[Inception] Goofs

Goofs

Character error 

Dom slipped the sedative into Fischer's drink on the plane. The flight attendant, who was in on the plot, could have slipped it in beforehand, with much less chance of detection.

Continuity 

The first time the cab is hit, the front grille with the Hyundai logo is smashed in, and disappears. The grille reappears in the next scene, and the car has less damage than before. In the warehouse scene, the grille disappears again.

When the white van emerges from the warehouse, the passenger side mirror strikes the warehouse door. In the next shot of van's exterior, the passenger side mirror is fully extended and instead the driver's side mirror is flipped back. In subsequent shots, the correct mirror is flipped back.

In the falling van, Arthur is sleeping without the headphones that were placed on his head. The headphones reappear before the van hits the water.

One car explosion is shown twice. First, the car explodes in a fireball, filling the frame. Minutes later, the same car explodes in the same fireball, but as part of a bigger shot from further away, in the bottom half of the frame.

At the café, when Ariadne adjusts her hair or picks up her coffee cup, her hand movements are out of sync from shot to shot.

When Eames is chasing down the Hummer with skiers trailing behind it, the number of skiers on the ropes alternates between five and six in different shots.

When Saito enters the helicopter and tells Cobb about the inception plan, hard rain hits the helicopter window. Subsequent shots show no rain.

When Arthur and Ariadne are looking at the hotel rooms in the second layer of dreams, Ariadne's bun keeps moving from the back of her head to the top of her head.

In the warehouse scene between Cobb and Ariadne, a Nikon DSLR camera on a desk behind Cobb disappears and reappears between shots.

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When Arthur is tying up the team in the hotel scene, Eames' arms are tightly bound to his sides. When Arthur is pushing them down the corridors, Eames' arms float freely. Then, in the shot looking down into the elevator, his arms are once again bound tightly.

 

Shots of the falling van are interspersed with several stages of the dreams. The van backtracks in several shots.

When Arthur puts the cab in reverse and rams a bodyguard/projection, the gun flies out of the victim's hand and falls a few feet away. In the next shot, the gun is next to the dead body.

 

When Cobb first meets Ariadne and begins her interview drawing puzzles, she is wearing a gray henley shirt with buttons underneath her jacket. For the rest of the interview, she is wearing a different gray pullover blouse without buttons.

 

Arthur fights a projection in the rotating hallway, and they slide into a room. When everything finally comes to a stop, and he shoots the projection, he curls up to his left. When he gets up, he straightens up from his right.

When Yusuf drives the white van with frequent jerks, the same shot of the dreaming passengers moving inside and trying to gain balance with one hand while dreaming is shown twice.

In the first scene, Saito spins Cobb's totem clockwise. When the same scene is shown at the end of the movie, the totem spins anticlockwise (counterclockwise).

The crew busts into room 528 by kicking the door down, which should damage the lock. In later scenes, the lock is fully functional.

During various shots of the van falling off the bridge, the train on the adjacent bridge stops, moves at a decent rate of speed, and disappears between shots.

When Saito is taken from the second level dream to the first level, the floor is linoleum tile. When they push him to the floor, it is carpeted.

When Eames gets on the taxi after Robert in the rain, the scene outside the taxi with a red door, is different than the building stairs before taxi stops.

When Eames and Saito are in the hotel elevator, Saito's right hand is on Eames' shoulder. His hand is in a different place just after the camera shows the mirror.

When Cobb spins the totem in the final scene, 3 paint pens are in one glass on the table. When the camera moves back to the table a few seconds later, more paint pens are on the table.

When Cobb dives to grab his pistol and shoot Arthur, it is not in the same position as it was when he surrendered it and slid it onto the table.

In the warehouse, while Cobb and the team are talk about the idea of inception, Cobb rolls up his sleeve, then starts rolling up the next sleeve. The camera cuts away, then moves back to Cobb, who is rolling up his sleeves again.

Bullet holes and damage disappear in various shots of the falling van.

When Arthur arrives in the hotel to get Cobb for their ride on the roof, it is dark outside. When they are out on the roof, it is around noon.

After the van falls into the water, Fischer saves Peter Browning (actually Eames) from drowning in the van. Saito's eyes are wide open. Back inside the submerged van, when Arthur and Ariadne are breathing from the oxygen tank, Saito's eyes are closed.

When the rain-soaked cars enter the warehouse, the floor already has wet tire tracks, evidently from a previous take. Once they stop and the people exit, the floor behind the cab and back towards the door is dry.

Cobb and Ariadne are walking along the bridge and Cobb is explaining the importance of not building entire areas from memories. In the single shot of Cobb it's clear he's swinging both arms while walking. In the 2-shot he has his left hand in his pocket.

Cobb stops the car in a crosswalk at an intersection to pickup Ariadne. As soon as she enters, the car is broadsided by a train, in the middle of the intersection.

In the first dream sharing of Ariadne and Cobb, when Cobb wants her to think about how they ended up there, in the close shot Cobb hasn't crossed his arms. Then suddenly in the long shot he has crossed his arms, and in the next close shot they are un-crossed again.

On the flight, having verified that Fischer is asleep, Cobb signals the flight attendant. She immediately draws the curtain, retrieves the case from a locker, and upon turning around the curtain is open again.

When the white van starts to cross the bridge there are several bullet holes in the back door and side panels. After the van crosses the safety bollards the bullet holes have gone.

When the helicopter sets down at the airport, there is lots of water on the ground, and the rotor makes large ripples on it. When Saito calls to Cobb asking him if he would like to go home, the water is gone. It reappears when the helicopter takes off again.

When Ariadne goes into Cobb's dreams, she is in the elevator and passes the train in limbo. Behind the train is a body of water and the a hilly landscape with houses, not the abandoned cityscape of Cobb's perception of limbo.

Dileep Rao drops his African accent in the first dream, after the team leaves the warehouse. He only has about 2 or 3 more lines in the movie, but he says them in his normal American accent.

 

When Ariadne is showing Cobb her dream level layouts a Nikon camera is visible besides Cobb at the desk he sits down at. The camera angle looks at Ariadne, then returns back to looking at Cobb and the camera on the desk is gone.

In the opening scene, when Saito is presented with Cobb's totem, it is shown upside down, immediately after being placed on the table properly.

Crew or equipment visible 

When Fischer's cab is hijacked, numerous production markings are visible on the street.

When Cobb confronts Mal at the hotel, in front of the open window with billowing curtains, a crew member's fingertips can be seen through the sheer fabric.

 

When Arthur arrives in the hotel to get Cobb for their ride on the roof, the reflection of the window reveals a moving boom pole, possibly a c-stand and the boom operator himself.

Errors in geography 

During the chase sequence in Mombasa (filmed in Morocco), the cars' steering wheels are on the left. In Kenya, where Mombasa is located, steering wheels are on the right.

 

After the initial dream sequence, on board the Bullet Train, Cobb states that he's "...getting off at Kyoto." In the next establishing shot, we can clearly see that the city Cobb is in is Tokyo (judging by the presence of Tokyo Tower). Kyoto is over 200 miles away from Tokyo.

 

Saito's helicopter takes off from a rooftop in Tokyo, with the distinctive red and white Tokyo Tower in the background of several shots. But it lands moments later at the ultra-modern Farnborough Airport in England, more than 5,900 miles away.

 

Factual errors 

In Mombasa, the cars have yellow license plates in the front and back. Kenyan cars have white plates in front, and yellow plates in back.

Cobb tells Ariadne to draw a maze in two minutes that takes more than one minute to solve. She eventually draws a circular maze. The circular maze seems to be unsolvable by Cobb. However, it is solvable, and it would probably take most children less than a minute to solve.

 

Incorrectly regarded as goofs 

On the flight from Sydney to LAX, a flight attendant gives Cobb a white I-94 immigration form, for people coming to the US on a visa. US citizens only need to fill out a smaller blue customs declaration form. Cobb clearly declines the white form. The flight attendant also offers Fischer an I-94. He takes it and sets it down. Fischer is an Australian citizen; his passport is visible when he sits down and Cobb looks at it. Australia is a member of the Visa Waiver Program, so Australians do not need a visa to visit the US. However, flight attendants regularly give immigration forms to passengers who don't need them. Plus, depending on Fischer's position in his father's company, his visit could require a B1 (visitor for business), L1 (intra-company transferee), or E1/E2 (treaty trader/investor) visa.

The characters dream during a 10-hour flight from Sydney to Los Angeles on a Boeing 747. In real life, a 747 flight from Sydney to LAX takes at least 13.5 hours. The characters need 10 hours to complete the inception, regardless of how long the flight takes.

 

When the bus on the bridge hits the guardrail, it flies horizontally for some time, but the passengers immediately become weightless. That is correct; weightlessness is caused by acceleration, not speed. Falling is a vertical acceleration, and gravity will immediately cause the bus to fall as soon as it is no longer supported by the bridge.

When the train engine hits the cars, it is clearly affected by the mass of the cars it pushes, and its bouncing movements suggest some form of suspension (or rubber wheels). A real freight engine weighs more than 100 metric tons, far more than the cars it hits. It would not give way or bounce when hitting cars. However, the train appears in a dream, so the laws of physics may not apply. Further indication of this is that the train's wheels are shown running on non-existing rails in/under the asphalt. In real life it would not continue in a straight line.

 

When Ariadne and Cobb are at the café, a man in a yellow jacket passes behind Cobb. The camera switches back and forth between Cobb and Ariadne several times. When it switches back to Cobb, the man in the yellow jacket passes once again. The person in the jacket is a projection and based on what the movie explains, projections behave a lot like extras. This means the same projection may reappear like that.

 

Revealing mistakes 

When the team busts into room 528 in the hotel, the door opens fractionally before Cobb's foot hits it in the POV shot.

When Saito uses his teeth to pull the safety pin from a fragmentation grenade (extremely difficult in real life) the safety lever remains in place even after the grenade is thrown several feet into the opening of a vent.

When Ariadne starts changing her first dream with Cobb, she steps over an invisible step (probably a part of a green screen) each time she moves a mirror.

During the city bending scene, reflections in the windows show the buildings in place, not bending.

 

When Dom shoots Arthur to wake him from the first dream, Arthur has no bullet-hole in his forehead until he is shown lying on the ground.

Just after Cobb spins Mal's top and closes the safe door, the water in his cityscape is not moving or rippling. When he and Mal walk outside, the water in the background is stationary.

When the avalanche starts after the first kick, smoke from the explosion that probably started it is visible above the cliff for a few seconds.

 

In the beginning when you see the old man sitting at the table, one of his guards brings him a top that they found with Cobb. He sets it down so it leans to the side with the bottom point touching the table. In the next frame, the longer top point is touching the table.

One newspaper article about the strained relationship between Maurice and Robert Fischer misspells "success" (with only one "c") and uses the phrase "eminent death" instead of "imminent death".

 

In the cut-away shot of Fischer's Maybach driving up to the foot of the stairs of a private jet during the initial description of the Sydney-LA flight, the car's rear number plate is shown is show as "63-AG-GW" in black on yellow, with the text "NEW SOUTH WALES". While the format and subtext are correct for that Australian state, the actual pattern of the number is not and should instead be "AG-63-GW".

The registration code for Fischer's private jet is shown as "VH-7JL", with the "VH" prefix indicating registry in Australia. However, in reality Australian aircraft registration codes cannot include numbers.

 

When Ariadne is asked by Cobb to draw a maze she draws 2 that are easy to get out of, but she draws a 3rd that's impossible - the only two ways out of the maze from the center are dead ends.

Spoilers 

The goof items below may give away important plot points.

Continuity  When Cobb returns home at the end of the film, his children run toward him, and he picks up Phillipa. The scene cuts to Miles before cutting back to Cobb, who is now holding James.

Crew or equipment visible  During the zero-gravity fight, as Arthur chokes a projection, padding is clearly visible on the ceiling, to facilitate stunt work.

Incorrectly regarded as goofs  When Cobb and Mal commit suicide in front of the train, they look young, although they have been in limbo for decades. This is deliberate, an artifact of Cobb's happy recollections. A later scene in which he reflects on their life together revisits this shot, and the actors are aged to show Cobb's corrected memory of the events.

Incorrectly regarded as goofs  When Saito is lying on his back after being shot in the chest, something that looks like a squib is visible under his shirt. Someone mentioned first aid earlier in the scene, so it may be a bandage on his wound.

Incorrectly regarded as goofs  There are several valid reasons why Robert Fischer didn't bring a bodyguard on the 747 flight. He may like to keep a low profile. He may have thought it wasn't necessary, since he was in a secured first class compartment. Since he'd just become the heir to his father's company, he may not yet have recognized the need for a bodyguard when he traveled in public. Since his being on the 747 flight was a last minute move, very few people would have likely known about it and had very little time to do anything about it, including potential terrorists. Finally, since it turns out his mind was trained by another extractor, Fischer knew how to protect his subconscious if he ever was put under.

Incorrectly regarded as goofs  U.S Immigration no longer stamps passports as shown when Dom reenters the U.S at LAX. Since the movie takes place sometime in the future, though, it is possible that the policy has changed.

Revealing mistakes  When Cobb meets Saito in limbo, the full-eye contacts used to make Leonardo DiCaprio's and Ken Watanabe's eyes look glossy and bloodshot are visible in close-up shots.