In Christopher Nolan’s Inception, what object does Cobb use as his personal totem?

In Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Cobb uses a spinning top as his personal totem.

In the film’s dream-sharing system, a totem is a distinctive object whose behavior helps its owner determine whether they are in reality or a dream. Cobb’s top spins indefinitely in a dream but eventually falls in the real world.

The top originally belonged to Mal, Cobb’s wife, before he adopted it as his own test object. This detail creates an important complication: because Cobb knows the top’s properties, the film raises questions about whether it is truly a reliable personal totem.

The final shot shows the top continuing to spin while Cobb walks away to see his children. The camera cuts before viewers learn whether it falls. That ending is deliberately ambiguous, but the object itself is not: Cobb’s defining totem is the spinning top.