Die Hard 2 (1990) - 6 questions

Question: How could McClane tell that the ammo in the blue labeled magazine were blanks?

Answer: If you listen, he says something to the effect of "I know I had that guy in my sights", meaning he is amazed he missed. So he checks the bullets in the magazine to see if that's the problems. Blanks are simply shells with no bullet that are crimped shut to hold the powder in. The difference between blanks and live rounds is very obvious even at a glance.

Question: When McClane ejected from the cockpit of the military plane, why didn't Colonel Stewart and his men shoot him while he was in the air? These men deliberately crashed a commercial plane killing innocent civilians and by doing this, it's obvious that they are ruthless, so why wouldn't they try to kill their main enemy when he is at his most vulnerable? (With the weapons the soldiers had, McClane was still in range to be hit.) Can someone explain this for me?

Answer: Because the police were moments away from arriving at the scene. They needed as much time to get away without being tracked. Every moment counts. And a target rocking about a few hundred feet in the air doesn't seem to be such an "easy target".

Question: In the scene where General Esperanza takes control of the plane he is on, it shows him locked in chains, but then later it shows him strangling the guard aboard the plane. it is never shown how he got out of the chains, so how did he do that?

Answer: He wasn't released from the chains when he strangled the guard, he would have sweet talked the guard into coming near him for something, killed him and then got the key from him.

Question: When McLane comes across the two terrorists in the luggage hold, what exactly are they doing? They finish the process before McLane calls out to them (one says, "We're ready to roll", or something similar). Any ideas?

Answer: Not too long after the special forces team arrives, one of them finds a device in the luggage area and said something like "Traced the signal. Found it in the luggage belt." They'd planted it there to listen to the tower chatter.

Question: Why were the two bad guys in the luggage room in the beginning?

Answer: They were placing devices that monitored the radio and phone chatter at the airport. That is why the "bad guys" always knew what the "good guys" were up to. I say devices becuase they placed two devices as the "decoy" one is found later by one of the soldiers.

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: He is not an L.A. cop in Die Hard 2, he actually repeatedly says he's from New York. He's just in L.A. for family reasons.