The Mission: Impossible movies make for a hugely entertaining franchise, but they also have some plot holes that even Ethan Hunt was unable to fix. The Mission: Impossible stunts are what steal the show in these movies, with the plots sometimes feeling like simple setups for Tom Cruise’s latest death-defying feat. As such, some of the plot holes that have come up over the years have largely gone unnoticed by fans.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning seemingly brings this to an end for the franchise that has been thrilling audiences since 1996. This has led to a lot of fans rewatching the entire series over again, and while the previous movies still deliver big thrills, revisiting them can make those plot holes harder to overlook. While none of these missteps take away from the overall adventure of the Mission: Impossible movies, they can be frustrating once you notice them.

10

How Krieger Got His Knife Back

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Mission: Impossible’s famous CIA heist is one of the most thrilling moments in the franchise, but it also reveals a crucial bit of information about the villains Ethan is facing in the first movie. During the heist, Ethan stops Krieger (Jean Reno) from killing a guard with a knife, only to realize that the knife was the same one he found by the body of his murdered team member, Sarah.

However, the clue doesn’t make sense because Krieger never should have had the knife in the first place. Ethan finds Sarah’s body with no sign of her killer, and the knife is left behind. For Krieger to then have the knife later during the CIA heist, it means he would have had to return to the scene of a very public crime and retrieve it, which would be foolish for a professional killer. It could be that the knife he has later is just a similar-looking one, but that defeats the purpose of identifying Krieger as Sarah’s killer.

9

The 20-Hour Virus Timeline

Mission: Impossible II (2000)

Mission: Impossible II is often regarded as the worst Mission: Impossible movie, but the fact that it is still quite an entertaining ride is a sign of how solid the franchise is. John Woo’s action sequences are what keep the movie going, whereas the plot is the weak link. It relates to a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly virus that threatens to be unleashed on the world, as anyone infected with it will become contagious and die within 20 hours.

The movie begins with one of the scientists who created the virus in Australia purposely infecting himself with the virus and then flying to the United States in the hope of getting the IMF to help him destroy it. However, even if he immediately went to the airport after injecting himself, a flight from Australia to the US is around 12 hours at the least. That is not leaving much time for error when dealing with a virus that could kill countless people.

8

Ambrose Let His Most Important ᴀsset Go

Mission: Impossible II (2000)

The plan of the villainous Ambrose in Mission: Impossible II is to let the ᴅᴇᴀᴅly virus loose in the world after acquiring stocks in the only known cure for the virus. Nyah (Thandiwe Newton) makes the plan difficult by injecting herself with the only remaining sample of the virus. However, Ambrose simply decides he will let her loose in a populated city just before the 20-hour mark when she will become contagious.

Since she was the most valuable ᴀsset of his plan, it makes no sense that he would be so careless with her in the end.

At the end of Mission: Impossible II, he does just that, releasing her in Sydney, but he doesn’t do anything to ensure she stays. The IMF could have easily picked her up and ensured she couldn’t infect anyone. Indeed, when Ethan’s team does find her, she is about to jump off a cliff into the ocean, which would have ruined Ambrose’s plans. Since she was the most valuable ᴀsset of his plan, it makes no sense that he would be so careless with her in the end.

7

Davian Hears Ethan’s Name

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davian remains the best Mission: Impossible villain the franchise has ever produced. Part of the reason he is so effective, apart from Hoffman’s performance, is that he makes things personal for Ethan. After learning his name, Davian has Ethan’s wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan), taken, and he forces Ethan to steal the Rabbit’s Foot for him. However, that crucial bit of information should have been impossible for Davian to get.

After capturing Davian, an angry Ethan questions the villain by hanging him out of the cargo door of their plane while it is in midair. Luther (Ving Rhames) tries to stop Ethan, using his name. It might seem like a foolish thing for Luther to do, but in his defense, there is no way Davian should have been able to hear anything since his head was hanging out of a moving airplane.

6

Cobalt Unnecessarily Jumps To His Death

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

Though Cobalt in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is not one of the most physically imposing villains Ethan Hunt has faced, they share one of the best Mission: Impossible fights. At the climax of the movie, Cobalt uses a case to launch a nuclear missile. It is then up to Ethan to get the case so he can abort the missile. Ethan and Cobalt then fight their way through a multi-story parking garage with Ethan trying to get the case and Cobalt trying to keep it from Ethan.

The fight comes to a dramatic conclusion when Ethan has Cobalt cornered at the top of the complex, and Cobalt remains defiant by taking the case and simply jumping down to his death with it. While the case being so far from Ethan was a smart move, there is no reason that Cobalt also had to jump. He simply could have dropped the case all the way down and continued to try preventing Ethan from getting to it. In fact, had he done that, he likely would have won.

5

Ethan’s Burj Khalifa Climb Goes Unnoticed

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

The Burj Khalifa stunt in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol remains one of the defining moments of the franchise. It was a sign of the films taking it up a notch in terms of the stunts while also offering a cinematic experience like no other. The movie does a great job of setting up the fact that scaling the building from the outside is Ethan’s only option at this point. However, it also requires you to ignore the problems with this plan.

It is not as if he were climbing stealthily, and his running on the outside of the building would have drawn more attention.

It is fair enough that no one on the ground noticed that there was a man climbing up the world’s tallest building, as it likely would have been hard to see. However, the suspension of disbelief in accepting that there was no one in any of the rooms that Ethan climbed past is a stretch. It is not as if he were climbing stealthily, and his running on the outside of the building would have drawn more attention.

4

Cobalt Didn’t Need To Buy The Nuclear Codes

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

The entire Burj Khalifa sequence in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is an intense ride as Ethan and his team face one hurdle after another. With Colbalt coming to buy the nuclear codes he needs for his launch, one of the main problems comes when it is revealed that he has brought along a man who will be able to verify the codes, meaning that Ethan cannot give him fake codes in their staged meeting.

However, if Cobalt had a man who could verify the nuclear codes by looking at them, why would he ever need to buy them from a third party? This man could simply have told him the codes from the beginning since he apparently knew them by heart.

3

A New Key Could Have Been Made

Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning (2023)

The key in Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning becomes one of the many MacGuffins in the Mission: Impossible franchise. It is sought after by so many different people that it is hard to keep track of it all. However, with it being a key, it seems as though all of these parties failed to realize the fairly obvious solution that was staring them all in the face.

When Ethan is given the mission to retrieve the key, he is shown a very detailed image of the key. If they can provide that image, the IMF has everything it needs to simply make another version of the key. It is mentioned several times that it is a very unique key, but there is no reason that it could not be duplicated and work as effectively, leading to a plot hole.

2

Grace’s Changing Eye Color Goes Unnoticed

Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning (2023)

The masks in the Mission: Impossible franchise are one of the most entertaining trends of these movies, making for some of the most memorable scenes. Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning adds another one to the collection as Grace (Hayley Atwell) is forced to pose as Alanna (Vanessa Kirby) in order to infiltrate a deal for the prized key. While the mask is flawless as usual, they did overlook one glaring aspect.

The fact that Alanna’s bodyguard is her brother makes it truly unreasonable that he wouldn’t notice.

When Grace takes over as Alanna, she has her own green eyes instead of Alanna’s quite noticeably blue eyes. The movie clearly made the choice to keep Grace’s eye color, despite the fact that it never comes into play. While it could be argued that it is a small detail most people might not notice, the fact that Alanna’s bodyguard is her brother makes it truly unreasonable that he wouldn’t notice.

1

Ethan’s Backstory Is Inconsistent

Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning (2023)

Ethan Hunt’s backstory in the Mission: Impossible movies has always been kept rather vague, but it also didn’t seem necessary. However, Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning revealed that Ethan actually comes from a criminal background and was given the choice to either join the IMF or go to prison. It is also revealed that his arrest coincided with a woman he cared about, named Marie, being killed by Gabriel (Esai Morales), linking the villain to Ethan’s past.

Given that Ethan’s life before the IMF was a life as a criminal who lost the woman he loved, it doesn’t seem like something he would describe as “good.“

The reveal of Ethan’s dark past took many fans by surprise, as there was no real hint of this in any of the previous movies. However, there is one moment from Mission: Impossible III that contradicts all of this. When Ethan is preparing to marry Julia, he says that “What I see in Julia is life before all this. And it’s good.”

Given that Ethan’s life before the IMF was a life as a criminal who lost the woman he loved, it doesn’t seem like something he would describe as “good,” nor would it make him want to settle into domestic life.