bearebel7 wrote:Every one is making theories. and everyone can
Can some one pls explain this Mal-Adriane theory , just cant get it. anyway that thought is just briliant.

2.i still have a doubt. How Cobb came to Satios Limbo. everyone says Cobb somehow got kicked back to level 1 where drowning threw him to Satios Limbo. But the movie doesnt show wat kicked Cobb back to level 1. pls help

3.And how the last dream saved Fisher since he was already dead in level3
thanx in advance

Don't know anything about your first one.

2. Saito's limbo is the same world as Cobb's limbo. There aren't separate limbo's for different people. If you are connected to someone who has been there before then you will go to the Limbo that they created.

3. The last dream as you called it is actually limbo. Ariadne went and rescued his mind from there while Eames revived his body in Level 3.

paladinryan wrote:I think so. He remains awake. Just like JGL is the 2nd level dreamer, and he remains awake.

Regarding the fairy tale/mythology aspect: it's interesting that Cobb's "sin" or "hubris" is Inception and his eventual salvation is Inception too.

If he's the dreamer, why isn't his subconscious attacking fischer's?


This bugs me and makes me think less of the film. I always though each layer was Fischer's projections.

GunRanger wrote:

paladinryan wrote:I think so. He remains awake. Just like JGL is the 2nd level dreamer, and he remains awake.

Regarding the fairy tale/mythology aspect: it's interesting that Cobb's "sin" or "hubris" is Inception and his eventual salvation is Inception too.

If he's the dreamer, why isn't his subconscious attacking fischer's?


This bugs me and makes me think less of the film. I always though each layer was Fischer's projections.

The dreamer creates the dreamworld (architecture-wise) but does not populate it. That is left to the "subject" or "target" of the dream, i.e. Fischer (or anyone else in the dream, like Dom populating the dream with Mal). No one has had their subconscious militarized except for Fischer. Thus, each layer's army of guards IS made up of Fischer's projections.

So why do the members of the "Dream Team" not militarize their subconsciouses as well? This is because the subconscious recognizes ALL invading dreamers as threats, not just the subconsciouses of enemies (this is demonstrated in the scene with Ariadne and Dom, among others). This means that, in the dream, each member of the team would have his/her own army of dream soldiers waiting to take down everyone else in the dream, including team members. For obvious reasons, that wouldn't be productive.

bearebel7 wrote:Every one is making theories. and everyone can
Can some one pls explain this Mal-Adriane theory , just cant get it. anyway that thought is just briliant.

2.i still have a doubt. How Cobb came to Satios Limbo. everyone says Cobb somehow got kicked back to level 1 where drowning threw him to Satios Limbo. But the movie doesnt show wat kicked Cobb back to level 1. pls help

3.And how the last dream saved Fisher since he was already dead in level3
thanx in advance

1. Can't comment, 'cause it's not my theory.

2. All the other levels of the dream had collapsed when the kicks occurred. This means that level 1 was the only remaining dream level, and in it, both Saito and Dom were dead, but they were still connected to the suitcase. That means they were still in limbo, but the same limbo. Now, the movie never shows Cobb getting kicked up there because everyone else had already left the dream. But it's reasonable to assume that he waited in limbo with Mal for ~50 years then killed himself. By that time, he would be dead/the sedative would have worn off in level 1, thus allowing him to escape level 4 (his limbo).

3. Fischer's body was resuscitated by the defibrillator in level 3 just as he was kicked back up from level 4. This allowed him to come back to life just as he was waking up.

MrFang wrote:

GunRanger wrote: If he's the dreamer, why isn't his subconscious attacking fischer's?


This bugs me and makes me think less of the film. I always though each layer was Fischer's projections.

The dreamer creates the dreamworld (architecture-wise) but does not populate it. That is left to the "subject" or "target" of the dream, i.e. Fischer (or anyone else in the dream, like Dom populating the dream with Mal). No one has had their subconscious militarized except for Fischer. Thus, each layer's army of guards IS made up of Fischer's projections.

Well what is the point of a dreamer when you have an architect? The architect creates the world, the subject fills it, what is the dreamers job?

I thought it went like this:
Ariadne creates the different levels of the dreams

They make Fischer dream in this world.

Yusuf stays behind to kick them while they go into further levels

It doesn't make sense to me to have the dreamer not be the subject.

GunRanger wrote:Well what is the point of a dreamer when you have an architect? The architect creates the world, the subject fills it, what is the dreamers job?

I thought it went like this:
Ariadne creates the different levels of the dreams

They make Fischer dream in this world.

Yusuf stays behind to kick them while they go into further levels

It doesn't make sense to me to have the dreamer not be the subject.

The architect merely designs the levels of the dream, and teaches them to the "main" dreamers. You can see Ariadne doing this as they're planning the job. The dreamer, as far as I can tell, must stay awake within the dream so they can maintain the structure of the dream. Yusuf was the dreamer in level 1, so he stays behind and remains awake. Arthur was the dreamer in level 2, so he stayed behind and remained awake (also note that, because he's the dreamer, he has the ability to change the structure of the dream, like the paradoxical staircase; I don't know why the dreamers didn't use this ability more often). Eames was the dreamer in level 3, and Ariadne mentions that he modified the design of the level to include the air vent that led directly to the vault. Obviously, Dom was the dreamer in level 4 and Saito was the dreamer in level 4b.

To recap--

Architect: Designs dream before the dream takes place
"Main" Dreamer: Builds the structure of the dream
"Attacking" Dreamers (including the subject): Populate the dream with projections

Architect: Designs dream before the dream takes place
"Main" Dreamer: Builds the structure of the dream
"Attacking" Dreamers (including the subject): Populate the dream with projections

Oh okay I get it. And it all deceives the subject into thinking it is his dream from the very beginning right?


However I don't think it could have been Eames' dream. It had to be Fischer's, since they went into the dream of one of his subconscious projections - in this case Browning.

GunRanger wrote:

Architect: Designs dream before the dream takes place
"Main" Dreamer: Builds the structure of the dream
"Attacking" Dreamers (including the subject): Populate the dream with projections

Oh okay I get it. And it all deceives the subject into thinking it is his dream from the very beginning right?


However I don't think it could have been Eames' dream. It had to be Fischer's, since they went into the dream of one of his subconscious projections - in this case Browning.

That's what they told Fischer they were going to do, but there are a couple problems with Fischer being the main dreamer: First, how would he know the layout of the dream that Ariadne had designed? He couldn't have known that because he wasn't a part of the team. But more importantly, how could the dream have remained intact when he was dead and floating around in limbo? If he had been the dreamer, the dream would have collapsed then and there.

When you watch the movie again, listen to the dialogue between Ariadne and Dom. They make reference to Eames being the dreamer multiple times.

Fischer THOUGHT they were going into Browning's mind; this way, Fischer would be convinced of the veracity of the information he thought he was extracting. In other words:

Level 1 -- The kidnapping/torture sets up a situation in which Fischer believes he's been kidnapped. He never sees Browning get tortured, though, and Eames's Browning says various things that throw Browning's motives into suspicion.

Level 2 -- Fischer believes that level 1 is reality, and that level 2 is a dream in which Browning is attempting to break into his mind. In this level, because Browning's motives have already become suspect, Fischer creates Browning as a projection, and the team convinces Fischer to break into Browning's mind to retrieve his motivations for pulling off this terrible crime. In fact, however, they simply descend into a new dreamstate in which Eames is the dreamer.

Level 3 -- Fischer believes he is breaking into Browning's mind, but is in fact placing an idea within his own subconscious. He needs an explanation for why his father would want to split up the company and why Browning would want to stop him, so he creates one, subconsciously. This is the secret that he finds within the safe. Because of the levels above, Fischer believes he has extracted the idea from Browning, when in reality he has incepted it into himself.

I read this entire thread, and the explanations people came up with answered most of my questions, although I'm not satisfied with some of them.

First, I think MrFang is right about the sedatives--the special strong sedatives have to be used in all levels, or else Fischer wouldn't have gone into limbo upon dying in L3.
Second, a bit of a plothole (or at least real misdirection), in the last scene, the top falling down doesn't even prove he's in the real world, because the top would only behave falsely (i.e., spin forever) if it was created by someone who didn't know the true properties of the top. But if Dom created this last dream with his kids and Michael Caine, his subconscious mind would create the top to be correct (falling)--he'd fool himself. A totem only helps you become lucid if you're in someone else's dream.
I agree that kicks produce merely the option of going up one level, rather than the compulsion to do so. Otherwise Arthur would have been forced to wake up from the hotel back into the rainy city upon the initial van kick.

One big problem I have with some theories is the time. People forget that even if you spend fifty years in limbo, in the real world, only a couple hours have passed. So, for example, choosing to hang around in limbo for decades has basically no (real-world) opportunity cost, beside the possibility of going crazy. The only reason for limbo is the special sedatives anyway--without them, limbo wouldn't even be a risk. (So for example, the crazy theory that Mal actually got out and is alive in the unshown Real Real World and is trying to convince Cobb to come out makes no sense; she could just wait a few hours, bam. By the same token, if Cobb really wanted to stay, he has no reason not to; upon getting out, he wouldn't have missed anything.)

Also, nobody's even questioned why Saito's much older than Cobb in limbo. Someone said above that it's because Saito died earlier But the difference in time would have been minuscule. L1-Saito would have been dead for a fraction of a second at most (in L1-time) before L1-Cobb's dreamself's dreamself's dreamself died. Remember, Saito died right after he threw the grenade. Cobb died a couple (L3) minutes later, either because L4 collapsed, killing L4-Cobb, or the mountain fortress collapsed, killing L3-Cobb. This would have been about 40 minutes later in L4 time, which wouldn't have been more than a day later in limbo-time. You could stretch the multiplier 300X and still only make that time difference a year.

Re: getting out of limbo, I'm conflicted. We know the special sedatives are the root cause of limbo. And it was explained that the fear of 50 years in limbo exists because outlasting the sedatives results in (e.g.) 5 hours of real time (the amount of time for the sedatives last) and multiplying it by 20^4 or whatever. So how do you get out of limbo?

1. Suicide or waiting out sedative (pro: explains train tracks double suicide, explains cobb and old-saito gun suicides. Con: Fischer did not kill himself, he got defenestrated by Ellen Page yet he still woke up)
2. Dying or waiting out sedative (pro: fits both Fischer and train tracks pair, con: Why didn't Cobb go into limbo straight from level 4 then? He couldn't have, or he'd have aged the same as Saito, and been there much earlier instead of arriving there on the beach 50 years later. Another con: Why would Cobb have needed to perform inception on Mal if he could have just killed her, then himself?)

Neither of these are satisfactory. Suicide is the easiest to make work, if you assume that Fischer wasn't really in limbo because maybe his L3 body was still barely alive, or maybe he got pulled into Cobb's L4-that-is-a-clone-of-his-old-limbo, or some other reason.

eeeebo wrote:I read this entire thread, and the explanations people came up with answered most of my questions, although I'm not satisfied with some of them.

First, I think MrFang is right about the sedatives--the special strong sedatives have to be used in all levels, or else Fischer wouldn't have gone into limbo upon dying in L3.
Second, a bit of a plothole (or at least real misdirection), in the last scene, the top falling down doesn't even prove he's in the real world, because the top would only behave falsely (i.e., spin forever) if it was created by someone who didn't know the true properties of the top. But if Dom created this last dream with his kids and Michael Caine, his subconscious mind would create the top to be correct (falling)--he'd fool himself. A totem only helps you become lucid if you're in someone else's dream.
I agree that kicks produce merely the option of going up one level, rather than the compulsion to do so. Otherwise Arthur would have been forced to wake up from the hotel back into the rainy city upon the initial van kick.

One big problem I have with some theories is the time. People forget that even if you spend fifty years in limbo, in the real world, only a couple hours have passed. So, for example, choosing to hang around in limbo for decades has basically no (real-world) opportunity cost, beside the possibility of going crazy. The only reason for limbo is the special sedatives anyway--without them, limbo wouldn't even be a risk. (So for example, the crazy theory that Mal actually got out and is alive in the unshown Real Real World and is trying to convince Cobb to come out makes no sense; she could just wait a few hours, bam. By the same token, if Cobb really wanted to stay, he has no reason not to; upon getting out, he wouldn't have missed anything.)

Also, nobody's even questioned why Saito's much older than Cobb in limbo. Someone said above that it's because Saito died earlier But the difference in time would have been minuscule. L1-Saito would have been dead for a fraction of a second at most (in L1-time) before L1-Cobb's dreamself's dreamself's dreamself died. Remember, Saito died right after he threw the grenade. Cobb died a couple (L3) minutes later, either because L4 collapsed, killing L4-Cobb, or the mountain fortress collapsed, killing L3-Cobb. This would have been about 40 minutes later in L4 time, which wouldn't have been more than a day later in limbo-time. You could stretch the multiplier 300X and still only make that time difference a year.

Re: getting out of limbo, I'm conflicted. We know the special sedatives are the root cause of limbo. And it was explained that the fear of 50 years in limbo exists because outlasting the sedatives results in (e.g.) 5 hours of real time (the amount of time for the sedatives last) and multiplying it by 20^4 or whatever. So how do you get out of limbo?

1. Suicide or waiting out sedative (pro: explains train tracks double suicide, explains cobb and old-saito gun suicides. Con: Fischer did not kill himself, he got defenestrated by Ellen Page yet he still woke up)
2. Dying or waiting out sedative (pro: fits both Fischer and train tracks pair, con: Why didn't Cobb go into limbo straight from level 4 then? He couldn't have, or he'd have aged the same as Saito, and been there much earlier instead of arriving there on the beach 50 years later. Another con: Why would Cobb have needed to perform inception on Mal if he could have just killed her, then himself?)

Neither of these are satisfactory. Suicide is the easiest to make work, if you assume that Fischer wasn't really in limbo because maybe his L3 body was still barely alive, or maybe he got pulled into Cobb's L4-that-is-a-clone-of-his-old-limbo, or some other reason.

nope....even though the sedatives wore off, if you did not get out of limbo, you will still be stuck there

the only way to get out of limbo is through death, and to do that, you will need the will to kill yourselves

Dan_87 wrote:nope....even though the sedatives wore off, if you did not get out of limbo, you will still be stuck there

the only way to get out of limbo is through death, and to do that, you will need the will to kill yourselves

Dying in a dream, just because you took a Nyquil, puts you in a coma? Sorry, that makes zero sense.

Edit: And anyway, it doesn't matter--they mention multiple times that limbo lasts for decades--because of the length of the sedative * the multiplier. If you never got out no matter what, it wouldn't be decades. It would be infinite.