In an interview with "Entertainment Weekly", writer, producer, and director Sir Christopher Nolan explained that he based roles of the Inception team similar to roles that are used in filmmaking, Cobb is the director, Arthur is the producer, Ariadne is the production designer, Eames is the actor, Saito is the studio, and Fischer is the audience. "In trying to write a team-based creative process, I wrote the one I know", said Nolan.
In an effort to combat confusion, television broadcasts in Japan include text in the upper-left corner of the screen to remind viewers in which level of the dream a specific scene takes place.
In spite of this movie's extensive surreal effects sequences, the majority of visual effects throughout the movie, such as the Penrose stairs, rotating hallway, mountain avalanche, and zero-gravity sequences, were created through practical methods, not through the use of computer graphics imagery. This movie only has around five hundred visual effects shots, as opposed to most other visual effects epics, which can have upwards of two thousand visual effects shots.
Once Leonardo DiCaprio was cast, he spent months with Sir Christopher Nolan working on the script. Nolan stated: "He made some extraordinary contributions to the script and really challenged me to make the script clear, but also to follow its interior logic and really be true to the essence of the characters and the rules we set out." Nolan's wife and producing partner Emma Thomas said that "the work [DiCaprio] did on his character with Chris made the movie less of a puzzle and more of a story of a character audiences could relate to."
Sir Christopher Nolan has said that the snow-based third-level dream was inspired by his favorite James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).
Christopher Nolan: [Murphy's bag] The third Nolan movie in five years in which Cillian Murphy's character spends a significant portion of his on-screen time with a cloth bag over his head. Cillian Murphy later spent a significant amount of screen time with a bag over his head in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), extending the streak to seven years. Fortunately, Dunkirk (2017) didn't require Cillian Murphy to wear a bag over his head at any point.
Christopher Nolan: [college] University College London was a location for several scenes, including when Miles introduces Cobb to Ariadne. Nolan studied at this university and has used it as a location for several movies, such as Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).