Cruise lit his parachute on fire 16 times — more than any other person in recorded history — while filming one of the last stunts for “The Final Reckoning.”

Tom Cruise in a burning parachute while shooting ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’.Credit: Paramount Pictures/YouTube

Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire.

Tom Cruise has been awarded the Guinness World Record for most burning parachute jumps by an individual, netting a whopping 16 flaming jumps while filming Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.

Tom Cruise in a burning parachute while filming ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’.Paramount Pictures/YouTube

The stunt, which arrives near the conclusion of the eighth M:I film, sees Cruise deploy a parachute and light it on fire while falling through the sky. Guinness noted that the actor had to jump out of a helicopter from a minimum height of 7,500 feet — sometimes while wearing a 50-pound camera rig — and that the parachute could only burn for about three seconds before completely disintegrating, forcing Cruise to deploy a backup chute.

On Thursday, Paramount unveiled new behind-the-scenes footage of the stunt, which occurs in the film after Cruise’s Ethan Hunt goes toe-to-toe with Gabriel (Esai Morales) in a high-flying biplane sequence where Ethan transfers from one airplane to another.

In the movie, Ethan bails out of the biplane and opens his parachute, only for it to burst into flames, causing him to fall more rapidly — and the film cuts away from Ethan after the ignition, so we don’t know if he survived the fall until several moments after the fire.

In the behind-the-scenes video, Cruise explains the complexity of the stunt. “If this is twisted while it’s burning, I’m gonna be spinning and burn,” he says. “I have to kick out of the twist and then ignite within 10 seconds.”

Tom Cruise at the New York City premiere of ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ on May 18, 2025.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty

The video then shows the crew soaking a parachute in aviation gasoline, also known as avgas. “We’re gonna submerge the parachute into the avgas, soak up the fuel, so that when the parachute opens and ignites it, it’ll hold fuel and explode,” a crew member explains.

Director Christopher McQuarrie tells Cruise the goal of the shot. “It’s quite literally: establish the objects in your hand and burn the parachute,” the filmmaker says.

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Cruise then tells two crew members in a helicopter about how they’ll approach the stunt. “We’re gonna be real smart — I’m not saying be risky. We don’t take risks, obviously,” he says as he laughs, acknowledging the lunacy of what he’s just said.

The video cuts to Cruise diving out of a helicopter and deploying his parachute, followed by the parachute bursting into flames — 16 times in a row.