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

• 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.
  • Edith Piaf is prominently on the soundtrack as the music used to "kick" the dreamers out of their dreams, a role not unfamiliar to Marion Cotillard.
• 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.
• Auteur License: Nolan spent years building up his reputation such directing mega hits like The Dark Knight to give him the clout to create this film his way. The fact that this film became a big hit itself guarantees he'll keep that clout for some time.
• 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 Kimberly's daughter. Oh my god: Alfred is Jack Bauer.
  • That one guy who gave Arthur so much trouble in the hotel corridor? Private Mailer.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The two female leads were up against each other for the Academy Award for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Motion Picture" in the same year: Ellen Page for Juno and Marion Cotillard for La Vie En Rose. Cotillard won, but Page got her revenge. In Inception, her character shoots Marion's.
  • Arthur is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who played Tommy on 3rd Rock from the Sun. The most memorable episodes of that show are the 3D episodes, which center on dreams. Tommy's own dream included him chasing a book down a hallway, that was not following the laws of physics. Also, he was a young man again, as he was actually the oldest of the aliens on his home planet.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Shrug of God: Basically Nolan's entire stance on the ending.

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.

• • In his own mind, though, the ending is real, but he feels this shouldn't be everyone's interpretation.
• 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.