'Mission: Impossible' Ad Gives the Internet the Giggles with Accidental BDSM Reference

The eighth "Mission: Impossible" movie has been praised by some as a thrilling actioner, while others deride it as incomprehensibly muddled. What no one suspected was that it would deliver a hilarious meme.

An online ad for the movie puts submarine commander Captain Bledsoe – played by out queer actor and "Severance" breakout star Tramell Tillman – front and center with the slogan, "His sub. His rules."

In the Navy that might mean one thing (or not), but in the BDSM community, it means something quite different.

The movie, subtitled "The Final Reckoning," puts star Tom Cruise through his paces, sending his character, Ethan Hunt, and Hunt's team on a global chase to stop a relentless AI from using its abilities to manipulate images, videos, online content, and nuclear arsenals to sow distrust and push the world toward a civilization-ending conflagration.

One of Hunt's adventures involves getting to the wreck of a Russian submarine, and to do that he needs the help of an American vessel (the one commanded by Bledsoe). Though his role is relatively small, Tillman makes it memorable.

The ad copy accompanying his photo in character makes it even more so. Sadly, someone at X (formerly Twitter) caught on, and the ad was pulled from that platform. But that didn't stop Gay Twitter from weighing in.

The ad remains up on Instagram, though, where some commentators had a little fun with the inadvertent double meaning.

"his what?" one person asked, while another queried, "his SUB??"

"'His sub'?" another comment put in. "His name is Ethan ok".

Remarked someone else, "I love that they deleted this on twitter because people were making gay jokes".

The only way this could get better would be for Capt. Bledsoe's first name to be revealed as being Dominic, but that might be something best left to fans' head canon.