FILM · 1996 · USA
Mission: Impossible
- Directed by
- Brian De Palma
- Runtime
- 111 min
- Studio
- Paramount Pictures, Cruise/Wagner Productions
113 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
When Ethan Hunt, the leader of a crack espionage team whose perilous operation has gone awry with no explanation, discovers that a mole has penetrated the CIA, he's surprised to learn that he's the prime suspect. To clear his name, Hunt now must ferret out the real double agent and, in the process, even the score.
Summary: TMDB
78 Interesting Facts About Mission: Impossible
- #001
While filming the famous scene in which Tom Cruise drops from the ceiling and hovers inches above the floor, Cruise kept hitting his head on the ground until he came up with the idea of putting coins in his shoes to keep his balance.
- #002
This is not only the only film in the series in which Ethan Hunt does not fire a gun, it is also the only one with no gunfights.
- #003
Tom Cruise deferred his 20 million dollar fee as a percentage of the box office gross and was reportedly ultimately paid 70 million dollars.
- #005
The producers cast Ving Rhames as Luther because they felt he was the exact opposite of what a hacker normally looks like.
- #007
It is the last film from a major studio to be released on the Betamax videocassette format for home video.
- #010
Contains a major spoiler — show
Dame Kristin Scott Thomas said of her role: "I die on page twenty-five. But I die in the arms of Tom Cruise, so it's worth it."
- #012
The scene in which the water tank bursts and Ethan Hunt escapes from the Aquarium restaurant was shot in two different places. The tank explosion and Hunt's jump through the restaurant window were filmed at Paramount Studios. The part where he runs into the street with water streaming behind him was actually shot in Prague's Old Town Square.
- #013
Director Brian De Palma convinced Tom Cruise to shoot the film's first act in Prague, a city rarely seen in Hollywood films at the time.
- #014
The thrilling train scene took six weeks to shoot on the 007 stage at Pinewood Studios.
- #015
The producers delivered the film on time and under budget; Tom Cruise performed most of the stunts himself.
- #016
Alan Silvestri was originally hired to score the film and had written about twenty-three minutes of music before he left. He recycled the material he had written and used it for the score of Eraser (1996). Bootleg copies of the Mission: Impossible (1996) score are in circulation.
- #019
The trailer shows a shot of Ethan and Claire kissing passionately (and it also appears in the brief clips from the film at the beginning of the movie), but it is not in the film itself.
- #020
Jim Phelps is the only character from the original series to appear in this film.
- #021
Contains a major spoiler — show
A helicopter inspired by this film successfully flew through a tunnel in Brazil in 2006.
- #024
The CIA's main lobby. The headquarters in Langley was shot inside County Hall in London. The helipad next to Tower Bridge where Kittridge lands does not exist and was built specifically for this film and later removed. The site is a public park.
- #026
The bone-white look of the vault was influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
- #027
Contains a major spoiler — show
The opening title sequence gives away seven plot points from this film.
- #028
Dame Vanessa Redgrave's role was originally written for a man.
- #029
One reason Tom Cruise and producer Paula Wagner wanted to make this film was the gadgets. Cruise said: "I felt like I was ten years old again. I thought, What would be the coolest thing to see?"
- #030
It was the first film to open in more than 3,000 theaters in the United States.
- #032
It was one of the first major films shot in Prague after the city's liberation from communism in 1989.
- #033
It was the first film Tom Cruise produced.
- #034
Contains a major spoiler — show
When Sarah dies, Ethan seems more troubled than he does by the killing of the other team members. When Jim receives the mission by video on the plane, each team member's profile reveals that Sarah is the only member of the team Ethan trained. This explains his significant reaction to her death, as he probably felt a responsibility toward her.
- #035
Contains a major spoiler — show
During the flashbacks showing how Jim Phelps dismantled his team, Ethan wonders whether there was another accomplice who blew up Hannah's car or whether Phelps triggered the mechanism. This film leaves it ambiguous who actually killed Hannah, unlike the other team members. However, the script had much more dialogue in the final confrontation on the train between Claire, Phelps and Ethan. This plot point was actually resolved by Claire confessing to Ethan that she blew up the car and killed Hannah.
- #037
The plot of this film is based on the potential exposure of the N.O.C. list. Traditionally, when a spy is captured, the spy's own country acknowledges that the person is a spy and gets them back by releasing a captured spy from the country holding them. An N.O.C. agent, or Non-Official Cover agent, is disavowed by their own country if captured, which effectively means they will be executed as an unauthorized spy. So this list falling into the wrong hands would result in the deaths of many spies. The concern over exposing the identity of such an agent is no longer a fantasy invented for a film. Valerie Plame Wilson was an N.O.C. agent, and her public exposure as a spy compromised many of the operations she worked on, as shown in Fair Game (2010).
- #038
Contains a major spoiler — show
Peter Graves refused to reprise the role of Jim Phelps in this film after it was revealed that the character had betrayed the IMF, and he is the film's villain. In this film Jim kills three IMF members. His death in a helicopter crash at the end of the film disappointed him and his fellow actors and saddened many fans of the original series.
- #039
According to Brian De Palma, there was initially a complex opening sequence establishing a love triangle between Phelps, his wife and Ethan Hunt, which was removed because it tested as "out of the genre" with test audiences.
- #040
This film entered pre-production without a script the producers wanted to use. Brian De Palma designed the action scenes, but neither David Koepp nor Robert Towne was satisfied with the story that would make those scenes work. Towne helped arrange a beginning, middle and end on which the story details would be hung, while De Palma and Koepp worked on the plot.
- #041
Brian De Palma said that one of the reasons he agreed to direct this film was that he needed a commercial success at the time.
- #043
The Apple laptop Ethan uses was a product placement for a product not yet released, and not even functional. The screen shown belonged to an earlier model. In the shot where Ethan begins to fall asleep, a dark part of the screen becomes visible.
- #045
When Ethan decides he needs help and calls the disavowed I.M.F., the first person on the list of agents is Simon Staines, the computer graphics designer on this film.
- #046
Apple Computer had a $15 million promotion tied to this film that included a game, print advertisements and a television commercial featuring scenes from the television series turned into a feature film; retailer and in-cinema promotions; and the placement of Apple personal computers in this film. It was an attempt to improve Apple's image after it reported a $740 million loss in the second quarter of the fiscal year.
- #047
French actor Jean Reno admitted that working with Tom Cruise was not very pleasant; according to Reno, Cruise behaved very condescendingly toward Reno and some other crew members.
- #049
Contains a major spoiler — show
Wind machines blew winds of up to one hundred and forty miles per hour (two hundred and twenty-five kilometers per hour) into the faces of Tom Cruise and Jon Voight atop the train.
- #052
The disguise Claire wears while in the CIA building (long red dress, large black-framed glasses, hair in a tight bun) is identical to the disguise of Dana Lambert, the character played by Lesley Ann Warren who was frequently used in the original TV series.
- #053
As Jim Phelps carries out his mission on the plane, the team is shown one by one. The files contain aliases. The aliases are as follows: Emilio Estevez's (Jack Harmon) alias is "Tony Baretta," the character from the police show Baretta (1975). Sarah Davies's alias is "Sarah Walker." Hannah Williams's alias is Pauline Brady. And Ethan Hunt's alias is Phillipe Douchette.
- #055
U2 bandmates Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton were fans of the television series and knew the original theme music well, but they were nervous about redoing Lalo Schifrin's legendary theme song. Clayton put his version together in New York, and Mullen did his own version in Dublin on weekends between U2 recording sessions. The two musicians were influenced by Brian Eno and by the European dance club sound of the recently completed Passengers album. They let Polygram choose its favorite, and it wanted both. Within a month, two versions of the song and five remixes of it by DJs were made. All seven tracks appeared on promotional records and CD releases.
- #056
In the scene where Ethan Hunt studies Senator John Waltzer's television interview in order to later impersonate him, the person on the television screen is (of course) Tom Cruise. So, strictly speaking, Cruise can be said to have two roles in this film: Ethan Hunt and the real Senator.
- #058
The exterior shots of the train scene, which is said to take place in Kent in southeast England, were mostly filmed in Scotland.
- #059
FRANCHISE TRADEMARK: Ethan (Tom Cruise) hangs from a cable while infiltrating the CIA. The vault. See also Mission: Impossible II (2000) and Mission: Impossible III (2006); Brandt (Jeremy Renner) did the same in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011).
- #060
It was the third highest-grossing film of 1996.
- #061
Development of a film adaptation began in 1986, long before Tom Cruise became attached to star. The 1988 Writers Guild of America strike halted momentum on the project, and in the meantime Paramount Pictures produced the television revival Mission: Impossible (1988).
- #062
Contains a major spoiler — show
The team killed at the beginning of the film was meant to consist of the cast of Mission: Impossible (1966) reprising their roles, which would have meant passing the torch. Every original cast member turned down the offer. Only Greg Morris accepted the invitation to the film's premiere, and he walked out partway through because of the treatment of the character Jim Phelps.
- #063
There were rumors that Tom Cruise and Brian De Palma did not get along, and these were fueled when De Palma gave last-minute approval for the media interviews planned before the film's release.
- #064
The Channel Tunnel sequence contains 152 special effects shots for a scene that runs a little over 7 minutes.
- #065
Jean Reno, Kristin Scott Thomas and Emmanuelle Béart performed their on-camera roles in English and were later to be dubbed for the French release.
- #067
This was the third and last film or film series that Paramount Pictures developed from a television series it had acquired from Lucille Ball's company Desilu Productions.
- #068
The newspaper William Donloe reads at the CIA cafeteria is the May 24, 1995 issue of the Washington Post. Two partially visible headlines are "Intruder Is Shot At White House" and "Veto Aimed At Foreign Policy Bill".
- #070
It surpassed The Flintstones (1994) as the highest-grossing film adapted from a TV series worldwide.
- #071
The opening title sequence was influenced by the intro sequences of Gerry Anderson's television programs Thunderbirds (1965) and Space Precinct (1994).
- #072
According to Deadline, Paramount Pictures earns 10 million dollars a year from this film across all media.
- #073
Director Brian De Palma initially offered the role of Claire to Juliette Binoche.
- #075
As Donloe, Rolf Saxon speaks only three distinct lines: "Oh my God", "Can I get you anything?" (to his secretary) and his own name, which he says several times.
- #076
Reshoots, location conflicts in Prague and difficulties with filming and visual effects invalidated the December 1995 premiere date Paramount Pictures had proposed.
- #077
Jim Phelps's lighter is a Dunhill Rollagas. This lighter appeared in several James Bond films.
- #078
Despite the critical praise and record-breaking Memorial Day opening weekend that earned him positive media coverage, Brian De Palma drew little press attention because his divorce from his third wife, Darnell Gregorio-De Palma, was pending. He began developing Snake Eyes (1998), a follow-up project with David Koepp, during a paid leave of absence in New York City.
- #079
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the scene where Ethan catches the stabbed Sarah Davis hanging in the doorway, Ethan pulls the knife from Sarah's lifeless body. It is the same knife that Krieger later drops from the ventilation shaft onto the computer desk when entering the CIA vault scene.
- #082
The helicopter in the thrilling action scene is an MD Helicopters 520N NOTAR. NOTAR (an acronym derived from "no tail rotor") generates counter-torque thrust by creating laminar airflow around the tail boom instead of using a conventional tail rotor.
- #083
This is the only film in the Mission: Impossible series in which Tom Cruise's team (initially) includes three women. In all subsequent installments, Hunt's team had at most one woman, and some technically had none.
- #085
The name of computer systems coordinator Andrew Eio appears as an agent on the N.O.C. list.
- #086
Hannah, the first I.M.F. member, has only two lines of dialogue.
- #087
The phone number Max tries to transmit the N.O.C. list to on the train is 004940229713, a German number from the city of Hamburg.
- #088
This was the premiere of the first feature film from Cruise/Wagner Productions, the partnership founded in 1992 by Cruise and his longtime agent Paula Wagner.
- #089
It began as a Sydney Pollack project.
- #090
Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez appeared together in The Outsiders (1983) and Young Guns (1988).
- #093
It grossed 57 million dollars domestically over the Memorial Day weekend, more than any film up to that time, beating The Flintstones (1994) and its 37 million dollars.
- #098
Contains a major spoiler — show
Max Mitsopolis was revealed to have a daughter in Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018), while Jim Phelps was revealed to have a son in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025).
- #099
This was the second film director Brian De Palma and Ving Rhames made together. The first was Casualties of War (1989).
- #100
When William Donloe emerges sick from the vault, the clock reads 9:51. When it reads 10:01, he returns.
- #101
Brian De Palma did not enjoy working with Robert Towne on the screenplay of Mission: Impossible (1996).
- #104
According to the NOC list, Ethan Hunt's code name is "Yankee."
- #107
The six-digit code of the vault containing the N.O.C. list is 789551.
- #108
It was the first Mission: Impossible film to carry the Paramount Pictures logo used from 1987 to 2002.
- #109
It is the first and only film in the Mission: Impossible series to be shot and released in the 20th century.
- #110
Both Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt) and Jon Voight (Jim Phelps) receive the new mission message on a British Airways flight, as can be seen from the flight attendant uniforms.
- #111
Robert Towne later wrote and directed Without Limits (1998) and Ask the Dust (2006); both were produced by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner. Cruise's cousin William Mapother appeared in Without Limits.
- #112
Makeup effects artist Rob Bottin provided the makeup effects on another feature film adapted from a television series, Charlie's Angels (2000).
- #113
Former CIA officer Michele Assad said that Ethan Hunt's anger over the death of his team reflected the genuine feelings of a CIA officer.
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