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  • When Zeus is stopped by a policeman in the subway (due to Zeus hopping the gate without paying for a ticket), the phone starts ringing (it's Simon on the other end). Zeus calmly tells the officer that he has to answer the phone, but the policeman repeatedly tells him to get his hands up. After another comment of insistence that he has to answer it but being denied it, Zeus lays it on the line:
    Zeus: Look, if you have to shoot me, then you go ahead and you shoot me! But I have to answer this phone! All right?! (picks it up without any incident)
    • This entire sequence was so good that the makers of The Incredibles included it almost verbatim as a Shout-Out.
    • Zeus gets another one shortly after when he pulls the same cop, frozen like a deer in headlights, out of the way of the derailed subway train.
  • The subway sequence, all of it:
    • First, after figuring out there is a bomb on a subway car, John manages to sneak onto the train in question by jumping on top of it from the street, narrowly avoiding falling off the car and getting hit by a signal post.
    • Then once he finds the bomb, he calmly evacuates everyone to the front of the train while he relocates the bomb to the back, breaking a window and tossing the bomb out just before it explodes. This saves countless lives, as Simon had intended for the bomb to go off regardless if John made it to the station in time.
    • He then survives the train derailing, with little more than a few cuts and bruises, and continues his job at trying to stop Simon.
  • Simon's reaction to Zeus with a gun:
    Zeus: You call in that code right now. Or I'll blow your sick ass into the next world.
    Simon: [shrugs casually] If that's what you gotta do.
    [Zeus pulls the trigger and nothing happens. Simon eats an egg and calmly takes the gun from Zeus.]
    Simon: You forgot to take the safety catch off.
    [shoots Zeus in the leg]
    Zeus: Oh, God!
    Simon: See, that works. Now, where's McClane?
  • When the bomb in the school is about to go off, the school is finally evacuated but a group of children stayed behind and are still in danger. Two detectives immediately run back into the school to get the kids out. Charlie, the NYPD bomb expert, was already the last to be evacuated but refuses to stop working on the bomb because he heard on the radio there were still kids inside the building. "No guts. No glory." The school's janitor also gets a Heroic Bystander moment by throwing his keys to the detectives and telling them which ones to use without being asked.
  • The Federal Reserve Guard's response after calling for help and discover he's completely cut off from help is to grab a shotgun and go out loud. It doesn't save him but he didn't go down quiet like his colleagues.
  • Zeus using a frickin' butterfly knife to start a Yugo:
    (Zeus breaks into the car and throws the gold ingot into the back seat)
    John: You know how to hotwire this thing? (enters car)
    Zeus: Course I can; I'm an electrician. (pulls out knife) Only problem is... (jams knife in ignition and starts engine) ...it takes too fuckin' long.
  • There's the alternative ending in which the robbery succeeds and John gets blamed for it leading the NYPD to fire him and the FBI to take away his pension. Despite that, John manages to track Simon (who has since double-crossed everyone including his girlfriend) to a bar in Hungary using a batch number on a bottle of Aspirins where he holds him at gunpoint after a bit of conversation.
    • And then there's the reason as to why John is there. Furious at Simon for everything he put him through, John decides to give him a taste of his own medicine by having him play his own version of "Simon Says" which involves Russian roulette with a small Chinese rocket launcher but with the sights removed meaning there's no way to know which end is which. He then asks Simon some riddles similar to the ones he asked John in New York and every time Simon gets one right he rotates the ends of the rocket launcher. Eventually however, Simon gets one wrong and John forces him at gunpoint to fire the launcher. He does which leads to his own death when the rocket fires through him. Satisfied, John says his catchphrase and leaves.


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