FAQ

Ethan may have simply colloquially referred to him as a sergeant in a bid to strike a conversation and keep him busy until Jack got them in. Or perhaps it's traditionally a sergeant that mans that post. Even more likely, the senator that Ethan was disguised as knew the sergeant. So Ethan would have to know the man's rank.

The interested buyer (i.e. Max) probably knows where NOC lists are stored and how difficult it would be to steal them. Or we could just presume that Ethan and/or Max are so well-connected in this business that they'd easily gather such information.

Notice that Ethan had to really break into Langley Headquarters and steal the *real* list; he couldn't just try and fool Max with a fake list, presumably because Max has channels that can tell her if an actual security breach had occurred at a place where a NOC list was stored.

Yes.

While working a mission in Prague, the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) team, part of an unofficial branch of the CIA led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), is wiped out except for Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise). Ethan subsequently finds himself under suspicion of being a mole by the head of the agency, Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny). Determined to prove himself innocent, Ethan makes a deal with illegal arms dealer Max (Vanessa Redgrave) in exchange for the name of the mole.

Mission: Impossible is based on a TV series, also titled Mission: Impossible (1966), that ran from 1966 to 1973 and was created and initially produced by American screenwriter Bruce Geller. Writing credits for the movie are attributed to American screenwriters David Koepp, Robert Towne, and Steven Zaillian. The popularity of the movie led to seven sequels: Mission: Impossible II (2000), Mission: Impossible III (2006), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015), Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018), Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), and Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025).

The team's mission was to prevent Alexander Golitsyn (Marcel Iures), an attaché at CIA's embassy in Prague, from stealing the Non-Official Cover (NOC) list, a list of all covert agents in Eastern Europe, because the list, should it get out in the open, would most likely be sold to the highest bidders, e.g., Third World terrorists, arms dealers, drug lords, etc. If the names of the agents on the list were given or sold to terrorists or even governments, the lives of those agents would be in danger, which could mean they'd be found and killed or captured and tortured for classified information.

As Jim lays out to the team, they have to gather video proof of Golitsyn stealing the info -- Ethan's glasses sitting nearby with the camera built in -- trail Golitsyn to his accomplice and get video proof of the exchange and apprehend them both.

Lalo Schifrin - "Mission Impossible Theme" Prior to that, when Ethan and Luther meet and have a drink for the final scene, it's "Dreams", by the Irish alternative band, The Cranberries. The song was quite popular at the time of this film's release, 1996, even though the song was released as a single in 1992.

There might have been any number of explanations in the way the gum was designed. There might have been a special material inserted between the two halves to separate them. Alternatively, perhaps both parts need to be crushed together before it activates. Similar to how you have to crack a glow stick before it starts glowing.

It doesn't exist, it was a set constructed for the movie and specifically for the scene. As Ethan escapes from the rushing water he runs north through Prague's Old Town Square, which is a real place. Through careful cinematography and editing, it appears that the place is in the Old Town Square. To enhance the effect, a large quantity of water is even dumped onto the pavement behind him.

The Charles Bridge (Karluv Most in Czech). The Charles spans the Vltava River and is one of the city's biggest tourist attractions and is only open to pedestrian traffic. The staircase that Ethan runs down is at the west end of the bridge.

They used magneto-optical disks. Magneto-optical disks were not as popular as the other two main storage formats at the time the film was made, the 3.5-inch floppy and the Iomega Zip Drive, however, they stored their information differently. The Iomega Zip and the floppy both used magnetic disks. The magneto-optical disks, however, were made of a material that could only be magnetized if heated to a very high temperature with a laser, and the disk would retain its magnetic "bits" after it cooled down. The main advantages of magneto-optical disks were much higher storage capacity (they could be as high as 9.1 GB, compared to 1.44 MB for the floppy and 750 MB for the Iomega Zip) and greater reliability. However, they were expensive; and eventually, they were rendered obsolete by the USB flash drive.