Trivia

Computer systems coordinator Andrew Eio’s name appears as an IMF agent on the “NOC list”.

In-joke: Tom Cruise goes online with his laptop by typing in, not Usenet, but Crusenet.

As Max looks over the NOC list on the train, it’s possible to see that the names are repeated many times.

Alan Silvestri was originally hired to score the film, and had written roughly twenty-three minutes of music before he was taken off. He recycled the material he had written and used it for the score to Eraser. Bootleg copies of his “Mission: Impossible” score are in circulation.

Jim Phelps stays at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. In Tom Cruise’s earlier film, Risky Business, this is where he waits for Rebecca De Mornay.

Diehard fans of the original TV series were upset by the treatment of the Jim Phelps character in this film, and by the decision to turn much of the focus onto one character.

The six-digit code to the vault holding the NOC list 789551.

While filming the famous scene where Tom Cruise drops from the ceiling and hovers inches above the ground, Cruise’s head kept hitting the floor until he got the idea to put coins in his shoes for balance.

The main lobby of CIA Headquarters at Langley was actually shot inside County Hall, London. The helipad next to Tower Bridge where Kitteridge lands does not exist and was specially built for the film and removed afterwards. The site is a public park.

Brian De Palma originally offered the role of Claire to Juliette Binoche.

The first film to be shown at over 3,000 theatres in the U.S.

When Jim Phelps is getting his mission on the airplane, his team is shown one by one. In the dossiers there are aliases. The aliases are as follows: for Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez), his alias is “Tony Baretta” (the character from the cop show Baretta. For Sarah Davies (‘Kristin Scott-Thomas’ ), her alias is “‘Sarah Walker’”, Hannah Williams’ (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) alias is Pauline Brady, and Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) alias is Phillipe Douchette.

Oscar-nominated writing team Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz began a script that would pass through the hands of writers David Koepp and Steven Zaillian, before being ultimately refined by Koepp and Robert Towne. Towne kept revising the script all the way through production after Koepp left to direct The Trigger Effect.

The NOC list theft, with Tom Cruise hanging on a rope from the ceiling, is inspired by the museum heist in Jules Dassin’s film Topkapi.

Ethan Hunt never fires a gun.

Body count: 8

Peter Graves, who played Jim Phelps in the original TV series, turned down the opportunity to reprise his role in the movie after he learned that his character was to be killed off at the end of the movie.

Emilio Estevez was cast in the role of Jack Harmon to create a sense of shock in the audience when he died early in the film. The film makers felt that casting a well-known actor in the role would increase the impact of Jack Harmon’s death.