Film / Mission: Impossible II

All spoilers for Mission Impossible are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Expect the impossible again.

Swanbeck: So you think this will be difficult?

Ethan: Very.

Swanbeck: Well, Mr. Hunt, this is not 'Mission: Difficult', it's 'Mission: Impossible'. 'Difficult' should be a walk in the park for you.

Mission: Impossible II (stylized as M:I-2) is a 2000 American action spy thriller film and the second entry in the Mission: Impossible film series, starring Tom Cruise as Impossible Mission Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt.

Ethan is snagged out of a vacation to track down rogue IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) living in Sydney who has stolen a very dangerous virus and has malicious plans for it. He is sent to recruit Classy Cat-Burglar Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandiwe Newton) and ends up falling for her. That is made all the more complicated when he learns that she is an ex-girlfriend of the rogue agent and the agency wants her to infiltrate his group. Ethan has to put aside his personal feelings as he tries to stay one step ahead of his rival.

The film also stars Richard Roxburgh as Hugh Stamp, John Polson as Billy Baird, Brendan Gleeson as John C. McCloy, Rade Šerbedžija as Dr. Vladimir Nekhorvich and Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell.

Directed by John Woo and it is plain to see, as this film is far more stylized and action-packed, with less cloak and dagger than the first film or the franchise as a whole.

Followed by Mission: Impossible III.

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This film provides examples of:

• Actionized Sequel: Compare this to the first film, where Ethan never fired a gun once. It helps that John Woo is a specialist in the action genre.
• Actor Allusion: The use of "Iko-Iko" during Ethan Hunt's introductory scene is a reference to Cruise's Rain Man, which also features (a cover of) the song.
• Affectionate Pickpocket: Nyah sidles up against Ambrose to steal a valuable envelope. She's successful the first time, but he notices when she does it again to return it (and she puts it in the wrong pocket, which would have tipped him off anyway).
• And Starring: The cast roll here ends with "and Ving Rhames".
• Artistic License – Engineering: To steal the virus by staging an air crash, Stamp simulates a loss of pressure and deploys the oxygen masks, which knocks out the passengers, co-pilot and flight engineer with sleeping gas. The problem with this is that, in real-life airliners, while the flight crew have a shared oxygen supply, the passenger masks are fuelled by individual chemical generators.
• Artistic License – Religion: The film's portrayal of the Spanish Holy Week in Seville is bizarre. It mixes the Holy Week (a Spanish religious festival that is celebrated in April) with the burning monuments of the Fallas (another Spanish festival, non-religious and completely unrelated to the previous, which only takes place in March in the city of Valencia) and shows people wearing attires from the San Fermín (yet another unrelated festival which, again, only takes place in Pamplona, and in mid-summer). To understand it better, this would be the equivalent of a non-American film set in the US managing to mix Thanksgiving Day with Mardi Gras and Saint Patrick's Day.
• Backstab Backfire: With a gun and a vial of Bellerophon!
• Bad Boss: Ambrose doesn't take criticism well, as Hugh finds out when he confronts Ambrose about keeping Nyah around.
• Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: Ethan Hunt from the previous film is re-introduced organizing a plane hijacking, stealing a bio-weapon, and brutally executing an already-unconscious Dr. Vladimir with a Neck Snap. Except that's not Ethan Hunt, but Big Bad Sean Ambrose who rips off his latex mask before ditching the plane - the real Hunt is on a rock-climbing tour somewhere else.
• Big Bad: Sean Ambrose, a rogue IMF operative who is going to steal and release a gene-engineered super-virus to become incredibly rich by way of a backdoor deal with the very company that not only invented the virus but its cure as well.
• Blofeld Ploy: Ambrose has his gun against what seems to be Ethan Hunt's head. It is expected that he will kill McCloy, whom he is talking to. However, he instead shoots and kills Hunt. Minutes later, the subversion is subverted when it is revealed that the Hunt that was killed was actually Ambrose's chief lieutenant (courtesy of Latex Perfection).
• Bloodier and Gorier: Considered to be the most violent of the Mission: Impossible movies, to the point where it was almost given an R rating.
• Book Ends: During his mission briefing at the start of the film, Swanbeck mentions that Ethan should let the IMF know where he's going the next time he's on vacation. At the end of the film, Ethan and Swanbeck revisit the topic, with him pledging to let them know where he's going on holiday. Swanbeck counters it's not necessary, as "it wouldn't be much of a vacation if you did."
• Boring, but Practical: Ambrose has studied Ethan's methods closely, and knows he'll use stealth and acrobatics to avoid security while infiltrating the Biocyte building. Ambrose finds it much quicker to enter the building during security shift rotation and shoot the men while their guard is down.
• Brief Accent Imitation: The second movie shows little throat patches that are able to alter their voice into the voice of whoever they are imitating through Latex Perfection. The third film not only shows how said latex masks are made, but also the voice strips; they require voice samples of the target making various commonly used syllables.
• Cacophony Cover Up:
  • "The generators will cover the sound of Hunt's break in."
  • Nyah's theft of the necklace early in the movie involves a similar trick. To cover the sound of her high heels as she runs to the room where the necklace is kept, she only runs while dancers downstairs are dancing, making their own heels-on-floor noise.
• The Cameo: Anthony Hopkins turns up unbilled.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: In the climax of the movie, Nyah injects herself with the last sample of the Chimera virus. If Ambrose kills her then, before the virus replicates enough to be harvested or reaches its contagious phase, he will lose the obscene amount of money he planned to make selling the antidote for the virus.
  Nyah: (to Ambrose) You're not gonna kill me. Not this bitch. Cause she's worth 37 million pounds!
• Carrying the Antidote: Turned inside-out. A scientist creates the ultimate flu vaccine - also producing the ultimate superflu in the process. Of course things are the right way around once the villain gets his hands on the suitcase. The villain also had an interesting way of selling the vaccine, as surprisingly, he did not ask for a ransom.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Ambrose is established as a disavowed IMF agent who has access to mask-making technology, as he uses it to imitate Ethan Hunt and steal the research from Dr. Nekhorvich. He does the same thing later to ascertain Nyah's true intentions midway through the film.
  • A somewhat obvious (after the fact) example: Luther accidentally pulls up the location of the final part of the movie on display, before moving to the actual building of interest at the time.
  • Early on, Nyah is given a Tracking Chip inside her ankle tattoo so that the team can track her whereabouts on Ambrose's property. The only laptop capable of tracking her is damaged midway through the film, requiring work to get it back online and find her during the climax of the film.
  • Hugh's bandaged finger, which Ambrose had mutilated earlier.
• Climb, Slip, Hang, Climb: Happens to Ethan Hunt whilst on holiday free soloing - rock climbing without ropes - at Dead Horse Point in Utah.
• Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity: Ethan is introduced climbing Dead Horse Point in Utah barehanded before he gets his mission briefing. Keep in mind he was doing that for fun. He was on vacation.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: And McCloy admits it with gusto.
  McCloy: I, John C. McCloy, ordered the creation of Chimera and I did it for the money!
• Cool Shades: The pair delivered to Ethan via rocket launcher, which incorporate a retinal scanner, video display on the lenses, and self-destruct mechanism. The camera glasses he used in the first film have nothing on these.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Ethan does this during the climbing scene. Afterwards he becomes an unstoppable demigod rather than the secret agent he was in the first movie.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: An inversion. Ambrose plans on releasing a stolen and deadly virus on the entire planet, but only so he can subsequently sell the cure and make billions legitimately.
• Dare to Be Badass: After Swanbeck gives Hunt his latest oddball mission, Hunt points out that what he's being asked to do is 'pretty difficult'. In what is possibly one of the movie's best lines, he responds, "Well, this isn't "Mission: Difficult", Mr. Hunt, it's "Mission: Impossible". "Difficult" will be a walk in the park."
• Darker and Edgier: This is not only the darkest in the series (at least until Fallout), but also the one that came closest to being slapped with an R rating. It has a higher rating in most countries for this reason.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Ethan disguises himself as the dead Russian scientist to get information out of John McCloy
• Dead Star Walking: Rade Šerbedžija (a notable European character actor) gets killed off in the first scene after "Ethan Hunt" (Sean Ambrose in disguise) knocks him out and crashes the plane he is traveling on.
• Decoy Getaway: Ethan Hunt affixes a latex mask to Hugh Stamp, and escapes as Ambrose guns down Stamp, mistaking him as Hunt.
• Didn't Think This Through: Ambrose's plan in the final act hinges on letting Nyah loose in downtown Sydney, which would cause her to fall to the virus, have it replicate in tens of thousands of victims, and drive up the share price of Biocyte when they offer the only viable antidote in Bellerophon. It doesn't occur to Ambrose to actually keep tabs on her — she simply walks to the North Bluffs in Australia, fully content on throwing herself off a cliff and ending the threat of the virus right then and there, which would likely have doomed Ambrose's plan even if Ethan hadn't stopped him. The only reason she's impeded is because Billy and Luther arrive in time to stop her, and bring her back to the site of the final battle between Ambrose and Hunt, where the latter is able to inject her with the antidote.
• Disguised Hostage Gambit: There is a rare example of the hero pulling this on the villain, with the aid of a couple of Latex Perfection masks.
• Disposable Love Interest: The film closes with Ethan and Nyah living happily ever after. The third film opens with him marrying a different woman, and Nyah is never spoken of again.
• Disturbed Doves: Courtesy of John Woo, of course! Way too many appear at the climax, nesting in the Biocyte storage facility.
• The Dragon: Hugh Stamp to Sean Ambrose.
• Dull Surprise: Thandiwe Newton barely changes her expression whether trying to convey seduction, loyalty, betrayal, etc.
• Engineered Public Confession: Dr. Nekhorvich infects John McCloy with the Chimera virus, and will only give him the antidote if he confesses to leaking it. However, it's all a trick, and Nekhorvich is really Ethan in disguise with a tape recorder hidden under his coat.
• Evil Counterpart: Sean Ambrose is literally this; he would oft be disguised as Ethan in previous missions when working for IMF due to their similar facial structure, and would explain why he'd also have the masks and voice strips of Hunt once he went rogue. Word of God labels this as one of the reasons he turned traitor in the first place, as he was sick of so many of his missions involving impersonating another agent.invoked
• Eviler than Thou: McCloy ordered the creation of Chimera and Bellerophon to make a lot of money. And he's nothing next to Ambrose, who even forces him to get on his knees at gunpoint at the climax strictly for the sake of doing a Blofeld Ploy for fun.
• Eye Scream: Ambrose's knife stops just millimeters away from Ethan's eye. This was no effect; they actually stabbed at the stuntman's eye with the knife, and it actually went that close. Sure, they had a frame rigged up with a rope so it couldn't stab him, but still.
• Facial Horror: The pictures of what the Chimera virus does. The poor guy's skin looks like it's flaking, and he has some nasty Blood from the Mouth.
• Faux Affably Evil: Ambrose can be witty and charming but is a violent psychopath who snaps easily.
• Final Battle: Ethan escaping Ambrose and his men in a high-speed motorcycle chase, followed by a fistfight between Ethan and Ambrose on a beach.
• Fingore: Ambrose cut off the tip (or a slice) of Hugh's finger with a cigar cutter. Subverted by a Gory Discretion Shot of sorts, cutting to the horse track encounter between Nyah and Ethan.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • During his stealth mission to meet with Nyah at Ambrose's property, Ethan is shown looking slightly more antagonistic, having facial expressions that range from downbeat to outright sinister. When she runs back into the house, the reason for his mood is revealed — it's actually Ambrose, wearing a mask of Hunt.
  • Luther realizes that Ambrose and his men are heading into the high-rise storage facility to stop Ethan from destroying the Chimera samples (as they plant a bomb in his van he barely escapes from), but is only able to warn Ethan just after Sean's men have arrived and stopped him from destroying the last sample moments later.
• Foreshadowing: Just before the infiltration into the high-rise storage building to destroy the vials of Chimera, Luther (who is pulling up information on the building) accidentally pulls up a diagram of a "Biocyte facility" on its own island. This is the location of the negotiation Ambrose conducts with McCloy, and where first of two confrontations with Ambrose takes place.
• For the Evulz: Ambrose loves nothing more than taking time to gloat before sadistically killing people and he is mentioned as having been unstable long before his betrayal. It's even a Fatal Flaw as Ethan uses the time he takes to gloat over a double he murders to get away with the virus.
• Genius Bruiser: Sean Ambrose. Goes with being a former agent.
• Go Seduce My Archnemesis: A particularly agonizing example. Ethan Hunt recruits Nyah without knowing her true purpose, and promptly beds and falls in love with her, only to find that Swanbeck wants Nyah to seduce Ambrose. Needless to say, Ethan is not happy.
• Good Needs Evil: Invoked by Dr. Nekhorvich, describing his creation of a "monster" (Chimera) in order to create Bellerophon, which was intended to be a cure-all for all strains of influenza:
  Every search for a hero begins with a search for something that every hero requires: a villain.
• Groin Attack: Ironically, it's the villain doing this to the hero (usually it's the other way around), but the beach fight at the end have Ambrose briefly scoring a hit on Hunt down there.
• Guns Akimbo: This being a John Woo film, Ethan Hunt does this with a pair of Berettas.
• The Heavy: The film lacks a straightforward example of the trope, but the page quote summarizes the plot brilliantly; Doctor Nekhorvich spliced together every influenza strain known to man into a superflu he codenamed "Chimera" - in order to develop a perfect influenza cure. That worked out perfectly, and would have been worth billions. Unfortunately, he didn't realize he was working for an evil drug company, resulting in the plot; the EDC realized that his superflu would be worth hundreds of billions to the right buyer, and that a superflu outbreak would make a universal cure worth trillions. In turn, Ambrose goes rogue to steal them. In turn, Ethan is sent after both Ambrose and the EDC. All of it happens because of Chimera.
• Hidden Depths: Nyah proves to have some - what with injecting herself with Chimera and then almost committing suicide in order to save Ethan and everybody else...
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Ethan disguises himself as Stamp, tricking Ambrose into shooting the real Stamp, who's disguised as Ethan. The real Ethan takes the virus and leaves. The movie started with Ambrose imitating Ethan in the same fashion.
  • Ethan reminds Ambrose that his break-in to Biocyte is only necessary because he was so eager to kill Nekhorvich and all the other passengers on the plane that he missed the fact that Nekhorvich was smuggling the virus inside his own body and the briefcase he took off Nekhorvich after killing him contained nothing of any use.
  • McCloy gloats to who he thinks is Doctor Nekhorvich that he ordered the creation of Chimera strictly for the money and gives his full name. We then discover during the attempted Chimera heist at the mid-point that the chamber in Biocyte where Chimera is held has a voice lock and the code is an authorized user saying his full name. Nice job giving Ethan the keys, jerk!
• Hollywood Glass Cutter: Ethan Hunt laser-cuts a hole through glass and jumps through into the lab.
• Imagine Spot: During the mission to destroy the Chimera samples in the Biocyte lab, Ethan imagines Dr. Nekhorvich injecting himself with a sample of the virus and apologizing for what he must do — an incident he never personally witnessed (it's reused footage from earlier in the film).
• Incredibly Obvious Bomb: Luther sees the bomb's red flashing light reflected in a puddle beneath his van, referencing an identical scene in In the Line of Duty 4: Witness.
• Just in Time: A villainous variation — Ambrose and his goons arrive just in time to stop Ethan from destroying the last canister of the Chimera virus, with a shootout commencing between both sides as they try to gain control of it.
• Killing for a Tissue Sample: Inverted and invoked by Nyah, who injects herself with the last sample of the Synthetic Plague that the villains need for a Poison and Cure Gambit to stop them from killing her - at least at that particular moment. All of the parties involved assume that it would be impossible to retrieve a sample of the virus from a freshly-dead corpse, as it would take a few hours for the virus to replicate in her system to the point where it could be harvested.
• Kiss of Distraction: Nyah distracts Ambrose with a kiss while stealing the envelope containing the memory card from his pocket. She tries something similar when she returns the envelope (sidling up against him), but this time it doesn't work—(a) he realizes it instantly, and (b) even if not, she puts it in the wrong pocket, which would have tipped him off eventually.
• Large Ham: Ambrose's head trembles and his eyes bug out whenever he's angry.
• Latex Perfection:
  • Ethan Hunt apparently carries perfect latex masks, not only of various bad guy henchmen but also of himself. These he was able to apply unaided to himself (or in the case of the mask of himself, a bad guy henchman), in about ten seconds flat. The film also shows how they mimicked the voices as well, with a thin strip of circuitry placed at the base of the neck (which somehow affected sounds made mostly in the mouth).
  • This holds true for Ambrose himself, a former IMF agent who has access to latex masks (and presumably the latex-mask making machine), which he uses to mimic Dr. Nekhorvich and Ethan.
• Literal Metaphor: When Ethan and Luther meet again, Luther ends up stepping in sheep droppings. This conversation takes place:
  Luther Stickell: Shit.
  Ethan Hunt: Yes it is.
• Living MacGuffin: Nyah, once injected with Chimera.
• Magic Countdown: The bomb is planted on Luther's van with one of these.
• Majority-Share Dictator: Ambrose's big plan is to use the money he gets from selling Bellerophon back to McCloy to buy 51% of Biocyte, which will have its stock price going through the roof once Chimera starts killing people on the streets and the fact that Bellerophon is the only available cure becomes public. Of course, McCloy tries to balk at that fact, which only gets him a gun pointed at his face.
• Manly Tears: Ambrose is shedding these, albeit of the Single Tear variety, at the realization of Nyah's duplicity, indicating that he's genuinely in love with her, despite his status as a villain.
• Motorcycle Jousting: With the inclusion of jumping off the bikes at the same time and tackle each other in mid-air.
• Oddball in the Series:
  • As demented as the action sequences have become as the series has gone by, this is the only film in which Ethan shoots two guns while jumping through the air or do a backflip kick. The action makes quite clear who the director is.
  • Animal Motifs play a major part in the film, via the usage of doves (a John Woo trademark) that conveniently appear at key moments around Ethan Hunt — particularly his infiltration into, and escape from, the Biocyte facility on Bare Island. No other film in the series leans so heavily into said motifs.
  • Ethan is able to pull off feats on a motorcycle — shooting backwards (while not looking) with a high degree of accuracy, maintaining speed on a motorcycle while functionally "skidding" across the ground on the soles of his shoes, and pulling off near-gravity defying feats like "floating" his motorcycle onto a bridge via a ramp and slowing to a dead stop with one wheel of the cycle — that are never repeated in any subsequent film, even though the majority of them lean into high-speed motorcycle chases (which become very "traditional" in nature).
  • It's also the only film in which he and his team are not forced to take it on the lam at some point.
  • The movie is also very much of the year 2000, with its copious slow-motion action scenes, heavy-metal rendition of the M:I theme instead of the traditional composition or variation of in the title sequence, and a heavily promoted rock soundtrack featuring the likes of Limp Bizkit and Metallica.
  • Ethan acts more like a James Bond Expy than his characterization in the other films, being able to quickly seduce a woman he just met into the sack and has no problem going for guns time and time again.
• Officially Shortened Title: "M:i-2".
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Some of this chanting is heard when Ambrose kills what he presumes to be Ethan Hunt, only to find that he ended up killing Stamp...
• One-Woman Wail: Injection and Mano a Mano.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Ambrose claims "women are like monkeys. Won't let go of one branch until they get hold of the next." (the unfortunate implications of the "monkey" comment are heightened by the fact that Nyah is a black woman).
• Product Placement: For Bulgari (the luxury fashion house) — Nyah is introduced trying to steal an expensive Bulgari necklace in Seville. When she opens the safe and looks at the necklace, the camera lingers on the Bulgari logo stamped on its case for a moment.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Ambrose has two in a row: "Get! Down! On! Your! knees!" and "This -= is — what's known as getting your gun off."
• Race Against the Clock: Part of the climax involves Billy and Luther rescuing Nyah (who, having been infected by Chimera, is fully content on throwing herself off a cliff to prevent the virus spreading), then bringing her back to Ethan so he can inject her with Bellerophon.
• Recruiting the Criminal: Subverted. Ethan thinks he's recruiting Nyah in order to steal something, until Swanbeck reveals they only wanted her because she previously had a relationship with Ambrose, and they want to exploit that to get a person inside for recon.
• Rogue Agent: Sean Ambrose is a rogue IMF agent.
• Sadly Mythtaken: Swanbeck mentions that Spaniards honor the Saints during the Holy Week of Seville by burning their effigies. He's probably confused with the Fallas of Valencia, a different city where effigies of celebrities and politicians are burned — nothing to do with religion. He's shown to be a jerk, but he should know the name of the city he's visiting, and people were in fact burning some effigies in the streets of Seville for some reasons we Spaniards cannot even imagine.
• Scaling the Summit: We meet Ethan Hunt climbing Dead Horse Point in Utah. Reference to climbing Kirk climbing El Capitan at the beginning of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
• Schizo Continuity: To date, M:I-II is the only film in the series to never have its plot elements directly referenced with the other films in any way. As well, while Ethan and Luther are series mainstays from the first film (and Eugene Kittridge returned to the series much later in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning), none of the characters introduced in this film (including Nyah, Swanbeck, and Billy) ever returned. By contrast, every installment from the third and onward introduces at least one new recurring character to the series. Rogue Nation and Fallout do feature a few minor Call-Backs to this film, however.
• Self-Plagiarism: Ethan and Nyah first seeing each other in freeze-frame is identical to a scene in Woo's The Killer (1989) where Ah Jong and Jenny meet for the first time.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Nyah changing into the dress Ambrose bought for her (and him stopping her, telling her she can show him "later") is accompanied by a Fade to Black, followed by Ethan walking outside and staring at the sunset as a varient of the love theme plays.
• Shoot the Fuel Tank:
  • During the escape from Bare Island, Ethan shoots a cluster of tanks to cause a major explosion, killing the guard firing on him and Billy's helicopter.
  • He does the same thing a couple minutes later to a moving vehicle, from a moving motorcycle.
• Shout-Out:
  • This being a John Woo film, doves play a prominent part of the climactic confrontation in Bare Island, as they fly in and out of various rooms.
  • Ethan and Nyah first seeing each other was inspired by Tony and Maria's first scene in West Side Story.
  • Nekhorvich's line "You're sorry and I'm sorry" is from Dr. Strangelove; likewise, he calls Ethan by the alias "Dmitry" as the President in that film calls his Soviet counterpart.
  • The car chase is similar to the race scene from GoldenEye, but Darker and Edgier.
  • The cigar cutter scene and the Disguised Hostage Gambit to Darkman.
• Smug Snake: Ambrose. He spends half of the film with a smug look of self-satisfaction on his face and the other in a ballistic rage when things don't go according to plan.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Ethan and Nyah are talking while she's on line. She kneels down to pick up something she dropped and by the time she stands up, Hugh is in his place.
• Symbology Research Failure: The film mixes the processions of the Holy Week in Seville with the "Fallas" of Valencia (and throws in some people dressed for Pamplona's running of the bulls looking at them for good measure), even having a character uttering the line "how crazy Spaniards are, burning their saints to honor them?". The origin of the Fallas is only incidentally religious: they take place in the four days prior to March 19, Saint Joseph's day in the Catholic calendar, who is the patron saint of carpenters. In this day, carpenters would take out and burn the wooden splinters left by their work that could not be reused, and over time it evolved into the confection of elaborate structures over the year for the express purpose of being burned that day. These structures often make parodic references to events of the year and feature caricatures of politicians, actors and other famous people, but never effigies of saints or other figures of worship. And they are not held in Seville.
• Title Drop: When Ethan says convincing Nyah to go along with the plan to plant her with Ambrose may be "difficult", Swanbeck retorts that their assignment is not Mission: Difficult, it's Mission: Impossible, so "difficult" should be "a walk in the park".
• Took a Level in Badass: Ethan never fires a sidearm in the first movie, and here, he's dual-wielding pistols while flipping in the air, doing some acrobatic martial arts, and busts out Car Fu on a motorcycle wearing Cool Shades.
• Toros y Flamenco: There is a sequence taking place in this kind of Spain where they managed to mix Pamplona's Running of the Bulls with Seville's Easter processions, Valencia's Fallas, and about any other Spanish cliché. Also, Swanbeck tells Ethan that "the people are burning the saints to worship them", which is completely false; the already mentioned Fallas DO burn figures, but not of saints, and in Easter processions figures of saints are taken out, but not burned.
• Tracking Chip: Ethan has a chip implanted inside him that is completely untraceable, save for a connection to a single satellite that can only be accessed by a specific laptop. It's the same kind of chip they put inside Nyah's ankle tattoo, and it didn't present any problems besides when they need to find Nyah near the end due to the laptop getting damaged and needing to be brought back up online again.
• Trigger-Happy: Sean Ambrose is well-known to be one, or as Ethan calls it "getting your gun off". It definitely comes to bite Ambrose in the ass at the climax because he is so driven to play around with (who he believes is) a captured Ethan before blowing him away with a proper Ironic Echo Pre-Mortem One-Liner ("This is what is called 'getting your gun off'") and doing a Blofeld Ploy with McCloy that he didn't noticed that it was Stamp wearing an Ethan mask until it was too late.
• Typhoid Mary: The villain's plans for Nyah; he even mentions Mary by name. Nyah, until the team arrives, plans to kill herself to save everyone.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee:
  • Ethan is able to dissuade the security guards at the Villa in Seville by portraying himself as a security consultant who is testing the building's defenses, with Nyah instantly understanding and playing along the moment security arrives.
  • Played With, as the detailed break-in into the Biocyte lab would have succeeded, had Ethan not let Ambrose get the virus to save Nyah.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Nyah attempts to hide the expensive necklace there. Ethan then forces her to give it back, right in front of the head of security.
• Violent Glaswegian: Sean Ambrose. The man is known In-Universe to be pretty Trigger-Happy and just looks pissed most of the time.
• Villainous Crush: Ambrose appears to have genuine feelings for Nyah, enough to be legitimately hurt and angry upon finding out that she was playing him.
• Virus and Cure Names: Chimera (virus) and Bellerophon (cure) are named after a monster from Greek Mythology and its slayer. This is justified, as those are actually their codenames from the project that created them.
• Visual Pun: The camera quickly cuts to another scene right after Ambrose uses the cigar cutter on Hugh.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The premise of the film—spy falls in love with girl, but the mission requires the girl to fake getting back together with her boyfriend, a Bad Guy who is trying to get a dangerous weapon—is lifted from the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Notorious. They even both have a scene where the spy meets the girl at a racetrack.
• Withholding the Cure: Doctor Nekhorvich spliced countless influenza viruses together into a super-influenza as part of the process of creating a universal cure for influenza. That worked out perfectly, and would have been worth billions. Unfortunately, he didn't realize until it was too late that he was working for an evil drug company - that realized that his superflu would be worth hundreds of billions to the right buyer... and when he discovered this and went to the IMF for help, Ambrose realized that a superflu outbreak would make a universal cure worth trillions. Cue gunfights.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Did Ethan nail Ambrose with an enzuigiri? Yes, he did.

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"Let's get lost."