YMMV / Following

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Even if The Blonde was manipulating The Writer, it doesn't make her demise at Cobb's hands any less horrifying.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Cobb sure makes breaking into houses For the Evulz look fun.
• Evil Is Cool: Cobb is a pretty mundane version of this. But the way he goes about his dirty deeds is pretty awesome.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Twelve years later Christopher Nolan would make a movie staring a thief also (sur)named Cobb. Considering Nolan got the idea for Inception early in his career (but took years getting to a point where he was well-known enough to get the funding necessary to pull it off), this probably isn't a coincidence.
  • The second apartment Cobb and The Writer break into has a Batman sticker on the door. Christopher Nolan's Breakthrough Hit would be The Dark Knight Trilogy.
  • Cobb tries to break into a flat using a credit card - something characters in Memento and Insomnia would do as well.
• Magnificent Bastard: Cobb is ordered by a gangster (The Bald Guy) to kill one of his former lovers after she started blackmailing him, then notices that a stranger (the Writer) has been following him. He plays the Writer for a complete fool, implicating himself in the murder Cobb is planning under the guise of teaching him the art of burglary. He pretends to be working with the Blonde to implicate the Writer for another murder. He reveals he's working for the Bald Guy, kills the Blonde with the same weapon the Writer used earlier in another burglary, then disappears into thin air to let the Writer take the fall.
• Paranoia Fuel: Someone you trust has been playing you from the start and manipulating things so that you take the fall for their crimes. And there's nothing you can do about it.
• Vanilla Protagonist: The Writer of course is the everyman to contrast with the Anti-Hero Cobb and the Femme Fatale.

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