The date that President Sloane sends to Admiral Neely, implying vast importance in the characters' lives, is May 22, 1996. This is also the release date of Mission: Impossible (1996).
The seventh and eighth installments were planned to be filmed back to back. This changed after the seventh completed filming, due to Tom Cruise having to leave to do promotion for Top Gun: Maverick (2022), as well as the difficulties of filming massive action scenes under strict COVID-19 prevention protocols.
In October 2023, in addition to announcing that the film would be delayed nearly a year, Paramount also announced that the film would drop the "Dead Reckoning: Part Two" subtitle, but it will still be a direct sequel.