Primer: Please see [this post] (http://www.reddit.com/r/Inception/comments/ctlyh/cobb_is_an_old_man_in_a_coma/) for some background. I have separately come to this conclusion and found this post to capture some of my thoughts.

Argument: Cobb is an old man.

Defense: The main indication is a touching moment near the end of the movie when Cobb holds and comforts the dying projection of Mal (who had just been shot by Ariadne) in Limbo. This moment occurs at 2:12:42.

-Excerpt from the script-

Cobb holds Mal in his arms. The wind DIES...

MAL: We’d be together forever. You promised me. (Not shown in the film)

COBB:I know. But we can’t. And I’m sorry. (Not shown in the film)

MAL: You remember when you asked me to marry you? You said you dreamt that we’d grow old together.

COBB:And we did...

Mal looks at Cobb... thinking. Remembering.

INSERT CUT: Two elderly people (Mal and Cobb) walk through Limbo... across a wasteland... two elderly hands clutch each other as they lie down on the railroad track...

COBB: I miss you more than I can bear... but we had our time together. And now I have to let go...

She nods, weakly. Cobb holds Mal as her eyes close... DYING...

-End of excerpt-

1. Cobb is dreaming. Inherent in the theory that Cobb is an old man, is the idea that he is sleeping still, and that the whole film is a dream. By necessity, Cobb is not old in the film, so if he were truly old, then he by necessity be dreaming. Many people believe Cobb is dreaming, because Mal and Cobb awoke from Limbo to the "real world" of the film, when in reality they should have gone one level up in their multilevel dreaming that got them into the Limbo state in the first place.

2. Assuming Cobb is dreaming, he is an old man, because Mal and Cobb are shown as elderly in Limbo. This cut scene is shocking, because for the first time we see the true image of Mal and Cobb as they really were in Limbo. We know this is true, because this is just a conversation between Cobb and Mal's projection. We know this is their true image, because the script clearly says Mal is remembering their experiences. Your memories are different from dreams in that they are stable and people don't change their image in their memories greatly. The fact that both Cobb and Mal's projection remember themselves as an elderly couple in Limbo confirms they were elderly in Limbo, while suggesting that previous flashbacks of their adventures as their younger selves in the movie (especially the vision their younger selves on the railroad tracks) are incorrect visions, likely by Ariadne as she is learning about Mal and Cobb's tragic story for the first time. People tend to recall experiences as they happened, not randomly change their age and fundamental details. While all this does not preclude the possibility that they grew old within their dream state in Limbo, instead of in real life, I find it hard to believe for the following reason.

3. Cobb and Mal were like gods in their own Limbo, so they would not willingly choose to be old. If they entered Limbo as young people, why would they willingly become elderly and feeble. In the true flashback, we see they are hardly moving along at a snail's pace. Cobb and Mal built a super metropolis that would have taken them centuries, not decades, to explore and move through. No, gods wouldn't make that choice, especially not human gods.

4. Cobb looks young throughout the film because he is dreaming, but c. We know Mal and Cobb at some point became very lost while exploring multilevel dreaming--but, they went too far, Cobb says. It's been well documented in many threads how Cobb's (and Mal's) totem makes no sense as a measure for knowing reality. Additionally, we know many aspects of the film that are dreamlike and suggest he is dreaming. Cobb's only connection to his perception of reality is the top, but we all know that the top doesn't work as a totem. In other words, he is so lost in his dreams that he struggles to tell what is real--so much that he doesn't realize his totem is useless. He's off his rocker. At a certain point, he may not realize that he's still in a dream and he may be choosing a younger appearance now that he's had a lot of dreaming experience.

5. Mal's projection asked him about his promise that they would live together forever (not included for some reason in the final cut of the film). Limbo was his promise to Mal, the real one. Limbo was their forever, but Cobb changed his mind. What are your thoughts?

The way he spoke about Yusuf in the Mombassa bar reeks of homoeroticism.

There are extractors and few other jobs related to extraction.
It is also so well known that very important/powerful people like Fisher Jr. gets trained to defend against extractors in the dream.

The questions is: how do the extractors get so close to their target for at least several hours for extraction?

The targets are most likely well protected person.

The first time I asked this question was the first extraction scene in the movie, where Saito and the Cobb‘s crew are sitting in a Shinkansen. In Saito‘s case he let them in on purpose of an audition.

But I cannot imagine how the extractors would do it by other targets. It must involve some kind of kidnapping or setting the targets under influence to dock them into the dream machine.

Don‘t get me wrong, I love this movie and watched it way too many times and can‘t get enough. But this is something I cannot solve in my head haha

Hey guys Ive seen many inception theories and thought of another theory which I think most people haven’t mentioned and that’s how biology and outside physics affects your dream and that actually shows whether you’re in a dream or not

Yusuf when dreaming can’t control the rain because his body actually needs to urinate and rather than the Eames and Arthur telling him to stop thinking about it or stopping it themselves since they’re the architects, they just complained to him instead showing that the persons actual biology can be a marker of whether they’re in a dream or not.

And also when Arthur’s in a dream whilst the van is in free fall because of Yusuf initiating the kick, it shows real world physics are affecting the dreamer inside the dream which I think are 2 biggest markers a persons in a dream,

But that doesn’t absolve whether they’re in a dream within a dream but hypothetically someone can keep realising they need to piss until they actually wake up because there’s constant rain with each layer they wake up from. If they keep waking up later after later and there’s rain, but then they wake up again and there’s no rain it could be a key indicator they’ve woken up

She was way up in Doms business for not having a vested interest, she knew something was wrong with him damn near instantly, and her token was a bishop; which fits in with the chess symbolism (Robert Fischer - Bobby Fischer). She couldn't come back into the dream as Mal because of the way she left it the first time, but could forge her way in as an un-naturely talented architect.

Oh, and then she 'accidentally' created a familiar scene to Dom the first time they are

Cobbs father is the master Architect and they are inside Mal's dream. Cobbs father and Mal want to understand why Cobb is going insane in the real world so they attempt to recover his darkest secrets.

Whenever Mal and Cobbs father are shown in the dream they are there to stabilize Cobb from knowing that he is dreaming. Mal and Cobbs father cannot let Cobb from leaving until they find out what is wrong with him, so they altered his mind. He believes that he is the only one who can secretly place information into peoples minds, when in fact it is only Mal who can do that.

When Cobb is spinning his top we are shut off from knowing the end result, which suspiciously makes me think that his father doesn't allow him to know. Being an experienced fabricator, he can alter deception in dreams.

This is one of my favorite movies, and I've watched it many times. However, after watching it again recently, I just can't help but notice multiple plot holes and instances of the movie breaking its own rules. Below I will list them out, and I'm wondering if people generally agree, or if there are explanations:

1. The kick in dream 3 is pointless

The movie explains the concept of the kick early on. You drop the sleeping body to have the person wake up from their dream. At no time do they say that falling in a dream wakes you up from it. In fact, the only ways they indicate you can wake up is from a kick, death, or when time runs out on your dream.

Thus, what was the point of blowing up the facility in dream 3? The elevator shaft kick in dream 2 was there to wake them up from dream 3. The people in limbo wake up by death, or in the case of Fisher and Ariadne, they apparently wake up from falling (which again, was not the way a kick was explained to work earlier in the movie). But even if that falling wouldn't wake them, they obviously were going to die from falling from that height. The way I see it, there was no need to have a kick in dream 3 at all.

2. Dream 3 completely ignores the rules of gravity

The movie explains early on and throughout that the movement of your sleeping body affects the gravity in the lower dream. This is displayed many times, primarily in dream 2 with Arthur's spinning room and then zero gravity, based on what is happening to the van in dream 1.

But then the movie completely ignores this rule for dream 3. When the van rolled over, the gravity in Arthur's dream rolled over. This should have caused the sleeping bodies of everyone else to be thrashed around the room, which should have affected their gravity, but it doesn't. Then when the van is in free fall, there is no gravity in dream 2, and everyone is floating around. This means there should also be no gravity in dream 3, but again, nothing. When Arthur begins the kick in the elevator shaft, everyone is launched forward. Again, no affect on dream 3. This seems to me just to be an oversight to me.

3. Everyone should have been woken up by the van's movements

Carrying on from the above, the van rolling over, and then the first kick (when the van hit the bridge), should have woken Arthur up. Those were kicks, and he was awake in dream 2. The movie literally shows Arthur get launched forward when the van hits the brige, but he doesn't wake up, but he should have woken up in the van.

As for everyone in dream 3, again, the van rolling over should have thrashed their bodies around in dream 2, and that thrashing in the hotel should have woken them up from dream 3. The kick of the van hitting the bridge should have launched their sleeping bodies in the hotel quite literally into the wall, which should have woken them from dream 3, but again, none of this happens. The elevator shaft explosion in dream 2 should have also woken Eames up immediately, but doesn't.

4. There's a very easy way to tell whether you're dreaming, which could have saved Mal's life

Throughout the movie, it is explained and demonstrated that the dreamer can do almost anything. They can manipulate their surroundings, build buildings, make weapons appear from nowhere, etc. So, an easy test to see if you're dreaming is to try to do any of these things. If you can't, you're not dreaming. If you can, then you are. Seems like a surefire way to know whether you're dreaming, but it's not used.

5. The movie doesn't explain what happens if you die while in limbo while sedated, or if your sleeping body from an earlier dream dies while you are already in limbo

The movie explains that death won't wake them up because they are sedated, and instead they will fall into limbo. But the usual way to escape limbo is death. So if you're in limbo and sedated, does death wake you up? Does it do nothing? Do you just reenter limbo? It's unclear.

The same is true for your sleeping body dying in an earlier dream. For instance, Cobb likely drowned in dream 1, while he was already in limbo. Does that do anything to him? I have heard a fan theory that this is what causes him to wash up on the shores of limbo, instead of being in his house as he was, and causes him to briefly forget why he is there. I could buy this, but the movie does not address or explain it.

6. How do they wake up from dream 1?

The movie seems to change the kick to be that falling in your dream wakes you up, but the van kick does not return them to the plane. Instead, it works the way it was explained from the beginning, and just wakes them up from dream 2. So how do they wake up on the plane? There is no kick they can do on the plane, and they can't kill themselves, as they are still sedated. The dream is set to expire after 10 hours, which is explained to be 1 week at the first dream level.

The movie does not explain how they wake up. It just shows Saito reaching for the gun, then cuts to them waking up. But how? Did they just wait out the week now that Fisher's subconscious should be chill? Can they actually wake themselves with falling, and just jump off a building?

7. Didn't Cobb just incept Saito to kill himself in the same way he did to Mal?

The final interaction between Cobb and Saito in limbo is very similar to Cobb convincing Mal to kill herself in limbo. He even says some of the same things (take a leap of faith). Wouldn't this mean he just incepted Saito to kill himself as well?

I have a strange fear of pop music and I won’t be able to mute it in time whenever it comes on. How audible is the audio? (lol) I especially get triggered by electronic music with singing. This is because I’m autistic btw. What is the song really like for you guys? I’m talking about that French one

I feel it's best not to tell anyone until I get feedback but I'd like to hear people give their 2 cents on what they believe happened to the top in the ending(did it fall, didn't it, etc.) and their religious beliefs(Christian, Jewish, Atheist, etc). I don't feel like creating a poll so I'd just like to see comments on here. Thank you!

I'm a producer and I'm currently working on a MIDI-only rework of Hans Zimmer's 'Time'.

No audio files, no pre-made samples. This is a real challenge, for any producer.

Here to attract ONLY people interested, no spam