'Inception' idea may have been stolen… oh, the irony!

2010 saw the release of Inception – and it was generally regarded as pretty damn good. It had everything: action, romance, stunning cast, amazing visuals, originality. Hang on a minute… What was that last one?

Well it turns out that in the midst of film critics ranting and raving about how amazingly original Christopher Nolan’s plot for Inception was, eagle-eyed fans of the comic ‘Scrooge McDuck’ noticed a rather striking similarity to one of the issue’s plot lines.

Yes, believe it or not, a Disney comic first suggested the idea of dream sharing and ‘thought theft’.

Could this be a coincidence? Is it possible that Christopher Nolan genuinely did come up with the idea for Inception and knew nothing of the comic? After all this is the man who gave us ‘The Prestige’, ‘Memento’, and the rather brilliant ‘Dark Knight’. Well for that to be the case it would have to be one hell of a coincidence.

It WAS my idea, Honest!

The comic starts out with Scrooge’s enemies, the Beagle Boys, trying their hand at dream thievery. Their prize is the secret to the location of Scrooge’s fortune. Hmm sounds familiar, right? Well it certainly should be because how does Inception start? DiCaprio enters the dreams of a wealthy businessman in order to steal his secrets.

Remember that awe-inspiring scene in Inception where that girl who played Juno folds Paris in on itself? In that scene DiCaprio warns her of the dangers of confusing a dream-world with the real world (leading to the use of totems). I wonder if the Beagle Boys had similar troubles?

Looks like they did.

In the comic after they enter Scrooge’s dream, Donald Duck then also has to enter to try and save Scrooge’s fortune and his mind. To do this he must find a way to get them out. And guess how he does it.

Yep, that’s right. He uses ‘kicks’ just like Inception.

Throughout the comic there is also the concept of hopping to different dream levels and then Scrooge not remembering the last dream with each new one – a phenomenon that the dream thieves in Inception use to their advantage.

Hang on, what about limbo? That’s got to be Nolan! Surely Disney wouldn’t have come up with something so terrifying?

Oh no, wait... They did.

This surely is all coincidence! So what, there happen to be a handful of similarities to this comic. There’s so much more to Inception! It’s so wicked, complex, and COOL! It even addresses the sub-conscious of DiCaprio’s character and his guilt surrounding the death of his wife. Now THAT is pretty deep.

...ok this is getting ridiculous.

That strip refers to Scrooge’s ex-girlfriend, Goldie, which he finds in a very deep dream level. And yes, she is there because he carries guilt over the way she was treated.

If you take the time to read the comic you’ll soon find that this is all pretty compelling evidence in favour of those who think Nolan did steal the idea. But if he did I highly doubt he’s going to admit it, I mean can you really picture him ever saying: ‘my masterpiece is all down to Scrooge McDuck!!’

The REAL genius!