Impossible Mission - Television Tropes & Idioms

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

Custom Search

Impossible Mission

Another visitor? Stay a while. Stay FOREVER!

An assignment is received in The Teaser. A planning session is held (Avengers Assemble). Then comes The Caper or The Con, using a Master Of Disguise and an A Team Montage. The resolution is as close to end of The Tag as possible.

At about the 40-minute mark, there is a Pseudo Crisis.

The trope takes its name from the series Mission Impossible, whose Impossible Mission Force did one of these every week. The trope quote comes from the C64 game Impossible Mission, which actually wasn't all that Mission Impossible-ish, oddly enough. (However there were ATARI and ZX-Spectrum ports of that game, which were Unwinnable due to a bug, hence carrying its name for good reason — although unwanted)

Examples:

Despite its few episodes, Firefly did two of these, in "Ariel" and in "Trash".
Mercilessly parodied in the Whose Line Is It Anyway game "Improbable Mission," which had agents given missions involving high stakes but ordinary tasks, such as doing laundry or mowing the lawn.

Identity Impersonator

« Plots »

In Another Mans Shoes