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Quotes

John McClane: Hey man, when you go through the airport metal detector, what sets it off first? The lead in your ass or the sh*t in your brains?

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Mistakes

During the last fight scene on the wing of the plane, just after the guy is sucked into the engine, general Stuart comes rushing out and yells something like "it's time for the main event". At this, John rolls over onto his back. The shot then switches to much further away, and he is still on his stomach. The camera cuts in close again, and John is back on his back, and sliding towards the center of the wing. The camera cuts away again and shows John back on his stomach and just now rolling over. See more...

Trivia

The film is based on a book called "58 Minutes" by Walter Wager. In the book, it is the hero's young daughter, not his wife, that is on one of the planes. See more...

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Die Hard 2 (1990) - 49 corrections

Directed by Renny Harlin, starring Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Willis, John Amos, William Sadler (add more)

Genres: Action, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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Look at the people carefully when they run out of the airport. They don't seem to have any hurry or rush. You have to watch single people to see it. [With the exception of elderly people, every person is running for their lives.]
Edit Corrected by Knever Time
When the bad guys are throwing hand grenades in to the plane to kill Mclaine, the last grenade misses the window. The camera cuts and it has gone through the window. [In the last shot of grenades being thrown, two are thrown. One from a bad guy off screen to the right, which bounces off and does not enter the cockpit. There's another from the guy to left, and his grenade is still in the air when the shot cuts. Back in the cockpit, one more grenade falls in. It was the one from the guy on the left.]
Edit Corrected by Knever
In the first shot of McClane on the snowmobile his breath can be seen in the air in front of his face. But he's driving so fast that that would be impossible. [It's not shown in front of his face, it's to right of his face, and he goes past it quite quickly. There's nothing impossible about it. I have a snowmobile myself and witness this just about every time I go out on it.]
Edit Corrected by Knever Time
It is impossible for a stream of burning gasoline to follow a plane through snow and catch up. A plane would quickly reach an altitude where the fuel stream would be too dispersed for the flame to climb up into the tank. [There are quite a few errors with this entry. The first is that aviation fuel cannot catch fire that easy for it to "burn" but we will ignore that fact. Reaching an altitude? The plane was barely off the ground when "the flame" caught up to it. Finally, have you seen a fire breather? When the flammable liquid is set alight it makes it easier for it to burn when it is dispersed.]
Edit Corrected by XIII
When John McClain sends Officer Powell the fax of the fingerprints, notice the direction he feeds the page into the fax. The middle two fingers' prints are the first two prints to go across the scanner, followed by the outer two fingers' prints. With a fax, the first thing scanned is the first thing printed. Therefore, when Powell received the fax, the middle two prints should be at the bottom of the page with the outer two prints higher up on the page. You can see when Powell removes the page out of the machine that this is not the case. [Faxes are not "streamed" live; in other words, the data is not being printed by one machine while it's scanned by the other. Instead, the machine scans the image and creates a file. That file is transmitted to another machine, which then prints the image according to its system preferences. So it's entirely conceivable for one machine to scan from "top" to "bottom" and another to print from "bottom" to "top."]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez Time
When McClane is trapped in the cockpit of Esperanza's plane, and the terrorists throw grenades in, it sure takes them a long time to explode. At least a good 20 seconds passes before he ejects from the plane and the grenades go off. Normal grenades would have gone off long before 20 seconds. [Whilst you are correct in what you say, typically movies rarely time things to occur exactly, mainly to build up dramatic tension. It's a standard movie making convention.]
Edit Corrected by GalahadFairlight
After Col. Stewart has crashed the Windsor flight, he communicates with the control tower with the radio handset he used to contact the plane, every other time he uses a separate phone handset. [So he chose to use a different handset at one point. That is not a mistake, but a character decision.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
At the end when John lights the fuel with a lighter, this isn't possible with Jet A-1 which is what the Boeing 747 is fuelled with. It is very hard to light. Even if you drop a match into a bowl of jet A-1 it will not ignite. Jet A-1 has to be compressed or have the temperature raised to a minimum of 38c/100f in order to ignite (which the compressing also does) so fuel in snow would never ever ignite in the way shown. [An open flame on a lighter burns hotter than 38C. That's equivalent to about 100F - not all that hot as fire goes. Assuming the wind doesn't blow the lighter's flame out, it stands to reason the jet fuel could be ignited. The match in the bowl of fuel story refers to JP-7, a fuel specially developed for the SR-71 Blackbird. From Wikipedia.org: "The story told by Ben Rich in his book Skunk Works is that a lit match can be dropped in a bucket of JP-7 and the fuel will not ignite and match will be extinguished"]
Edit
The interior of the plane which is deliberately crashed by the terrorists is of a BAC 1/11. I do not know any airline in the world which would choose to send a BAC 1/11 over the Atlantic from Europe due to it only being able to carry a limited number of passengers and short range capabilities. [It would be helpful to know what about the interior gives this plane away as a 1/11, as the exterior is very a DC-8. Many early jets have similar or identical seating layouts and cabin appointments. I have not seen anything that obviously distiguishes this plane as a 1/11.]
Edit
The last scene shows the bad guys in their plane ready to take off - driving down the runway. Then Bruce gets from the helicopter to the plane's wing, fights with each bad guy, falls off, and the plane begins to take off - again. At no time did the plane turn to circle to another runway. It seems this runway was about 2 to 3 times as long as it should have been. [Have a closer look. As the 747 begins its takeoff run, it can be seen just completing a right-hand turn onto the runway.]
Edit
Shortly after the terrorists first start taking over the airport, the airport's chief engineer is shown scurrying about with an E6B flight computer in his hands. The E6B is a mechanical device, usually made out of aluminum, that is similar to a old-style slide rule. But it is used only by pilots to calculate things like course corrections due to winds - there is absolutely no reason that an airport chief engineer would carry one on the ground, especially in a time of crisis. The mechanical E6B, even by 1990, had largely been replaced by electronic calculator type E6Bs by the airlines and even many private pilots. [Although electronic flight calculators have been in widespread use for some time, E6Bs are (and were in 1990) still in widespread use (I use one presently - it works and is far cheaper than the electronic alternative). People who grew up in the pre-digital age were and are often leery of electronics. It's entirely possible that the chief engineer was simply more comfortable with the mechanical E6B. A character choice.]
Edit
When McClain is arguing with Lorenzo in the police station, McClain shoots the gun at him with the blanks in it to make his point. Lorenzo walks over to the phone, picks it up, and says, "This is Chief Lorenzo." It has been established throughout the movie that Lorenzo holds the rank of Captain. [Rank and title are often used interchangably. In many naval services, as an example, the CO of vessel is often referred to as the captain, whether or not s/he actually holds the rank of Captain. If Lorenzo is the highest ranking officer serving in the airport, it would be appropriate to call him Chief, regardless of his rank.]
Edit Time
When McClane says 'damn it, I hate it when I'm right' during the crawl through the ventilation duct, it is clear that this line has been dubbed. [This is most likely a network TV alteration, rather than a mistake. Most US networks either edit out or re-dub scenes with expletive language to make them more family-friendly.]
Edit Time
It is not possible that a Heckler & Koch MP5 repeats with blank rounds as seen during the fight at the church. An automatic weapon, such as an MP5, repeats with gas pressure, which only is strong enough when a bullet is in the barrel. [There are different types of blanks, that do allow for the firearm to operate. The 5-in-1 style of blank, designed to cycle through firearm actions and fit a variety of firearm chambers, is also commonly used in real firearms for dramatic effect.]
Edit Corrected by pross79
Early in the film, Willis' character describes a terrorist's handgun to Dennis Franz as a "Glock 7" which is made in Germany. While the model could easily be made up for the movie (there's no real Glock 7, and even the mostly non-metal models are easily detected), Glocks are Austrian, not German. [Willis' character is a detective in the LAPD, he is not an international arms dealer or sales rep from Glock. He doesn't know the country of origin of every type of weapon on the planet. He may not even distinguish Austria from Germany.]
Edit
On the plane, Holly informs the air hostess that Dick Thornberg filed a restraining order against her. She then goes on to say that this is because she knocked two of his teeth out. In the first "Die Hard" film, Holly punches Dick in the nose, not the mouth. [Because of the camera angle, we can't see the location of impact of Holly's punch. The fact that Thornburg only holds his nose doesn't preclude the possibility that the injury might've been more extensive. Also, given Thornburg's reputation and character, it wouldn't have been beyond him to have been lying about knocked out teeth when he filed the restraining order. Holly didn't stick around to see the results, so from her perspective that might've been what happened.]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez
When McClane is about to attach the church he notes that the guard is walking over his own footsteps. But there are some cars between him and the church so he can't see the guard's feet. [He is just pointing out that the guard is walking back and forth, like he is guarding something or on an outlook, not that the guard literally is walking over his own footsteps.]
Edit Corrected by Mortug
The only reason the terrorist's plot can work is that the airports around Dulles are all closed to landings because of the violent snowstorm. If there were no storm, the pilots of the airliners in the holding pattern would simply divert to nearby airports when they started running low on fuel. If they were able to do that, the whole plot would simply fall apart. How were the terrorists able to count on the storm happening on the very day General Esperanza's flight was due to land? They didn't have any influence over the date of his flight. How did they know the storm would be so bad that all airports would be closed - except Dulles? I don't think they had any way of predicting the weather quite that accurately. [They may have made a number of plans for different scenarios, and the storm occuring was just a coincidence for them. Another plan they may have had is to take the Air Traffic Controllers hostage (as they did) and have the other aircraft diverted for a supposed emergency.]
Edit
In the scene where McClain lights the trail of jet fuel, and the fire catches up with the wing of the airplane, for 11 seconds there are several shots of the wing explosion showing fire moving from the rear to the front, engulfing the bad guys. In the very next shot, there is a side view of an airplane exploding from the front to the rear. [Precisely. The flames engulf the "still intact" body of the plane from back to front, burning up the bad guys. Then the plane explodes from front to back. If the shot of the flames inside the "still intact" cabin was meant to be the same shot as the explosion, the cabin itself would not still be intact, but rather blown up as well.]
Edit Corrected by Jazetopher Time
When the aircraft start landing at the end, they all come in one after another, and we see them all parked at the end of the runway, (we don't see any of them turn off the runway onto the taxiways). That would never happen with commercial passenger aircraft. What if one of them had skidded on the ice and slammed into the rest? One would not land until the runway ahead was clear. [It was a desperate time, all the planes where running on fumes and could have crashed at any moment. The main priority was to get them down, even if that meant taking some risks.]
Edit Corrected by Cybermoose

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