Tom Cruise showed us a side we've never seen before with Jimmy Fallon in hilarious sketch

In the fake sequence, the television host introduced himself as 'Special Director Pollywog' who entrusts a fictional mission to Cruise.
PUBLISHED FEB 4, 2025
Tom Cruise and Jimmy Fallon performing a skit on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' at Rockefeller Center on July 23, 2018, in NYC. (Cover Image Source: Getty Images| Photo by Jamie McCarthy)
Tom Cruise and Jimmy Fallon performing a skit on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' at Rockefeller Center on July 23, 2018, in NYC. (Cover Image Source: Getty Images| Photo by Jamie McCarthy)

Tom Cruise has made many appearances on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' to promote his spy franchise 'Mission Impossible.' However, there's one segment that truly lives rent-free in the minds of viewers— his 2018 stint on the talk show that promoted his latest installment (at the time), 'Mission: Impossible – Fallout.' Titled the 'Mad Lib Theater with Tom Cruise,' the segment featured Fallon indulging Cruise in a hilarious sketch. The duo recreated the iconic opening scene from the spy verse much to the amusement of the audience. As per People magazine, the two pretended to be spies, onboard a train, discussing a crucial assignment involving a "criminal organization of the world's most amazing sanitation engineers who hacked into the government's Walkman, stealing their top-secret report on vintage sneakers." 



 

The dialogue for the skit was previously determined by Cruise's answers to random questions. Fallon fielded the Golden Globe winner with silly prompts. "I'm gonna ask you for some silly words— nouns, verbs, adjectives, et cetera— and as we do that, they'll be written on the cue cards, and then, we're gonna act out a very dramatic Mad Lib scene," the late-night host instructed. Cruise, always the sport, intentionally made his answers bizarre. When Fallon asked, "Name of a cute puppy," he replied, "Uh, uh, My Little Cookie," sending the audience into fits of laughter. 

Tom Cruise at the 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' US Premiere at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum on July 22, 2018, in Washington, DC. (Image Source: Getty Images| Photo by Michael Loccisano)
Tom Cruise at the 'Mission: Impossible- Fallout' US Premiere at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum on July 22, 2018, in Washington, DC. (Image Source: Getty Images| Photo by Michael Loccisano)

This went back and forth with Cruise naming vintage sneakers as his favorite eBay purchase, 'Doody-head' as a cuss word a first grader would use, and so on. The wildest answer came when Fallon asked, "What would you shout if you saw a spider crawling up your leg?" Cruise answered, "Come here, darling!" 



 

In the fake sequence, the television host introduces himself as 'Special Director Pollywog' who entrusts a mission to Cruise after a criminal organization kidnapped the latter's fictional aunt Ingrid and asked for a ransom of '1,000,256 sofas.' Fallon holds up a disk in 'Mission Impossible' style and says, "This disk contains sensitive information that might help." Cruise asks, "What's on this disk?" to which Fallon answers, "Seven photos of Ingrid Bergman running." As their pretend banter continued, both failed miserably and laughed out loud. "How do you prepare for such tense missions?" the host amusingly asked, concluding the scene. "By waking up every morning, going up on the roof, and kissing and by repeating my own personal mantra --poopy-di-scoop, poopy-di-scoop," Cruise replied amid thunderous applause. 



 

The duo had similarly entertained the audience in 2017 by recreating scenes from 'The Mummy' scripted by children for a segment called 'Kids Theater.' During the 2018 segment, the 'American Made' star also revealed that he had injured his ankle doing a simple stunt. He said, "I'm running and I jump from one building to the next."

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