50 Fun Facts About Inception

Who wrote and directed Inception?

He produced it with his wife Emma Thomas. It was his follow-up to The Dark Knight.

What genre was Nolan's original 80-page treatment about 'dream stealers' pitched as?

He shelved it after Insomnia to gain experience on bigger films, then rewrote it as a heist movie.

Which three films did Nolan make while Inception sat on the shelf waiting for him to gain experience?

Warner Bros. finally bought the revised treatment in February 2009.

What is the name of Leonardo DiCaprio's character?

He is an 'extractor' who steals secrets from people's dreams. DiCaprio was the first actor cast.

What does Saito promise Cobb in return for performing inception?

Cobb had fled the US after Mal framed him for her death.

Who is the target of the inception job?

He is the heir to a rival energy empire. The idea planted is to break up his dying father's company.

What is Eames's role on the team?

Tom Hardy plays him. In the dream he impersonates Fischer's godfather Peter Browning.

Why can Cobb not design the dream architecture himself?

So he recruits Ariadne, a Paris architecture student recommended by his father-in-law.

Ariadne's name alludes to a Greek princess who helped which hero through a labyrinth?

She gave him a ball of string to find his way out of the Minotaur's maze, much as the film's Ariadne guides the team through the dream mazes.

How many dream levels deep does the team take Fischer on the plane?

A rainy city, a hotel and a snowy mountain fortress. Time runs slower on each level down.

Which French song is used to time the 'kick' that wakes the dreamers?

Édith Piaf sang it, and Marion Cotillard, who plays Mal, had won an Oscar for playing Piaf two years earlier.

Instead of waking up, where do dreamers go if they die under Yusuf's heavy sedation?

Limbo is a world of infinite subconscious where decades pass in a night. Saito and Fischer both end up there.

How long did Cobb and Mal spend in Limbo, in what was one night of real time?

They grew old together building a city. When they woke, Mal still believed she was dreaming.

Whom does Eames impersonate inside Fischer's dream to plant the idea of an alternate will?

Browning is Fischer's godfather, played by Tom Berenger, who says he has spent more time with Robert than his own father did.

Which team member dreams the second-level hotel and stays behind to deliver its kick?

He rigs an elevator with explosives when Yusuf's early kick throws the plan off. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays him.

How does Yusuf perform his kick too early on the first level?

Arthur and Eames have to improvise new kicks timed to the van hitting the water.

What idea did Cobb accidentally plant in Mal's mind in Limbo, with fatal consequences?

He did it to convince her to leave Limbo. Back in reality she jumped, believing she would wake up.

What is the idea Fischer finally 'discovers' in the third level?

A positive emotion sticks better than a negative one, the team reasons.

What is Cobb's totem, used to test whether he is dreaming?

It was originally Mal's. In a dream it spins forever; in the final shot he walks away without watching it fall.

What does the top appear to do just before the film cuts to black?

That wobble launched a decade of arguments about whether Cobb was home or still dreaming.

What rule did Nolan give Michael Caine about which scenes were real, according to the actor?

Caine plays Cobb's father-in-law Miles, who meets him at the airport at the end, so by that logic Cobb makes it home.

Who plays Saito, the businessman who hires the team?

Nolan wrote the part for him after working together on Batman Begins.

Which architect on Cobb's team betrays them early on and is replaced by Ariadne?

Lukas Haas plays him. Saito's men take him away after the failed job in the opening.

How did Joseph Gordon-Levitt describe the corridor he trained in for the rotating hallway fight?

He did the fight himself and came home battered after six-day weeks. The idea came from Kubrick's 2001.

How long did the rotating hallway set end up, after starting out planned at 12 m?

It was built in a converted airship hangar in Cardington, Bedfordshire, where Nolan had also shot Batman sequences.

Which Stanley Kubrick film inspired the rotating-set technique?

Kubrick had built a rotating centrifuge set for the Discovery spacecraft scenes.

Nolan's favourite James Bond film inspired the mountain-fortress ski chase. Which one?

He praised its balance of action, scale, romance and tragedy. The fortress was shot at Fortress Mountain ski resort in Alberta.

Which Moroccan city doubled for Mombasa, where Cobb hires Eames and Yusuf?

Its streets were also used for the riot scene in Saito's dream.

At which Paris landmark does Ariadne create an illusion of infinity with facing mirrors?

The famous folding-city sequence was done with green screen and CGI on location.

What crashes down the middle of a downtown Los Angeles street during the first-level car chase?

The train was built on a truck chassis. The van later goes off the Schuyler Heim Bridge in slow motion.

At what speed were the slow-motion sequences shot on the Photo-Sonics camera?

Capturing the actors suspended in the falling van took a whole day.

In how many countries was Inception filmed?

It began in Tokyo on 19 June 2009 with Saito's helicopter scene and wrapped in Canada that November.

What was Inception's official budget?

Split between Warner Bros. and Legendary, plus about $100 million of marketing.

Roughly how much did Inception gross worldwide?

That made it the fourth-biggest film of 2010, behind Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland and the first Deathly Hallows.

Who composed the score, describing it as 'a very electronic, dense score' full of nostalgia and sadness?

He reworked pieces of the Piaf song into his cues, and lost the Oscar to The Social Network.

How many Oscars did Inception win?

Cinematography, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects. It lost Best Picture and Original Screenplay.

Which cinematographer gave each dream level its own colour palette and won the Oscar for the film?

The mountain fortress is cool and sterile, the hotel warm, the van neutral, so audiences can track the crosscutting.

Which 2002 comic have several sources noted plot similarities to Inception with?

In 'The Dream of a Lifetime', the Beagle Boys enter Scrooge's dreams to steal his vault combination.

What was the title of the online prequel comic Warner released?

It shows the failed job for Cobol Engineering that opens the film. Nolan also floated a video game set in the world.

To which honour did the Library of Congress add Inception in its class of 2025?

For being 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant', fifteen years after release.

Which actress plays Mal, the projection of Cobb's dead wife who haunts his dreams?

Nolan called Mal 'the essence of the femme fatale', the film's key noir reference. DiCaprio said Cotillard could be strong, vulnerable and heartbreaking in the same moment.

In which year did Inception open in cinemas?

It opened on July 16 in both conventional and IMAX theatres, took $62.7 million on its first weekend and held the No. 1 spot for three weeks.

Nolan produced Inception with which producer, who is also his wife?

Thomas has produced every one of Nolan's features. Inception's $160 million budget was split between Warner Bros. and Legendary.

In which city did Inception hold its world premiere on July 8, eight days before release?

The premiere was held in Leicester Square. Nolan is British-American and shot the film's rotating sets in England.

The snowy fortress scenes were shot at Fortress Mountain ski resort in which Canadian province?

The set near the top of the chairlift took three months to build, and the crew then had to wait for a big enough snowstorm to arrive.

Which actress was offered the role of Mal but turned it down, unable to see herself in it?

Winslet had starred opposite DiCaprio in Titanic and Revolutionary Road. Inception became DiCaprio's second-biggest hit after Titanic.

Hans Zimmer's Inception score lost the Best Original Score Oscar to the score of which film?

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won for their electronic score. Zimmer wove pieces of Edith Piaf's 'Non, je ne regrette rien' into his own cues.

Cillian Murphy studied the sons of which media mogul to play an heir in his father's shadow?

Murphy described his character as a petulant child with everything material but deeply lacking emotionally. Tom Berenger plays his godfather, 'Uncle Peter'.

The tilting bar and rotating corridor were built inside a converted what in Cardington, England?

The bar set tilted 30 degrees, while the corridor hung on eight concentric rings driven by two huge electric motors so it could spin a full 360 degrees.

The role of Ariadne was written with which actress in mind before she turned it down?

Blunt, McAdams, Taylor Swift, Emma Roberts and Carey Mulligan were also considered before the part went to Elliot Page, whom Nolan praised as a combination of freshness and maturity.