Latex Mask

Luther Stickell operating the head scanning mask creation machine.

A Latex Mask is a gadget used to create flawless disguises. It is primarily used by agents of the Impossible Mission Force.

Mission: Impossible series

Several IMF team members (Barney, Cinnamon, The Great Paris, Nicholas, Rollin, and Casey) were masters of disguise, capable of either impersonating the target of a mission or someone close to them through the use of realistic latex face masks and make-up.

Although the person being impersonated was usually unaware that they were being doubled, sometimes they did know and would cooperate with the team to ensure the impersonation was accurate. In some cases, the actor playing the IMF agent also portrayed the person to be impersonated (this most frequently occurred during Martin Landau's tenure on the series, beginning in the pilot) or the voice of the person being impersonated would be dubbed. Often, a guest-starring actor would be introduced as the target of the impersonation, a scene would be filmed showing the disguise being applied, and then that same actor would play the IMF agent performing the impersonation. Sometimes, one or more IMF team members would allow themselves to be captured in order to gain more access to or knowledge of the organization they are infiltrating, either by conversing with the target or being held in a jail cell and hatching their plan there.

Creating the face of Owen Davian.

A few episodes of the early seasons showed the painstaking creation and application of these masks, usually by make-up expert Rollin Hand or former actor The Great Paris. This was later omitted as the series progressed and the audience presumably became familiar with the mechanics of the team's methods. In both the 1980s revival and the Tom Cruise movies, the mask-making process was largely automatic, and mostly consisted of a digital computer using photographs of the agent and the target of the impersonation to create a form-fitting mask with the assistance of a portable machine. Most episodes included a dramatic "reveal" (also referred to as the "peel-off") near the end of the episode in which the team member would remove the mask. In Ghost Protocol, a similar latex mask was used by Kurt Hendricks to fool Ethan Hunt and his team into believing that they were dealing with his second-in-command, while he made off with a briefcase containing Russian nuclear launch codes.

In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, it is revealed that masks cannot fool biometric scanners, as they can detect things such as stride patterns and body language that are nearly impossible to duplicate.