I finally got off my ass and created this because I saw Inception for a third time. I took detailed notes this time. Enjoy:

- Cobb goes under (in dream den) after meeting/establishing connections with characters (Eames, Saito, Ariadne, and Yusuf), therefore providing context for creating their subconscious forms in his dream. After “waking” from dream, spins top. Saito interrupts, no result. Top doesn’t spin again until final scene. From this point on, everything is Cobb’s dream.

- All legible/relevant numbers include 528491. Mal’s safe (maaaaybe) shows 52 as a number combo during one scene. The hotel room below Room 528 is Room 491 (Arthur’s sequence).

- In a flashback scene, post-Mal inception and reawakening, she rejects her children as legitimate. Both children have notably darker hair and are played by different actors than those in Cobb’s visions.

- Mal is a violent character in the movie, having a fascination with sharp objects, particularly knives. She was adamant in rejecting those children after waking from limbo, so there’s a possibility that she murdered the children, then Cobb took revenge. The story then becomes Cobb creating a fantasy world void of the dangers of Mal, yet still detached from his children. Possible hero complex? Needs to fix issue/save his children somehow?

- However, this conflicts with Miles (Cobb’s father) cooperating with his son to reunite him with children and phone call, unless that’s another layer all together.

- A note to suggest that his marriage was troubled is the presence of Cobb’s ring. In all scenes where the top topples (reality), Cobb isn’t wearing a ring. In his shared dreams and all of the inception sequence, he’s wearing a wedding ring.

- Cobb urges Ariadne to never reveal the passage through the fortress labyrinth, yet he forces her to tell him the air duct route when she could have privately told Fischer and Saito herself. She tells Cobb, his subconscious takes that information to the projections of Fischer and Saito.

- People’s projections stared at the intruder up until Cobb goes under in the dream den. After that point, the projections stare straight back into the camera, making the audience (us!) the intruders in Cobb’s elaborate dream.

Got anything to add/scream at me for? Leave a comment, ye bastard.

[Image courtesy Film School Rejects]