Die Hard/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Divorced Installment: In addition to the above, the first Die Hard was originally conceived as a sequel to Commando that got reworked after Arnie passed on it.
  • Enforced Method Acting:
    • During the filming of Die Hard, 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.
    • 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!:
  • Hey, It's That Voice!:
  • Sequel Gap:
  • 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, McClane and Simon meet again at a European cafe well after the events of the film. In this ending, Simon gets away with the heist by turning the gold into small Empire State Building statues. McClane recaps that he was fired because of Simon's getaway. McClane forces Simon to play a "McClane Says," Russian Roulette-style game using a Chinese rocket launcher with the sights removed. Simon gets a question wrong and dies from being shot by the launcher. McClane was wearing a flak jacket which would have prevented major injury. The filmed alternate was rejected by the studio for being too dark.
    • In the unfilmed one, McClane and Carver head back to shore after the boat explodes. Carver notes that the villains are going to get away; McClane tells him not to be so sure. The scene cuts to Simon and his crew on board a plane when they suddenly discover the briefcase bomb that Simon had used on McClane and Carver in the park, the same one Carver gave back to the Mooks posing as cops. Presumably, the bomb used on the plane would have been a different one or not used to blow up a dam in a later sequence. Simon would then ask anyone on the plane if they had a 4-gallon jug, Lampshading the disarming sequence from the park.
    • 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

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