Over the years, it's been common practice for HANS ZIMMER to share co-composing credits with his armada of younger composers (the German artist will enroll for a film and then farm out the bulk of the score to his "assistants"). However, funny accidents happen along the way.
Years ago, KLAUS BADELT (2003's PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL) had a falling out with ZIMMER due to one of his original PIRATES themes ("HE'S A PIRATE!" itself based on prior ZIMMER material from other movies) not being credited properly to BADELT in the sequels (according to PIRATES' director GORE VERBINSKI DVD commentary, it took fifteen composers in addition of BADELT and ZIMMER to finish the PIRATES' score in a timely fashion but BADELT still assumes the paternity of the piece on his web site).
Old habits die hard and now, following an interview with VULTURE, ZIMMER is taking sole credit for the low end "BRAAAM" sound signature associated with CHRIS NOLAN's INCEPTION (2010). However, considering the use of a repetitive "sound stab" to drive anticipation was used by JONATHAN ELIAS for his landmark 1979 ALIEN trailer (since then recycled for PROMETHEUS), one wonders who really came up with this "invention".
Cherry on the cake, MIKE ZARIN (who originated the seeds of the "BRAAAM" sound in an early INCEPTION teaser trailer) has gone public regarding how the sound signature emerged. Not only did it go through one (MIKE ZARIN; Inception Teaser), two (ZIMMER's REMOTE CONTROL team who added on top of ZARIN's music; Inception Trailer 2) but three composers (ZACK HEMSEY; Inception Trailer 3 aka MIND HEIST) before ZIMMER picked up the pieces, the article also makes clear that every involved party had a creative role in how the "BRAAAM" progressively evolved. In other words, ZIMMER taking sole credit for such a collaborative endeavor is pure heresy. [INCEPTION BRAAM Article & Discussion]