Mission Impossible Trivia
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46 free Mission Impossible trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
45 free Mission Impossible trivia questions with answers. Tom Cruise has been accepting impossible missions since 1996, and the trivia is as good as the stunts: a score that was thrown out weeks before release, a moustache that broke Superman, an ankle broken on camera and a villain who missed out on Wolverine because the shoot ran long. This quiz runs 46 questions across all eight films, from Brian De Palma's Prague heist and John Woo's doves to Ghost Protocol's Burj Khalifa climb, Rogue Nation's opera, Fallout's HALO jump and cliff fight, and the Entity storyline of Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning. There are questions on the 1966 TV series and its 5/4 theme too, so casual fans and completists both have somewhere to start. Every answer has been checked against reference sources, shown under each question once you answer, so it works for a movie night, a franchise rewatch or a film round at pub trivia.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ethan Hunt's spy agency is known as the IMF, letters that stand for what?
Impossible Missions Force
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'.
Q 02Which Star Trek star joined TV's Mission: Impossible in 1969 as a master of disguise, replacing Martin Landau?
Leonard Nimoy
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.
Q 03Who composed the famous Mission: Impossible theme?
Lalo Schifrin
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.
Q 04The Mission: Impossible theme is written in which unusual time signature?
5/4
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.
Q 05Who directed the first Mission: Impossible film in 1996?
Brian De Palma
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.
Q 06Which veteran actor plays Ethan's IMF mentor, revealed as the mole, in 1996's Mission: Impossible?
Jon Voight
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.
Q 07In 1996's Mission: Impossible, what is the IMF team in Prague trying to stop being stolen?
The NOC list of undercover agents
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.
Q 08In the climax of 1996's Mission: Impossible, a helicopter is dragged behind a TGV into which famous underground passage?
The Channel Tunnel
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.
Q 09Two members of which band recorded the hit dance version of the theme for 1996's Mission: Impossible?
U2
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.
Q 10Which of Tom Cruise's Outsiders co-stars plays IMF hacker Jack Harmon, uncredited, in 1996's Mission: Impossible?
Emilio Estevez
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.
Q 11Who directed Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)?
John Woo
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.
Q 12In Mission: Impossible 2, what are the engineered virus and its cure called?
Chimera and Bellerophon
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.
Q 13Which actor lost the role of Wolverine in X-Men partly because Mission: Impossible 2 overran?
Dougray Scott
Q 21Ghost Protocol was the live-action directing debut of which animation director?
Brad Bird
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.
Q 22In Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Ethan Hunt scales the outside of which skyscraper with malfunctioning sticky gloves?
Burj Khalifa
Cruise was attached to the Burj Khalifa by cables the whole time; Industrial Light & Magic painted them out.
Q 23In Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the IMF is disavowed after being framed for bombing which landmark?
The Kremlin
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.
Q 14How is Ethan Hunt spending his holiday when his mission arrives at the start of Mission: Impossible 2?
Free-climbing a desert cliff
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.
Q 15Which knighted actor makes an uncredited cameo as Mission Commander Swanbeck in Mission: Impossible 2?
Anthony Hopkins
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'.
Q 16Which nu-metal band recorded 'Take a Look Around', a version of the theme, for Mission: Impossible 2?
Limp Bizkit
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.
Q 17Mission: Impossible III was the feature-film directing debut of which TV creator?
J. J. Abrams
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.
Q 18Who plays arms dealer Owen Davian, the villain of Mission: Impossible III?
Philip Seymour Hoffman
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.
Q 19Which Simon Pegg character debuts as a desk-bound IMF technician in Mission: Impossible III?
Benji Dunn
Benji Dunn becomes a field agent from Ghost Protocol onward, one of the few characters besides Ethan to recur across most of the series.
Q 20Which of the first seven Mission: Impossible films had the lowest worldwide gross?
Mission: Impossible III
Mission: Impossible III made about $398 million worldwide, below the first film's $457 million and MI2's $546 million, despite positive reviews.
The Kremlin bombing gives the film its title: 'Ghost Protocol' is the order shutting the agency down.
Q 24Which Slumdog Millionaire quiz-show host plays media tycoon Brij Nath in Ghost Protocol?
Anil Kapoor
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.
Q 25Who is the first director to helm more than one Mission: Impossible film?
Christopher McQuarrie
Christopher McQuarrie directed Rogue Nation and Fallout, then Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning, after doing uncredited rewrites on Ghost Protocol.
Q 26Rogue Nation opens with Ethan Hunt clinging to the outside of what?
An A400 cargo plane taking off
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.
Q 27Which opera, famous for the aria 'Nessun dorma', is playing during Rogue Nation's assassination attempt in Vienna?
Turandot by Puccini
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.
Q 28Who plays Ilsa Faust, the MI6 agent who first appears in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation?
Rebecca Ferguson
Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa was killed off in Dead Reckoning Part One, in Venice, at the hands of Gabriel.
Q 29What is the name of the rogue organisation of ex-spies led by Solomon Lane in Rogue Nation?
The Syndicate
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.
Q 30Which actor plays CIA chief Alan Hunley in Rogue Nation and Fallout?
Alec Baldwin
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.