Die Hard 2

Die Hard 2 (1990)

57 corrected entries

(25 votes)

Corrected entry: In the scene where John McClane fights the terrorist near the annex, you can see a terrorist on scaffolding reach over the deck to shoot John, yet he still manages to make holes in what he was reaching over.

Correction: The bullets are tearing through a lower level of the scaffolding.

Corrected entry: When the major is fighting John on the plane wing there is a white spiral in the middle of the engine, but when the Major falls into the engine there is no spiral.

Correction: Yes, there is. The turbine blades are now spinning, and the turbine boss or 'hub' is, too, which blurs the painted pattern so that it looks like a solid colour.

Corrected entry: McClane's fireman's jacket gets progressively bloodier throughout the film, but around the time when he is fighting the terrorists on the plane's wing, it is miraculously clean again.

Correction: It is clean because he is not wearing it, he took it off to jam the wing ailerons to stop the plane taking off, later Col. Stuart retrieves it and throws it away.

Corrected entry: When the plane explodes at the end of the film all the planes circling can now tell where the ground is and start landing. Why did they not do this earlier when the Windsor (British) plane crashed?

Correction: They couldn't tell where the runway started. The bad guy's plane left a long trail of burning fuel.

Grumpy Scot

Corrected entry: Now, I've never been to IAD (Dulles) or LAX but I've been in several airports and have never, ever seen a control tower in such close proximity to the terminal area that one can take an elevator to, let alone be so unsecure that civilians and reporters and camera crews can go into unmolested.

Correction: Go to the Dulles Airport official website. You'll see that the control tower is in the main terminal building, rising 193 feet above it. It is easily accessible with public restrooms right at its base! Dulles was designed in the late 1950s and opened in 1962. At the time, airports were designed for beauty, not security. Secure, stand alone towers were not the norm. Even in 1990 when this film was made, security was not what it is (or should be) now.

Corrected entry: The plane crashes into the runway because they think they are higher than they really are, but the runway lights are never turned on. I'm no pilot, but I don't think a pilot would try to land a plane on an unlit runway.

Correction: A pilot got in touch with me about this: If necessary we will land a plane without runway lights - there is this thing called an ILS (instrument landing system) which they used to land the plane. If not tampered with you would be able to land the plane safely. On the other hand with that much snow on the runway, no plane would be able to land, not enough space to stop the planes. Another thing there is is a safe altitude and approach slope warning that would have went off no matter what the ILS was telling them.

They think they can't see the lights due to the storm, and are flying through clouds. I've seen and been on planes that have taken off and/or landed in heavy fog. The pilots are assuming the lights are on, and they just can't see them yet.

Corrected entry: Forget BWI, why couldn't they just light up the runway with gasoline in the beginning?

Correction: If the terrorists had seen them do it, they might have started shooting people - someone pointed out that there were no terrorists in the airport, they were all in the church. However, another relevant point is that the police didn't know there were no terrorists in the airport.

Corrected entry: Bruce Willis, on the wing of the terrorists' getaway plane, unscrews the gas cap. The gas cap cannot be unscrewed on a plane unless a lever is pulled in the cockpit.

Correction: Further to this comment: 1. There is no fuel cap on a B747 engine pylon.
2. Fuel used is JET A-1 (kerosene) which is not readily flammable.
3. As it is not so easily lighted, there is no way it could have burned on the ground (covered with snow!!) and eventually caused the aircraft to explode.
There is no lever in the cockpit to open a fuel cap. The only equipment in the cockpit is for a fuel dump from the wing tips in case of an emergency.

Corrected entry: Bruce is sitting in what looks like a C-130 while terrorists throw grenades in it through the window. Never mind the grenades going off too late, because they wouldn't all have made it through the small window anyway. In fact some of those grenades would've bounced back killing the terrorists also, which would've made for a surprising end to this movie. (01:17:45)

Correction: It is improbable that the terrorists could toss all the grenades in a small window, but it isn't factually impossible.

BaconIsMyBFF

Agreed. Many units of a tide for this exact event.

Ssiscool

Corrected entry: When McClane's wife is thinking about using the phone to call, there is a shot of the phone. Behind the phone, you can see a circular staircase. The aircraft she is on, an L1011 TriStar, has only one passenger deck. (01:23:20)

Correction: The L-1011 was originally designed with a lower deck, configures either as a passenger lounge/bar or as a galley; just not all airlines bought the option.

Corrected entry: Dick locks the door using the slide lock inside, so Holly couldn't have got in to electrocute him.

Correction: To open the door to the lavatory, all you have to do is flip the metal hinge on the outside.

Corrected entry: At the end of the film when John and Holly get driven away on the back of what resembles a golf cart, the long shot of them clearly shows two dummies that nearly fall off when the cart sets off. (01:51:35)

Correction: They are real, they just move due to the cart accelerating as any normal person in the back of one would, if it took off too fast. I saw no evidence of them being dummies.

manthabeat

Corrected entry: 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.

Jack's Revenge

Correction: Have a closer look. As the 747 begins its takeoff run, it can be seen just completing a right-hand turn onto the runway.

Corrected entry: Early in the film, McClane describes Cochrane's pistol to Lorenzo 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.

Correction: McClane 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.

Corrected entry: When Willis is in the pilot's seat of Esperanza's plane, he ejects when grenades are thrown in by the terrorists. First of all, those aircraft are sealed tight and have no canopy or hatches to blow off for an ejection. In that case, ejection seats would be useless. Also in that scene, multiple grenades are thrown in the cockpit, yet it takes 23 seconds before any of them blow. The type of grenades they were using, which were US issue, have a fuse no longer than 7-8 seconds upon release.

Correction: Some C-123 Sherpa (Esperanza's plane type) transport aircraft are equipped with ejection seats. The V-22 Osprey's model is so equipped for example.

And the grenade explosion time?

That's why it's suggested people only put in 1 mistake per entry and not combining mistakes, since part would be wrong. It's not up to the corrector to correct every part of the mistake entry, just the part that's wrong. If you think the grenade part is a valid mistake, make an entry.

Bishop73

Esperanza's plane is NOT a C123 Sherpa, which is a twin turboprop cargo aircraft with a square profile fuselage, fixed undercarriage and a twin vertical tail. It looks nothing like the weird (and completely fictional) aircraft in this film.

Corrected entry: If the terrorists had sailed off in the 747 in the end, what then? They had no way of protecting themselves from fighter planes, which would certainly have been on their tails. So what could their next move have been?

Correction: This isn't a plot hole. The characters may have had a plan, but they just didn't get that far.

Corrected entry: Col. Stewart asks if the 747 is ready and says he wants ground personnel to inspect the plane. Maj. Grant intercedes and tells Stewart to check out his own plane so not to have potential hostages (which, of course was a ploy). When the hanger door is opened, you see ground personnel running back and forth between the door. They are noticeable by their orange vests. (01:33:45 - 01:35:40)

Correction: Stewart asked for a ground crew, Grant told him to check out his own plane. No decision on whether Dulles would provide a ground crew or not was decided on screen.

Plot hole: The only reason the terrorists' 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, and If the storm hadn't hit or had been even slightly less severe the pilots of the stranded airliners could easily have diverted to any one of half a dozen alternate landing sites, including a nearby Air Force base. They could do this without consulting or even contacting air traffic control. The whole plot falls apart from there - no hostages, no leverage, and who cares what happens to the people on Esperanza's plane? They'd have it shot down as soon as they knew Esperanza had killed the pilot and taken over the flight.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: The terrorists in the film planned extensively for this operation, but the storm occurring may have just been a coincidence for them. They may also have had the plan waiting for a perfect opportunity, like a snowstorm. In the beginning of the movie, there's a news story on while the Colonel is exercising nude. The story says Esperanza's extradition has been long and drawn out, until a phone call from..." and he cuts the TV off. Given his connections, Colonel Stewart may well have been able to arrange a State Department call the week of a predicted snow storm. Esperanza's adherents may also have been able. Another scenario 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, but the snowstorm worked out. Whatever the case, that element of the plot is an interesting discussion, not a mistake.

If the storm hadn't hit the pilots of the stranded airliners could easily have diverted to any one of half a dozen alternates, including a nearby Air Force base. They could do this without consulting or even contacting air traffic control. The whole plot falls apart from there - no hostages, no leverage, and who cares what happens to the people on the Esperanza's plane? They'd have it shot down.

That bothered me too when I first saw this in theatres. The chances of it snowing in D.C. on any particular day are pretty low, and the plan falls apart without it. The only way to 'fix' this is to assume that when the film was originally written, it was set in New York City. This makes more sense thematically...with the original set in Los Angeles. But at some point, probably late in the production, they changed it to D.C. for some reason, and made it fit as best they could.

The snowstorm was not part of the plan. Early on when the group of terrorists is sitting around the table about to exchange the package, Cochran is listening to a weather report and states that a huge storm is approaching, which makes the other men smile and one of them responds "God loves the infantry." The terrorists could still crash planes without the snow storm because they could impersonate the tower. The planes that are circling overhead are the planes that didn't have enough fuel to be diverted to another airport and that has nothing to do with a snow storm. The blizzard was simply fortuitous for the terrorists.

BaconIsMyBFF

The airliners we see could easily glide to any one of seven nearby airports from the airspace over Dulles, let alone fly there when fuel began running low.

That is a separate issue (and is indeed a mistake in the film) that doesn't really have anything to do with the blizzard. This film acts as if Baltimore Washington International or Richmond International Airport don't exist.

BaconIsMyBFF

And since they do, it is both a plot hole and a factual error. If they had called their fictional airport Springfield International, fine, but they didn't. They identified it as Dulles International which is within easy flying - or gliding - time to half a dozen other airports.

This is possible that other airports were closed due to bad weather.

Which necessitates the terrorists knowing that! They had to know the storm was coming for their plan to work. The stranded airlines could easily have diverted to an alternative even if that meant gliding, and they could do so without consulting air traffic control.

The terrorist obviously knew that. They are very arrogant and planned everything very accurately. They knew that other airports are closed because of the bad weather.

The airports were closed AFTER Esperanza's flight took off. The storm is an essential part of the terrorist's plans. Storms like the one we see can can diminish very rapidly or veer away from their original course (I have seen both happen) and cannot, ever, be counted on to the meticulous extent the terrorists do.

More mistakes in Die Hard 2

Gen. Esperanza: Freedom.
[John McClane appears and punches him in the face.]
John McClane: Not yet.

More quotes from Die Hard 2

Trivia: When being played on basic cable or regular TV, John McClane's catchphrase "Yippee ki yay, mother fucker!" is sometimes oddly redubbed as "Yippee ki yay, Mr. Falcon!" Falcon is the call sign for General Esperanza's original flight, which half explains the odd wording.

Phaneron

More trivia for Die Hard 2

Question: Why was McClane introduced in the first Die Hard movie as a New York badge, and in the second Die Hard movie as a L.A. badge? Then in the third Die Hard movie, he's again a New York cop.

Answer: In the first movie he's a New York cop visiting his wife. In the second Die Hard, he tells the airport officer that he's LAPD and moved there because of his wife's job. In the third Die Hard film, he most likely went back to New York because of marital problems and became a New York cop again.

More questions & answers from Die Hard 2

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