When John is asked what he has done during his suspension from the police force he says "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo". This is a line he sings from the radio in Pulp Fiction just before he ran over Wallace. Appropriate, since Pulp Fiction falls neatly between Die Hard 2 and 3. See more...
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Directed by John McTiernan, starring Bruce Willis, Jeremy Irons, Samuel L. Jackson (add more)
Factual error: When the collected bad guys are at the "North of the Border" truck stop, a subtitled henchman tells Jeremy Irons that the helicopter will be ready in ten minutes. But the confused fellow actually says, "...in zwanzig minuten," which means TWENTY minutes!
Visible crew/equipment: There is a shot towards the end of the film, (just before Willis and Jackson exchange dialogue in the engine room) in which it shows the entourage of people boarding a smaller boat from the much larger ship. Look towards the bottom left corner of the screen as the boat pulls away - inside you can see the head of a female boom mike operator.
Factual error: When Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson are in the minivan with the feds, the bad guy rings up. This call is taken on an old Motorola flip phone. They plug it into something to make it hands free loud speaker. The thing they plug it into is actually the house charger that comes with the phone, it doesn't have a loud speaker and it's also mains voltage. You can even see the spare battery in the second slot at the back of the charger and the red LED flashing to indicate that the battery is charging.
Continuity: When Bruce Willis swerves into Central Park, he pulls the steering wheel hard left, but the next shot shows the car turning right.
Factual error: In the North of the Border scene when McClane's helicopter makes an emergency landing you can see a Giant Food trailer in the background. They are supposed to be in Canada, but this grocery store chain is located in the Mid-Atlantic states. This scene was actually filmed in Jessup, MD where Giant has its headquarters.
Factual error: When Zeus goes to Yankee Stadium, the terrorists tell him to report to the home-team dugout. Yet when Zeus goes to Yankee Stadium, he is shown at the dugout along the third-base line, which any Yankee fan knows is the visitor's dugout. Given he knew which dugout he was meant to go to, and the importance of the situation, this can't just be a character mistake.
Revealing: When Willis is driving through the park, you can see the tyre marks and lines where they had driven there on other takes.
Factual error: During the bridge scene, when Willis and Jackson jump down to the passing ship, check out the background landscape - it is marshy with NO evidence of ANY tall buildings. Since this movie was supposed to take place in NYC, there should be a building somewhere. That scene was shot in Charleston, South Carolina; they chose SC because there are two suspension bridges right next to one another. Action can occur on one bridge, while they film it from the other bridge.
Continuity: When they first start with the gold operation, Targo jumps on a large orange vehicle with some kind of drill on the front, already raised into the vertical position. He then jumps off and in the very next shot the drill raises from a horizontal to vertical position.
Other: Throughout the film Inspector Walter Cobb is as you would expect referred to as Walter. But in the end credits he is listed as Arthur Cobb.
Revealing: When the female terrorist goes to use the large drillhammer on the concrete wall, the force of turning it on causes it to "jump" in her hands. When the drill bit bounces against the concrete wall, you can clearly see the wall move back and forward about half an inch.
Continuity: When the two heroes are crashing through the city in the taxi, the car takes a significant beating. The bumper is pushed up from rough landings and there are long scrapes down each side. When Zeus skids to a halt outside Wall Street station the taxi is in almost perfect condition.
Continuity: In the scene where McClane jumps in the car because the Germans are shooting at him the first shot he gets in and his feet are all the way in. But in the next shot his feet are still out and then he brings them in again.
Continuity: When the No. 3 train is arriving at Wall Street, we see that that the head car is slowing, about to stop at the end of the platform. However, when McClane shatters the storm door window at the rear of the train to eject the bomb, we see the train is still moving at speed through a local station. This is because the train interior footage with McClane was shot on the actual subway here in New York, while the exterior shots were filmed on the set in Mount Pleasant, SC.
Revealing: When fighting with Targo on the boat, McClane pulls a chain, which trips Targo over. When we see Targo being tripped from above, you can see it is a stunt double - not only is he bigger than the actor playing Targo, but also his hair is grey unlike Targo's brown.
Continuity: When McClane is thrown out of the aqueduct he jumps into the Mercedes driven by Zeus. Then another car shoots at them and they're in a fight. If you look at it closely, the front window of Zeus' Mercedes is broken, but in the next scene it is like nothing happened.
Continuity: When McClane and Zeus are chased after escaping from the aqueduct, look at the right front light of the Dodge Ram the bad guys are driving. It goes from being broken to intact several times. Also, when McClane and Zeus stop the same Dodge Ram afterwards on the bridge, both front lights have magically become intact again and even though now the hood is missing, it's still obvious that the whole front part of the truck is significantly less damaged than before.
Deliberate "mistake": While most of the German spoken in the movie is correct (even if with bad accent) there is a translation error in the scene at Yankee Stadium. When the guy with the sniper rifle gets nervous and asks if he should shoot or not, the other one says,"Nein, wir brauchen den anderen", which would translate, "No, we need the other one", but the subtitles say,"We'll follow him", which they do.
Continuity: When the police van leaves McClane semi naked on the street, his beard is a mere shade. When he mets Zeus, 10 minutes later, his beard has grown much larger.
Continuity: When Willis washes the blood off his face after shooting the bad guy in the elevator, the "towel" he wipes his face has no blood on it at all. Even after washing the worst off with the water it would still be full of blood.
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