Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has a Mission: Impossible 3 callback and the early theories say it's everything from a "red herring" to a de-aged Tom Cruise scene

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has an unlikely Mission: Impossible 3 callback, one that could have far-reaching ramifications as we inch towards the end of the action franchise.

You may have been too dazzled by Tom Cruise's showreel of stunts in the first trailer for The Final Reckoning to notice, at the 1:35 mark, Ethan Hunt picks up a container marked 'Biohazard'.

That isn't just any MacGuffin. It's eerily similar – if not identical – to the all-powerful biological weapon the Rabbit's Foot that enters the radar of Philip Seymour Hoffman's Owen Davian in the J.J. Abrams-directed threequel.

Inevitably, that has led to the Mission: Impossible community wondering just how something from Mission: Impossible 3 has suddenly snuck its way into what could be Ethan Hunt's final act.

"Thoroughly convinced the real key to the sevastopol is right here in a random ass artefact from 2006 we didn't even know the contents of," one remarked on Twitter, a reference to the Cruciform key that is needed to 'unlock' the code of The Entity, a rogue AI.

Film Speak's Griffin Schiller offered, "Here's my hot take...as curious as I am to see how it's used, I really hope the Rabbit's Foot is a trailer red herring. I think it's better it remains an enigma. The mystery of it all was a JJ signature that helped MI3 maintain its pace and intensity."

"That’s not a shot from MI3, because we never see how Ethan Hunt actually got it during that heist," Slash Film's Ethan Anderton opined. "Looks like a digitally de-aged Tom Cruise back there, so how will this come into play?"

So, plot purposes, misdirects, and de-aging are all early contenders – and Final Reckoning's director has already said "never say never" when it comes to de-aging Tom Cruise, despite dropping the idea in Dead Reckoning.

"Originally, there had been a whole sequence at the beginning of the movie that was going to take place in 1989,” McQuarrie told 12DOVE and the Inside Total Film podcast last year. "We talked about it as a cold open, we talked about it as flashbacks in the movie, we looked at de-aging."

The director continued, "One of the big things about [the de-aging] I was looking at while researching, I kept saying, 'Boy, this de-aging is really good' or 'This de-aging is not so good.' Never did I find myself actually following the story… In researching that, I cracked the code – I think – on how best to approach it. By then, we had kind of moved away from it. We may still play with it. We never say never."

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, hits cinemas on May 23, 2025.

For more, check out the upcoming movies headed your way very soon and our ranking of the best Mission: Impossible movies.