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CIA headquarters in Langley has its own firefighting unit and never, ever calls for outside help. See more...

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Mission: Impossible (1996) - 33 corrections

Directed by Brian De Palma, starring Emmanuelle Béart, Henry Czerny, Jean Reno, Jon Voight, Kristin Scott Thomas, Tom Cruise, Vanessa Redgrave, Ving Rhames (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
Corrections
Questions
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In the scene where Ethan Hunt types the email for Max, he retypes it again in German, using letters like "ä", "ö", and "ü". However, these letters do not exist in the English alphabet, which is why the laptop he's using doesn't have keys on it with those letters, (and neither does Czech by the way, for anyone who would assume that he might have gotten the laptop in Prague). To be able to type the email in German as rapidly as he did, he would have needed a German laptop, produced and sold in Germany. [I took German classes years ago in high school. With practice, it is easy to quickly type the commands needed to input foreign characters. Being how he's a spy, it can be readily assumed that he has quite a bit of practice.]
Edit Corrected by LorgSkyegon
During the Channel Tunnel helicopter chase sequence, the colour of the helicopter changes from red to black. [No, it most certainly does not.]
Edit
When Krieger drops the knife into the room William Donloe is just about to come in. When he does he looks up and the vent is back to normal screws and all. They would never have enough time to take the laser stoppers off, put the vent on, and screw it back in. Also if they did do it that quick how did they not make one sound? [That is exactly what they have been trained to do! i think it is fair to assume that these agents will be capable of covering their tracks fairly rapidly and quietly.]
Edit
In the computer room, when the man returns and Tom Cruise is being pulled back up, notice that the floor becomes reflective when the security system is deactivated. The camera angle just happens to hide the view of Tom's reflection on the floor. [It wouldn't matter if his reflection was in shot, because Eathan is so far up that his reflection wouldn't be noticable to the casual eye of the technician, unless he looked down at the floor(which he didn't).]
Edit Corrected by Aaron Wilson
When Ethan Hunt is in the computer room dangling just above the floor (right before his sweat starts dripping down the glasses) and he is moving around trying to keep his balance, the edge of his shirt touches the pressure sensitive floor. (Granted, this was only for a second but the alarm should have gone off.) [His shirt never actually touches the floor. if you look at his reflection it shows that the closest he gets to the floor is about an inch or two.]
Edit Corrected by Aaron Wilson
At the beginning when Jim Phelps is being briefed about the mission, the recording tells him that his "usual" team will be used, and then goes on to tell him who they all are and what their skills are. If they are his usual team, surely he would know this already? I know it tells the audience who the characters are but it makes no sense to tell Phelps that Jack can hack into any security system when he was most likely recruited for that very reason. [The IMF is just covering all their bases. It doesn't hurt Ethan to hear this information again; and if, for any reason, he should neglect to use a specific talent possessed by one of his team members resulting in a mission failure, IMF will be exempt from any responsibility for that critical error. Since when has the government *not* included exhaustive details in all of their correspondence?]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
In the scene on top of the train, Jim Phelps is opening the clip on his harness by unscrewing it. But the cable attached to the helicopter is a clip that doesn't need an opening. [He is using a locking carabiner. There is a spring-loaded gate that swings open like a normal "D-ring" but it also has a locking nut at the end of the gate. He needs to unscrew it in order to open the gate on the "D-ring" and operate the clip normally.]
Edit Corrected by Mobrien316
Why does the CIA go to all the trouble of putting lasers across the air vent into the secure room, wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to make the air ducts too small for anyone to squeeze through? [This is the submitter's own opinion. Granted, it may also be the opinion of every sensible thinking person on the planet, but that does not qualify as a mistake. Also, there are a thousand conceivable reasons why the vents may need to be that big, we just weren't told about it.]
Edit
During the scene where Ethan is hanging in the bank, he can't talk or he'll set off the sound-sensor; he can't touch the ground because of the weight sensor; and he can't cause the room to get too hot because he'll set off the heat sensor. If there were a vent, the temperature would most likely change. Why isn't there a motion detector? [For the same reason that there is no CCTV camera, because the film makers chose not to have one in the scene. If they had done, they would also have had the character's figure out a way of getting around it. This is not a mistake, just a matter of opinion whether there 'should' be one there or not.]
Edit
In the scene where they go to the mainframe to get the NOC list, there is, of course, an extremely secure computer. However, with all these security precautions, somehow, it allows logins when the security system knows that no-one can be in the room. [That is because the two are not connected. The computer is a stand alone unit that is not part of any network. If it were, then a man of Luther's talents would be able to hack into the security network, and then into the computer from there, without the need for an elaborate break-in.]
Edit
In the scene were Max tells Ethan the combination for the money, the code is 3-14, in the bible Job 3:14 says "with kings and their advisors whose palaces lie in ruins" possibly referring to Phelps who was the king of the operation and Claire and Krieger, his advisors. [The code can be applied to any book of the bible, chapter 3 verse 14, and without the character Max actually referring to any book in the bible, it doesn't even have to refer to the bible.]
Edit
When Ethan is hanging from the ceiling of the computer room suspended just above the floor he watches sweat build up on the corner of his glasses then drop. When he catches the drop he is seen to breath a sigh of relief, then there is a cut to Luther also breathing a sign of relief back in the control position. Luther would not have been able to see the drop build up on the glasses from a camera in the glasses. [No, he couldn't have seen the drop build up, but he could certainly have seen Ethan catch it, so a sigh of relief is quite reasonable.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
Sarah Davies (Kristin Scott Thomas) is killed at the gate by a knife in the back at the gate near the embassy. Later she shows up with the CIA farm boys when they try to catch someone using the bogus NOC list. [That wasn't Sarah, it was just some other female agent.]
Edit
Why is there a sign inside the secure room saying whether the security measures are on or off? The only people able to read it would have to be in the room, and anyone supposed to be there would know they were off, and there would be no reason to put a sign up for anyone not supposed to be there. [The sign may be redundant but it's not a mistake for it to be there.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
The vents that Hunt and his sidekick crawl down at CIA Headquarters are standard galvanized iron box vents; they are very common in the building trade. Try walking or crawling down one - you'll make a noise like the sky is falling down. People will be able to hear you for miles. Every person in that building would know somebody crawling about in the vent system. (This error applies to dozens of films, not only this one.). [You need to remember that these people are professionals, just like Kittridge said - "they're trained to be ghosts".]
Edit
When Ethan runs out of a restaurant after blowing the large water container with fishes with his chewing gum-bomb, you can see all the fishes fall to the floor as water rushes outside the restaurant. No even one fish moves. The explosion wouldn't have killed them because the tempered glass and the water have more density than air, so it would break the glass, but the blast would go the other way. They drop dead. (Fake ones for the activists, maybe.) [Are you kidding? Water is an excellent conductor of shockwaves - because it is incompressible it is better than air. Density has nothing to do with it, shockwaves expand in a spherical pattern unless they meet something they cannot penetrate, and they can certainly penetrate water. Every fish in that tank would have died instantly from the blast effect, and the scene is 100% accurate (though I doubt if they used live fish.).]
Edit
In the scene where Tom Cruise and Vanessa Redgrave are in her chauffeur-driven car, he "sets his price" for the NOC list, stating that he wants "two million dollars in bearer US Treasury bonds, with all coupons attached". The film is set after the fall of the Berlin Wall and after the Eurostar started running, that is no earlier than the nineties; however, the U.S. Treasury ceased to issue bearer bonds in 1986, so it would be impossible to find by that time, those bearer bonds, with "all coupons attached" (unless they can locate a lazy bones or neglectful investor which has let several years go by without collecting his coupons). [Bearer bonds are still available outside the US. They may not be sold by the US and trading in them in the States may be illegal, but most banks in Europe (especially in Switzerland) can get them if they want to.]
Edit Corrected by Guy
When Hunt and Krieger are crawling around in the duct work to break into the computer room, the arm that removes the vent cover is visibly that of a black man. Both Hunt and Krieger are white. [Both Hunt and Krieger are wearing black gloves.]
Edit
Liverpool Street Station is shown as more or less deserted in the hours of daylight. The only way this could be achieved in real life is by phoning in a bomb threat. [It's night. After Ethan sees that his parents have been arrested, he walks out in the streets, and it's dark outside. Several shots later the big clock in the station is shown, and you can see that it's about 11pm.]
Edit
Claire leaves the fire fighter uniform in the closet but is seen wearing it again in the truck while leaving. [We don't see Claire after she leaves the hall so she has all the time she needs to change back her clothes.]
Edit

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