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Quotes

Lucy McClane: Daddy, you're out of your mind.

John McClane: What're you talkin' about?

Lucy McClane: You shot yourself!

John McClane: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

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Mistakes

When John and Lucy are having an argument at the start of the film, Lucy's hair is over her shoulder or not over her shoulder, depending on the shot. See more...

Trivia

Mentioned in the DVD commentary, is that the Tunnel (used to trap McClain and Farrel with traffic from both directions in DC) was an open tunnel and they had to shoot at night because they could not afford to cover it with their production budget. This is obvious from most of the shots pointed to the room where you can see a "break into night" opening. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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Live Free or Die Hard (2007) - 26 corrections

Directed by Len Wiseman, starring Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Timothy Olyphant (add more)

Genres: Action, Crime, 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.

Mistakes
Trivia
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McClane carrys a Sig Sauer P220, which has an 8 round single stack magazine. In the first shoot scene in the apartment, he reloads twice and then fires over 12 rounds blindly around the corner. [The gun McClane uses is actually a P226, the P220 is an older version dating from 1975. The P226 has a 12 to 13 round capaticy, thus making it possible to fire more than 8 rounds.]
Edit
When McClane drives the SUV into the elevator shaft, you can see where the windshield has been "smashed out". There are wavy clean breaks along the perimeter of the lucite used as the glass. In reality, a windshield would shatter but still hold together in one sheet. It's impossible for it to break cleanly like shown in the scene. [Back in 2003 when I was in Iraq, we had half a windshield shot out in an ambush. Yes, it is Very possible.]
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When McClane is driving the semi chasing the Haz-Mat van, he radios Warlock to patch him thru to the FBI. After getting patched through he tells the FBI agent that he is chasing the van onto 695. 695 is the Baltimore beltway. There are no elevated highway sections over the Baltimore beltway the way the movie depicts. [These elevated over-passes were added to the sequence to set up the later chase scenes and for dramatic purposes. Therefore, no mistake here.]
Edit
In the scene when Bruce Willis and Maggie Q are having a fight, Bruce throws Maggie through a shelf and the next shot cuts to Bruce holding a piece of her hair. The next shot cuts to Maggie and there is no sign of hair or scalp damage. [Hair doesn't always break/snap at the root. Besides we do not see her entire head to make the assumption that there is "no sign of damage". She also has long black, impossible to tell where exactly the hair was ripped off.]
Edit Corrected by XIII Time
Henchmen are shown flying a helicopter over DC, with automatic weapons and such. After 9/11, DC has very strict airspace security, and a helicopter flying around without broadcasting its position would be beset by fighter jets in no time at all, especially if the helicopter was carrying armed men. [The hackers have access to all communications so could therefore prevent the summoning of any jets. Not a mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Starchild
When McClane and Farrell are stealing the BMW 5-series in Washington DC, Farrel hits the cars bumper with a trash can in order to deploy the airbags and prevent McClane from disabling the vehicle. Airbags do not deploy if vehicles are hit on the bumper with small objects, only if the vehicle is hit with sufficient force to trigger the airbag, usually by another vehicle or a large stationary object. [This is a valid mistake but your reasoning is incorrect. There are compression sensors across the bumper and if sufficient pressure is applied the airbags will deploy BUT ONLY if there is also sufficient deceleration detected by the ACU (to prevent such unnecessary deployment). As the car is stationary it is not possible to set off the airbags in this manner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_bag#Triggering_conditions]
Edit Corrected by Starchild
Near the start of the chase involving the HAZ-MAT van and the semi, John runs into a black Mercedes Benz car, skewing it round to the left of the cab, later on in the chase, he hits exactly the same Mercedes. [There must surely be two black Mercedes Benz cars as the first one is all smashed up.]
Edit Corrected by Starchild
The news broadcast showing panic on the stock markets is shown shortly after McClain arrive in DC. However the speaker says panic broke out "this afternoon". But it's morning. [Simple character error that "afternoon" was said instead of morning. It happens.]
Edit Corrected by Starchild
When McClane is attacking the helicopter from inside the tunnel, the guys in the helicopter see him coming when he is still deep inside the tunnel. They would not be able to see that the car was moving - let alone that it is McClane attacking them. [If you look carefully, the lights are on at the top of the car and flashing. They can see that the vehicle is moving towards them and they know he went into the tunnel in one, so it's easy to presume that they know it's him.]
Edit Corrected by Starchild
When the terrorist holding Lucy is shot in the foot, it is very clear that Lucy is wearing sandals, but when we see her feet from under the van as she kicks the gun to her dad, she has brown boots instead. [The scene happens fast but if you watch close, you can see that Lucy is wearing sandals and the terrorist has the boots.]
Edit
The amount of data that is stored at Woodlawn is so massive, the computers need cooling towers. However, the DHS guy tells Bowman that Gabriel could load the data onto a portable hard drive. The problem with that scenario is that a hard drive of that size would be able to hold a minuscule amount of the data. [We are told that the data held is everything that would be required to restart the USA. Gabriel only wanted the info on bank accounts.]
Edit Corrected by Starchild
There are no toll booths, tunnel or otherwise in D.C. [According to the Washington DC Traffic Resources web site toll booths are found on Dulles Toll Road, as well as the Chesapeake Expressway, Coleman Bridge, Dulles Greenway, Pocahontas Expressway, Powhite Parkway Extension, and RMA Expressway. Also, there is indeed a tunnel called the DC Tunnel.]
Edit Corrected by OneHappyHusky
McClane carries a Sig P220 .45. NYPD only approves the Sig in 9mm, like the P226. You can easily tell it's a .45 due to the single stack magazine, while the 9mm uses a double stack. [McClane was never one to follow the rules. So using a different gun is not beyond the realm of reality.]
Edit
When talking to Gabriel, McClane covers the camera with his hand and asks the Warlock to locate him, only to be told that covering the lens does not deactivate the microphone. So if Gabriel is aware that an attempt is being made to locate his position, why doesn't he take any measures? Especially when he sees McClane bursting out of the basement? [This is a character mistake not a movie mistake. It shows Gabrielle's arrogance in the fact he thinks nobody will be able to locate him.]
Edit Corrected by ctown28
When the lights in the tunnel are switched off, you see that the cars that have been directed into the tunnel have their lights off. When you enter a tunnel, you are required by law to turn on your lights despite the lights in the tunnel. Sure, one or two drivers might ignore this obligation, but the whole avalanche of cars? [There is no such law, according to the District of Columbia Department of Motor Vehicles.]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez
Farrell's own cellphone was Nokia E61. In the car, Farrell used his car-lighter charger to charge the battery of the stolen Nokia 9300, which has different charger connector than his Nokia E61. [The fact that Matt (Farrell) uses his own car-lighter charger, which he carried around with him, implies that he also carried around with him other other computer/phone related bits and pieces. This is shown by the fact that he has a "soft" keyboard with him which he uses later on in the movie. Therefore it would be safe to assume that he has an adapter plug in his bag to charge any phone or any other device with his car-lighter charger.]
Edit Corrected by XIII
When McClane drives the truck into the computer control room, he smashes into the Thai goon with high speed, and then slams her into a wall. Her legs would have been crushed by that impact, but she's not hurt at all, and we see her moving her legs around with ease when she's trying to climb up the truck. [If you look closely, she does not actually hit the wall. The truck slams into an elevator shaft, and the rear of the truch gets stuck and stops it just short of the front end slamming into the opposite wall.]
Edit Corrected by wizard_of_gore
When the hackers have taken over the TV broadcast signal and the picture is being displayed in the FBI command centre, a message scrolls across the screen. Cut to another shot with John McClane watching the same TV channel as the FBI, the same message scrolls across, when it had in fact already been displayed. [This is a standard movie making convention of showing the same scene or shot from different characters' point of view.]
Edit Corrected by wizard_of_gore
In the scene where McClane is in the truck being chased by the jet plane, the truck is attacked by missiles. In a particular shot a missile blows up the road making the truck almost flip-over. The truck is in a hard LEFT-turn. McClane steers hard LEFT to prevent the truck from flipping over. But that would only make the truck flip harder. He should have steered hard RIGHT. [The trailer portion is trying to flip overto the right. He steers hard left to try to counterbalance the effect of the trailer tipping over.]
Edit Corrected by wizard_of_gore
While John and Matt are driving into West Virginia in the BMW, they have a conversation in the car. The back left window has been broken out, but there is absolutely no noise from the wind that would be whipping through the car at the speed they were going. [My 17 year old BMW is surprisingly quiet, even if the windows or sunroof are open at 80 mph.]
Edit

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