Trivia / Mission: Impossible – Fallout

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• Banned in China: Nearly done in India, but the Central Board of Film Certification allowed it to be shown in the country if references to Kashmir were removed.
• California Doubling: The final act of the film takes place in Kashmir, but was actually shot in New Zealand and Norway, with the cliff being the Preikestolen cliff (Pulpit Rock) in the latter country.
• The Danza: Saif Al-Warith plays a character named Saif.
• Fake American: Brit Henry Cavill as August Walker.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: Rebecca Ferguson got pregnant during the filming hiatus forced by Tom Cruise's unfortunate encounter with a concrete wall (which resulted in a broken ankle), and was about seven months along when filming was completed; fortunately, most of her major stunt sequences had been shot before the hiatus.
• Meme Acknowledgement:
  • Continuing from Justice League (2017), Henry Cavill is still having a ball with joining in on the jokes about his mustache.
  • The cast also had fun referencing Cavill's "reloading his arms" scene during interviews and press tours.
• Missing Trailer Scene: Many.
  • Absent from the final theatrical cut is the final shot seen in several of the movie's trailers, in which Ethan Hunt appears to be flying a helicopter at ground level directly towards a tractor-trailer. Oddly it appears to take place directly above a surface road surrounded by a thick canopy of greenery.
  • Another bit from the trailer that was seemingly removed from the final cut was Ethan Hunt swinging on a cable above the rave crowd in Paris. (The Blu Ray has the making of this stunt, with the acknowledgement that the scene was eventually cut.)
  • Another scene that takes place in a snowy setting, showing Ethan Hunt and his team discovering abandoned trucks with dead soldiers inside and around them, it then shows Ethan approaching a bunker door, about to enter with his gun drawn.
• No Stunt Double:
  • As is standard for Tom Cruise and the series, taking this to new heights:
    • Cruise hanging from a helicopter mid-flight in the climax. He also gets to pilot the helicopter himself in the sequence (he took piloting lessons just for the occasion... which took two years and over 1000 flight hours).
    • Riding a motorcycle against traffic at the Arc de Triomphe, and crashing it into a car. Then he gets into another car and drives it into Ilsa.
    • Running over roofs, jumping out of a high-rise building window, and jumping between buildings. This one finally scored Cruise a Jackie Chan level injury with a broken ankle (after which he kept going, not wanting to have to do it again after he healed).
    • Cruise and Cavill fighting on a very high cliff (a real cliff), with Hunt falling off...
    • Cruise performed over 100 HALO jumps (resulting in three usable takes) for the sequence where he rescues his teammate.
  • Meanwhile, Rebecca Ferguson did the vast majority of her own fighting scenes. Ilsa's motorcycle stunts, however, are — as Ferguson freely admits — done by an excellent stunt double. Rebecca herself cracked many a joke on red carpets worldwide about sitting back and having a coffee whilst Cruise did all his crazy stunt work.
• On-Set Injury: Tom Cruise broke his ankle doing a stunt involving a Literal Cliffhanger in a Roof Hopping sequence, but he remained in character as he pulled himself up and hobbled off-camera to finish the sequence. This was the take that made it in the film (partially because Cruise really didn't want to do it again). Production had to halt for three months after to give him a chance to heal.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Henry Cavill as a villain. He played mostly heroes up to this point.
  • One for the director, Christopher McQuarrie; Tom Cruise picked him to direct Fallout after Rogue Nation, marking the first time a director returned for a M:I movie. But McQuarrie chose to switch up his directing style to continue the tradition of the movies feeling different from the predecessor, including picking a whole different crew compared to Rogue Nation.
• Throw It In!: Henry Cavill did the "arm gun reload" moment in the bathroom fight with no intention of it being on film, as he was just stretching his arms in between takes. When he realized he was doing it constantly, he stopped, but then the director asked why he stopped and asked him to do it again, which he did and it ended up being added to the film.
• Troubled Production: Production was supposed to begin in Fall 2016, but due to salary disputes was delayed to Spring 2017. Additionally, an accident during a stunt involving Tom Cruise resulted in a broken ankle and a nine-week production shutdown.
• What Could Have Been:
  • When Jeremy Renner's commitment to Avengers: Endgame prevented Agent Brandt from having a more substantial role like he had in the previous two films, McQuarrie considered having Brandt appear during the opening mission in Berlin, with its failure resulting in his death. While filming this scene would have fit around his Endgame schedule, Renner was still interested in returning to the franchise in the future, and didn't want to be unceremoniously killed off in the first ten minutes. In the finished film, Brandt is not seen or mentioned at all, but is presumably alive, leaving the door open for Renner to return.
  • Vanessa Kirby was supposed to first appear in the movie by singing in an early cut, but it was revised when the cut was made to film scenes of her giving a speech.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Simon Pegg revealed that when production began, the film's script was only 33 pages long, in contrast to typical film scripts, which have 85-100 pages. As a result, Christopher McQuarrie had to make events up throughout the filming process.

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