Plot hole: At the beginning of the film, it is still daylight, which at Christmas, would mean it's about 4:30pm at the latest. The whole incident of the film lasts around 4 hours (figured by the scene when Barnes was talking to the planes and said the trouble started around 2 hours ago coupled with the fact that not long before that, Trudeau confimed that Holly's plane had only 90 minutes worth of fuel left). So why at the very end are there shots where it appears the the sun is rising in the distance? (And no, it's not caused by the fire of the exploded plane. By that reckoning, the terroists would have had to have taken over the airport well after midnight, which is pretty much impossible since Esperanza's plane was already on route.)
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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?
Trivia
Renny Harlin, the film's director, is from Finland and puts something Finnish in each film he directs. In Die Hard 2, while the credits are rolling, Jean Sibelius' Finlandia plays. See more...
Die Hard 2 (1990) - 58 mistakes
These mistakes are currently being ordered by time. Entries without times will appear at the end.
Directed by Renny Harlin, starring Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Willis, John Amos, William Sadler (add more)
A few people have said that if the plane was running on fumes it couldn't explode into a huge fireball - yes it could, because fumes are just as explosive, if not more so.
Continuity: After McClane gets the car towed away, notice that it is night and snowstorming all over the place. When he enters the airport, you can see that outside it is daytime and sunny, yet McClane shakes off snow whereas other people in the airport don't have snow on them at all. The airport scenes were filmed at LAX's Bradley International Terminal during the month of February, so this explains the sunny day.
Factual error: The payphone McClane uses in Dulles airport has the "Pacific Bell" logo. Pacific Bell is a West Coast phone company.
Factual error: Near the beginning of the film when John McClane goes to the pay phone and calls his wife Holly on the airplane, that is impossible. Those phones you see on the seats on the plane can only be used from the air to the ground not the other way around. Holly does answer on the plane phone and not on any cell phone she had in her purse.
Continuity: Two guys dressed in red go to the church and are let in by the old man. One of the men then says something like "You were right about that," and the scene shows him shoot his gun with his arm outstretched (obviously). The next scene though of the old man falling backwards shows the shooter's arm down by his side, however in the next scene where it cuts back to the shooter his arm is outstretched with the gun again.
Deliberate "mistake": When the terrorists shoot a man in the church and he falls on his back, both benches behind him topple (in the shot from the ceiling of the church). You can't see that the benches are connected and even if they were, the bench he doesn't actually touch wouldn't topple.
Continuity: In the beginning of the movie when John is sitting at a table in the airport smoking a cigarette, you see him notice the table with the 3 (2 white and 1 black) guys that are acting suspicious. When the black guy gets up to leave, he leans down and you see a hand grab a package. If you notice, the hand that grabs the package is white. Later when the two white guys leave, one of them leans down to grab the package and it's the same shot that was used when the black guy grabbed his package.
Continuity: When McClane is lying on the conveyor, and he picks up his gun, just before the camera switches to the terrorist, you see the slider on the beretta go back into the empty position, yet when the camera changes, you hear another shot from McClane's gun!
Deliberate "mistake": In the fight scene at the luggage machine McClane pulls a golf club from a golf bag. But a golf bag would never be sent as luggage without being wrapped tightly up. Otherwise the clubs could fall out or be damaged on the way.
Revealing: Obvious stunt double for the black terrorist during the fight with McClane in the baggage area.
Revealing: When John is fighting in the baggage area and he and the bad guy fall off one of the conveyors, you can see it is not Bruce Willis as he's falling.
Revealing: On one of the first shots of inside Holly's plane, you can see the blue screens through the windows. No, it's not blue sky, in all the following shots the sky outside is orange.
Factual error: When McClane (Bruce Willis) is brought into Capt. Lorenzo's (Dennis Franz) office at Dulles Airport for the first time, Lorenzo mentions that McClane was in violation of several District of Columbia laws. Dulles Airport is in Virginia, not DC, therefore any DC laws would not apply to Dulles. (Although VA may very well have similar laws about airport misconduct.)
Other: When the soldier is lighting General Esperanza's cigar while Esperanza is still a prisoner in transport, the cigar is visibly already lit before the soldier's lighter brushes over the cigar.
Factual error: When Bruce Willis faxes the finger prints of the person he killed to his friend cop in LA, I don't see how you can determine the prints through a fax. They would appear as blobs on the other end.
Factual error: Just before Col. Steward activates his equipment, we can see one of his men working with a welding torch on telecommunication equipment. You can't patch telco connections using a welder.
Plot hole: When McClane gets kicked out of the control tower and is sent down in the elevator with Coleman he quite obviously stops the elevator before saying "Here's a couple of words, F**k off." to Coleman. He then opens the top panel and climbs out WITHOUT restarting the elevator. Almost as soon as he has closed the panel again the elevator has reached the bottom and the cops are asking "Where's the other one?". As it is meant to be a single shot and there is no delay we know Coleman did not start the elevator again herself.
Revealing: In the skywalk scene, when McClane pushes the paint stand on the terrorist, you can clearly see that they use a dummy when the paint stand falls on the terrorist.
Continuity: The dead bodies of the SWAT team move around on the escalator between shots. The best example of this is after the last SWAT guy dies, there is a body or two near the end of the escalator. They disappear or at least move much further away after McClane drops his gun on the escalator. And all this happens while the escalator is not moving.
Factual error: When the platform falls on top of McClane and he drops his gun, I don't see how it would land more than six feet away from him. One foot at the most. Unless of course it was made of rubber.
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