Couple of questions

[tykjen]

It's probably the most unclear section of the entire film. The rule is set up that a kick comes from the level above you. For Fischer, the kick from above is him getting shocked by the defibrillator. For Ariadne, it's the collapsing of the snow fortress.

However, when Eames initially sets up the defibrillator on Fischer, Cobb says that it's no use, his mind is already trapped down there. So it seems to indicate that the kick from the level above isn't enough by itself, and that they also need a kick from below.

And I don't think that Ariadne died in Limbo to wake up, because she was still sedated, and dying when sedated won't wake someone up. That's why I think she woke up from the kick.

Fischer wakes up from Limbo by falling off the building which is synchronized with the defibrillator.
Ariadne wakes up from Limbo by falling off the building which is synchronized with the explosion in the hospital layer.
The rest of the layers are synchronized with everyone -- hospital explosion, elevator explosion & Van hitting the water.

Clearer now.

[tykjen]

Mal's totem had a special property in the DREAM.
Arthur and Ariadne's totem had special properties in REALITY.

Which ends with that the special property of the top helped Cobb "keep track of reality" in Limbo, and remember why he was at Saito. And from then on Cobb reminded Saito, and they gave each other the best Deja Vu ever and escaped Limbo after realizing it was not real.

[karthiksac]

here's one more question that's bugging me....

We know Cobb performed Inception on Mal, so when she woke up back to reality she still believed she was dreaming and the only way to wake up is by killing themselves... so she comes up with a plan on their anniversary..where she jumps her to death... and she dies for real...

(If Mal belives she was still dreaming, she could have used her totem right to find out.. the anniversary hotel room scene is reality, if she had spun the totem, it would have actually toppled since it was not a dream..)

And we see the totem down on the floor when Cobb walks on the broken piece of glass.

What happened here.. did she never spin the totem to find whether she was dreaming or she refused to believe even after seeing the totem topple.

[Baneling]

here's one more question that's bugging me....

We know Cobb performed Inception on Mal, so when she woke up back to reality she still believed she was dreaming and the only way to wake up is by killing themselves... so she comes up with a plan on their anniversary..where she jumps her to death... and she dies for real...

(If Mal belives she was still dreaming, she could have used her totem right to find out.. the anniversary hotel room scene is reality, if she had spun the totem, it would have actually toppled since it was not a dream..)

And we see the totem down on the floor when Cobb walks on the broken piece of glass.

What happened here.. did she never spin the totem to find whether she was dreaming or she refused to believe even after seeing the totem topple.

Once the simple (yet extremely powerful) idea was planted, it did not matter to her if her totem toppled or not when back in reality. She became possessed by "radical notions" and ultimately went insane which led to her planned suicide. Cobb became equally troubled when using Dreamshare in the wake of this but managed to self therapy himself out of the recurring nightmare. And in the end, it did not matter to Cobb either if the totem toppled or not

[Lynn]

Exactly Baneling. The top creates a beautiful parallel/contrast between Mal and Cobb, her literal leap of faithlessness and his leap of faith at the end of the film.

After returning from the long dream with Cobb, Mal doesn't care whether the top keeps spinning or not because she's trapped in her own obsession, she has become unable to look at reality and recognize it for what it is. She's a prisoner of her own mind - she completely mistrusts the external reality and anything beyond the borders of her own mind, and that's what ultimately brings her to her death.

Cobb, instead, doesn't care whether the top keeps spinning or not for the very opposite reason: he's finally free from his obsession, from the cage of guilt and happy memories he was building for himself in his own mind. He doesn't need the top anymore because he has learned to believe in the outside reality.

[Baneling]

For Cobb, seeing the faces of his children again was a true assurance of his reality It was enough for him, but not for Mal