Why is inception called inception

A: It seems impossible that they could have known in advance, they must have left a blank place in their design to be filled in with the numbers as they learned them. If anyone has any other theories on this, sound off in the comments! Why did dying wake dreamers up early in the movie, but later in the movie it sent them to Limbo? A: The film explains this as being due to the types of sedatives used on the dreamers during the final sequence.

When normal sedatives are used, death wakes you up. But in order to go three dream levels deep, heavier sedatives must be used, causing this unwanted side-effect. A: When the van drives off the bridge, Cobb says they missed the first Kick.

But Arthur is in the level directly below the vans, and the rules of the movie do seem to suggest that he should have awakened by that Kick. Perhaps experienced dreamers have some control over whether a Kick wakes them up? We're a little baffled by this one, let us know if you have a better theory. Alternate Theory CB reader Jordan offers this possible explanation: Ealier in the movie Arthur tells Ariadne that if Yusuf kicks too early then they won't wake up.

While normally in order to wake up you must recieve a Kick in the level above, this isn't true when using the special sedative. Instead with the sedative it takes two synchronized Kicks. In order to be Kicked when under the sedative you had to be kicked in both 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.

Why did Ariadne jump off the building in Cobb's limbo if Eames was going to wake her up with his Kick in the level above? A: Ariadne may not have been certain Eames' Kick would work, so she was attempting to kill herself by jumping off the building. Even though we'd been told killing yourself inside the dream would only push you into limbo, Cobb has just told her that once he got to limbo with Mal they escaped by killing themselves so Ariadne knows that death is a way to escape, even though in this case it wasn't necessary.

Alternate Theory Because of the sedative it may require two, synchronized Kicks in two levels to wake someone, instead of the single Kick normally used. A: We're not entirely sure it is. It's more important that he wake them up quickly when it comes time for the Kick, to time it to occur at the same time as the Kick in the level above.

By putting them in the elevator he can give them a Kick all at once, and synchronize it with the other Kicks.

A: The safe is a creation of the subconscious that Cobb exploits, in this case Mal. The safes are constructed so that the dreamer believes that it is a safe place for them to store their secrets. The top is Mal's totem, which she uses to determine whether she's in a dream.

If it never stops spinning, that tells Mal that she's in a dream. By placing a constantly spinning totem in the safe, Cobb is placing an idea and a very simple one inside her subconscious. It's not that she saw the totem spinning, but that it was always spinning in her subconcious mind. This is why she thought she was trapped in the dream world. Why did Cobb need to use Inception on Mal to convince her to kill herself?

Couldn't he have simply snuck up on her and shot her? A: Concievably. But perhaps Cobb, madly in love with Mal, simply couldn't bring himself to do it. Remember, he was barely able to shoot a projection of her. It might be all but impossible to kill the real Mal, no matter how important he thought it was to do so.

A Kick: By upsetting the equilibrium of a dreamer you can wake them from a dream and return them to reality. So Arthur blew up the elevator to wake them up from the snow fortress dream so they could then be woken up by the car hitting the water. Limbo: A place where dreamers may end up if they go too deeply. The Architect: The person who constructs the dream world inside the mind of the Dreamer. In the final dream of Inception , Ariadne as played by Ellen Page is the architect.

The Dreamer: The person whose dream you're actually in. When creating a dream within a dream, each level must have a different dreamer. In the final sequence, Yusuf dreams the first level, Arthur dreams the second one, and Eams dreams the third level with the snow fort.

The Subject: The person whose subconcious is actually brought into the dream, usually for the purpose of extracting information from them or on rare occasions in order to plant an idea in their mind. In the final sequence, Fisher Jr. Totem: An object constructed by someone who plans to invade a dream, whose exact weight and composition only they know. Cobb uses a top which, when spun inside a dream never stops spinning. Ariadne constructs a chess piece, which she plans to use as her totem.

Projection: A person created by the subconcious mind of the subject. This is explicitly exposited by Saito. However there also exists a meta-level to the titling and, by extension, the theme of the whole film.

Inception is very much like some of Nolan's previous films in that it tries to evoke aspects of the topic at hand; both Insomnia and Memento are prime examples of this, evoking feelings of the titular insomnia and the confusion of disordered memory suffered by their protagonists.

Inception goes one step further, concerning itself with the idea of lucid dreaming and the ability to at least feel like you control your dreams. Cobb's dialogue with both Ariadne- when he's training her in dream construction- and Fischer- when he's conning him into believing he's his dream security- are actual techniques for lucid dreaming: notice the strangeness of the dream, always be questioning reality, question how did I get here?

Aside from necessary film techniques that could be interpreted as dream-like cuts, for example and the things explicitly shown to be part of the dream, the film's ambiguity as to the outer layers and whether Cobb's entire experience is a dream is left ambiguous. This serves the main purpose of the film: to incept its audience with the ideas that promote lucid dreaming. The film experience lulls people into the experience of dreaming, but leaves them with the questions of "what is reality?

Wiktionary defines inception as. Dom Cobb Leonardo DiCaprio is the only one that is convinced that in constrast to stealing information through dreams it is also possible to implant information. He explains that this cannot be done directly though, but that one must plant a seed in the form of an idea or feeling that then will grow into thoughts and finally change that persons behavior.

He did this to get her out of the dream world. But that idea developed to such a strong conviction that even when she was in the real world she still was convinced that it was a dream and killed herself to "wake up".

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why was the movie titled Inception? Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 4 months ago. Our inceptions vary from project to project, but they usually generate alignment between the business and the technical people, and create an ordered list of user stories with estimates together with a release plan.

And I was very satisfied facilitating these agile inceptions this way until , the year my son was born. The thing is, I was the inception facilitator, but the inception would take from two to four weeks. And I could not stay away from home for more than a week. I had to make the inceptions leaner, somehow make them fit in one week. I was going on my first trip after my son was born. From it I found the perfect excuse to reduce the inception length, and return home after one week.

This new inception style is definitely a shift from the inception. The team doesn't write and estimate user stories anymore. While experimenting with this new style, the name inception gave everyone the wrong message. I needed a different name. A lean inception is useful when the team needs to iteratively develop an MVP. Although the term is often misunderstood, the central property of an MVP is that it is something we build in order to learn whether it is worthwhile to continue building a product.

So we choose features based on testing our assumptions of what is valuable to our users. For this we need to understand who our users are, what activity they do that the product supports and how to measure if they find the product useful. This workshop is specifically about understanding an MVP, it doesn't substitute for ideation sessions, customer research, architectural review, or competitive analysis.