TV SERIES · 1966– · USA
Mission: Impossible
88 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
70 Interesting Facts About Mission: Impossible
- #001
Greg Morris and Peter Lupus were the only original cast members who stayed with the series throughout its entire run, though Sam Elliott replaced Lupus in roughly half of the fifth season's episodes.
- #002
Many people had grown so accustomed to Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) as the team's leader that many viewers were shocked when they saw reruns of the first season, in which Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) was the leader of the IMF.
- #003
Nearly every actor or actress who was not a main cast member on Star Trek: The Original Series (1966) also appeared on this series. This was likely because both series were initially filmed at Desilu Studios and later at Paramount Studios. Prominent "Star Trek" performers who appeared as guest stars include George Takei, William Shatner and series regular Leonard Nimoy. Vic Perrin appeared in several episodes, and Percy Rodrigues appeared in Court Martial (1967)(#1.20) and also provided the voice-over for the Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) trailer. There were also those who did not work on Star Trek: The Original Series but later appeared at some point in the Star Trek franchise.
- #004
When the tape recorder played the mission instructions, it was actually in "rewind" mode rather than "play" mode. This was because the tape moved too slowly to be believable as "playing."
- #006
The faceless figure shown striking a match in the opening title sequence was the series' creator, Bruce Geller. Until the series' 1988 revival, it was never shown being illuminated by a known character (Jim Phelps).
- #007
Pasadena City Hall in Pasadena, California, was frequently used as the capital building of a foreign country.
- #008
In the first season, Martin Landau's face was not shown in the main title sequence. Throughout that season he was listed in the credits as making a "special appearance." He was not considered a full cast member until the second season. This was because Landau, who at the time had a successful film career, did not want to commit to the standard five-year contract that studios typically demanded of actors on a television series. Series producer Bruce Geller wanted Landau so badly that he agreed to use him on a "guest star" basis in the first season. Landau signed one-year contracts at the start of the second and third seasons.
- #009
"Action!", "The Town" and "Kidnap" are the only episodes in which the head of the I.M.F. appears. The team did not receive instructions. In "Action!" Cinnamon Carter received the instructions instead, and it is the only first-season episode in which Daniel Briggs does not appear. In "The Town," while Jim Phelps was on vacation, he uncovered a town full of assassins who immobilized him and tried to kill him. In "Kidnap," Phelps was abducted and information regarding his release was given to Barney Collier. In "Homecoming," Jim came to his hometown to discover that someone was killing young women. There are only six episodes that are not "true missions": "Homecoming," "Kidnap," "Death Squad," "The Condemned" and "The Ransom." In "Cat's Paw," Barney's brother is killed and the team helps bring his killer to justice.
- #010
Willy Armitage was one of the few members of the team who did not smoke.
- #011
In many episodes, a large, white, ornate arch with metal gates was used, usually as a prison entrance. It was in fact the former main gate of the Paramount Pictures studios, where the series was filmed.
- #012
This series (excluding the 1988 revival) had the most episodes of any English-language spy series, with 171. Its closest rival was "The Avengers (1961)," with 161 episodes.
- #013
Greg Morris appeared in most episodes of the series, missing only five. He is also the only actor to appear in all 171 opening sequences.
- #015
The main reason Daniel Briggs (Steven Hill) and later Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) looked at photographs to select the various team members for each mission was that in most of the early episodes guest actors played the team members. However, once it became clear that the same members were chosen every time, the practice was abandoned.
- #016
After five seasons of international intrigue stories, the I.M.F. spent its last two seasons pursuing American gangsters.
- #017
Barney Collier was the only team member shown to have a relative; Collier's brother Lawrence was killed in "Cat's Paw," the fifteenth episode of the fifth season.
- #018
Aside from Bob Johnson (the voice heard saying "Good morning, Mr. Briggs" or "Phelps" in most episodes), Greg Morris and Peter Lupus were the only actors who worked on the series throughout its run.
- #019
In "Operation Rogosh," the third episode of the first season, the last photograph left in the portfolio as Briggs selects agents for the mission belongs to series creator Bruce Geller.
- #021
The series gave Peter Lupus (Willy) the chance to work under his own name. Much of his earlier acting career had been in Europe, where he starred as "Rock Stevens" in sword-and-sandal mythological muscleman films. It also gave him the chance to play a role not based primarily on his physique.
- #022
When the series began, Ford was the main supplier of cars. In later seasons the main supplier became Chrysler, and in the final seasons it was GM.
- #025
When selecting an agent from the IMF, the pictures of the agents chosen for the mission in the folder were almost always in color. The pictures of rejected agents were in black and white.
- #027
According to Peter Lupus, Bruce Geller did not want any of the regular actors appearing on talk shows while the series was running because he wanted viewers to believe they really were the characters.
- #028
Although Barney's file contains a letter from the United States Air Force, the first episode of the third season, "The Contender," mentions that he was a boxing champion while in the United States Navy.
- #029
In the fifth season, Sam Elliott replaced Peter Lupus in some episodes.
- #030
As of 2022, Peter Lupus and Sam Elliott are the only surviving regular male actors. Among the female actors, Barbara Bain, Lynda Day George, Lee Meriwether, Barbara Anderson and Lesley Ann Warren are also still alive.
- #031
No explanation was ever given for why Daniel Briggs was no longer head of the IMF or how Jim Phelps came to lead the team.
- #032
Of the 148 missions in which Phelps or Briggs received a taped briefing, 119 began with "Good morning," 21 with "Good afternoon" and 8 with "Good evening."
- #033
In an interview, Leonard Nimoy (after playing for two seasons) said he left the series because he felt the character of Paris had not progressed or changed much after the first season. He also said that acting in this series felt very different from acting in Star Trek (1966).
- #035
In "Memory," the second episode of the first season, Briggs received his instructions not via a tape or film projector but on a card handed to him by a photographer.
- #036
Many episodes feature warehouses and industrial buildings. These were office buildings, warehouses and sound stages on the Paramount lot.
- #037
Many actors and actresses were reused across the series: John Vernon appeared in "The Exchange", "The Falcon", "The Catafalque" and "Movie"; William Windom in "The Fighter", "Blues", "The Widow" and "The Train". This was a common practice in 1960s television programs.
- #038
For the film Mission: Impossible (1996), Tom Cruise wanted the series' cast to appear as the team killed at the beginning of the movie as a way of passing the torch. Every one of the actors declined.
- #039
In several later episodes, Jim Phelps is seen driving a 1969 Dodge Coronet R/T convertible. It is an extremely rare car.
- #040
The character Mimi Davis, played by Barbara Anderson in seven episodes across several seasons during Lynda Day George's maternity leave, is the only female IMF agent with a criminal record; the seventh-season premiere states that she served four years in prison, but why she was in prison was never explained and was never mentioned again.
- #042
Leonard Nimoy's character replaced Martin Landau's character in the fourth season. Largely because of this, it is widely believed that Landau was originally offered the role of Spock on Star Trek (1966).
- #043
The Secretary's exact name was never revealed, but given the IMF's international jurisdiction in the first five seasons, it is almost certain that this person was the Secretary of State. However, given that in the last two seasons the Secretary is never named and the team's missions are almost entirely related to organized crime, it is possible that the IMF moved this role from the State Department to the Department of Justice. Some fans of the series assumed the Secretary referred to the IMF Secretary.
- #045
The series not only reused existing exterior sets and buildings on the old R. K. O./Desilu/Paramount lots with minor to major set dressings, but also reused some enormous interior studio sets; in the second season, for example, huge hotel lobby rooms reappear dressed as the King's palace chambers. Basement cells with different walls become a palace dungeon and a South American prison. Unsurprisingly, some of these same standing sets were reused as other planetary locations in Desilu-Paramount's Star Trek (1966).
- #046
In almost every episode, a large portion of the "incidental" music actually consists of various arrangements of the main theme played in different styles, instruments and timings. Alongside the more traditional studio orchestra style, you can also hear magnificent harpsichords, military drums, pianos, strings, winds and experimental jazz styles.
- #048
The mission assignment recording usually self-destructs after five seconds. Six times it is ten seconds. For the pilot, it is "one minute" after the seal is broken, and on another occasion "sixty seconds". Once it happens when you stop the machine, and once when it reaches the final slot. Only Miss Carter was told she would disintegrate "immediately".
- #050
Joseph Ruskin, who appeared many times as a villain during the series' first six seasons, played an IMF agent in one seventh-season episode.
- #052
The 1967 season of "The Avengers" included Mission… Highly Improbable (1967).
- #053
Daniel Briggs can be seen driving a black or light blue 1967 Lincoln Continental convertible.
- #054
It was parodied as "Mission: Ridiculous" in issue 118 of Mad Magazine, published in 04/1968, written by Dick DeBartolo and drawn by Mort Drucker.
- #055
All mission assignment recordings end with "Good luck, Dan" (first season) or "Good luck, Jim" (from the second season through the seventh), but one recording for "Miss Carter" (first season, "Action!") ends with "Good luck."
- #056
The reason for the occasional reuse of Jim's mission-receiving scenes is clearly logical production economy, since it saves on pre-title/cold open footage. However, it can easily be explained within the IMF: there are a known number of locations Jim goes to several times to receive missions. In the second season, for example, Jim visits both the rooftop and the street photo booth twice for four separate missions. He clearly knows the locations well and has all the keys he needs in the second season.
- #057
In the third-season episode "Nitro," Barney poses as a computer programmer to get into the villain's computer room. When Barney introduces himself to one of the villains, he is asked what happened to the regular programmer, "Mr. Connery," and Barney tells him that Mr. Connery is on another assignment.
- #058
When Jim Phelps first appeared, his main car was a greenish-blue 1967 Mercury Parklane convertible.
- #059
In most European countries, the team and the locals use Checker cars. Checker was a Detroit company.
- #060
The same footage was used repeatedly in the opening sequences. The only things that changed were the music from the recorder and the pictures Phelps looked at.
- #061
For the episodes from the 1960s, weapons left over from World War II were used.
- #062
The amount of time that passed between Jim initially receiving the assignment, selecting the team, planning, placing the relevant materials and people, carrying out the mission and completing it at the end of the episode was never explained.
- #063
The series' original title was "Briggs' Squad."
- #064
Greg Morris also signed a contract in the fourth season and received a salary increase of 500 dollars per episode.
- #065
Whenever Dan or Jim received instructions, they first turned on the recorder and then opened the folder containing the photographs.
- #067
Anthony Zerbe, Albert Paulson and John Vernon each played different characters in 5 episodes. The most prominent actor, with 10 unusual roles, was Jack Donner.
- #068
Peter Graves played in the series for six seasons (from 1967 to 1973), during the same period in which his famous brother James Arness also appeared in the long-running Gunsmoke (1955).
- #069
In "Zubronik's Ghost" and "Elena," Dan mentions during the mission briefing that he cannot take part because Martha Zubronik and Elena know him, but that neither of them knows he is an intelligence agent.
- #070
When the series was bought by ARD for the West German market in 1967, only selected episodes from the first three seasons were dubbed (the episodes were also cut to the standard length of forty-five minutes). A few years later, they did the same with the later seasons (with new dubbing actors and actresses). When the series aired on Kabel 1/Pro 7, all the other episodes (except one) were also dubbed (again with new dubbing actors and actresses). The last remaining episode was dubbed for the 2006 DVD release.
- #071
The reason Tom Cruise wanted to make a film version of "Mission Impossible" was that he was a big fan of the television series.
- #073
Barry Atwater and Jason Evers each appeared in five episodes of the series. Warren Stevens and Antoinette Bower each appeared in four episodes.
- #075
Whenever someone wore a rubber mask, it was almost always one of the heroes.
- #076
The name of Paula Patton's character in "Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol" is Jane Carter, a nod to Barbara Bain, whose character's surname was Carter.
- #077
The villains almost always drove around in a Chrysler Imperial limousine.
- #079
It is never specified in which city the various characters live.
- #080
Martin Landau and Lesley Ann Warren appeared in "Joseph (1995)."
- #081
In the last two seasons, the cars preferred by the team were Chrysler Corporation and Chevrolet models.
- #082
Most of the photographs accompanying the recorded instructions appear to have been taken by the same photographer (the same background, lighting and scale), even when the characters have no connection to one another.
- #084
It is little known that Peter Graves and James Arness were brothers!
- #086
While making the Tom Cruise-focused 'Mission: Impossible' films, the producers looked at which 'clever' features from this series' episodes could be borrowed (for example, the team swapping a number or signing a door). It was determined that viewers or fans of this series would recognize the 'callbacks'.
- #087
The series is quite popular in France. However, when an episode is set in a French-speaking country, there is always a sign containing a spelling error. Whether this was intentional is still debated among fans (for example: S2E1: "ne functionne pas", which should be "ne fonctionne pas"; S2E8: "compagnie des Agent de change", which should be "Compagnie des Agents de Change"; S2E13: "Consigne à bagage", which should be "Consigne à bagages"; etc.).
- #088
A numbered account is a bank account in which the owner's name is replaced by a multi-digit number or code in internal documents. It is designed to maximize privacy and limit the number of bank employees with access to the client's identity. The real name is recorded securely but is restricted to a very limited number of senior staff. Only the designated number appears on bank statements, digital banking portals and transaction records. This minimizes the risk of internal leaks or data breaches. Despite the concealed name, the account operates the same as a standard bank account, allowing deposits, withdrawals and bank transfers.
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