Inception’s Dream Timeline Explained (In Full)

Christopher Nolan’s Inception takes place in at least four different dream levels, all of which have their own dreamer, layout, and time dilatation factor. While Inception’s ending has dominated the conversation around the movie for over a decade, the film has a complex enough story even without considering the mystery of whether the top stopped spinning. The best way to understand Inception’s dream levels is to assume that what Cobb perceives as reality is indeed real, at least initially.

Cobb had to perform an inception in Robert Fischer, meaning Leonardo DiCaprio’s character had to get deep enough into the target’s subconscious and plant an idea that would grow like a virus. Fischer’s mind could not track down the origin of the idea, which is why they would need at least three levels to complete the mission. The Christopher Nolan movie establishes a series of rules regarding how each level works, including but not limited to how differently time passes in each and what is the kick that will wake up the characters.

Ground Zero Is Reality

Time Dilatation: None

While not technically a dream level as far as we know it, reality can be considered ground zero of Cobb’s mission in Inception. Inception starts with a scene that is later revealed to be set in limbo, followed by moments from two different dream levels that help us understand what Cobb does and how the concept of shared dreams works. Between Cobb and Arthur’s first interaction with Saito and Cobb running for his life in Mombasa, keeping track of reality in the first act of Inception can be tricky.

We are asked to assume that everything that happened from the moment Cobb was hired by Saito to when they started the Fischer mission took place in reality, the only exception being a couple of flashbacks. That said, Inception plays around with the idea of what is real or not even before the actual Inception mission starts, particularly with Cobb not waiting for his top to stop spinning after he wakes up from a strong sleep powered by Yusuf’s new compound in Mombasa. Regardless, the Fischer mission starts inside the plane.

The First Level Is The Rainy City

Time Dilatation: 10 Hours Equals One Week

Assuming reality as Cobb knows it is indeed the real world, the first dream level of the Fischer mission is the rainy city. As soon as the team is sedated and falls asleep on the plane, they find themselves in the middle of a city during a strong rain. We learn that the rain is being caused by the fact that Yusuf, who is the dreamer at this level, drank too much at the airplane before falling asleep. This is where the inception plan kicks off, with the team staging the kidnapping of Robert Fischer.

The idea was to use the kidnapping scenario to force Robert Fischer’s subconscious into revealing key information about his relationship with his father, which was the key to Cobb’s inception plan. However, Arthur’s research failed to discover that Robert Fischer had been trained to protect his subconscious against dream invaders like Cobb. This is why Cobb and his team are attacked by armored people in the middle of the city – those are a defense mechanism sent out by Fischer’s subconscious. This completely changes the parameters of the mission, forcing the team to move faster and deeper into Fischer’s subconscious.

The Second Level Is The Hotel

Time Dilatation: 10 Hours Equals Six Months

After doing the kidnapping routine in the first level and realizing that Fischer was more than prepared to deal with them, the Inception characters put a much riskier plan into practice on the second level – “Mr. Charles.” It involves telling Fischer that he is dreaming so that Cobb can present himself as the person who is training him to deal with extractors. It is an extremely risky plan because it reveals to the target they are in a dream, meaning their subconscious sets up their defenses immediately. Through the “Mr. Charles” plan, Cobb learns more about Fischer.

Here, the goal is to make Fischer believe that his godfather is a traitor. The only way to fix Robert Fischer’s relationship with his father was by destroying the only positive relationship he had in his life, which is why they started framing Browning as a traitor. With Fischer starting to believe that Browning was behind the kidnapping and buying Cobb’s Mr. Charles story, he was now part of the team without knowing he was actually the target of their mission. Cobb, Eames, Saito, Ariadne, and Fischer then get another level down.

The Third Level Is The Snow Fortress

Time Dilatation: 10 Hours Equals 10 Years

Fischer, now believing that Cobb and his team are trying to help him, thinks he is the one dreaming this level. The snow fortress should have been the final stage of the mission, with the fort in the middle of the map guarding the secret that Fischer believed he was looking for. In reality, getting Fischer into the fort was the manifestation of the inception they were trying to perform. They were now deep enough into Fischer’s brain to plant the idea that not only did his father love him, but he wanted his son to carve his own path.

The plan goes off the rails after Cobb, who insists Ariadne would show him the quickest way to get to the fort, leads Mal into Fischer. Cobb was not the dreamer or the Architect for any of the levels because his subconscious was compromised due to the guilt he carried with him over Mal’s death. Mal got to Fischer before he could open the safe and shot him. The mission was about to be declared a failure, but Ariadne suggested they would go even deeper so that there was still time to reanimate Fischer and complete the mission.

The Fourth Level Is Limbo

Time Dilatation: 10 Hours Equals 200 Years

Inception’s dream levels and time dilatation rules start to get more complicated after they enter limbo. It is unclear how exactly the limbo works or what it even is, including whether every person gets their own limbo, or if it is a shared dream level. Ariadne, Fischer, and Saito were all apparently sent to the same limbo Cobb and Mal had inhabited during all those years, and we even get to see the world they created. While going into the limbo was very risky, if all the kicks happened correctly, everyone would be able to return.

Once Ariadne found Fischer, she threw him and herself out of Cobb’s house to force a kick on both of them. Cobb stayed behind to finally confront his memories of Mal and to find Saito, who died in the earlier levels and risked being lost forever in limbo. Time dilatation in limbo with that specific compound was 1 by 160000, meaning that Saito could have lived a lifetime already by the time Cobb found him. This is exactly what happened, and it brings Inception full circle back to where the movie began.

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Inception: What Happened To Cobb’s Wife & Why He Sees Her Explained

Cobb’s wife, Mal, was almost an antagonistic force in 2010’s Inception, but her role in these dream worlds was far more complex and tragic than this.

Once Cobb finds Saito and reminds him of who he was and the promise he made, it is implied that they kill themselves and wake up. All the other kicks in the other levels happened successfully – the bombs Arthur planned in the elevator, the van falling and hitting the water, and the timer reaching zero at the plane. Inception ends with the whole team waking up in the real world as Saito picks up the phone to make sure Cobb can return to the United States. Cobb returns home but doesn’t check if his totem fell, hence the never-ending theories.

Christopher Nolan’s 2010 Sci-fi action film Inception follows a thief who enters the dreams of others to steal information and, after being caught, is given a chance to clean his slate by performing an untested concept – implanting an idea within another mind. An ensemble cast is brought together by former target Saito, who seeks to implant the idea of destroying his own company into his father’s mind. In a complex labyrinth of dreams and untested theories at the forefront, survival is not guaranteed in this psychological heist where the stakes are high, and nothing is what it seems.

Release Date

July 16, 2010

Studio(s)

Warner Bros. Pictures

Distributor(s)

Warner Bros. Pictures

Runtime

148 minutes

Franchise(s)

Inception

Budget

$160 million

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