Tom Cruise Did So Many Burning Parachute Jumps Filming Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning That He Won a Guinness World Record

Here’s the thing about Tom Cruise: we may never have another truly fearless actor like him again. The man hung from a biplane for real, after all, in his latest film Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Oh, and not to make things more complicated, his parachute catches on fire once he drops from the plane and he has to quickly cut himself free and deploy a second chute. Well, he could’ve done the plane stunt, we well know, but surely he didn’t also set himself ablaze, right?

Wrong. Cruise did jump from a helicopter at 7,500 feet in Drakensberg, South Africa with a fuel-soaked main parachute that was rigged to be set on fire, according to The Hollywood Reporter, a death-defying stunt he performed a terrifying 16 times. Sheesh.

“What I’m going to do is I’m going to be deploying,” Cruise explained to crew members in a recent video that highlights the work that went into making the stunt work behind the scenes. “[And] if this is twisted while it’s burning, I’m going to be spinning and burning. I have to kick out of the twist and then ignite. I got 10 seconds.”

As a result, Guinness World Records has declared that Cruise set a record for “the most burning parachute jumps by an individual."

Most burning parachute jumps by an individual - 16