46 Fun Facts About Mission Impossible

Ethan Hunt's spy agency is known as the IMF, letters that stand for what?

Impossible Missions Force dates from the 1966 TV series, whose taped briefings warned that if agents were caught or killed, 'the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions'.

Which Star Trek star joined TV's Mission: Impossible in 1969 as a master of disguise, replacing Martin Landau?

Leonard Nimoy signed on as soon as Star Trek was cancelled in 1969, spending two seasons as an ex-magician and make-up expert before leaving in 1971.

Who composed the famous Mission: Impossible theme?

Lalo Schifrin was leading a jazz big band in Buenos Aires when Dizzy Gillespie heard it and invited him to America; he spent years as Gillespie's pianist before writing the 1966 theme.

The Mission: Impossible theme is written in which unusual time signature?

5/4 squeezes five beats into every bar, and that lopsided count is what lodges the theme in the ear; its long-long-short-short pulse also happens to match the Morse code for M and I.

Who directed the first Mission: Impossible film in 1996?

Brian De Palma reshot the opening after his friend George Lucas watched a cut and told him to sit the team around a table and brief the audience, replacing a scene about a jealous husband.

Which veteran actor plays Ethan's IMF mentor, revealed as the mole, in 1996's Mission: Impossible?

Jon Voight took over the team-leader role Peter Graves had played on TV; Graves hated the traitor twist, saying the film could have retired his character with a telegram from Hawaii instead.

In 1996's Mission: Impossible, what is the IMF team in Prague trying to stop being stolen?

The NOC list of undercover agents names deep-cover operatives across Eastern Europe; the Prague job turns out to be a mole hunt, and Ethan later lifts the real list from CIA headquarters on a wire.

In the climax of 1996's Mission: Impossible, a helicopter is dragged behind a TGV into which famous underground passage?

The Channel Tunnel finale has the helicopter, tethered to the high-speed train from London, dragged underground, where Ethan destroys it with a stick of explosive chewing gum.

Two members of which band recorded the hit dance version of the theme for 1996's Mission: Impossible?

U2's rhythm section, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr., flattened the theme's odd meter into a straight four-four beat so clubs could dance to it, and the single went top ten in Britain and America.

Which of Tom Cruise's Outsiders co-stars plays IMF hacker Jack Harmon, uncredited, in 1996's Mission: Impossible?

Emilio Estevez, Cruise's co-star from The Outsiders, plays Jack Harmon uncredited; Harmon is impaled at the top of a lift shaft during the Prague embassy job.

Who directed Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)?

John Woo brought his slow-motion doves and two-gun shootouts only after Oliver Stone, the first director attached, dropped out; the sequel went on to out-gross every other film of 2000 worldwide.

In Mission: Impossible 2, what are the engineered virus and its cure called?

Chimera and Bellerophon come from Greek myth, where the hero Bellerophon rode Pegasus to kill the fire-breathing Chimera; in the film the cure only works if given before the virus takes hold.

Which actor lost the role of Wolverine in X-Men partly because Mission: Impossible 2 overran?

Dougray Scott, who plays villain Sean Ambrose, had been cast as Wolverine, but MI2's overrunning schedule forced him out and the role went to Hugh Jackman.

How is Ethan Hunt spending his holiday when his mission arrives at the start of Mission: Impossible 2?

Free-climbing a desert cliff is Ethan's idea of time off; Tom Cruise did the climb himself at Dead Horse Point in Utah, held only by a safety cable in case he fell.

Which knighted actor makes an uncredited cameo as Mission Commander Swanbeck in Mission: Impossible 2?

Anthony Hopkins appears uncredited as Swanbeck, briefing Ethan in Seville; when Ethan calls the job difficult, he replies that this is 'Mission: Impossible', not 'Mission: Difficult'.

Which nu-metal band recorded 'Take a Look Around', a version of the theme, for Mission: Impossible 2?

Limp Bizkit built 'Take a Look Around' on the TV theme's riff, and its video hands the band a mission of their own by payphone outside a coffee shop; Metallica's 'I Disappear' shared the soundtrack.

Mission: Impossible III was the feature-film directing debut of which TV creator?

Cruise hired him after binge-watching Alias; the delay while Abrams finished Alias and Lost cost the film Kenneth Branagh, Carrie-Anne Moss and Scarlett Johansson.

Who plays arms dealer Owen Davian, the villain of Mission: Impossible III?

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Owen Davian, who calmly counts to ten while threatening to shoot Ethan's wife; the 'Rabbit's Foot' he is after is never explained, even to Ethan.

Which Simon Pegg character debuts as a desk-bound IMF technician in Mission: Impossible III?

Benji Dunn becomes a field agent from Ghost Protocol onward, one of the few characters besides Ethan to recur across most of the series.

Which of the first seven Mission: Impossible films had the lowest worldwide gross?

Mission: Impossible III made about $398 million worldwide, below the first film's $457 million and MI2's $546 million, despite positive reviews.

Ghost Protocol was the live-action directing debut of which animation director?

Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille, made his first live-action film here and still hid A113 in it, the number of the CalArts animation classroom that Pixar's films also sneak in.

In Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Ethan Hunt scales the outside of which skyscraper with malfunctioning sticky gloves?

Cruise was attached to the Burj Khalifa by cables the whole time; Industrial Light & Magic painted them out.

In Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the IMF is disavowed after being framed for bombing which landmark?

The Kremlin bombing gives the film its title: 'Ghost Protocol' is the order shutting the agency down.

Which Slumdog Millionaire quiz-show host plays media tycoon Brij Nath in Ghost Protocol?

Anil Kapoor plays the playboy tycoon Brij Nath; Paula Patton's Agent Jane Carter seduces and then overpowers him to get the override codes for his satellite.

Who is the first director to helm more than one Mission: Impossible film?

Christopher McQuarrie directed Rogue Nation and Fallout, then Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning, after doing uncredited rewrites on Ghost Protocol.

Rogue Nation opens with Ethan Hunt clinging to the outside of what?

An A400 cargo plane taking off carried Tom Cruise himself on its side, climbing to around 5,000 feet; the main trickery was painting out the safety cables that held him there.

Which opera, famous for the aria 'Nessun dorma', is playing during Rogue Nation's assassination attempt in Vienna?

Turandot by Puccini plays on while Ethan fights an assassin whose rifle is disguised as a flute, high above the stage; the finished film later held its premiere in that same Vienna opera house.

Who plays Ilsa Faust, the MI6 agent who first appears in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation?

Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa was killed off in Dead Reckoning Part One, in Venice, at the hands of Gabriel.

What is the name of the rogue organisation of ex-spies led by Solomon Lane in Rogue Nation?

Solomon Lane's Syndicate is a network of rogue agents drawn from intelligence services worldwide; in Fallout its remnants regroup as the Apostles, a terror-for-hire outfit.

Which actor plays CIA chief Alan Hunley in Rogue Nation and Fallout?

Alec Baldwin plays Alan Hunley, who gets the IMF shut down in Rogue Nation, ends that film as its new Secretary, and is killed by August Walker in Fallout.

Henry Cavill's moustache in Fallout caused a famous problem with which other film's reshoots?

Justice League needed a clean-shaven Superman for its 2017 reshoots; Fallout's makers offered to let Cavill shave for $3 million, Paramount refused, and the moustache was erased digitally instead.

What did Tom Cruise break in a rooftop jump on Fallout, stopping the shoot for about two months?

Cruise broke his right ankle when he slammed into a wall during a rooftop jump in London; he finished the take by limping out of frame, and filming shut down for around two months.

Ethan and August Walker's HALO jump in Fallout lands them in which city?

Paris is where the HALO jump lands Ethan and Walker, on the roof of the Grand Palais; Tom Cruise made the 25,000-foot jump more than 100 times to get three usable takes.

Fallout's climactic cliff-top fight is set in Kashmir, but in which country was it actually filmed?

Norway's Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock, a flat ledge about 600 metres above Lysefjord, stood in for Kashmir; much of the helicopter chase before it was shot in New Zealand.

What is the rogue AI at the heart of Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning known as?

The Entity first shows its hand by tricking the crew of a Russian stealth submarine into sinking their own boat with their own torpedo.

Which sunken Russian submarine holds the rogue AI's source code in Dead Reckoning?

Sevastopol sinks in Dead Reckoning's opening scene, hit by its own torpedo; in The Final Reckoning Ethan dives to the wreck as it slides into deeper water.

Who plays Grace, the thief who steals half of the key in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One?

Hayley Atwell's Grace lifts the key from Ethan at Abu Dhabi airport and keeps slipping away from him; by the end she takes the IMF's offer with the words 'I choose to accept.'

Dead Reckoning Part One earned Mission: Impossible's first Oscar nominations, in which two categories?

Best Visual Effects and Best Sound were the first Oscar nominations for any Mission: Impossible film, after six earlier films drew none; it lost them to Godzilla Minus One and The Zone of Interest.

Which character from 1996's Mission: Impossible returns in The Final Reckoning after 30 years exiled to a Bering Sea island?

William Donloe, played by Rolf Saxon, was the CIA analyst whose Langley vault Ethan raided in 1996; posted to a Bering Sea island as punishment, he hands Ethan back the knife dropped during that heist.

In The Final Reckoning, Shea Whigham's agent turns out to be whose son?

Jim Phelps, the IMF team leader Ethan exposed as a traitor in 1996, was his father; the agent has been working under an assumed surname, and makes his peace with Ethan at the end of the film.

The Final Reckoning's climactic aerial duel takes place aboard what kind of aircraft?

Biplanes carry the final duel over South Africa, with Tom Cruise himself holding on to the wings in flight; Gabriel dies when he bails out and strikes his own plane's tail.

Which long-running IMF team member sacrifices himself in The Final Reckoning?

Luther Stickell dies disarming a bomb in London; Ving Rhames's hacker had appeared in every film since 1996, the only cast member besides Cruise to do so.

Who plays Julia Meade, the nurse Ethan Hunt marries in Mission: Impossible III?

Michelle Monaghan's Julia has to restart Ethan's heart at the end of Mission: Impossible III, after he electrocutes himself to fry the explosive in his head; she returns briefly in Ghost Protocol and Fallout.

Who led the IMF team in the first season of the original 1966 Mission: Impossible TV series?

Dan Briggs was played by Steven Hill, an Orthodox Jew who had to leave the set on Fridays before sundown; Peter Graves replaced him without explanation.

Which TV creator's own hand strikes the match in the original Mission: Impossible title sequence?

Bruce Geller's own hand struck the match that lit the fuse, a cameo by the man who created the show; when the series was revived in 1988, the hand became Peter Graves's.

Which two actors stayed with the original series for its entire seven-season run?

Greg Morris (Barney Collier) and Peter Lupus (strongman Willy Armitage) appeared in all seven seasons; in the 1988 revival Morris's real-life son Phil played Barney's son Grant.