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Inception Plot Theories

1. Each dream has a subject and guests.
   

2. Sharing a dreamspace requires all involved parties to be linked in the level above.
   

3. Heavy sedatives are required to stabilize dreams within dreams.
   

4. Dying in a dream takes one out of the dream.
   

   4a. If one dies in a dream within a dream (or deeper) one risks falling into limbo if headily sedated.
   

   4b. Normally, dying in a dream causes one to wake up one level up, with reality being the obvious limit.
   

5. Totems only work for their owners, given that no one else knows their nature/secret.
   

6. Dying in limbo wakes one up straight to reality.
   

7. Kicks work to wake one up from a dream, but not from limbo.

• The top totem belongs to Mol, not Dom.
  

• The top is not successfully spun by Dom in the bathroom.
  

• The top's outcome is not known at the end.
  

• The top falls when Dom is speaking to his children on the phone.
  

• Dom's children look the same throughout the entire movie (including the end). Same age, but more importantly, same clothes.
  

• Dom cannot dream naturally.
  

• Dom and Mol appear across from each other on separate ledges, in front of what appears to be identical rooms.
  

• Before Mol leaps to her death, Dom claims that if they were dreaming, he'd be able to do something about the situation.
  

• Dom and Mol are never shown in the presence of others, apart from their faceless children, in any scene.

This theory will detail the story in chronological order. Phrases with asterisks are to be taken as "let's just say".

Dom and Mol Cobb experiment with dreams within dreams by using heavy sedatives as a stabilizer. Since they are experimenting, the effects of dying within deeper level dreams under such conditions are unknown. Since they have no kicks in place since their bodies are alone at home, on the floor in the living room, they can only rely on the assumption that death within dreams will kick them back up one level. In one of these deeper levels of dreams, of whom Mol is the subject*, Dom tampers with Mol's top (tampering can either mean switching it out, or learning its nature/secret) in hopes to render it inaccurate to Mol in determining if she is dreaming. He does this to plant the inception that the top has lost its accuracy so that Mol can never be sure of whether she is dreaming or not since her totem does not perform as it should in dreams. At this point, Dom thinks he has a better understanding than Mol as to whether they are dreaming or not.

In this arbitrarily deeper level of dreaming, since time is much quicker and they are well aware of their dreaming, they create an entire world for themselves and live what feels like 50 years together, happily, until old age. They eventually want to return to their real lives, but having only experimented with dreams within dreams under heavy sedatives, they are scared/nervous about dying in this dream, as seen by their behavior and "last words" on the train tracks. Once killed by the train, they appear on the floor of their living room and they are in limbo, but initially believe they are back to reality. Since Mol's top no longer works for her, she is unsure if she is still dreaming, while Dom is positive they are not. Over time, Mol becomes increasingly suspicious of her environment and is confident that they are just in a higher level of dreaming. She frames Dom in order to give him a good reason to kill himself as well and sets up the hotel room incident. Dom exclaims that if he were dreaming he'd be able to change their situation, which shows that a dreamer can be just as equally bound by rules in a dream if he or she believes its reality. Mol jumps to her death while Dom stays behind.

Now, with no effective link to the actual real world, Dom is trapped in limbo, "where your mind eventually turns to mush" - a coma - while Mol is back in reality. No kick can wake Dom out of his coma, and with the belief that his world is the real world, he has no intentions on killing himself. In his coma world, Dom goes on to live through the events detailed by the rest of the plot. In his coma world, he must leave the country to avoid being pinned as his wife's murder, gets jobs as an extractor, works on the Fischer inception, and returns home to see his children, at which point, the top does not topple.