47 Fun Facts About Inception

Nolan first wrote Inception as which kind of movie?

Heist film. He found such films glamorous but 'deliberately superficial', so when he came back to the script he raised the emotional stakes for both his hero and the heist itself.

Which three films did Nolan make between shelving Inception and shooting it?

Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight. Nolan pitched the dream story after Insomnia but felt he needed more experience of making big movies before he could finish it.

How does Saito make sure the team can work on Fischer undisturbed during the flight?

He buys the airline. Told the plan means buying out a 747's entire first-class cabin and its flight attendant, Saito replies that owning the carrier 'seemed neater'.

What does Saito promise Cobb for performing inception?

Clearing his criminal record so he can go home. Saito says one phone call will do it, so when he is shot inside the dream, Cobb has to keep him alive long enough to make that call.

Which Irish actor plays Robert Fischer, the heir targeted in Inception?

Cillian Murphy. The film's director had once screen-tested him to play Batman, then liked him so much that he cast him as the villain Scarecrow instead.

What is Eames's role on Cobb's crew in Inception?

Forger. He fakes people as well as papers: inside a dream Eames can take on another person's face and voice, and the plan depends on it.

Why can Cobb not design the dream architecture himself?

His projection of Mal would sabotage it. Whatever he knows, she knows, so he hires a student to build the mazes and tells her never to show him the full layout.

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

Theseus. Ariadne gave him a thread to retrace his steps out of the Minotaur's labyrinth; in the best-known telling he repaid her by leaving her behind on Naxos.

Which setting is the third dream level built for Fischer in Inception?

Mountain fortress. Time runs slower with each level down, so the team's long assault on it takes up only minutes of the hotel dream above.

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

Non, je ne regrette rien. Édith Piaf's 1960 recording was written into the script, and every tempo in the film's score is a multiple or fraction of the song's.

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.

What did Cobb and Mal spend decades doing in their shared dream?

Building their own city. They lived through fifty years there and grew old together, while only hours went by for their sleeping bodies.

Whose face is faked inside Fischer's dream in Inception to plant the idea of an alternate will?

Peter Browning. He is Robert's godfather and his father's closest adviser, so a fake Browning can raise doubts about the will in a voice the heir already trusts.

Which member of Cobb's team dreams the hotel level and stays behind to deliver its kick?

Arthur. When gravity vanishes in his dream, he bundles the sleeping team into an elevator and sets off explosives to send it plunging, the only jolt he can still give them.

In Inception, how does Yusuf deliver his kick too early?

He drives the van off a bridge. Chased by gunmen, he goes too soon, and the van's slow-motion fall toward the river becomes the deadline for improvised kicks in the dreams below.

Which idea did Cobb plant in his wife Mal's mind, with fatal consequences?

That the real world was still a dream. He planted it so she would agree to leave the dream they were trapped in, but the doubt followed her into waking life and she died trying to 'wake up' again.

Which idea does Fischer finally 'discover' for himself?

That his father wants him to build something of his own. Cobb insists a positive emotion takes root better than spite, so the old man's dying 'disappointed' is recast: disappointed that his son tried to be him.

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

A spinning top. It belonged to Mal before him, and it only topples in the waking world; inside a dream it would spin on forever.

What does Cobb's totem appear to do just before Inception cuts to black?

Show a faint wobble. Whether it falls was left open on purpose, and the director's own answer is that it doesn't matter: Cobb has already walked away without waiting to see.

Which Inception actor says Nolan told him that any scene he appears in is reality?

Michael Caine. Puzzled by the script, he asked which parts were the dream and was told 'when you're in the scene, it's reality'; he is in the final scene, so he says Cobb gets home.

Which actor plays Saito, the tycoon who hires Cobb in Inception?

Ken Watanabe. The part was written for him: the director had enjoyed their earlier film together, where his role was small, and said that this time he made sure it was bigger.

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

Nash. His slip ends the opening job, when Saito notices the carpet in 'his' apartment is the wrong material; Nash then tries to sell Cobb out, and a student is hired in his place.

Which Inception actor trained for weeks to perform the revolving hotel corridor fight himself?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The corridor was a real set that rolled right over, and the stunt coordinator said such work normally needs a double because it throws you around like a washing machine.

What does Eames produce after telling a teammate not to be afraid to 'dream a little bigger'?

A grenade launcher. His partner is trading rifle shots with a gunman hidden behind a wall; in a dream a weapon only has to be imagined, so Eames conjures a larger one and ends it in a single shot.

Which Stanley Kubrick film inspired the rotating hotel corridor built for Inception?

2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick had a giant rotating wheel of a set built so his astronauts could walk right round the inside of a spaceship, and Nolan wanted to turn the same trick on an action scene.

Which James Bond film did Nolan say inspired Inception's snowbound fortress assault?

On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The 1969 film has Bond escaping on skis from a villain's Alpine mountaintop base, and Nolan said he tried to match its balance of action, scale, romance and tragedy.

Which city does Ariadne fold over on itself during her first lesson in dream-building?

Paris. The café blasts around her were staged on a real street there, but the city bans explosives on location, so the crew blew the set apart with bursts of high-pressure nitrogen.

What crashes down the middle of a downtown Los Angeles street during a car chase in Inception?

A freight train. With no tracks for miles, the crew built a locomotive shell over a stretched tractor-trailer chassis and drove it down South Spring Street, the driver steering by camera screens.

The crew gets to Robert Fischer aboard his regular long-haul flight to Los Angeles from which city?

Sydney. Saito points out that it is one of the longest flights in the world and that Fischer makes it every two weeks, so the hours the crew needs with him come built in.

Inception's shoot began with a helicopter scene above which city?

Tokyo. Saito's helicopter flight starts over its skyline, but the airport where he drops Cobb off was filmed half a world away, at Farnborough in England.

Which star says he turned down Inception's lead?

Will Smith. 'Chris Nolan brought me Inception first and I didn't get it,' he admitted in 2025, adding that films about alternate realities 'don't pitch well'.

Which composer wrote the score for Inception?

Hans Zimmer. It was his third score for the director, and he brought in Johnny Marr, guitarist of The Smiths, to play its guitar lines.

Which of these Oscars did Inception win?

Visual Effects. All four of its Oscars were for craft, the rest being cinematography and the two sound awards, and its director was not even among the five nominated.

Which cinematographer won an Oscar for Inception after giving each dream level its own colour palette?

Wally Pfister. He shot the snow scenes cool and sterile, the hotel corridors in warm hues and the van scenes neutral, so viewers always know which dream a cut has landed in.

Which film beat Inception to Best Picture at the Oscars?

The King's Speech. Its screenwriter, once a stammerer himself, had shelved the story for two decades because the Queen Mother asked him not to tell it in her lifetime.

Which sight is kept from Cobb, and from the audience, until the final scene of Inception?

His children's faces. In every memory they run off with their backs to him, and when Mal calls them round in a dream he shuts his eyes; only at home, at the very end, do they turn to him.

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

The National Film Registry. The Library's citation praises the way its scenes were created with cameras rather than computer imagery, and says the film resonates in an age of digital simulation and blurred realities.

Which actress plays Mal, Cobb's late wife, in Inception?

Marion Cotillard. She had won an Oscar for playing Édith Piaf, but the Piaf song that wakes the film's dreamers was no nod to her: it was in the script before she was cast.

What did Nolan test for Inception, then drop?

3D conversion. The tests went well, he said, but there was no time to do it to a standard he would be happy with, and he admitted he was 'not a huge fan' of the format anyway.

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

Emma Thomas. They met as students at the university where a scene of Inception was later shot, and she has produced every feature he has directed.

In which city, its director's birthplace, did Inception hold its world premiere?

London. The city is also in the film in disguise: the college where Cobb first meets Ariadne, set in another country, is really University College London's Flaxman Gallery.

Inception's snowy fortress scenes were shot at Fortress Mountain, a ski resort west of Calgary, in which Canadian province?

Alberta. A week before the crew flew out the closed resort still had no snow, and back-up plans were drawn up; it began to fall about two days before they arrived.

Leonardo DiCaprio played a grieving widower in Inception and in which Martin Scorsese film?

Shutter Island. Paramount pushed it from October 2009 to February 2010, so DiCaprio's two widowers who cannot trust what they see reached cinemas only five months apart.

Inception's score lost the Best Original Score Oscar to the music from which film?

The Social Network. Trent Reznor first turned the job down, burnt out from touring, then rang back months later to apologise and learned that its director was still waiting for his yes.

What childhood keepsake does Robert Fischer find beside the will in his father's safe in Inception?

A pinwheel. He made it as a boy, and an early scene shows it in a photograph he left by his father's sickbed, unnoticed; finding the toy itself kept in the safe turns that memory around.

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

Airship hangar. The shed is so long that the hotel's lift shaft was built lying on its side along one wall, then filmed so that the lift seems to travel up and down.

Which actor plays Ariadne, the architecture student Cobb recruits in Inception?

Elliot Page. Ariadne was written as the audience's way in, a newcomer who needs every rule explained, and the director said he cast for freshness and savvy beyond the actor's years.