This is why it is so dangerous and feared by the team. The reason it was filled with Cobb and Mal's city was because Cobb had spent 50 years there.

As with other dream levels, each state of dreaming is filled with projections and places from each of the current dreamers minds. Having spent so much time there, Cobb filled Limbo with his dream memories of his and Mal's previous Limbo city. After Mal dies in their apartment, Cobb wakes up on the beach once again. This time, near a pagoda-like palace where he finds Old Saito. The jump from one place to another can be explained by a previous scene in the movie where Cobb tells Ariadne that often in dreams you jump from one place to another, not knowing how you got there.

Alternatively, the jump can also be explained by Cobb drowning to his death in the first level of the dream and thus ending up in Limbo. The reason the palace is here in this part of Limbo is because Saito and Cobb had spent time there during the audition extraction that Cobb and his previous team did for Saito. Saito now occupies this palace in Limbo where he has been stuck for many years.

One theory is that Cobb entered Limbo twice. The first time was with Ariadne. They found Fischer and kicked him back to Eames' dream. Meanwhile Saito dies and goes to Limbo. Cobb provokes Mal into attacking him. Note: He provoked her very methodically, a conscious choice he made for some reason, and this theory is one explanation for it. Mal dies from Ariadne's gunshot wound and Cobb dies from Mal's knife wound.

At this point, Cobb is currently dying in all 3 levels in 3, crushed by the exploding snow fortress; in 2, in the crashing elevator; in 1, left to drown in the van. When he dies in Limbo, he wakes up in one of or perhaps all of these levels and dies again, sending him to Limbo and washing up on the shore near Saito's palace.

Saito, having been in Limbo this whole time, has aged decades while Cobb is just arriving to Limbo for the second time. Another perspective as to why Saito is older is that Limbo is formed around the "raw subconscious".

During the helicopter scene, Saito relates to Cobb his personal fear of becoming an old man filled with regret. And this is the form that Saito takes in his Limbo. His age does not reflect the time in the various levels of dreams. With this in mind, the flashbacks of Cobb and Mal in their old age perhaps did not reflect them becoming old in Limbo, but rather were real memories of themselves.

Limbo is a very deep dream state where a few hours in the real world last for decades. When Cobb explains that dying under sedation won't make somebody wake up but instead fall into Limbo, they explain that nobody on the team had ever gone there except Cobb. Because they are all sharing their dreams, nobody else had been there and they had no plans prepared there, all that exists is Cobb's. Limbo isn't shared among everybody in the world, it's only shared by the team that's sharing their dreams.

Cobb says at one point that remembering what happened in a dream takes years of experience. It can be assumed that this also works conversely: remembering what happened in reality when entering a dream.

It is made apparent throughout the film that the dreamers are fully aware of what they're doing because they've trained ahead of time. Many of the "why"s in the film can be explained simply because the dreamers are professionals and have training and experience.

Imagine, if you will, that you could predict what dream you were going to have tonight and you could prepare for it. When you arrived in the dream you would be aware what it was because you had prepared yourself for it. Throughout the film, Cobb's team prepares thoroughly for the Inception job: they study Ariadne's models with the exception of Cobb , they go through the scenarios, etc.

By the time they are actually ready to enter the dreams, they have fully prepared their minds for what they're about to experience and their minds can thus recognize the reality that they are in a dream while Fischer, on the other hand, has not had any prior knowledge of this and can thus be fooled by the illusion. These numbers "" were the same ones that Fischer Jr. Just as a safe created by an architect can be filled with a dreamer's secrets, so too can the safe be set to unlock with the dreamer's own numbers.

By taking Fischer Jr. Eames projected as a blonde woman gives Fischer Jr. Cobb exploits this and forces additional rehearsal when he asks Fischer to "figure out the room" to search for extractors. The rest of his team is already at the hotel room when Cobb and Fischer arrive, since they knew the room to be at since they exited the first dream.

Nolan has said multiple times that one of his favorite quotes that inspired him to make this movie is just that. In many other interviews he says that although this is a completely original idea, there are causes of inspiration for everything he's done.

This explains the whole premise of "inception" and is a big symbol of how our lives are all made up of tiny little inceptions or inspirations caused by others. It's an appropriate song for Inception because of the theme of regret that weaves through the film. The melody of "Non, je ne regrette rien" is also echoed in the score of Inception by being slowed down. According to The Wall Street Journal, Christopher Nolan, the writer and director of Inception, had incorporated the use of this song into the script from early on.

Marion Cotillard , who plays Mal, also portrayed Piaf in La Vie en Rose and won an Academy Award for it , which caused Nolan to seriously consider taking the song out before being convinced by Hans Zimmer to keep it.

In Greek Mythology, she was considered the "Mistress of the Labyrinth". In the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur, Ariadne was a princess of Crete, and her father the king created a labyrinth with a Minotaur inside it. Every year seven men and seven women would have to be sacrificed to it. One year, a hero named Theseus offered to kill the Minotaur, and Ariadne fell in love with him, so she gave him a ball of string before he entered the labyrinth as well as directions.

Theseus was able to kill the Minotaur and took Ariadne for his bride. In some accounts of the myth, Theseus later abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos, where she was discovered and rescued by the god Dionysus. Ariadne eventually became the wife of Dionysus and joined the pantheon of gods on Mount Olympus. This song can also be read as backing the theory that "Inception" follows the metaphysics of "A Course in Miracles", a spiritual text which describes humanity as dreaming. The dream is described in the Course as having a flavour or underlying, all-pervasive guilt—just as Cobb tells Adriadne he experiences.

Truth, says ACIM, is buried deep in the dreamer's unconscious mind cf. Mal's safe , and Spirit tries to wake us up to our innocence through what is metaphorically described as "an ancient melody" that speaks of our innocence cf.

Cobb is told by Ariadne that the key to him undoing the nightmarish situation in which he is entrapped with Mal is forgiveness. Cobb forgives both Mal and himself, releases his regrets, and so heals his past another key theme of ACIM. Thus in the movie, Ariadne serves as the "mistress of the labyrinth" both in the obvious sense of devising dream labyrinthine architecture, and in the more subtle sense of leading Cobb out of his mental imprisonment. The city Yusuf's Dream 2.

The hotel Arthur's Dream 3. The mountain Eames' Dream 4. Limbo the decaying city and the castle where Cobb finds Saito Edit. This is a storytelling device.

As Cobb tells the story, the audience and Ariadne both imagine Cobb and Mal as they are young-the only way we know them, because it is from our and Ariadne's point of view. When Cobb reminds Mal that they did grow old together, and we see them as they really were in his memory, walking together as older people, finally we see their aged hands clasped together, shaking as they lie on the tracks. It is then we realize how that final scene really was in Cobb's memory, and we understand the full life that they have shared.

It is not explicitly explained. The device used to enter dreams connects to the wrist of the people using it, but it does not appear to be intravenous IV. After Saito wakes from his dream on the train, he feels his wrist, which shows no evidence of needle puncture, etc. The machine is a plot device that somehow allows the experience of shared subconscious during dreaming, and it also apparently rapidly induces REM sleep the phase of sleep in which dreaming takes place.

It also maintains this REM state for the duration of its activation, obviously necessary for the extraction missions. The science or mechanism behind these features of the machine are not explained, presumably as they have nothing to do with the actual plot. An example of a plausible explanation may involve the use of electromagnetic pulses to stimulate rapid onset of REM, but this is pure speculation.

In this case it was both. The fact that Cobb and Ariadne can voluntarily follow Fischer into Limbo means that Limbo is simply the fourth dream level, where you also end up when you die in one of the first three dream levels while still sedated, which is what happened to Saito and Fischer.

Due to the sedative, a synchronized multi-level kick was needed the van freefalling, the original plan for the hotel floor explosion, and the snow fortress explosion. Yusuf's kick van freefall was too early due to Fischer's projections attacking, and thus, the kicks weren't synchronized. This was designed to ensure that the team was able to stay where they needed to and finish the job. If one kick failed because it wasn't synchronized, they could try another while using the musical countdown to warn the next level that it was coming.

Earlier in the movie Arthur tells Ariadne that if Yusuf kicks too early i. While normally in order to wake up you must receive a kick in the level above, this isn't true when using the special sedative. Instead with the sedative it takes two or more synchronized kicks in all levels simultaneously. Arthur didn't have the second kick ready when the van drove off the bridge, so he wasn't awakened by the van falling off the bridge. When the elevator hit the ground floor and the group was kicked by the van hitting the water, they were pulled out of Eames' dream the snow fortress and simultaneously pulled out of Arthur's dream the hotel back into Yusuf's dream the van.

Cobb and Saito weren't kicked back up because they were still stuck in Limbo and weren't being kicked at that moment. So they were left in the van underwater still attached to the dreaming device. For normal sedatives, you just go back to reality if you become aware that you are in Limbo. As shown where Cobb and Mal returned to reality.

If the timer on the machine reaches zero and you've forgotten where you really are, you accept it as reality become older like Saito and die.

You'll never go back to reality as your mind perceives that you're dead coma. But these are memories—fresh in his mind due to the fact that he just woke up from dreaming about the time Mal and he spent in Limbo together. If you notice, there is no evidence that the window is part of Yusuf's bathroom. The curtains with their warm glow are even the same as those in the hotel room.

This is followed by a close-up shot of Mal sitting on the ledge of the hotel room where she committed suicide. These are all fresh recent memories to Cobb since he relives them in his dream. The room behind her is fine. The room she lured Cobb to is trashed because she is setting up a crime scene that will implicate Cobb in her death. She lures Cobb to the room across from her so she can try to convince him to die with her, without giving him any chance of stopping her.

Here she shows a more sinister side: if he doesn't join her in jumping off the ledge willingly out of love for her, she has made it so he might be pressured to jump unwillingly to avoid being framed for her murder. And, in fact, it is because he doesn't jump that he ends up framed for her murder, which would motivate Cobb to follow after Mal and commit suicide to avoid a life sentence. It's also possible she hoped that if he didn't jump, he'd be sentenced to death and upon execution, would join her.

She was hedging her bets in trying to ensure he would wind up dying in every scenario to join her in what she believed would be the real world. Time needed in Reality: 10 hours. In Level 1, time in the dream: 1 week.

Idea to be planted: I will not follow my father's footsteps. Method: Eames disguises and impersonates Browning, Fischer's godfather and convinces him that his father loves him and doesn't want him to follow his footsteps.

Cobb gets a random number from Fischer's mind to set the hotel room number in level 2. Yusuf drives with everyone in the van to the bridge where they can perform the Kick. Kick: the van hit through the barrier and off the bridge. In Level 2, time in the dream: 6 months.

Idea to be planted: I will create something for myself. Method: Eames reminds Fischer about the number. The team tricks Fischer by letting Fischer's projection of Browning tells him that his father so it seems self-generated has an alternate will which supersedes the other and his father wants him to split his empire.

Kick: to have the floor of the hotel room with everyone drop from underneath by triggering the explosives in below. In Level 3, time in the dream: 10 years. Idea to be planted: My father doesn't want me to be him. Method: By now, the random number Fischer comes up will be the security code for his safe.

His projection of father should appear in the vault. Eames need to come up with something to put in the safe paper fan from the picture Fischer cherished most to let Fischer thinks that his father doesn't want Fischer to be him.

Kick: Drop from exploding the hospital floor. All the kicks are synchronized. Dropping hospital floor sends them from Level 3 to Level 2, dropping hotel floor sends them from Level 2 to Level 1, the falling van in Level 1 Yusuf back to the plane, where he performs final kicks to wake the rest of the team.

Charles" is a gambit designed to alert the Target Fischer to turn against his own subconscious by telling him that he's dreaming and pointing out the strangeness of it all, gaining his trust in order to move forward with the mission at hand as quickly as possible.

Cobb impersonates as Mr. Charles, a projection of Fischer's subconscious trained by an Extractor who comes to help him to get rid of the intruders. This is extremely dangerous as this alerts Fischer's trained subconscious to be well-prepared to find the intruders and kill them Fischer's projections in the third level down are militarized and well-armed.

Eames is the "dreamer" for the third level. Fischer, as he is for dream levels 1 and 2, is the "subject" of the dream. The task of being the dreamer on each level requires being someone within the team so the designs for the dream space can be correctly constructed according to plan. Mal told Cobb her plan to incriminate him if he won't jump with her. Mal went to 3 different psychologists to prove that she's mentally sane, then sent a letter to their attorney that Cobb is trying to kill her and papers indicating her mental state.

Considering that Mal had deliberately staged a struggle in the hotel room before she jumped off the ledge of the opposite room, this is why the police refuse to listen to Cobb's explanation that she's mentally unstable and conclude that he killed her. It's left unclear as to how forensic pathologists wouldn't have been able to verify that Mal fell from the building on the opposite side of space between the buildings, but it might suffice to say that the street or alleyway was narrower than it seems to us the audience or that Cobb was convinced enough of Mal's plan to simply run from the law without giving his statement, making him a fugitive.

In either case or both cases, it's possible that what we see or gather from exposition is Cobb's imperfect and guilt-filled recollection of the events, which aligns perfectly with the "metaphysics" of the movie's narrative—that the world is what one makes of it.

That's the original Inception plan. However, it seems that not even a day has passed in level 1 dream throughout the whole mission. This is due to the unforeseen circumstances such as Fischer's subconscious being trained heavily armed and capable of finding the intruders quickly and Saito is hurt and dying, so their mission needs to be completed as quickly as possible. The team knew the number beforehand, when Fischer told them. Since Arthur is the Dreamer, all he needs to do is to change the room number s.

Even though Cobb appears to act quickly during Inception's finale , the potency of Yusuf's compound has pushed Saito deep within his infinite subconscious. Cobb knows that he must find Saito in Limbo, but also knows that the businessman likely won't remember their arrangement.

In fact, they even discuss this concept after Saito is shot in the first dream level. As it turns out, though, repetitive dialogue "You're going to become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone" and a spinning totem remind Cobb that the shores of his subconscious are not real. The old friends return to the real world, and Saito immediately honors his agreement by making the phone call that he promised all along, one that will allow Cobb to return to his family. Both men are clearly dazed upon waking up in Inception because they've been trapped within their subconscious much longer than the rest of the team.

Hough is a senior writer at Screen Rant. He's also the founding editor at Vague Visages, and has contributed to RogerEbert. Hough Published Jun 27, Improve this question. KyloRen KyloRen 1. Don't have any objective references, but my take on it was that Saito, mentally exhausted and damaged from years of living in Limbo, expects Cobb to have gone through the same experience by that point, and to have nothing but hatred left for Saito.

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Many, many years ago … It belonged to a man I met in a half-remembered dream … A man possessed of some radical notions … Over the course of the conversation it dawns on Saito that he is indeed in a dream or at least that he's got little to lose and that his former life is probably reality.

Improve this answer. Valorum Valorum k gold badges silver badges bronze badges. It's worth adding that limbo is confusing and has a tendency to drive a person a little crazy the whole point of the Mal arc.

The implication is that by the time Cobb shows up for him, there's a good chance Saito has lost all grasp on reality. Cobb is hoping that somehow he can convince Saito to remember their arrangement despite "decades" of dream living. Saito's projections? Projections "protect" the dreamer in some way, and in limbo they're guarding a fortress with him inside. Even with a lack of specifics, in a dream like that, you would get the sense that you're a target.

I definitely agree with hoffmale. Cobb and Ariadne go down into Limbo to find Fischer, and after Ariadne pushes Fischer off of the highest floor of Cobb and Mal's home, she jumps herself, administering the kick, and leaving Cobb alone to search for Saito.

Years later, Cobb washes up on a shore and is brought inside of a large palace; inside it is Saito, though he is now ninety years old. Both struggle to remember their situation, but slowly regain memories of their former life.

Finally, Cobb, noticing the constantly spinning totem, gives Saito a message: that the world is not real. Cobb and Saito discuss going back to reality for a moment, and Saito reaches for Cobb's Beretta.

Both Cobb and Saito awake from Limbo, presumably having shot themselves, and Saito immediately honors his agreement to Cobb, allowing him to return to his family with a single phone call. Despite not having any special skills, he is an excellent shot, taking out guards in the first level with a Browning BDM.

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