My personal theory is that, as Fischer has been trained to resist extraction/inception he must have a totem.
I think that it's the photograph of him and his father in his wallet that is stolen in the first dream. Fischer is therefore unable to verify whether he is living or dreaming, and falls under the inceptors' spell
The picture is shown several times, and it has a "Chekhov's gun" significance in the film.

There are some weaknesses in the theory. Why for example would Fischer give up the totem?
A possible explanation is that he is unaccustomed to dreaming on his guard. He reacts as anyone would when mugged.

The second is that all the other totems in the film are in some way reliant upon gravity. This would not. Fisher would have to know the exact feel of the paper, the fading of the colours that would be impossible for an architect to replicate.
In passing, how would Arthur know that he's dreaming during the zero gravity sequence- his die wouldn't be able to tell him.

Anyhow. These are my thoughts following my viewing last night. Fantastic film!

What do you think?

Fischer wasn't trained that well against extraction. Otherwise he wouldn't have been so surprised when Cobb confronted him with the idea, that he is in a dream.
He could also have a totem that you don't get to see. We also didn't see the totems from Yusuf, Saito and Eames.

Exalto wrote:Fischer wasn't trained that well against extraction. Otherwise he wouldn't have been so surprised when Cobb confronted him with the idea, that he is in a dream.
He could also have a totem that you don't get to see. We also didn't see the totems from Yusuf, Saito and Eames.

I got the idea that only those who worked with Cobb knew about the usefulness of totems. He and Mal came up with the idea, so the other side might not even know about the idea.

I also don't think it would make a good totem, at least not from what we see of it. A totem needs a non-guessable attribute, such as its weight or center of gravity.

Of course it *could* have such an attribute. Probably the best thing for a photo is to do something like make it magnetic.

It seemed like a unique idea for Cobb's team, thanks to Mal. So I'd say only Cobb, Ariadne, Arthur, and probably Eames have totems. Not that any of there's are ever significant...

Only people that have worked with Cobb has a totem.

Eames totem was a poker chip