The corridor sequence was pretty much Nolan echoing 2001, I think they even used very similar or even the same techniques to achieve the effect.
Paprika, being an animated film, is unconstrained by the necessities and problems that arise from working with real actors and real props.
Nolan is a film buff, in a similar vein to Tarantino, if you don’t mind the parallel, so while it’s pretty much a given that he must know 2001, the claim that he might’ve taken inspiration or paid homage to an anime movie, is far more dubious.
He is also known for preferring practical effects to VFX, which were amply used in 2001 (obviously) and Inception.
I say this as someone who was quite sad to hear that Satoshi Kon passed away. He was clearly an original and innovative artist and he died way too soon.
While not conclusive, indications were that the ideas behind Inception had been around for a long time.
Nolan accepted to make The Dark Knight trilogy because he wanted to make Inception, but his credentials only extended to short and indie films, so he lacked the experience for a caper the scale of Inception.
Batman Begins came to cinemas in 2005, while Paprika in 2006. All IIRC.
I was personally quite surprised that some even went as far as to say Inception ripped off Paprika because the general ideas about dreams have been around not only for decades, but probably centuries. And the two films did seem so very different from one another.
