Trivia: During filming, Alan Rickman was found proficient at mimicking American accents; the scene in which McClane and Hans Gruber meet was then inserted.
Trivia: The teddy bear that Bruce Willis brings to his son is the same bear Alec Baldwin brings home to his daughter at the end of "The Hunt for Red October," which is another John McTiernan film.
Trivia: Nakatomi Plaza, the setting of the film, is actually Fox Headquarters in Los Angeles.
Trivia: One cop says that John McClane (Bruce Willis) "could be a f***ing bartender for all we know". Prior to becoming a well-known actor, Willis was a bartender.
Trivia: Bruce Willis was only fifth choice for the role of John McClane. The others were, in order: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, and Richard Gere.
Trivia: The film was originally planned as a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger and a sequel to Commando, but Arnie declined.
Trivia: When Bruce Willis (well, the stuntman) misses one of the vents in the elevator shaft, this was unintentional. John McTiernan left it in to give viewers a little scare.
Trivia: All the terrorists are wearing the same make of watch, a fact that was cut from the movie. On leaving the truck at the start they synchronised them, and after killing some of the men, McClane noticed the matching watches. This is primarily what gave away "Bill Clay" as being a terrorist - McClane, already suspicious, noticed the brand of watch he was wearing. These references were cut because of a change to the script. The ambulance being used at the end was a late addition, however the synchronisation scene took place in the truck, where there was blatantly no ambulance (as noted in the mistake section). As such they cut that shot as short as possible, banking on audiences not registering the lack of ambulance, but the price was having to lose all reference to the watches.
Trivia: Bruce Willis ad-libbed his dialogue in the scene where John McClane is pulling the glass out of his feet.
Trivia: Bruce Willis lost two-thirds of his hearing in his left ear after firing a gun loaded with extra loud blanks from underneath a table in the scene before he throws the dead terrorist onto Al's car.
Trivia: For the shot where Hans Gruber falls from the top of the building, Alan Rickman was dropped by a stuntman from a 20-foot high model onto an air bag. To get the right reaction, the stunt man dropped Rickman on the count of two instead of three. Rickman said "That sounded like fun and so I decided to do it, I thought they were a bit surprised that I said I would and I was surrounded by people saying, 'You're mad, you're mad!' But no, it was fun. And it was the last shot, so if I'd broken my neck, they'd still have a movie."
Trivia: In the German version, all German terrorists received Anglicized names, and their background was altered as well. This was due to terrorist activities in Germany - the kidnapping of an airplane in Landshut (1977) and the activities of the Rote-Armee-Faktion ('Red Army Faction') in the Seventies; the German producers evidently felt uncomfortable about the idea of having German terrorists appear in foreign movies also.
Trivia: Die Hard and Die Hard 2 are based on books by separate authors, "Nothing Lasts Forever" by Roderick Thorp and "58 Minutes" by Walter Wager, which share none of the same characters. In both books, it is the hero's daughter that is in peril rather than his wife, and the hero is also more trusted by the authorities than McClane. (In "Nothing Lasts Forever," he tosses his wallet out the window so the police on the ground know he's a cop.).
Trivia: The scene where Alan Rickman and Bruce Willis meet atop the Nakatomi Tower was completely unrehearsed. This was done in order to create a greater feeling of spontaneity between the two men.
Trivia: Harry Ellis' line, "Hans, Bubby, I'm your white knight", was ad-libbed by Hart Bochner; Alan Rickman's confused reaction was real.
Trivia: The password cracked to enter the safe is Akagi / Red Castle, the name of an aircraft carrier which seemingly Takagi's grandfather served on. It fought in the Battle of Midway, under the command of Vice Admiral Nagumo. James Shigeta, who played Takagi in this film, also played Nagumo in the 1976 film Midway.
Answer: We don't know what John would have done in that circumstance. Obviously Hans was planning to kill everyone with the explosives anyway at the end. Perhaps John would have suspected that. Also, doing that would invite more police incursions.
Greg Dwyer
The fact that we don't know how John McClane would have acted doesn't remove the fact that it would most likely have been a good way to coax him out. Also, depending on when Hans Gruber would have decided do implement this strategy, John probably wouldn't have known about the explosives on the roof as he only finds out about them at the 3rd act break. As for the "more police incursions" part, I couldn't disagree more; Hans already killed two hostages - one on speaker with the police -, all the cops in LA seem to be there already, and don't forget that the involvement of the FBI is part of their plan anyway. This is definitely the one major plot hole of this otherwise perfect film.
It would have been, but plenty of movie plots don't pan out the "perfect" way without it being a plot hole. Killing Ellis is a reasonable first step, it doesn't work, and then the events of the plot pick up pace - Gruber goes to check the detonators, as that's a priority. He's hoping/assuming they can get through the rest of their plan by isolating McClane, or at least prevent him causing more chaos. They want the power shut off - they don't want to cause such massive carnage that the building is stormed before then. They need to get helicopters, blow the roof, and escape as planned. Hans doesn't want to derail things any more than they already have been.
Jon Sandys ★
Seems to me like they have all their bases covered; the police isn't even able to get in with a tank as he blows them up so I don't think the police "storming the building" is even a possibility in the reality of the film. Also, after blowing up that tank, that's two hostages and a bunch of cops dead so I would say the situation is pretty derailed. Everything is going as planned for Hans and his team, except for McClane, so he should be in damage control mode and this is an obvious solution. He doesn't even have to change his plans, just tell McClane he's gonna kill one hostage every 10 minutes until he shows up unarmed and tell one of his henchmen guarding the hostages to do it while they go along with the plan and maybe even try to find McClane at the same time. I think this is something Hans should have at least considered, but the screenwriters just didn't think about it/didn't want to address because they couldn't think of a good reason for him not to do it.
There are no cops dead, Hans says "Just wound them" and despite the awesome explosion, the APC isn't actually penetrated or destroyed. But Hans needed this to turn into a standoff, a show of force would prevent a SWAT raid from expediting the deadline, he needed to get all of the hostages up on the roof to make his getaway downstairs, and executing a bunch of them would bring suspicion onto how cooperative he is (His plan to blow up the roof relies heavily on the police sending in choppers) they cooperate with him, which they won't do if they think Hans is a crazed lunatic who's only interested in more and more carnage, if he wounds the cops and only shows he can defend himself, and that he was being reasonable. The cops would play ball, and they would believe he's willing to spare the hostages lives, plus he always planned on taking one hostage as a contingency, if they thought they were gonna be killed they'd become a liability. Patton Oswalt talks of a real plothole though lol.
John McClane would know they'd kill him as soon as he shows up, as soon as he heard "We'll have to tell Karl that his brother is dead" he knew that all bets were off, he lost his chance to end it civil, if they had no personal connection to the first terrorist John kills then maybe putting 5 people into a room and doing an Air Force One on them would work, but not when John knows he'll be body number 6. Al says it best "If he gave himself up they'd both be dead" with Ellis execution, John watched them take control of the hostages, watched them execute the Takagi, and when the first Terrorist thinks he's found John he shoots first after saying "I promise I won't hurt you" and then taking his bag and realizing how well financed and equipped, these guys weren't domestic terrorists, they used serious money, serious contacts, and serious planning to get themselves into this building on this night. He knew the only way to play ball with them was fists and elbows.
Just because a character doesn't do a thing I doesn't make it a plot hole. The plot was that he didn't do it. You may consider a different approach "better" but that's irrelevant. You may as well try to argue that any character choice that doesn't fit with a perceived meta is a plot hole. It isn't, it's just the plot.
Hans thought Ellis was a good friend of John's and John still didn't give up when he was going to shoot him. If John wouldn't save his friend, why would he care about others. Plus Hans told Karl earlier he could stall the police but not if they heard gun shots. The police would have absolutely stormed the building if he started killing the hostages.
Zorz