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== Limbo is not dreaming ==
During the film, Cobb says that getting shot and dying under heavy sedation sends one to Limbo (unconstructed dreamspace), this happens because the dreamer stops dreaming, but is physically unconscious due to drugs. When put under for operations, people don't dream. So going to Limbo collapses dream space, while being mentally conscious while physically unconscious.
The reason Limbo is dangerous is because A) Kicks can't wake you up due to sedatives. B) You forget you're in Limbo.
The way kicks work, is someone in the REAL world sets it up. So killing yourself is the only way to wake up from ''inside'' a dream. But since you need to wait for the sedative to wear out, people can end up forgetting they're in Limbo in the first place. (Since its hard to recognize reality from dream within a dream). Mal forgot that they were dreaming, so Cobb spun the top to "remind" her, so she would come up with the idea to escape Limbo on her own. Since the only thing keeping them at Limbo by that point was their own mind sleeping (thus, a coma).
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== The film is connected to Titanic. ==
At the end of Titanic,
== Cobb is dreaming EVERYTHING. ==
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== No one actually saw this movie ==
Think for a moment. Do you remember how you got into the theater? I didn't think so.
* I decided I wanted to see ''Inception''. I went to the cineplex. I bought my ticket. I went past the booth and turned right. I went to theater 8, all the way down the hall and on the left. I entered the theater. I chose my seat in the middle. Yes, I definitely saw this movie. Then again, there were only two other people there...
** [[Completely Missing the Point|sigh]]
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Double happy ending - he gets his kids twice! Unless, you know, he goes crazy from living a life that were never real. But he gets his youth back and he gets to relive his real life, and this whole thing would just seem like a fuzzy dream memory, so he should be fine.
* A slap to the face would have woken Cobb up after the sedative wore off.
== Arthur and Eames' past history. ==
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== They never left Yusuf's basement ==
This troper noticed something verrrry suspicious upon his second viewing. Remember that part where Yusuf the chemist shows Cobb his handiwork, and they go downstairs to see the dream addicts and the old man? The scene directly after shows Cobb in the bathroom, splashing water over his face to shake off the effects. Just as he places his top on the sink to give it a spin, he is surprised by Saito and leaves the room.
Without spinning the top.
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== The third dream, the snowy fortress, was created by a dreamer who was a fan of Metal Gear Solid ==
Think about it. It's a very snowy, fortress-esque stronghold, with a higher degree of combat and troop concentration, much like Shadow Moses. Plus, behind the giant door, where {{spoiler|Fischer's father was dying, and the safe was located}}, looked very much like the VR mission rooms from Metal Gear. Don't forget the [[Air Vent Passageway]] escape.
* Alternatively, someone who once owned a Nintendo 64, and mainlined a lot of [[GoldenEye 007 (1997 video game)|Goldeneye]].
* This troper, too, thought, "this is a sneaking mission". But before that, I assumed Fischer liked playing ''[[Modern Warfare]]''.
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* This is a valid theory, but it's probable that Eames is a [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] fan. The end is a [[Word of God|confirmed]] [[Shout-Out]] to ''[[On Her Majesty's Secret Service]]'' (Nolan's favorite Bond film) and as Eames is British, it seems fair to guess he likes Bond.
** Considering Bond has always been a big inspiration for MGS, I think we're just looking at two things that used the same inspiration.
* Out of curiosity, does anyone remember why the dream-insertion technology was invented in the first place? That's right, [[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty|to allow the American military to train soldiers in VR environments that would closely simulate actual combat.]]
* You're all forgetting that while Eames is the dreamer, Ariadne is the Architect, and therefore designed the maze. She would be the fan of MGS/Bond.
** I don't think Ariadne ever created from memory again, despite knowing that Cobb was doing it. So unlikely.
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* It could well be that the spinning top is completely irrelevant. Remember, Cobb made a mistake he told no one else to make - don't let other people know what your totem is. If people do, then they can fake it. And Arthur, Ariadne and Saito all know that Cobb's totem is the spinning top failing to fall over.
** Not to mention Saito actually spun the top himself.
* The fact that they don't explain how the PASIV technology technically works and the fact that it's like just one wire which isn't even put near the cereberum suggests that the PASIV technology may just be part of a dream.
== Inception is a semi-sequel to [[Paprika]] ==
Taking place two or three years after the whole debacle with the Chairman, the DC Mini is widely used by psychologists around the world. However, some people are using its power to enter dreams for nefarious uses. The suitcase they always carry around? A larger DC Mini that works on the wrists rather than the head.
** At the end will Ellen Page fall in love with a huge gross nerdy guy?
*** It's in a dream, the huge gross nerdy guy will look like DiCaprio.
== Cobb is from a dream. ==
This has just been my theory, but I didn't know there was already a WMG for this movie so why not put it down here? Anyways, here goes: Cobb, Leonardo DiCaprio's character, is from a dream and accidentally broke out. It could explain why he seems to know Mal, who's a "Shade" and they have children together, even though it's obvious she lives in dreams. I can't think of how else I should expand on this, but it would be really weird if this turned out to be true in the movie.
** Dude. I was totally thinking something similar. When Cobb starts talking about how {{spoiler|planted ideas can grow and grow and grow, I speculated that ''Cobb'' was an idea that had been planted into someone's mind (Mal's? Saito's, and this is all his dream?), and grown and grown and grown into something human-shaped. Or that he's the reverse of the WMG below, and he was a projection.}}
== Mal and the children are projections ==
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** While the film was obviously trying to trick the audience by having the kids in similar positions at the end of the movie, according to IMDB, the kids at the end of the movie were played by different actors who are several years older than those earlier in the movie.
*** Which means that he's just out-and-out ''hallucinating'. And since the top now spins like it's in the real world... Uh oh.
*** Also, they ''are'' wearing different clothes, just are the same color and patterns.
**** Confirmed by Word of God; someone from the internet contacted the actual costume designer to find out. The answer? Different clothes.
== Ariadne is Mal and Cobb's real daughter ==
The children are a kind of totem, but the test of their "balance" is not being unable to see their faces but being able to see that only one is blond like Cobb while the other is brunette like Mal, and that they haven't aged. This explains the subverted convention that Ariadne helps Cobb get over Mal and then ends up with him-- while he might think he's old enough to be her father, she knows he is actually her father. Both her parents are dream masters, after all, perhaps she eagerly followed in their footsteps and became a prodigy.
* Given that we're never actually told how long Cobb has been out of the country, this is actually a cool idea. Doesn't explain how her name went from being Phillipa to Ariadne, though. Witness protection program, maybe?
** Or a [[Shout-Out]] to the maze-creating mythological character to disguise her true relation to Cobb.
* But he talks to his children, both of them, on the telephone in the hotel. They still sound fairly young. And it'd be silly to use a person as a totem because other people can readily touched/pick up a person, and fabricate them in a dream.
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== Dreams and Physics ==
There is a lot of debate on how come the physics of dream level 1 (city streets and car fall) did not affect dream level 3 (snow area, open landscape). I made two possible theories that explain this.
* 1. Scientific Analogy. A magnet represents the first level of the dream and the subsequent levels are represented by pieces of iron, the corresponding physics of the subsequent levels are represented by the force of the magnet. The force of the magnet gets lower on each piece on iron added. In other words, the correspondence of the physics are only felt by "one level down" because the connection to the first level has gotten weaker and cannot transfer the physical dynamics to level 3.
* 2. Much simpler. Because time moves faster for each level. Level 3 is moving too fast for the physics of level 2 to catch up and start causing craziness.
** Or, the physics of level 1 transfered to level 2, but because they were dreaming in level 2, those physics did not transfer to level 3.
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* Also, I don't think there was any mention of, or even acknowledgment of, the PASIV (dream-sharing box). They just all woke up, and we're left to assume that it magically disappeared or something before Robert saw it. Unless one of them woke up really fast and managed to put the thing away in about three seconds...
** No, go back to when the sedate Fischer. The stewardess on the plane is their technician, she put the PASIV away when it was safe to do so. Like the Japense youth in the train with Saito, they employed someone who doesn't stick out.
* You guys need to watch more heist movies... you never talk to the your partners in public.
== Miles ( Micheal Caine) planned the entire thing. ==
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Nolan loves to toy with his audiences. Mal says earlier that dreams always leave a little doubt to them, making the dreamer question reality. This is what Nolan does to the audience when he cuts from the top spinning before it falls. He leaves us with that doubt. Have we been dreaming for 2h30m? Nolan doesn’t let us off."
* Another subtle variation from the theory is that the entire movie from the first frame to the last is Cobb's dream. Miles as [[The Man Behind the Man]] send Ariadne to retrieve Cobb and bring him back to reality. This is why Miles says "come back to reality," and in the scene where Yusuf brought Cobb into a basement full of sleeping people on drugs, Yusuf said "they are not trying to dream, they are trying to wake up. You of all people should've know." However, in the end Ariadne failed her mission; she saw that Cobb would be better off living his "earned" dream with his family and not come back to reality. That's why when the van is submerged with Cobb in it, Ariadne told Arthur "he (Cobb) should be all right." And this is also why the top at the final scene never stops spinning.
== The Never Ending Stair-case. ==
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* And Mal is River Song.
* Because he has two hearts, the gunshot that was supposed to take him out of Limbo didn't kill him.
** Dude, Mal would be [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31
** And Arthur is a young Jack Harkness.
** Surely Eames is more of a Jack Harkness?
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* Ariadne the Architect is the set and art designer. Important, but she comes in after the script is done, the director is set, and the money is on the table. She wasn't part of the idea from the beginning, so she relies on the screenwriter and the director to work her through their idea. She's a good one though, able to improvise on the fly and look cute in a business suit. The last guy was sacked for breaking suspension of disbelief with his shoddy work.
* Yusuf the Chemist is the technical element. [[Incredibly Lame Pun|He drives]] the whole production, getting everything from point A to point B, but doesn't get much credit. Not even on the posters. Here's your Technical Oscar, chump.
* Eames, the Forger is the actor(s). His job is to follow the script and act like someone else. He's also charismatic and shows everyone up.
* Mal is basically Terry Gilliam's career. The evil side of film making. She is everything that could go wrong in a production, especially the director's self-doubt and self-sabotaging baggage that ruins productions. She gives the producer a lot of control over the situation (first set piece), she fucks with your crew, she shoots your audience in the back...
** Which would make the real Mal the co-director/actor who killed themselves, and their spirit seems to haunt the production.
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** Arthur is the producer: "I figure out the details. And the director keeps throwing ''entirely new shit at me'' in the middle of production!"
** Aridane is the production designer: "I build the set. The tech guy (Yusuf) provides the materials and tools, but I put the set together. And it keeps getting [[Trash the Set|trashed!]]"
** Eames is the actor: "I play the role. And I can only play it right if the director tells me what I'm supposed to be!"
** Saito is the studio: "I ''pay'' for all of this. I paid a ''lot'' for all of this. The audience ''better'' buy it."
** Fischer is the audience: "I watch the movie. Convince me it means something significant and I'll buy it."
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== This is what happened after [[500 Days of Summer]] ==
After Tom was dumped was dumped by Summer, had a bad relationship with Autumm, and couldn't get a job in Architecture he met Cobb, changed his name to Arthur, and got involved subconscious etc. That's why all the dreams he hosts are buildings with modern architecture.
* I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought this. If it wasn't for you, I would've posted this myself. Also, when he said in the beginning that he wanted to go back to America, I thought he wanted to go back to see Summer.
== Dream-delving is wholly magical or psionic, and Mal is a supernatural being. ==
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Not intentionally, of course, but...
* Oh my god, yes.
== Not only was ''[[Lost]]'' all a dream, it was a mindcrime being perpetrated by the Man in Black. ==
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After the mission, he becomes his own man by dropping the business entirely. He becomes enamored with Dreams and Psychology after his incident on the plane. But there isn’t a lot of money to be earned by becoming a shrink, plus he's so used to the expensive lifestyle he had before. So he is forced to join with Ra’s Al Ghul’s study of weaponized hallucinogens.
* And Ra's Al Ghul is Saito's new identity after spending an eternity in limbo and going insane. The Scarecrow's fear toxin is a "chemical shortcut" to limbo.
* [[Fridge Brilliance|Robert and his dad's initial falling out was due to Robert pursuing medical school and psychiatric training instead of an MBA. The only thing keeping him from practicing was loyalty to Fischer Sr.]]
* But why did Miles change his name to Alfred?
** He knows the score already. And is preventing an Inception that can cause the ruin of a city or world. Batman with a persistent bad idea? Heaven help us all.
* Alternately, Inception takes place in the 8 years between, or prior to [[The Dark Knight Saga]]
** The entire crew try it again, attempting an Inception on Bruce Wayne. Who's mental defenses are a bit more complex than Fischer's.
== Inception takes place in the same universe as {{spoiler|[[Vanilla Sky]].}} ==
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* Something worth mentioning: During the parts of the film where Cobb is in a dream, he's wearing a wedding band. In the ending, he isn't wearing one.
** Another thing worth mentioning: After, or perhaps during (someone else can confirm the exact timing) Cobb's cathartic confrontation with Mal in Limbo, his ring disappears.
** In the opening scene with 'old' Saito, Cobb is wearing the wedding ring (you get a close up of his hands when he's eating the rice).
*** Or his loss of his wedding band could mean that he finally let Mal go.
== Mal was right. ==
When she and Cobb escaped limbo they didn't quite wake up and eventually she gave up trying to convince him and is now waiting in reality for him to either realize the truth or otherwise die and come back to her.
** Then wouldn't she just "kick" him?
*** Maybe she did and Cobb missed his kick.
** If this is the case, why doesn't she just come back to the level of the dream that Cobb thinks is "reality" and start warping it to the point the dream collapses? Wouldn't this also mean that Cobb is wrong about him having successfully done an inception to her?
** If Mal had really woken up for real, she would have been able to stop the sedative machine and give Cobb a good couple slaps until he woke up. Since that didn't happen, Mal really did die.
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** I think we're meant to assume this as a possibility that is neither confirmed nor denied by the movie, although it would be clearer if Saito wasn't so hard to understand in those scenes at the end and the beginning where he's an old man. It sounds like at one point he does say that the reason Cobb came back for him was not to kill him but "to convince him to honor our arrangement", which would support the theory that Cobb is performing inception on Saito.
** When they are in Saito's mind, aren't the rooms supposed to places he really knows? Such as, the love nest?
* This could be possible if at least Arthur, and maybe Ariadne, were in on Saito's inception. The way Saito fell into limbo was by getting shot by a projection, but Arthur was the research guy who should have found that out. Arthur and Cobb (the best extractor in the business) have worked together for too long to miss that, so the only solution is that he did find that out, told Cobb, but neither told anyone else. Their fight over Arthur's responsibility was staged for Saito's benefit.
** Or, better thought, it wasn't Cobb orchestrating the inception of Saito, but Arthur, who is the real magnificent bastard, and didn't even tell Cobb. He's working for a third party who wants everyone incepted.
*** That would be a Xanatos Roulette though, because he agrees to host the second dream level and can't go farther down. It's also more likely that Cobb was in on it because the idea being incepted is to free Cobb. Also, yes, Saito says "to convince him to honor our arrangement".
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*** Alternately alternately, One thing that is interesting about the top is that despite its supposed purpose of being able to tell when you're in a dream, we never see Cobb spin it at a time when he thinks he's in a dream, only when he's in what he thinks is reality. Therefore, we don't actually know how the top will behave if it were in a dream. And we're only told that the top would spin and spin when MAL used it. Maybe the top falling over is how it behaves for Cobb. Therefore, maybe the ending of the movie is actually Mal's dream...
**** Actually, we know that it works the same for Cobb, since that was how he managed to incept Mal in the first place. If the top didn't work the same for him, the inception wouldn't have worked, since the top wouldn't have still been spinning when Mal went to check it.
** Totem can only confirm that it's a dream. It works like this: When you want to do reality check you tell yourself "If it's a dream it'll keep on spinning" - if it does it's obviously a dream, after all you can't argue with real world physics. If it falls you can't be 100% sure why - because of gravity or because your subconcious mind wanted it to.
* Another alternate theory to this: {{spoiler|It doesn't matter because it wasn't even Cobb's totem in the first place. It's was Mal's. And Cobb killed the Mal living in his mind. Therefore, it may not work by her rules any longer.}}
* Yet another alternate (added by the same troper as the last one): {{spoiler|Cobb wants his happy ending with his children so badly that he convinces himself that it's reality - and that the top should fall, if he is in reality.}}
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* Albeit somewhat sloppily. {{spoiler|Her constant exposition and pressuring Cobb to let go of Mal are intentional and deliberate. She's trying to convince Cobb to let go of Mal at the subconscious level. She's just not sure how to be precise about it. What's her motivation? Well, primarily her own psychological safety, but also compassion for Cobb}}.
** Alternately, she performs the inception without even being aware of it. The whole film is a gambit by the rest of the crew (or at least Arthur and possibly Miles) in order to incept Cobb with the idea that he needs to let go of Mal, since it's become a threat to the work they do. They can't reach him by normal means and he's the best conscious dreamer there is, so they need to be extremely roundabout with it so that he doesn't suspect a thing. It's telling that Ariadne's totem is a chess piece, because if this is true then she totally got used as one.
*** Alternatively, she knew the basics of Miles' plan, and had been shown the ropes by Miles between her first and second dreams with Cobb. This explains how she jumped from "OMG, we're dreaming, panic mode!" to "Let's fold over Paris like a croissant, see what happens." so quickly. However, she didn't know exactly how bad the problem had gotten (nor, in all likelihood, did Miles), which made the plan a bit more personal for her.
== The number that Fischer Jr uses as the safe combination is the date that the picture was taken ==
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== Fischer Jr is Bruce Wayne in an alternate universe where only his mother is murdered ==
* Because only his mother was killed, Bruce/Fischer grew up a relatively normal childhood, albeit somewhat spoiled and bitter. His father grows to resent him and blame him for his mother's death. Wayne Enterprises loses its heart, and grows to be a huge monster corporation. Michael Caine (Alfred) is discharged by the Waynes after Bruce is eleven. He is able to focus on his research and is the one who introduces extraction/inception to the masses. Michael Caine was the one who taught Fischer to defend his subconscious when he was a child, which is why the defense in his mind is exceptional.
** This is even more awesome when you consider that Cillian Murphy orginally auditioned for Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins. Also, he reacts to having a gun in his face in level 1 like it's a regularly occurring minor annoyance.
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== In Limbo, you continue to age but never die ==
* This explains why Saito lived for so long. It also explains why Cobb HAD to implant the idea that it wasn't reality because they would never die otherwise. This is where limbo starts to become hell. If you enter limbo, convince yourself it's reality, you will be stuck there for an eternity. There are no natural predators (disease, accidents, murderers) because your own subconscious creates the world. But you are CONVINCED it is reality so your body will continue to age accordingly.
== Cobb is an [[Unreliable Narrator]] ==
We will never know if he was dreaming for the whole film or not. There is equal proof for and against this. If Cobb is crazy enough to imagine a malignant shade of his wife that continues to sabotage him, we cannot take anything he says at face value.
== Cobb receives the final kick and intentionally drowns himself in level one ==
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** That makes so much sense.
** This explains so much! Also, the difference in the passage of time between levels could mean that he didn't even have to skip levels as he "rode the kick up"-- He didn't spend that much time in limbo, so once he came back he could've wound up in the snow level only seconds after he went under. Then he could've been fatally wounded in the explosion, left to die slowly and effectively winding up in limbo again but with a significant amount of time difference between him and Saito.
** I agree with this in theory but I have a different idea-- I think he kills himself in ''all three'' layers-- drowning in level one, not being kicked up with everyone in levels two and three, and being stabbed by Mal in level four-- so that a) as you say, it's easier for him to find Saito, and b) so that limbo becomes the ''first'' dream layer (after levels two and three collapse and the sedative wears off for everyone on level one) and they only have to kill themselves once to kick out of it.
== The whole movie is an inception... ==
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== Ellen Page's Character in ''the Mirror'' SNL Digital Short is Ariadne in a recursive dream ==
It's all in the title. I usually hate "characters are the same because they share an actor" WMGs, but this is so damn close: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130105051504/http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/snl-digital-short-the-mirror/224715/ Sorry, Non-Americans, there isn't even a version on Youtube.]
== Everything is made up and a dream, taking place over the course of a single night. It's Cobbs way of coping with tragedy in the real world. ==
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== The kids at the end are just memories ==
They're wearing the same clothing that they were in all of the flashbacks!
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131007003850/http://clothesonfilm.com/inception-jeffrey-kurland-costume-qa/14317/ Jossed.]
== Maroon 5's "Misery" is an Inception Fanvid. ==
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** And Perry did dream in one episode...dammit this makes more sense than it should.
*** Could Perry have dreamed in live action and used his friends and family to fill the dream space?
*** Character Equivalents:
**** Dom = Phineas
**** Arthur = Ferb
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How else could he have that much money AND that much power?
* You could be the head of a powerful multinational corporation, which would give you much more power than a crime lord ''and'' high level connections to the American legal system.
** It's worth noting that in Japan, [[Yakuza]] and
== Cobb has multiple totems. ==
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Ariadne is the first Alice- She went completely physics-breaking-happy on her first experience, and if she was gone, the only thing people would really remember her for is her architecture stuff.
Cobb is the second Alice- He shot himself, obviously, to get out of Limbo, and he also created Limbo with Mal out of his experiences, etc.
Mal is the third Alice- Possessed by a dream, anyone?
And Fischer Jr. and Saito are the fourth Alices- Both are in danger of never waking up from their dream in Limbo.
[[Everyone Lives]], except for the third Alice, who was already dead. The first Alice learns caution, albeit with a run-in with the third Alice. The second Alice's killing himself was only to wake up from the dream, and helps the fourth Alices wake up from the dream as well.
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== Inceptions are impossible unless you do a self-inception. ==
We see 3 inceptions in the movie, on the first one Mal incepted herself by making her believe that Limbo was as valid as reality. The second inception is Dom self inception (thinking he was doing the inception on Mal, but actually incepted himself) and the third inception is Robert Fischer's.
Dom's inception make him believe that Mal actually followed him out of Limbo and created the false memories of her suicide while Mal did die out of [[Stealth Pun|malnourishment]] and dehydration after a week or two (which was millenia in Limbo for her).
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* This analysis is so attractive that I wish it were not the fact that Ariadne's totem is a BISHOP--not a pawn.
* Well, rats. I suppose then I (the original poster) need to rethink how this works.
** Still works. Initially, bishops were ''ships'' - which have to tack against the wind, hence their diagonal movement. The lumpy penis-head shape was originally three sails. But the Church, being the Church, wanted to be represented on the board of "the game of kings", and chose the pieces placed right at the sides of the king and queen. They were invited to the game, then took it over and changed it to their liking.
== The movie is actually a [[Perspective Flip]], we just didn't see the original. ==
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