Die Hard/Trivia

Franchise in general

 * Enforced Method Acting:
 * Hilarious considering his counting to three earlier in the movie.
 * From the same movie, the shot in the elevator shaft where McClane drops from the vent he was aiming for, but manages to grab the next one down was an accident on the part of the stuntman that made the final cut anyway.
 * Executive Meddling: When the fourth movie was made, the studio execs forced the filmmakers to get a PG-13 rating, thus eliminating half the fun, including McClane's favorite word. The "unrated" DVD version of the film fixes that problem and Bruce Willis resolved an argument over the phone with the studio over the script, by saying "Lemme ask you something. Who's your second choice to play John McClane? Yeah, I thought so."
 * Fake American: Alan Rickman put on such a convincing American accent in Die Hard, the director decided to extend the scene where he pretends to be a hostage in order to show it off.
 * Given a call back in the third film when his brother (Played by fellow brit Jeremy Irons) goes undercover with a heavy Texas Accent.
 * Fake Nationality: The "European" terrorists in With a Vengeance.
 * The Grubers are German, but were played by Englishmen.
 * Brief cameo example: The Apparently English pilot who is crashed into the ground in Die Harder is in fact Colm Meany, an Irishman. You might recognise him as all-Irish Chief Miles O'Brien from various Star Trek appearances.
 * In the German dub of the first movie, Hans and Karl are named Jack and Charlie, and all the German lines are replaced by Italian.
 * Franchise Zombie: To the point that Bruce Willis looks like he doesn't want to be involved and is firmly in Money, Dear Boy boredom mode.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!:
 * Many Finnish viewers might recognize boxer, professional wrestler and politician Tony Halme (aka Ludvig Borga) in With a Vengeance.
 * McClane teams up with Samuel L. "Mothafuckin'" Jackson
 * Heywood is Col. Stuart.
 * Mr. Vernon is Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson.
 * Special Agents Johnson and Johnson (no relation) are Franz Sanchez and Hawkins. The former's also known as Jake Fratelli.
 * Carl Winslow is Al.
 * T-1000 is one of the mooks in the second movie.
 * So is Toulouse-Lautrec
 * Detective Andy Sipowicz is Captain Lorenzo!
 * Also, Tuvok in Live Free or Die Hard
 * Speaking of, Colm Meaney in Die Hard 2
 * One of the terrorists in Die Hard is Genghis Khan.
 * Silent Bob in Live Free Or Die Hard.
 * Vigo the Carpathian is Hans' Dragon.
 * And Ranger Trivette is his Evil Genius.
 * And Walter Peck is Richard Thornton.
 * Ramona Flowers is John's daughter.
 * Emile Danko is an FBI agent.
 * And Hans? He's Severus Snape.
 * His brother Simon in With a Vengeance is Scar.
 * Necros is the first Mook McClane offs.
 * D.A. Arthur Branch is Trudeau, the airport chief in Die Harder.
 * James Evans, Sr. is Major Grant.
 * Kicking Bird is one of McClane's fellow NYPD officers.
 * So is Yvette
 * Matt Farrell is also a Mac.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!:
 * This troper only just realized that the Jerkass parking cop at the beginning of Die Harder is none other than Detective Harvey Bullock
 * Sequel Gap:
 * Twelve years between Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995) and Live Free or Die Hard (2007).
 * In a way, the first movie also counts: the book that it's based on was a sequel to The Detective, which was made into a film starring Frank Sinatra in 1968. Die Hard didn't come out until 1988.
 * Shout-Out: The villain in the first movie is named Hans Gruber.
 * Star-Making Role: Die Hard did this for Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman.
 * Technology Marches On: Cell phones and wireless Internet would have made things easier for McClane in the first film.
 * In the third, Simon bluffs the police off their radios by insinuating some of the bombs were keyed to police frequencies...then he locks up the entire New York switchboard by calling a popular radio station about the (fake) bomb he planted in a school, to destroy the other means of communication the NYPD could've had. Cell phones would've beaten both in a second (but then, Simon would've probably had something for that eventuality as well.)
 * Throw It In: The line "I wanted this to be easy, simple, but nooo, your Mr. Takagi couldn't go along, so he won't be joining us for the rest of his life." was an ad lib.
 * Too Soon: A TV showing of Die Harder was delayed in the UK - and instead replaced with the showing of the Sylvester Stallone movie Cliff Hanger - because of a recent incident at Glasgow Airport involving a flaming car crashing into the building, and with the movie being set in an airport, they probably thought showing it would be in bad taste.
 * What Could Have Been: Die Hard with a Vengeance was originally written as a Lethal Weapon movie and Die Hard itself was originally written as a sequel to Commando.
 * With a Vengeance took What Could Have Been Up to Eleven with not one, but two alternate endings (one was filmed, the other wasn't). In the filmed one,  The filmed alternate was rejected by the studio for being too dark.
 * In the unfilmed one,
 * When the TV series 24 was coming to an end and a movie was being considered, rumor has it that they were seriously considering making a Die Hard 5 that would actually be a cross-over, with Jack Bauer and John McClane teaming up to fight terrorists. The idea was eventually abandoned (assuming it was ever actually true in the first place) in favor of making a stand-alone 24 movie. But oh, What Could Have Been...
 * This is the big one: Nothing Lasts Forever, the novel in which this franchise started from, was a sequel to the Novel "The Detective." Which was adapted to film starring Frank Sinatra. When NLF was in the works before they changed it to the plot of Die Hard, Frank Sinatra was their choice to reprise his role as Joe Leland. In other words Frank Sinatra was and would have been the Original John McClane.

Trivia for Die Hard

 * Actor-Shared Background: Bruce Willis' own love of Roy Rogers inspired the film's other co-writer to come up with McClane's signature catchphrase.
 * Actor Allusion: Robinson says that McClane "could be a fucking bartender for all we know." Prior to becoming an actor, Bruce Willis was a bartender.
 * Beam Me Up, Scotty: Hans' quote on Alexander the Great. It's actually "Alexander of Macedon, who, upon hearing that there were other worlds, wept that he had not yet conquered one", though this would fit in with Hans' posturing and Delusions of Grandeur.
 * Completely Different Title: The original title, an English idiom, is hard to translate correctly, as it would sound like "It is hard to kill him" or "He dies slowly". That's why we have:
 * Czech Republic and Slovakia: "Lethal Trap" (which may often confuse people as Lethal Weapon, as the Czech title of said film was translated literally).
 * France: "Crystal Trap".
 * Hungary: "Give your life expensive". The title of the sequel is "Your life is more expensive", and the third part is "The life is always expensive".
 * Norway: "Aksjon Skyskraper".
 * Poland: "The Glass Trap" (which sounds and fits very well in the language, but does not make sense for sequels).
 * Portugal: "Assalto ao Arranha-Céus" ("Skyscraper Heist").
 * Russia: "Hard Nut" (to crack).
 * Spain: "Crystal Jungle".
 * The Finnish version is an interesting case: the original title was "Vain Kuolleen Ruumiini Yli" ("Over My Dead Body"). While the translated title is fairly close to the original, nowadays, the original English title is used to refer to the movie (or, alternatively, the series as a whole).
 * Defictionalization: You can buy gray sweatshirts that say "NOW I HAVE A MACHINE GUN. HO HO HO.".
 * Divorced Installment: The film was was based on a book Nothing Lasts Forever. This book was a sequel to The Detective, which had its own popular film adaptation in 1968, starring Frank Sinatra. When Sinatra declined to be in a film sequel, it was quickly retooled as a stand-alone work. Rumors that it was briefly intended as a sequel to Commando was debunked by co-writer Steven de Souza, though Arnold Schwarzenegger was also considered for the lead.
 * Enforced Method Acting: Alan Rickman was told that he was going to be let go on a count of three. They dropped him on "two", and the look of panic on his face is definitely not acted; one is not surprised to learn that he was extremely angry after that shoot was over.
 * Fake Nationality:
 * Alan Rickman as a German.
 * Russian Alexander Godunov plays Karl, who is from Germany.
 * The actress who played Paulina was actually Italian.