Impossible Missions Force

The Impossible Missions Force (IMF) is a fictional agency with varying designations depending on the medium, an independent espionage agency in the television version or a governmental agency of the United States government in the film version. The IMF was introduced in the TV series Mission: Impossible that was broadcast from 1966 through 1973, and later in the revival TV series shown from 1988 through 1990. Beginning in 1996, the IMF has been featured in a number of motion pictures that starred Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, including Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible II, Mission: Impossible III, , and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

In the TV series, thanks largely to the involvements of William Read Woodfield (1928–2001) and Allan Balter as the producers, story editors, and scriptwriters, the IMF operated primarily by using confidence tricks, infiltration, and high technology devices on its targets. The agents of the IMF were able to deceive their targets into cooperating with them without detecting any kind of deception until the "impossible mission" was carried out. By that time, the IMF team members had all vanished from the scene and/or left the target country. In some cases, especially involving organized crime, the mission targets were actually killed as a direct result of the IMF's work, though never actually by any IMF agents themselves.

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