Saito sees Browning, who he assumes to be Eames in disguise. He walks right up to him and says, "I see you've changed." Browning gives him an odd look and Saito sees Eames behind him. Saito quickly says, "I mistook you for a friend of mine." Browning smirks and says, "Must be a good-looking fella."
 * It makes a lot of sense, actually - as Eames says to Saito afterwards, that's not Browning but Fischer's projection of Browning, and how the projection behaves reflects Fischer's view of Browning. Fischer is being turned against Browning by the inception team, and so thinks of him as being arrogant and smirky.
 * Butt Monkey: Arthur's chair was knocked out from under him a lot. Additionally he was slapped, shot, and shot again. At least he got in a good kiss.
 * The Caper: You could say that again. Inside the world of your subconscious. Played with in the beginning of the movie and later as the group is attempting to place something in Robert Fischer's head, rather than take something out as was the case with Saito.
 * Car Chase: Fischer's projections chasing Yusuf's van in the first dream layer.
 * Caper Crew: Can't have a caper without one.
 * Casting Gag: An inadvertent one. Casting Marion Cotillard, who played famous French singer Edith Piaf in the biopic La Vie en rose, in a film that heavily features Piaf's song Je ne regrette rien. Christopher Nolan considered taking the song out of the movie when he cast Cotillard, but ultimately decided against after Hans Zimmer insisted -- he had already built quite a bit of score around it.
 * Casting Gag: An inadvertent one. Casting Marion Cotillard, who played famous French singer Edith Piaf in the biopic La Vie en rose, in a film that heavily features Piaf's song Je ne regrette rien. Christopher Nolan considered taking the song out of the movie when he cast Cotillard, but ultimately decided against after Hans Zimmer insisted -- he had already built quite a bit of score around it.

Some of the actors that previously appeared in The Dark Knight Trilogy appear here with their situations changed. Cillian Murphy is the one being mind raped, starting with a dose of drugged water, Ken Watanabe again "dies" in an exploding fortress atop a snowy mountain, and Michael Caine plays the mentor/father figure to the main character. Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Marion Cotillard are all playing roles in The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan has built himself quite a Production Posse. "Ariadne: They're still looking at us.
 * It has been acknowledged that Nolan does seem to enjoy putting a bag over Murphy's head in his films.
 * Casual Danger Dialogue: Saito intervenes as Dom is being chased by Cobol assassins, knocking out Dom's last tail with a Toyota Tripwire then quipping, "Care for a lift, Mr. Cobb?"
 * Chekhov's Gun:
 * The top comes back with a vengeance, and the train makes a few appearances before it gets any context.
 * The is pictured very briefly near the beginning and turns out to be
 * Cobb mentions early on that he doesn't like trains.
 * The large butcher knife Mal is seen fiddling with.
 * Subconscious security. In Cobb's first interaction with Saito, he mentions being able to teach his mind to protect itself from Extraction. This comes back to bite them in the ass when they try to pull the job on Fischer .]]
 * The picture of Robert playing with his pinwheel.
 * Chekhov's Skill:
 * Chess Motifs: Ariadne handcrafts her totem into a Bishop chess piece.
 * Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Dreamers when inside the dreamworld have this power. While you can literally do just about anything, doing so to someone else's dream is a VERY BAD idea since the more you mess with their dream the more likely their projections will catch on to the dreamer and force them out.
 * Clear My Name: This is Cobb's motivation for most of the film.
 * Close On Title: The movie doesn't have a title card until the end credits. Where it is displayed three separate times.
 * Cold Sniper: When the team enters the third level, Cobb is equipped with a sniper rifle and shoots several mooks to clear the way to the fortress. Subverted in that
 * Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: In the snow level of the dream, Cobb's crew carry guns and/or wear goggles that have all been colored white, and the mooks defending the fortress cover their faces in black while carrying black guns without winterized camouflage. Helpful since everyone is wearing winter combat gear and would be otherwise indistinguishable. Possible Justified Trope: may have made this adjustment as the dreamer for the snow level, or  may be influencing the projections because
 * The dream layers are also tinted differently to help the viewer discern between the switching scenes. The top dream layer is blue, the second is brown and the final dream level is white.
 * Come With Me If You Want to Live: Saito does this to Dom. In a subversion, Dom (as Mr. Charles) does it to Fischer, albeit it's "if you want your secrets kept safe."
 * The Constant: Played straight with the "totems." Inverted with everything else in the world around them. Furthermore, if you believe the entire film was a dream
 * Conveniently-Timed Attack From Behind: When Mal tries to attack Cobb with a knife in the last level,
 * The Con Within a Con: Well, if you view "incepting" and "extracting" as cons then Fischer is basically conned by being tricked into attempting to extract information from Browning.
 * Cool Car: The Hummer with treads used by the guards of the snow fortress.
 * Cool Train: The Shinkansen at the beginning and (for fans of American freight trains) the train from Cobb's dreams.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: While most examples are villains, Saito is a rare anti-heroic version of this trope. He is willing those who try to steal from him, hires Cobb's crew to Mind Rape a rival, and can undo a murder charge with a single phone call. However, he also honors the agreement he makes with Cobb.
 * Corrupt the Cutie: Ariadne. Michael Caine's character even refers to Cobb as wanting to "corrupt" one of his best students. Cobb openly tells her the job is not legal, but he, Arthur, and Ariadne herself each admit that after tasting the power of dream architecture, she would never want to go back. She willingly joins the team.
 * Crashing Dreams: A dreamer getting wet, being physically jostled, etc. results directly in events occurring in their dreams (such as a sudden flood, or gravity ceasing to function normally) which reflect whatever their body is feeling.
 * Crusading Widower: Cobb, though rather than revenge he wants to reunite with his children.
 * Cyberpunk: Actually done believably for once. See Twenty Minutes Into the Future.
 * More accurately, the movie is Post Cyber Punk, lacking both the "cyber" and the "punk", while still being clearly a successor to the parent genre.
 * Cyberspace: Subverted in that this movie hits every cyberspace trope it can without computers.
 * Dark and Troubled Past: Cobb has some serious issues concerning his past which have a major impact on his ability to work. Not that he feel he has to be upfront about it to those endangered by it!
 * Deadpan Snarker: Eames and Arthur, usually at each other, though Arthur tends to buckle down once the work starts.
 * Death Is Cheap: Being killed in a dream merely leads to the subject waking up, although if it happens while they're sedated, it can lead to remaining in limbo for what feels like years (see And I Must Scream).
 * Determinator: Deconstructed.
 * Did Not Do the Research: In-universe version. Arthur's background check on Fischer somehow, which makes their job a whole lot harder.
 * Disproportionate Retribution: In a bizarre case of dream logic, Cobol Corp. sends assassins after the heroes the very minute they find out they've failed to infiltrate Saito's mind, then sends two dozen more when the heroes are spotted in Kenya. This is somewhat less disproportionate if you take into account the prequel comic "The Cobol Job." The Arthur/Cobb/Nash team had failed to retrieve information on Proclus Global (Saito's company) twice by the start of the movie.
 * Then again if it's just a dream, Cobol Corp's assassins may be just projections.
 * And, of course, extraction is technically industrial espionage, which is illegal. Getting rid of Cobb after Saito's rumbled him would prevent Saito from discovering who hired Cobb and having Cobol either sued or prosecuted.
 * Dissonant Serenity: Edith Piaf as background music during the fight sequences.
 * Distracted From Death: In the third layer of Robert Fischer's dream,
 * 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.
 * Dream Apocalypse: All the time.
 * Dream Land: Basically almost the entire setting for this movie, or even all of it.
 * Dream Weaver: Extraction/inception teams, and architects in particular, are a sci-fi variant.
 * Dream Within a Dream: The dream-share can be used to create deeper-level dreams within the dream.
 * Driven to Suicide: . Subverted several times when characters resort to "suicide" as an emergency measure to escape from the dream state.
 * Dropped a Bridget On Him: Eames, Forging a woman, does this to Saito. Thankfully, Saito's reaction is mostly "Oh, quit screwing around."
 * Earn Your Happy Ending: For Cobb.
 * Eldritch Location: 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.
 * The Ending Changes Everything:
 * Enemy Within: Mal, or more accurately Cobb's projection of his guilt from
 * Enforced Method Acting: If this is to be believed.
 * Mr. Fanservice: At least half of the male cast counts, especially the guys in the inception crew. General consensus is that Arthur and Eames are particular favorites (helped by their choice of wardrobe and their actors).
 * Epic Movie: An all-star cast. Years and years in the making. Large nonuple-digit budget. From the director of The Dark Knight. This fits the trope to a T.
 * Epiphany Therapy:
 * Everyone Lives: A Foregone Conclusion, since it's all a dream. But dying isn't really what they're afraid of.
 * Everything's Better With Spinning:
 * 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.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: If you meddle with someone's dream too much, all the nice not-real people (and architecture) start getting feral. And they always know who's doing it. And sometimes,
 * Excuse Me, Coming Through: Multiple times during the chase scene in Mombasa.
 * The Faceless: 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.
 * 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 Ellen 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.
 * Fake-Out Make-Out: Arthur asks Ariadne to kiss him to keep Fischer's subconscious from detecting them.
 * Fake-Out Make-Out: Arthur asks Ariadne to kiss him to keep Fischer's subconscious from detecting them.

Arthur: Yeah, it was worth a shot."

"Arthur: And you. What the hell was that?
 * Fate Worse Than Death: Limbo. It's an unformed dream state where you go if you die in a dream but are too sedated to just wake up. The time dilation is so pronounced that a few minutes of real time is experienced as hundreds, if not thousands, of years. You're going to be there for a very long time. If you've got 30 minutes to go before your kick hits, or if you've missed the kick and are gonna be under for hours until the sedative runs out you'll be in limbo for an effective eternity.
 * Fauxshadow:
 * Ariadne's and Arthur's totems.
 * The insane time dilation as they go further down, such as the third level experiencing 400x the time of the first level.
 * Faux Symbolism: Most probably the train. Who would think that it's just a coincidence when the only female member of the team gets into the car, and without warning a giant phallic shape comes out of nowhere at massive speed, kicking cars to the sides left and right and trashing everything in its path. But it's actually just a symbol for leaving behind an old life for a new one..
 * Film Noir: Christopher Nolan has effectively mixed Noir chocolate with Cyberpunk peanut butter, and it's as tasty as it sounds.
 * Fire-Forged Friends: By the time, Cobb and Saito seem to share a deep bond and trust.
 * Five-Man Band:
 * The Extractor: Dom
 * The Point Man: Arthur (who is also The Engineer)
 * The Chemist: Yusuf (and Ariadne)
 * The Forger: Eames
 * The Architect: Ariadne. At least, the more positive aspects of this trope.
 * The Tourist: Saito, though he also has aspects of The Lancer, and the Big Good (relatively). He does become The Load for a while when he gets shot and is unconscious for several scenes.
 * Flipping the Bird: Done by Yusuf to a projection when he sets off the kick in Fischer's first dream layer.
 * Foreshadowing:
 * An interesting variation, as most examples feature characters discussing events they already know about, but the audience does not; the characters may be calling back to an event in the chronological past we have yet to see, or predicting the future using information we have yet to learn.
 * An example calling back to the characters' past: Mal asks Cobb in one of the first scenes whether she will
 * An example of a conversation that does foreshadow future events, but which the audience does not know what they are speaking about (in this case, ):

Cobb: I have it under control.

Arthur: I'd hate to see out of control."

"Ariadne: Mind asking your subconscious to take it easy?
 * Fischer says to Saito after the avalanche "Couldn't someone have dreamed up a goddamn beach?" Later, )
 * In Ariadne and Cobb's second session, Cobb's subconscious starts to get aggressive:

Cobb: I can't, it's my subconscious."

"I hate trains."
 * 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.
 * In the beginning after Cobb wakes up he mutters:


 * Genre Busting: Film Noir meets The Caper with a dose of Post Cyber Punk.
 * George Lucas Throwback: To 90's Cyberpunk/ Post Cyber Punk movies that had the Platonic Cave idea and Cyberspace. Similar to movies like: The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor.
 * A Glitch in The Matrix: The entire movie spins on it. With what the individual weirdness of dreams, and the weaponized one that is the top.
 * A God Am I/Reality Warper: Well, dream warper anyway -- Ariadne enjoys herself quite a bit while learning what it means to be an architect. Arthur is also no slacker when it comes to warping reality, and he even manages to turn recursive, impossible geometry back on his opponents.
 * Gone Horribly Right:
 * Gravity Screw: The entire hotel corridor fight sequence between Arthur and the projections. There's also Cobb and Ariadne walking straight up a wall in the "Paris folding" sequence.
 * Grey and Grey Morality: On one hand, they are essentially Brainwashing their target on behalf of a business rival. On the other hand, they are helping the guy get over his deep-seated father issues and getting him to forge his own path. They're also stopping him from creating a dangerous energy monopoly.
 * Grow Old With Me: Part of Mal's anger with Cobb stems from his promise that they'd do this.
 * Guile Hero/Manipulative Bastard: Eames, who specializes in manipulating the emotions of marks by impersonating people close to them in their dreams, is one or the other.
 * Guns Do Not Work That Way: One of the first clues that the prologue is actually a dream sequence (aside from being set in a massive Japanese castle, that is).

H-M

 * Hammerspace: Sometimes, the ordinance the team needs will simply be there, and will frequently appear just out of the viewers' field of view. Lampshaded by Eames during the grenade launcher scene.
 * 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.
 * Hand Wave: Aside from the single piece of Applied Phlebotinum that drives the plot, the film itself is completely innocent of this. However, the "characters" do it all the damn time, as per Real Life 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.
 * Haunted Technology: The projections within dreams, including Mal.
 * Hollywood Silencer: Used in the beginning. Oddly enough, it's paired with fairly realistic stealth techniques -- catching the bullet casing and gently placing the body on the ground as not to make too much noise. Possibly justified by the action taking place in a designed dream.
 * Hoist By His Own Petard: In the third dream level, Eames gets his gun knocked over a railing by a projection. The same projection then throws Eames over the railing. This allows Eames to retrieve his gun and shoot the projection.
 * Honor Before Reason: When Saito is shot in the first layer of the dream and Cobb explains about the consequences of the sedative and how death will send the dreamer to limbo until he wakes up, Saito tells Cobb that he will still follow through on his promise to Cobb.
 * Hostage for Macguffin: In the first dream operation, is captured--apparently by --and held at gunpoint in an attempt to force Cobb to give up
 * Hot Chick in A Badass Suit: One of Ariadne's outfits.
 * How We Got Here:
 * Humanoid Abomination: Mal is a psychotic, deadly, unkillable, relentless enemy that exists inside of the protagonist's mind. What horrendous form does this monster take? A French woman. *shudder*
 * Hypocritical Humor: Arthur dryly points out how often Dom does things he tells everyone else not to do. Goes into the territory of Lampshade Hanging.
 * I Did What I Had to Do: Cobb's justification for everything throughout the film, from his illegal activities, to deceiving his crewmates, to incepting Fischer . Usually in these Exact Words.
 * Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: All over the place. A nasty subversion occurs in the first dream level (the rainy city). Apparently in the world of Inception, executives and other people with secrets to guard can receive dream security training -- Cobb poses as such a trainer early in the movie. Fischer has apparently had it, and as such has military projections who can shoot quite straight. They and send the entire team scrambling.

However, the Mooks from the corporation who hunt Cobb and Arthur in what is allegedly the real world absolutely live by this trope. Two of them are equipped with semi-auto handguns and can't hit Cobb while he is running just few feet from them in the alleyway in Mombasa. "Eames: You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."
 * Implacable Man: Mal. Absolutely relentless and nearly impossible to reason with. Even if you're a trained dream infiltrator, when she shows up it's time to panic.
 * Impossible Mission: Though it's a very original variation on it, the film basically uses this standard plotline beat-for-beat.
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: 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.
 * Improvised Weapon: When the variable-gravity fight moves into the hotel room, Arthur clocks his opponent with the room's phone. Not that it helped much...
 * In Medias Res:
 * Of course, being a Nolan film. Made more relevant by dialogue about how no one ever remembers how they got somewhere in a dream, they just start in the middle of things.
 * Most scene transitions throughout the movie do this, emphasizing that aspect.
 * Insanity Defense: Inverted. had herself declared sane by three different psychiatrists, so as to prevent  from being able to explain the nature of her madness, as part of her plan.
 * Instant Costume Change: With switching between layers of dreams.
 * One at the end of the film during a panning shot of Robert Fischer. He's talking about the Aesop he's learned to "Browning" (Eames-in-disguise), whose form is briefly blocked from view by Fischer's body. On one side it's Browning; on the other, it's Eames.
 * Instant Death Bullet:
 * The mooks tend to die this way.
 * When Mal
 * Following that, when
 * Averted with, who spends roughly a third of the movie with a fatal gunshot wound, and
 * Internet Backlash: Not so much the film itself, but the ending got its share.
 * Ironic Echo: No room for tourists.
 * It Got Worse: Mal to the point where he can barely focus on the mission. The team's employer . Then of course there's the ending, which may or may not be this trope. And pretty much everything in between.
 * 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.
 * Journey to The Center of The Mind: Taken in the most literal way imaginable.
 * Just in Time: Everything, thanks to Year Inside, Hour Outside and it being a heist, albeit a darker version than most where Your Mind Makes It Real.
 * Kansas City Shuffle: The Mr. Charles Gambit.
 * Kill It With Fire: The grenade launcher scene.
 * Living MacGuffin: Fischer is an interesting variant of this.
 * The Load: Saito. Eames warns him that a shared dream is no place for "tourists."
 * Lotus Eater Machine:
 * Yusuf runs one of these as a day job.
 * The deep levels of the subconscious, especially being no easy way to wake up.
 * Cobb warns Ariadne against constructing her dream world out of real life memories, lest it becomes this.
 * Love Makes You Crazy:
 * Love Makes You Evil: Played with interestingly. You follow all that?
 * Magic A Is Magic A: While the protagonists can alter dreams however they wish, in order to successfully steal or plant information they have to keep attention away from themselves long enough to do so. That means limiting in-dream special effects to subtle paradox trickery and convenient firearms, a la Mage: The Ascension/Mage: The Awakening.
 * Magic Is a Monster Magnet: Changing dreams too much causes this.
 * Malevolent Masked Men: Cobb's team don ski masks while pretending to be violent kidnappers interrogating Fischer Jr. in his dream.
 * Master of Disguise: Eames, who can take on any form within a dream.
 * Meaningful Echo:
 * Dom's repetition of Saito's words about dying alone as an old man, filled with regret.
 * The entire You're waiting for a train speech given by Mal to wake themselves up.
 * Meaningful Name:
 * "Cobb" means "dream" in Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi. It was also the name of a gentleman thief in Following, Nolan's first feature film.
 * It's also an old English word for "spider" (hence the word "cobweb"). Fitting, for a man who weaves webs and traps others in them.
 * "Ariadne" is a very unusual name these days, but an appropriate one for a woman who leads a man around a maze.
 * "Mal" is a word in French, Spanish, Portuguese and other Romance languages, which can be used in different contexts to mean "bad", "evil", "hurt", "pain" or "sick".
 * Yusuf is the Arabic variant of Joseph (the one who famously interpreted Pharaoh's dreams in The Bible).
 * "Eames" is the last name of architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames.
 * Fischer's name may be a reference to the Arthurian legend of the Fisher King, whose kingdom physically changes to parallel his wounds and suffering; this is appropriate given that much of the film takes place within his troubled mental landscape. Also, "Robert Fischer" was the name of the famous chess player.
 * Dom, Robert, Eames, Arthur, Mal, Saito.
 * Mega Corp: Cobol Corp. is Absurdly Powerful. They have dozens of assassins in, say, Kenya, waiting to be activated in a strangely dream-like plot development (though we are warned beforehand that Cobol operates heavily there). See Disproportionate Retribution.
 * Memento MacGuffin:
 * Cobb's totem, the spinning top, which was actually
 * Also, the picture of Fischer Jr. as a kid with his father as well as the pinwheel in said picture.
 * Mental Story: Almost the entire film is set in someone's head.
 * Mental World: One after another.
 * Mercy Kill: There's a non-fatal version in the introductory sequence.
 * Meta Twist:
 * Mind Rape: From a Certain Point of View.
 * This is basically the entire point of inception itself -- to plant an idea in someone's head that will consume them.
 * Mind Screw:
 * Take notes. Better than most, due to Magic A Is Magic A. There are several different kinds.
 * The most obvious mind-screw is keeping track of how many levels of dreams they take Fischer into. It's stated that beyond two is too unsafe to attempt, and three is what the characters are aiming for all along, but
 * The movie starts In Medias Res, as noted above, and most scenes do as well, jumping straight from one bit of dialogue or action to another without establishing shots of people introducing themselves, walking up the street, etc. Coupled with the observation that dreams often work that way, it forces viewers to question either the nature of the scenes in this movie that supposedly aren't dreams, or the nature of movies in general.
 * , Cobb doesn't check his top to see if it stops spinning.
 * And the whole thing becomes just tragic considering that
 * For those who dislike, Michael Caine has provided the closest thing to Word of God. See Jossed above.
 * The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Within a dream, Eames can copy other people's appearances, but almost always has his own reflection. On one occasion he was, when in disguise, seated in front of multiple mirrors. Some reflected his true face, others reflected his disguise. Which mirrors reflected his true face and which reflected his disguise changed (almost certainly deliberately) between cuts.
 * Possibly Justified, since in an lucid dream, the reflection in a mirror is that of your self image.
 * Miscarriage of Justice:
 * Mooks: Plenty to oppose the heroes. Dream mooks are mookier than most mooks.
 * More Dakka: After Arthur's firing proves ineffective, Eames pulls out a grenade launcher to deal with the mooks.
 * Miscarriage of Justice:
 * Mooks: Plenty to oppose the heroes. Dream mooks are mookier than most mooks.
 * More Dakka: After Arthur's firing proves ineffective, Eames pulls out a grenade launcher to deal with the mooks.


 * The machine guns on the jeeps in the third level seem to have Bottomless Magazines.
 * More Than Mind Control: In order for inception to work, it's necessary to manipulate the subject into finding the idea that is to be implanted emotionally appealing on a subconscious level - otherwise the mind will reject it.
 * Mortal Wound Reveal: After the shootout/car chase in the first level, it's revealed that the only charascter who didn't escape unscathed was.
 * The Musical: Fan-made, but done.

N-S
"Eames: Too much free champagne before we went under, eh Yusuf?
 * Naive Newcomer: Ariadne, until she takes a level in badass.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Mal means "bad" or "evil" in many Latin-based languages.
 * Narnia Time: Five minutes of real time is an hour in a dream (possibly more depending on the specific sedative that you use). This is compounded with each level of dream you go down.
 * Neuro Vault: A more metaphorical example. In the first dream layer, Browning suggests that Fischer Sr. may have subtly implanted the combination to his safe in his son's head in this way. Plus, according to the universe's rules, a person's subconscious mind often places hidden desires, secrets, etc. inside literal vaults in the person's dreams.
 * Never Trust a Trailer:
 * The early trailers seemed to imply that the "folding up a city block" thing would be much more crucial to the plot than what it was, basically a party trick. They also cut together dialog to use "inception" as the name for stealing an idea from a dream, but that is "extraction." "Inception" is the film's actual plot of planting an idea within a mind.
 * Mal appears on the posters labeled as the Femme Fatale. The implication is that she's part of some rival organization working counter to our antiheroes.
 * Trailer three seems to indicate that Mal is Cobb's wife, and is still waiting for him back at home.
 * Saito was advertised as the main bad guy. He really isn't.
 * The trailer made the movie look like a lot more of a Mind Screw than it actually was.
 * NGO Superpower: The protagonists are trying to stop Fischer's company from becoming this.
 * 90% of Your Brain: Cobb tells Ariadne that when awake, people use only "a fraction" of their brains, but when sleeping, their whole subconscious is unlocked. This actually makes sense, to a degree. When you are conscious, immense resources are used to process sensory data. When dreaming these resources are known to be co-opted for other purposes.
 * Noodle Incident:
 * Every aspect of the dream sharing technology is kept purposefully vague. There are a few interviews online that 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.
 * Cobb references "The Stein Job", in which he had previously used the "Mr Charles" gambit. Arthur points out that it didn't work.
 * No One Gets Left Behind: Averted and played straight.
 * No Pronunciation Guide: Early on, people were pronouncing Saito's name as Say-toe as opposed to Sigh-toe. This changed later in the film.
 * However, Arthur still messes it up in every line, putting this into Spell My Name With an "S" territory.
 * Not Even Bothering With the Accent: Fischer Jr., who's supposed to be Australian (according to his passport), speaks with an American accent. Cillian Murphy, the actor who plays Fischer Jr., is Irish in real life. It is entirely possible that Fischer Jr. was raised in America, or that his mother was American, which would help explain, but none of these things is explicitly stated.
 * The Not Love Interest: Ariadne to Cobb. She grows to understand him more than any of the other crew, and . At the same time, her concerns are more practical than romantic,
 * Oh Crap: Cobb's expression in the 2nd dream-state when he hears broken glass which results in  during the Mr. Charles gambit.
 * Older Than They Look:
 * Once More, With Clarity: The first scene of the movie.
 * One Last Job: Cobb tells Miles that Saito's job will be his last, and that he's only taking it on so that he can see his children again.
 * One-Man Army: Although the entire crew is extremely badass, the gold medal of badassery goes to Eames.
 * One-Scene Wonder: Two -- Michael Caine as Cobb's father-in-law, and Pete Postlethwaite as Fischer Senior.
 * Only a Flesh Wound: No characters show injury or bleeding from the blood vessels in their wrists. And at the beginning of the movie, one character yanks the tube off like it's not even sticking out of his body, going against the guidelines of the PASIV manual.
 * The Ophelia: Mal.
 * Ordinary College Student: Ariadne, while a skilled architectural student, and as we soon discover, an excellent and precocious architect of the mind, acts as our Audience Surrogate during the planning of the mind-heist, as she is the only character unschooled in the ways of mind crime. She gets to ask questions about the rules of the dream world.
 * Orphean Rescue: For those trapped in limbo.
 * Painting the Medium: Cobb offers Ariadne a job, and they discuss it while walking through Paris, cutting between several locations. He then asks her how they got to the café they're sitting at.
 * Pants-Positive Safety: Cobb keeps a pistol in the waistband of his trousers, as seen in the beach scene.
 * Perma Stubble: Maybe it's Cobb's residual self-image?
 * Perpetual Tourist: Eames appears to be playing this role at the beginning of the film.
 * Perspective Magic:
 * The Penrose Stairs work this way.
 * In a meta example, a lot of the film's special effects were accomplished through perspective magic: the zero-gravity fight in the hotel corridor (using a rotating set) and the water meniscus levels going all weird (using a tilting set). Both times, the camera was level relative to the moving set.
 * Pinch Me: Averted. Even if you are aware you're in a dream, you can't leave it unless you're given a "kick" in the real world or if you die in the dream world. The very basis is averted too, as you can still feel pain in a dream. Extreme pain, as we learn early on.
 * Pin Pulling Teeth: Saito does this during the final assault.
 * Please Wake Up: Used multiple times, sometimes in the "dying" sense, sometimes in the "wake up from sleep" sense.
 * Plot Armor:
 * Arthur, Eames, and even Fischer to some extent seem to be wearing this during the shootout in the rainy city. Their cab is riddled with bullet holes, all of the windows have been shot out, and yet only is hit--once.
 * The car chase in the van is even more Egregious.
 * Posthumous Character:
 * Potty Emergency: Yusuf drank too much and then forgot to go to the bathroom before falling asleep, so in his dream, Los Angeles is rainy.

Yusuf: Ha ha bloody ha."


 * Power Perversion Potential: The projections are one's subconscious. This could get really creepy, really fast. Not to mention Ariadne being tricked into giving a kiss.
 * You can also change your appearance and gender in the dream, as demonstrated by Eames.
 * Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Arthur says "Paradox" before pushing a mook off the Penrose Stairs.
 * Prequel: "The Cobol Job", the story leading up to the events of the movie.
 * Pretty Little Headshots: When Cobb shoots Arthur in the head at the start of the film so the latter can escape from the dream.
 * Properly Paranoid: All dream extractors keep a special "totem" with them that's supposed to help them determine whether they are in someone else's dream or not.
 * Psycho Dead Wife: Mal.
 * Queer People Are Funny
 * Race Against the Clock: Played with; it's a race alright, but it's different clocks for different characters. Essentially, clocks within clocks within clocks: the "kicks" that wake people one stage closer to reality, but don't work more than one level deep.

As each dream level has a timed kick, and time slows down further with each level downward, the twist is that if you don't make one kick, you're stuck having to possibly wait what feels like years in the lower level. Stuck there while everyone is trying to kill you, as someone the level above you arranges another kick -- if they can do it before being taken by a higher kick themselves. Therefore, the reward the characters get for beating one clock? Beating several more clocks. "Arthur: But you'd have to buy out the entire cabin. And the first class flight crew.
 * Railroad Tracks of Doom:
 * Rare Guns: Being in a dream world where everything is possible, Arthur has no problem whipping out a SCAR-L, which in real life costs better than $2500, roughly $4000 with the scope, and is hard to find even if you can afford it. And then Eames upstages him with the revolving grenade launcher.
 * Reality Warper: The whole point of having an Architect on the team (in this case, Ariadne).
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: . She doesn't take that well.
 * Recursive Reality:
 * The various levels of dreams. Just so we're clear, the conversation where Cobb offers to help guard Saito against idea theft is
 * Recursive Simulacrum subtype, as well as, let's face it, every other mind screw trope. This is an interesting play on the Matrix Hypothesis, since due to Magic A Is Magic A, for some reason the chemical cocktail works the same inside every level of the dream, presumably because Your Mind Makes It Real. Never has a more logical dream been dreamed; presumably Fischer has a very organized subconscious, while Cobb does not.
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni: Cobb and Arthur, respectively. Eames even refers to Arthur as a "stick in the mud" with "no imagination." Meanwhile, Cobb is much more intense and reckless.
 * Redshirt Army: The subconscious security... projections of Fischer's heavily self-guarded mind.
 * Refusal of the Call: Ariadne tries this, but it doesn't last long.
 * The Reliable One: For all that Arthur "has no imagination", he's the best he is at what he does, which is making sure that you get out of any situation in one piece. Definitely the kind of guy you want watching your back.
 * The Reveal: The cause of
 * Rewarded As a Traitor Deserves:
 * Rule of Symbolism: 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.
 * Sacrificial Lamb: Nash, Cobb's previous architect.
 * Scare Chord: When In this case, the cause of the scare chord is, thus proving that this trope makes anything scary. Considering that this is Mal we're talking about here, and the wide-eyed look she gives Ariadne is , the scare chord may not have been entirely necessary..
 * Scenery Gorn: Paris exploding near the beginning and the dream city collapsing into the sea near the end.
 * Scenery Porn: Near on everywhere. Tokyo, Paris, the snow fortress, the final dream city...
 * The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction: In the second dream level, Eames poses as a gorgeous blonde and hits on Fischer in order to distract him while he steals his wallet - and in order to make Fischer more trusting of Cobb's "Mr. Charles" gambit.
 * Schrodinger's Butterfly: The characters take great pains to avert this. The ending takes great pains to leave it ambiguous.
 * Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Apparently, Saito is rich/powerful enough to And then there was this priceless moment when the team is discussing how to be left alone with Fischer for ten hours during a flight...

Saito: I bought the airline.

[Everyone looks at him incredulously]

Saito: [awkward] It seemed neater."


 * Secret Test: Saito's test of skill, which the team (and Cobol) mistook for a job. In level 2, they succeed in getting the documents (though key info is blacked out), but fail in Saito's eyes because the deception was obvious (or so he thought at the time). In level 1, they fail because of the carpet mix-up, but succeeded in impressing Saito.
 * Sherlock Scan: Saito figures out that the Action Prologue is a Dream Within a Dream -- not because of the explosions happening everywhere, but because the shag carpet on the floor of his girlfriend's apartment is polyester, not genuine wool. Saito is definitely earning his salary as The Chessmaster.
 * Shoot the Money: Did they ever. Filming took place in six different countries, and the filmmakers made sure to make creative use of the exotic scenery. They don't just show you downtown Paris -- they fold it on top of itself. They don't just set a few scenes in an ancient Japanese castle -- they flood it, and then blow it up. And so on.
 * Shout-Out: Has its own page.
 * Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Trailer: Yusuf, despite being a key player in the dreamscape, doesn't appear much in the promotional material, certainly not as much as the big stars. Mal isn't in much of the trailers either, though she does make it to the posters. In fact, on the main theatrical release poster that shows the entire team, Yusuf is pictured despite the fact his actor isn't among the sizeable billing list of actors; even Pete Postlethwaite and Tom Berenger receive a mention in the billing despite appearing just a few minutes apiece in the film, but poor Dileep Rao is left out...
 * On a positive note, his is one of only three actors names to appear on the Netflix envelope for the movie.
 * Sixth Ranger: Saito, as well as Ariadne.
 * Smart People Play Chess: There are several chess references in the film, including Ariadne's totem (which is a bishop), the black-and-white tiled floor of the fortress, and the character name Robert Fischer, after Bobby Fischer.
 * The Smurfette Principle: The crew consists of around six guys and one girl. There is one other important female character, and
 * So Much for Stealth: What happens if you tip off the "projections" to your presence.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: Je ne regrette rien. The rather upbeat melody already fits the trope to a T, but for added bonus, the title means "I regret nothing", and the lyrics are about starting a new life without any remorse or remaining attachment to the past, in a film where the struggle against remorse and regrets is a major narrative theme.
 * In addition, the Epic music for the later parts of the movie are just Je ne regrette rien slowed down substantially, as it could be expected to be heard by the crew while several layers down from the source of the music.
 * Spanner in The Works: Cobb's projection of Mal in the extraction at the beginning and
 * Spiritual Successor: Word of God says this movie is Nolan's homage to Dark City. He came up with the idea for it after seeing that film, which is the lesser-known rival to The Matrix. It then spent ten years in development while Nolan wanted experience working on big-budget films. Meaning that Dark Knight was a warm-up.
 * Spotting the Thread: In the prologue,
 * Stealth Pun: They spend much of the movie talk about "training your subconscious" ... and then they bring in an actual train.
 * Storming the Castle: The fortress assault.

T-Z

 * Tagline:
 * "Your mind is the scene of the crime."
 * "The dream is real."
 * Take Our Word for It: The "horrific" ramifications of Limbo. Once it's introduced, Limbo is sold as a Fate Worse Than Death; a place one's mind will be trapped for eons until it turns into "scrambled egg." Despite this, however, we never get to see the full extent of this Fridge Horror. Of the five characters who go there, the one who went the most insane Cobb,  Saito  Ariadne and Fischer both get out pretty quickly and with seemingly little consequences.
 * Talking in Your Dreams: Dreams are not only a way to communicate with other people, but also to steal or implant ideas.
 * Thanatos Gambit: Mal
 * Theory of Narrative Causality: Dreams.
 * Through the Eyes of Madness: Depending on your interpretation of the film.
 * 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.
 * Throw the Dog A Bone: Meta-example with one of the movie's costume designers and Michael Caine himself going on record to state that
 * Token Girl: Ariadne.
 * Token Romance: Surprisingly averted.
 * Took a Level In Badass: Ariadne. Or Yusuf. Everyone else on the team was badass before the mission.
 * Saito gets a bit of this, holding off the incoming mooks with a pistol and grenades while still being injured.
 * Torture Always Works: Notably averted. When threatened with a gun, Fischer simply gives the team the first combination of numbers that pops into his head.
 * Toyota Tripwire: Saito appears and knocks out the last mercenary chasing Dom in Mombasa with this.
 * Trash the Set: Most dreams fall apart at the end, leading to some spectacular special effects.
 * Treacherous Advisor: Fischer's godfather. Or at least the team decides to play up that angle to prevent him from getting control of the company.
 * True Companions: The Inception team. Ariadne tells Cobb to get over this guilt not for himself, but so that the others don't stuck in Limbo.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The technology to enter another person's dreamscape is only used by a small number of people. When talking to the professor, Cobb mentions that there are legitimate uses for it, but he hasn't really been able to find honest work after
 * Undisclosed Funds: It isn't out right stated how rich Saito is, but he seems rich enough to buy an entire airline for the operation (in what appears to be seconds), plus have enough connections to
 * The speed of the airline purchase is actually the result of how quickly his line goes by. He already took the precaution of buying the airline, before telling the group that they would be using it.
 * The Un-Reveal:
 * Up to Eleven: 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.
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Cobb's deepest dream world, which consists of a decaying city full of skyscrapers collapsing into an ocean shoreline. The thunderstorm that happens later on definitely adds into the mood here.
 * Viewers Are Geniuses: The first published review by Rolling Stone suggested that the film is quite ambitious in this regard.
 * 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.
 * Vision Quest: The mission becomes this for Cobb when Ariadne tells him he has to . Also,
 * Waistcoat of Style: Arthur.
 * The Walrus Was Paul: Christopher Nolan provides enough conflicting evidence to keep everyone arguing over the ending (or even the whole film); anyone looking for a theory that satisfactorily addresses every point is going to have a rough go.
 * Wasn't That Fun?: Yusuf after rolling the van and landing it upright.
 * The Watson: Ariadne.
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy: Fischer Jr., which Cobb and the team use to their advantage.
 * A Wizard Did It: As with having all the enemy Mooks consistently miss when they fire at the heroes, the unique premise of the movie allows Nolan to employ a normally cheesy element of Hollywood blockbusters -- in this case, action sequences that would be physically impossible in real life -- in a way that not only makes sense, but actually enhances the story's believability.
 * Woman in Black: Mal, being "The Shade."
 * 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.
 * World of Badass: In dreams, everyone has Improbable Aiming Skills and mad paramilitary training, even business executives.
 * Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Mal Because of this, she manages to come across as the most manipulative character in the movie, which says a lot in a movie where even the good guys are manipulative.
 * Yandere:
 * Year Inside, Hour Outside: Subjective time stretches in a dream compared to the layer above, with the exact amount of time depending on the sedative used. For the dreams earlier in the movie, time stretches by 12 times per level, for the inception operation, time stretches for 20 times per level.
 * You All Look Familiar: If you look closely, you'll notice that Cobb's team keeps fighting the same projections over and over.
 * You Cannot Kill an Idea: As seen in the top quote, an idea is the most resilient parasite. Moreover, we're told that subtle as inception must be, it will relentlessly grow into an obsession that can change everything about the target, so it's more like "Don't even dream of killing an inception."
 * You Can't Go Home Again: Cobb cannot return to America or step foot in any country with an extradition treaty with it because . The main reason he agrees with Saito's request is to have a chance to return home.
 * You Have Failed Me: Never get hired to do corporate espionage for Cobol Corp.
 * Your Mind Makes It Real: They manage to avert actually uttering the line, but they come darn close. Totally subverted when it is shown that dying is actually the easiest way to escape from a dream. Unless you're too heavily sedated to wake up, in which case you are doomed to dream for near-eternity. Played straight with pain, for it is a function of the mind anyway.
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle:
 * Zerg Rush: Non-militarized projections are limited to this, forming enormous crowds of hostile people who overwhelm intruders through sheer numbers. Militarized projections are more controlled, better-armed, and come in fewer numbers, but no less suicidally relentless.
 * Zig Zagging Trope: As noted above, the film initially subverts the typical "if you die in a dream, you die in reality" idea, but then plays it straighter later on, as

"How did you get here? Where are you right now?"