Inception (2010) - Frequently Asked Questions (+ Answers)

***MAJOR SPOILERS FOR INCEPTION LIE AHEAD***

If you've encountered problems understanding your Inception DVD or Blu-Ray, you are not alone. This informative article should supply you with the knowledge necessary to operate your Inception disc in a manner that leaves you entertained and satisfied, not confused and desperately seeking answers.

How did the dream sharing depicted in the film originate? 

Even if you watch Christopher Nolan's cerebral heist thriller vigilantly and with a watchful eye on the details, you may go the entire 148-minute run time without ever actually figuring out where the dream-sharing technology that is so prevalent throughout the film came from in the first place.

The answer can be found in a brief, easily-missable line from Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Arthur when he and Leonardo DiCaprio's Dom Cobb are first introducing Ariadne, played by Ellen Page, to the world of extraction and shared dreams. As Arthur divulges, the technology was first developed by the military (it's unclear of which nation) in order to provide soldiers with an arena in which they could practice stabbing and shooting each other without any real-world consequences.

Why can't you touch someone else's totem? 

This is another minute detail that Arthur relays to Ariadne sometime during the film's second act, a detail that might prove a little puzzling to some viewers upon their first or second foray through the mind-bending labyrinth of a narrative that Nolan masterfully weaves. It's an ancillary detail that might slip through the cracks if you're holding on for dear life to your grasp of what exactly is going on. And again, the answer to this particular quandary lies in Arthur's explanation.

Some of the film's characters are shown to have totems, which are handy objects used to decipher whether or not one is in a dream or in reality. Cobb, for instance, possesses a spinning top that never topples when he is in a dream. Arthur has a loaded die with a very specific weight to it. He doesn't allow Ariadne to touch it because, very simply, if other people know the specifics of your totem, they would subsequently be able to fabricate a version of it in a dream, thus confusing the totem's owner as to his or her true whereabouts.

What is the significance of the numbers 528491? 

Throughout the third act of Inception, there is a set of six seemingly random numbers that continually reappear at different moments. Those numbers are 528491. They first pop up when Cobb forces Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), whom they have abducted in the first level of their 3-level dreamscape, to say the first six numbers that he can think of. They deceive Fischer into thinking they are attempting to enter a safe next to his dying father's hospital bed.

The numbers again appear in the next level down, which takes place in a hotel. Eames (Tom Hardy), disguising himself as a young blonde woman, gives Fischer a napkin with those same numbers on it, pretending it to be the female character's phone number. Additionally, the rooms 528 and 491 in the hotel play a pivotal role in the team's plans.

In the final dream level at the snow-covered military base, 528491 is the combination that unlocks the safe next to Fischer's father's bed. There is no further significance to this set of numbers other than the fact that the team needed six random numbers to continually feed back to Fischer subconsciously so he could unlock the safe and successfully complete the inception process.    

Why is a young Cobb just arriving in Limbo when an old Saito has already spent years there? 

This is a detail that can initially seem like an oversight on Chris Nolan's part. At the conclusion of the team's infiltration of Fischer's subconscious, both Cobb and Saito are trapped in Limbo, which is unconstructed dream space. This is the sequence that also appears at the very beginning of the movie. Cobb washes up on the shores of a Limbo that has been significantly altered by Saito, who is now an old man with a beachside fortress and his own private security. Cobb had already traversed down into Limbo with Ariadne in order to rescue Fischer, who died on the snow fortress dream level.

Why wasn't Cobb still down there when Saito first got trapped?

The answer is ultimately quite simple. We first see Saito die on the snow fortress dream level when he is fighting back against Fischer's militarized subconscious while Eames sets charges around the facility. At this moment, Saito is dead on all three dream levels and drops down into Limbo. This occurs while the van from the first dream level is still in freefall. Cobb is still alive, having entered Limbo by way of a fourth dream level. When the van in the first level hits the water and the team members are submerged, Cobb drowns. The rest of the team escapes to the surface, but both Cobb and Saito are left in the van.

At this point, once Cobb is officially dead, he re-enters Limbo, where Saito has already been existing for a considerable amount of time. Remember, time is significantly dilated in the lower dream levels, so even the brief moments between Saito's death and Cobb's death equals years in a dream level as deep as Limbo. So by the time Cobb washes up on Limbo's shores, Saito has presumably spent many decades down there.

Was Cobb still dreaming at the end of the movie? 

No.

There are a lot of fun theories out there that expound upon the idea that Cobb was actually still dreaming when he reaches his children in the film's waning moments, some of which are actually backed up with some evidence from the movie itself.

But no. It's not a dream.

What did the team do on the first dream level for a week after the plan is executed successfully? 

This is a question without a specific answer, I'm afraid, but it's fun to ponder nonetheless. It is articulated at some point during the film that, due to the time dilation of shared dreaming and its heightened effect as a result of the customized compound developed by Yusuf (Dileep Rao), the 10-hour flight they used to stage the whole operation will last an entire week the first level down, six months on the second level, and ten years on the third. The heist takes place over the course of a couple of hours on the first level, which means the team must subsequently spend an entire week on this level until the dream ends and they wake up on the plane.

It's somewhat amusing to think about what they possibly could have done during all that time, especially considering Fischer's trained projections were probably still chasing after them.



Inception can be a rather confounding viewing experience if you lose track of what's going on, but hopefully this guide helps you navigate this especially complex film effectively.