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YMMV / Die Hard

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    Franchise In General 
  • Adaptation Displacement: Occurs frequently due to Dolled-Up Installment.
    • The first movie was based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp, which itself is a sequel to The Detective, turned into a film starring Frank Sinatra.
    • The second one was based on the novel 58 Minutes by Walter Wager.
    • The third one was originally an unrelated screenplay called Simon Says.
    • And the fourth movie was based on a magazine article written in Wired.
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees:
    • Modern viewers might be surprised at John being allowed to carry his gun on his flight to LA, but under the laws of the pre-9/11 world, law enforcement personnel were allowed to do so simply by showing their badge and ID.
    • A darker version: modern audiences might be surprised to see terrorists demanding that their "comrades in arms" be released as some of their demands. Twenty-first-century terror attacks are usually more about terror, with destruction and death widespread (or attempted). By contrast, the fake demands that Hans makes the police seem almost polite. In the '70s and '80s, that's exactly how terrorists operated: taking hostages and making demands to try to score political points before escaping (or attempting to).
  • Americans Are Cowboys: Hans mocks John as being a "cowboy" several times throughout the movie, hence John's "Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker" Catchphrase.
  • Awesome Music: Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' from the first film. It's also featured in the trailers for all the sequels.
    • In terms of music actually written for the movies, Michael Kamen (the first three movies) and Marco Beltrami (who took over following Kamen's untimely demise) turn in some fine work such as Kamen's "The Battle" in the first one and "Shootout And Snowmobile Chase" from the second one, and Beltrami's "Truckzilla" in the fifth.
    • In the first movie, the triumphant sounding music that plays near the end when Powell guns down Karl? It's actually an deleted section from "Resolution and Hyperspace" from Aliens.
  • Complete Monster: See here.
  • Contested Sequel: All of the sequels, to some extent, due to lacking the freshness of the first film. With a Vengeance, directed again by John McTiernan, is the least contested. Die Hard 2 and Live Free or Die Hard had some decent reviews, but A Good Day To Die Hard was wildly panned.
  • Evil Is Cool: Most of the badass villains in the films qualify for this.
  • Fanon Welding: Some fans like to pretend that Al Powell is also the unnamed police officer that Reginald VelJohnson plays in Ghostbusters. Some even stretch this to say that he is Carl Winslow from Family Matters and changed his name after shooting Urkel.
  • Franchise Original Sin:
    • The central conceit of John McClane being more of a Part-Time Hero always had a few holes in it, as he's just a normal cop dealing with marriage problems who happens to be the Right Man in the Wrong Place. The first film had numerous moments of him showing fear, exasperation, and screaming a Cluster F-Bomb to highlight the difference between a Rambo-type and an average cop, but there were moments such as the elevator shaft explosion and the kick to the throat where he should've died. In those earlier films, however, he was shown getting badly injured and worn down by the action such that they ended with him just grateful to still be alive, preventing him from coming off as an Invincible Hero protected by Plot Armor. By Live Free, however, that was mostly lost in favor of turning McClane into exactly the kind of Hollywood Action Hero he was originally meant as a subversion of.
    • The problems highlighted by critics in the last two entries of the original series, Live Free and A Good Day, included the abandonment of the "Die Hard" on an X conceit in favor of a state-spanning adventure that combined elements of a Buddy Cop Show and amped up John's near-superhuman resolve to then-unheard of levels, nevermind the fact that each of them felt like products of their time. Live Free leaned heavily into the cybersecurity angle, and A Good Day provided the Sequel Goes Foreign angle. The problem is that With a Vengeance was guilty of all this too. It felt like any other contemporary '90s action movie, kickstarted the trend of making the Buddy Cop Show the focus of the film, used all of New York (and even Quebec, Canada) as its backdrop, and had John doing absurd feats like "surfing" on a dumptruck as it tried to outrun a wave of water, boarding a subway car going at full speed from street level and climbing across a winched wire to a ship over the Hudson River. The difference is that Vengeance shook up the formula enough by pivoting from the "lone man gets the job done" conceit to focus on the relationship between John and Zeus, the latter of which was the straight man to John's antics and provided enough levity to make the film seem more grounded. It also developed a strong supporting cast and made The Big Applesauce feel like a character in and of itself, in tandem with attention to making the plot feel believable. When Live Free and A Good Day did the same without With a Vengeance's level of craftsmanship, fans were a lot less forgiving and felt that the series had lost its identity.
  • Franchise Zombie: Has become this as of A Good Day to Die Hard, to the point that Bruce Willis looks like he doesn't want to be involved and is firmly in Money, Dear Boy boredom mode.
  • Friendly Fandoms: With the Lethal Weapon and Terminator fandoms.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Japan provides the highest foreign box office gross for all four movies, with the highest gross being 81 million dollars for the third movie. The first movie has been spoofed in Japanese media before, and even Bruce Willis came to Japan to do some commercials.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The video game Die Hard Trilogy has the Die Hard With A Vengeance driving missions, with the final level having McClane chasing Simon in a helicopter and the player having to launch himself in the air and hit Simon's chopper several times until he dies. 11 years later, Live Free or Die Hard had McClane take down an enemy chopper by launching his car up into the air and having it collide right into it.
    • The first two films' Christmas setting, and the attendant jokes about them being the greatest Christmas movies ever made, become even funnier when you realize that Bonnie Bedelia is Macaulay Culkin's aunt. In other words, Kevin McAllister is John and Holly McClane's nephew. Now you know where he learned it from...
    • When traveling to Nakatomi Plaza, Argyle puts on a hip-hop cassette, causing John to ask if he's got any Christmas music, to which Argyle replies that the song (Run–D.M.C.'s "Christmas in Hollis") is Christmas music — foreshadowing years' worth of debates over whether or not Die Hard is itself a Christmas movie.
  • Iron Woobie: McClane Sr. But he still soldiers on. See Determinator below.
  • It Was His Sled: Most of the films. Yes, even on this very website, which makes it very difficult to watch the entire series unspoiled.
  • Narm: The sound-alike they picked for John McClane in Die Hard Trilogy sounds reasonably enough like Bruce Willis, but whoever they cast to portray Zeus in the With a Vengeance portion of game is putting on a barely passable impression of 80's-era Eddie Murphy, perhaps, but it doesn't sound a damn thing like Samuel L. Jackson.
  • No Problem with Licensed Games:
    • The original NES adaptation manages to be both faithful to the film and, in some ways, innovative. (John can't see around corners, for instance, despite the top-down view.) A set number of terrorists spawn in random locations throughout the building, so each playthrough is different. There is, however, quite a bit of Trial-and-Error Gameplay. Some people have described it as a prototypical Immersive Sim due to its more dynamic elements such as the Timed Mission aspect, having a separate meter for John's feet, having optional objectives to slow down the efforts of the terrorists, and the terrorists responding to John's activities.
    • Die Hard Trilogy for the PS1, Sega Saturn, and PC is considered to be a great Arcade-styled action game with plenty of variety in the styles chosen for each of the three movies (a third-person shooter for the original film, a first-person rail shooter for 2, and a vehicular driving game for Vengeance; each would be So Okay, It's Average by itself due to the somewhat simplified gameplay, but you get three competently-designed games in three different genres for the price of one). The only real sticking point is the graphics, which are butt-ugly even by 1996 standards.
    • Die Hard Arcade, which was originally an unaffiliated game (but clearly inspired by the first film) called Dynamite Deka, but became a Dolled-Up Installment when it was localized outside of Japan.
  • Older Than They Think: Everybody knows McClane's catchphrase "Yippie-Ki-Yay, motherfucker!", but few now remember that the line (or at least the "Yippie-Ki-Yay" part) was derived from the western song "Git Along, Little Dogies".
  • The Problem with Licensed Games:
    • The Die Hard 2 game for computers is an uninspired and repetitive gallery shooter without light gun support, loads of Fake Difficulty and a terrible A Winner Is You ending.
    • Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas generally lacks the charm and novelty of its predecessor and has stiff controls, bad level design and a weak plot that fails to capture the spirit of the original films.
    • Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza has been viewed by critics and some players as such, due to it being under development for years before being given an official license and having awful level design for parts not seen in the movie. Its voice acting however has most characters (except for Al Powell who has a Role Reprise from the movie) sound barely like their film counterparts. It also came with janky movement, terrible enemy AI and a weak difficulty.
  • Replacement Scrappy:
    • While not without fans, all of the series' later villains are very much stuck in the shadow of Hans Gruber, widely considered one of cinema's finest antagonists.
    • Similarly, while the later ones have fans, in terms of John McClane's sidekicks, Al is still by far the most popular, with his performer, dynamic with John, and arc being much more popular than the men who followed.

    First Movie 
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • It's mentioned in a news broadcast that Hans was a member of a radical West German terrorist organization known as Volksfrei, but ended up expelled from the group. Since the report never explains why he was kicked out, a number of possibilities have been suggested. Was it because his methods were too violent and extreme for them? Because he was more interested in making money than the cause? Or because he was defalcating funds?
    • Nakatomi having over 640 million dollars in bearer bonds after TEFRA was passed in 1982 has led to speculation that they're up to some pretty shady stuff, including from CinemaSins. This could be a holdover from the original novel, in which the company definitely is up to no good.
    • Does Ellis lie to Hans that John is his friend and guest because he wants to protect Holly? Or does he just want to make himself look more important to the hostage-takers and get better treatment?
    • Does Paulina the nanny let Thornberg see the kids because she really is an illegal immigrant who is afraid of his threat to call the INS? Or is she a legal immigrant who is merely moved by his appeal to let the kids say goodbye to their parents over the TV in case John and Holly die?
  • And You Thought It Would Fail: Apparently, before Bruce Willis was approached to play John McClane, the job had already been turned down by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson, who didn't believe in the script, and John McTiernan, who would later direct it, even turned down several offers. When his agent delivered the news to Willis, he immediately advised him not to do it, thinking he'd make a complete fool of himself. However, due to the $5 million salary being simply too good to turn down, Willis accepted to play McClane, kicking off his career as one of Hollywood's most popular and well-paid actors. Not to mention how the movie became influential in formula and protagonist type of later movies. It is now virtually impossible to find a Best Action Movies list that does not contain it (for example , it's ranked #39 on AFI'S "Thrills" list) more often than not, at the top of the pile.
  • Award Snub:
    • Alan Rickman deserved a lot of Academy Award nominations, but never more so than for this (and in his cinematic debut, no less). Hans Gruber has stood the test of time as one of the silver screen's most iconic villains. Empire even named Gruber the 17th greatest film character in 2006, while AFI ranks him at #46 on it's "Villains" list. As noted in Die Hard: A Complete Visual History, Bruce Willis also thought Rickman deserved a nomination.
    • Jan De Bont's cinematography and Michael Kamen's score were also un-nominated.
  • Awesome Ego: Hans is clearly a very proud man, but he's so cunning and suave that it's not hard to agree with him when he calls himself an "exceptional thief".
  • Base-Breaking Character: Harry Ellis. Some people find him funny, while others can't wait for Hans to shoot him in the head.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: After John takes cover in the pond when the FBI helicopter explodes, the elevator bell dings and an explosion bursts out of it as if it were timed. No explanation or setup is shown for this.
  • Broken Base:
    • Want to start an argument on the Internet? Take a stance on whether or not Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie.
    • There's also some division on whether or not Alan Rickman's American accent is good or not. Of course, even if you don't think it's good, it can easily be excused by it being an on the spot accent by Hans (so it's not a case of Alan Rickman merely doing an American accent, he's doing an American accent as done by a German). It's also worth noting that John doesn't actually buy it, as evidenced by the fact that he gives Hans an 'unloaded' gun.
  • Catharsis Factor: As fun and awesome a villain as he is, seeing Hans be dropped to his demise is an amazingly satisfying moment. In fact, for many the reason his demise is so cathartic is because he's such an awesomely crafted and performed villain.
  • Common Knowledge: Some are under the impression this was Alan Rickman's screen debut. Theatrically, yes, but his actual screen debut was in a 1978 television adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.
  • Complete Monster: Hans Gruber is a self-described "exceptional thief" who leads the takeover of Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles. A former German terrorist, Hans is focused solely on his own profit, attempting to steal millions in bearer bonds—a plan which involves demanding the release of numerous terrorists worldwide to throw the authorities off. Executing company head Joseph Takagi when he refuses to cooperate, Gruber has a SWAT team wiped out when they storm the building, and when John McClane interferes, Hans murders a hostage who claims to be John's friend and threatens to begin shooting more until he "gets to someone you do care about!" Hans never intends to let any hostages go, instead placing all of them on the roof to rig it with explosives, which he then plans to detonate—killing over 30 innocent people as a distraction—and fake his own death to escape with the bonds. While only succeeding in killing members of the FBI, Hans immediately kidnaps John's ex-wife before attempting to kill her and John in retribution. Ruthlessly devoted to his own profit above anything else and mixing an utter lack of regard for human lives—even those of his own men—with an air of urbane sophistication, Hans Gruber remains the most deeply personal enemy John McClane has ever faced, and serves as a prototype for countless future action movie villains.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • Sure, sending Tony's corpse down the elevator was meant as a intimidation tactic, but putting a Santa hat on him? Not to mention that John not only wrote "Now I have a machine gun" on his shirt in what is presumably blood, but he also included "Ho-ho-ho" at the bottom.
    • Takagi's death. He explains to Hans that he doesn't have the codes to the vault and goads Hans into killing him, which Hans promply does. What sells it is Hans' deadpan face and his flat "ok" when he shoots Takagi. He couldn't care less.
  • Discredited Meme: As of December 2018, some people are getting over the jokes about Die Hard being the greatest Christmas movie of all time. Bruce Willis went on record declaring he doesn't consider the film to be a Christmas movie. Courtesy of the Washington Post): "Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. It's a goddamn Bruce Willis movie". Director John McTiernan then went on record saying that it is a Christmas movie, either restarting the feud or forcing everyone to simply agree to disagree.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Argyle is well-liked for his fun-loving personality and managing to take out Theo by himself.
    • The highly enjoyable FBI agents Johnson and Johnson, no relation. They show up in the middle of the movie and act like they own the show, only to get blown sky-high at the first chance. They even get a teasing Continuity Nod in the fourth movie.
    • Among Hans's henchmen, Theo, Fritz, and Uli are decently remembered.
  • Evil Is Cool: Hans Gruber and The Dragon Karl.
  • Fandom Rivalry: With Christmas films. The fact that the film is set during Christmas (even though it was released in North America in July) has led to great debates as to whether or not to consider Die Hard a Christmas film, or even how it measures up compared to other Christmas films. In 2015, the British film magazine Empire rated Die Hard the greatest Christmas film ever.
  • First Installment Wins: Every Die Hard movie has been a hit, but only the first is a landmark in popular culture. Bruce Willis himself was quoted as saying that the only good Die Hard movie was the first.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • The Alexander quote Hans mentions ("Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer") is incorrect. It's actually "Alexander of Macedon, who, upon hearing that there were other worlds, wept that he had not yet conquered one". This is more accurate to Hans' situation, as he has not yet succeeded and soon after dies. It also gives an early clue to the viewer that Hans may not be as intelligent or clever as he makes himself out to be.
    • When talking to Hans shortly before he ends up getting shot by him, Ellis calls him "bubbe", which in Yiddish is a term of endearment that translates to "darling" or "sweetie". Hans goes completely stone-faced at this, like he had just been grievously insulted. In German, "Bubbe" means "boy", which would mean Hans took that as Ellis dismissing him as just a boy.
  • Genre Turning Point: The first Die Hard practically set the standard by which all future action films were judged, in terms of their heroes, villains, etc. On top of that, it even created an action subgenre.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Take a look at the cover. It shows Nakatomi Plaza, which was filmed at Fox Plaza in Los Angeles, with an explosion on the top. The dark stripe down the middle makes it look at first glance like two skyscrapers of a similar look to the World Trade Center. This is further amplified with Hans Gruber's fatal fall from an upper story window; a considerable amount of 9/11 victims died by suicide, jumping from areas of the buildings above the impact site because it seemed preferable to burning alive or suffocating. The shot of his body falling to the ground even bears a disturbing resemblance to "The Falling Man", an infamous photograph of one such "jumper." What's more, like the man in the photograph, Gruber tumbled vertically as he fell to the pavement below.
    • Powell's backstory involves him mistakenly shooting a 13-year old kid who was waving around a realistic-looking toy gun at night. In 2014 a highly publicized incident involved something just like this happening; a 12-year old kid is seen playing around with a realistic-looking toy gun by two police officers who mistake it for a real gun and shoot him in a moment of panic. The portrayal of the incident's effect on Powell as being more worthy of attention than the kid who was shot and possibly killed can be pretty hard to take now.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The brief exchange that John and Argyle have in the limo about Run–D.M.C.'s "Christmas in Hollis" being Christmas music now reflects the ongoing debate about whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
      'John': "You have any Christmas music?
      'Argyle': "This is Christmas music!"
    • At one point during the movie John tells Hans that he would make a decent cowboy. Just a few years later Alan Rickman would play a villainous Australian cattle baron in Quigley Down Under, who has something of a Foreign Culture Fetish for the American West, trying hard to be a western cowboy/gunslinger.
  • It Was His Sled: Hans and his crew weren't actually terrorists, they just pretended to be terrorists to deceive and stall the authorities while they raided the Nakatomi Corporation's cash reserves.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: While Hans Gruber is the big bad of this film, his (Barely Faux) Affably Evil personality almost makes him nicer compared to the arrogant FBI Agents, Deputy Chief Dwayne T. Robinson, and the Smug Snake businessman Harry Ellis. But the biggest jerk in Die-Hard is Richard "Dick" Thornburg, the amoral reporter that ends up exposing Holly's identity by threatening their housekeeper with deportation for the sake of a story. He gets his comeuppance when Holly punches him in the face at the end of the movie. The FBI Agents in particular, have no qualms about killing about 25% of the hostages caught in the crossfire if it means defeating the terrorists. You can very much understand why no one sheds a tear when they're blown up in the helicopter.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Karl. He shows real grief and rage when Tony becomes the first baddie McClane kills, and loses all interest in the robbery for the rest of the film, so bent is he on avenging his brother, and who wouldn't be furious if their sibling was killed?
    • Arguably Ellis. He's clearly scared when the terrorists first seize control, but he says "Everything's going to be fine" seemingly to reassure the others as well as himself. He may be a shallow and obnoxious self-serving suit, but he's harmless compared to Hans and his team. While he is smug, the fact he can't comprehend what kind of people the thieves are (something he may have picked up on if he hadn't been snorting all that booger sugar) is what gets him killed.
  • Love to Hate:
    • Hans Gruber. Sharp dresser, Deadpan Snarker extraordinaire (de rigeur for a character played by Alan Rickman), and thinks nothing of executing hostages for little more than wasting a few minutes of his time. To date, still the best villain of the franchise and one of the most memorable villains in the medium itself. As he says himself, he's no common thief; he's an exceptional thief.
    • Harry Ellis is a non-villainous example. He may be a Smug Snake and not exactly the brightest bulb on the tree, but he does seem to genuinely care for his workers, and maybe he could have been a decent hero if he didn't underestimate the terrorists or take all those drugs.
    • Johnson and Johhnson (no relation). Two antagonistic FBI agents who show up in the middle of the movie acting like they own the show, being disdainful and rude to everyone, playing into the terrorist's plan in a very entertainingly smug way, attacking John, thinking nothing of solving the crisis by force with 20-25% of the hostages killed and leaving a richer movie for the posterity with some memorable quotes.
  • Magnificent Bastard:
    • Hans Gruber is the debonair mastermind behind the scheme to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in bearer bonds from the Nakatomi building. Meticulously orchestrating his operation, Hans constantly shows his brilliance by outmaneuvering both the police and federal agents working to stop him, as well as cool charisma both when his initial plot is disrupted and in his ability to negotiate with his hostages. To stop the police forces from catching wind of his true intent, Hans phones their negotiators to demand the release of a list of incarcerated terrorists—casually noting to an underling that he got the name of one such group from the news—thus successfully disguising his actual plan. When confronted by a smug hostage, Hans tricks the man into giving up the name of hero John McClane and is nearly able to discern the location of the detonators McClane has been hiding to use against Hans and his men. Later caught unarmed by McClane, Hans effortlessly improvises using an American accent to pretend he is a hostage, a tactic which almost earns him the chance to kill the hero. A ruthless, greedy man, Hans's display of both strategic acumen and charisma nevertheless make him an iconic action film villain who sets the template for countless more to follow.
    • Theo is the charismatic hacker for Hans Gruber during their robbery of the Nakatomi Tower. Introduced wise cracking and witty, Theo immediately hacks into the tower’s system and shuts everything down, trapping everyone inside as Hans holds everyone hostage, and Theo makes work hacking into the vault and drilling through the remaining keys with precision and patience. Once the police gets involved and attempts to storm the tower, Theo watches through the cameras and organizes the group’s attacks to repel their advances. After the FBI shuts down the power and unwittingly opens the vault, Theo wastes no time emptying it out and comes close to getting away with the money, being the only one of Hans’ entourage to survive.
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Misaimed Fandom: John McClane is often seen by gun rights activists as an example of how "a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun." However, this completely ignores how John spends almost the entire film on the defensive, with his very first move being to run away and try to get help. He also spends a good chunk of the second act simply hiding in a remote part of the building and not confronting the terrorists at all apart from dropping C4 on them.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Hans Gruber's attempt to blow all the hostages away on the roof would have been this. Or even earlier, when he casually executes Mr. Takagi, who Hans himself mentions is a family man.
    • Thornberg was a self-serving asshole, but he crosses the line when he threatens the McClane's housekeeper Paulina with deportation so he can interview their children. This leads to Hans discovering Holly's identity. Yeah, she had every right to smack him in the face.
  • Narm Charm: Alan Rickman's American accent (a Brit playing a German who's pretending to be an American, to be precise) in the scene where he and McClane first meet is questionable, but it's still a tense moment for the audience and the characters, and one of the film's more popular scenes.
  • Once Original, Now Common: Though the action itself holds up, the movie's basic premise and elements being copied so much can often lead to people forgetting just how completely unlike anything else it was at the time. Compare it to Commando, which Schwarzenegger turned down the film to do and a more typical film of the era; a thickly-muscular Invincible Hero globetrotting the world and wiping out an entire terrorist organization singlehandedly in a hail of near-bloodless gunfire as everybody misses him, and realize just how revolutionary a film with a protagonist who's just a somewhat-skilled cop whose feats are mostly realistic, who gets injured and grows tired over the course of the film, with the action kept to a single confined space where every hit is brutal and made to count, would be by comparison.
  • Questionable Casting: Not well remembered, but at the time, putting Bruce Willis on the project was this in spades. The lead role was written for the 72-year old Frank Sinatra, and at the time Willis was a comedian in a downward spiral; internal strife and Shipping Bed Death were destroying Moonlighting, and most viewers knew him as "The guy from the Seagram's Wine Coolers commercials." Imagine a modern film built around Tommy Lee Jones suddenly swapping his role for Andy Samberg. Better yet, imagine it working, transforming that rubberface into an action hero.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Robinson is The Scrappy while he's in charge of the operation, but when the FBI arrives he becomes Out of Focus - save for a handful of funny one-liners.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
  • Rooting for the Empire: More than one commentary have pointed out that Hans and his crew are more like the protagonists than John and that it's hard not to root for them like it's a heist film and John is the antagonist they must overcome. It helps that everyone they are facing are unlikable assholes save for John, Al and Argyle.
  • Sequelitis: All of the following movies have suffered varying degrees of this; firmly cemented however with A Good Day to Die Hard, which is almost universally considered the weakest in the series.
  • Signature Scene:
    • McClane talking to himself while crawling through an air vent.
    • McClane and Hans' first conversation via radio, ending with the famous "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker."
    • "Shoot the glass!", and the ensuing Agony of the Feet.
    • McClane jumping off the exploding rooftop with a firehose tied around his waist.
    • Hans' Disney Villain Death. This one got a flashback in Die Hard with a Vengeance and a Shout-Out in A Good Day to Die Hard.
  • Spiritual Successor: Of a sort. The story is that Roderick Thorpe wrote Nothing Lasts Forever, the novel Die Hard is based on, after seeing The Towering Inferno and having a nightmare about being chased across the roof of a tall building by gunmen. That scene is in the film, and there are other scenes in the film which seem like Shout-Outs to The Towering Inferno as well, such as the presence and use of C4 and the exploding helicopter.
  • Strawman Has a Point: Losing 20-25% of the hostages and saving the rest would be a pretty good result under the circumstances, although Johnson & Johnson are just a little bit too excited by the upcoming bloodshed.
  • Too Cool to Live: The incredibly charismatic and unflappable Takagi is the first hostage to be executed.
  • Tough Act to Follow:
    • While some of the sequels have their fans, none of them have come even close to matching the original in either acclaim or cultural impact.
    • On another note, none of the other films in the series has had a Big Bad as iconic as Hans Gruber.
  • Unintentional Period Piece:
    • The references to VCRs, and the fact that John McClane seems really uncomfortable using the computer monitor at the front desk of Nakatomi Plaza.
    • Neither John nor anyone else in the building can call out after the bad guys cut the building's phone lines, because no one (other than Argyle) has a cell phone.
    • When Sgt. Powell responds to dispatch about John's call from the Nakatomi Plaza, you can see a gas station price sign in the background: Unleaded 77 cents, Regular 74 cents. Even the existence of Regular leaded gasoline is itself an example after the banning of leaded automotive gasoline in the 1990s.
    • During the beginning of the film, John having his service pistol with him on his flight to Los Angeles. Unthinkable in the modern day, but perfectly legal until 1994.
    • Bearer bonds were already being phased out in the United States at the time the film came out, after a 1982 law severely restricted their issuance, for the exact reason depicted here: their untraceable nature made them ideal vessels for fraud, money laundering and other criminal activities. Today it's rare that bearer bonds are even honored in the U.S., much less new ones issued; other countries that still issue them have switched over to electronic versions, where fraud is (at least theoretically) easier to track and avoid.
    • The film depicts a rising Japanese conglomerate buying up huge chunks of the American economy. This was in keeping with then-plausible predictions of Japan overtaking the American economy. But since the early 1990s, Japan has been in demographic and economic stagnation, and China has outpaced it as America's most prominent economic competitor.
    • Powell's Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet! backstory is given different weight now than it would have then. It was still more or less Ripped from the Headlines, as there had been several incidents like that happening by then; the primary difference is, it was somehow acceptable to manufacture and sell extremely realistic water guns clear into into the late '80s, with even the "orange tip on fake guns" thing only becoming a legal requirement in the early '90s.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • Argyll jokingly asking McClane if his wife beat him up wouldn't exactly get a laugh today. Thankfully, the joke ends just as quickly as it starts.
    • Holly asks her pregnant co-worker if her unborn baby is able to handle a drink, to which she replies that the baby is ready to be a bartender. There's been more awareness about fetal alcohol spectrum disorder note  in the years since the movie was released, making the scene less funny.
    • Granted, he is shown to feel bad about it, but Powell shooting a kid would likely be viewed far more harshly by a modern audience. The film treating Powell as the victim of the whole affair probably doesn't hold up well either.
  • Values Resonance: While Ellis' sexual pursuit of Holly may seem like an example of the above trope upon first glance, especially considering he outranks her at the company and knows she's married, its an important character establishing moment for both of them. It demonstrates that Ellis is a selfish, sleazy and unethical person who will disregard the wellbeing of others while he pursues the prize he's after. Holly's response demonstrates that she still respects John and their marriage, even though they're separated and she's returned to using her maiden name for political reasons. It also showcases her ability to maintain her composure while under pressure from an unscrupulous man. As such, it effectively foreshadows how both characters will interact with Hans and John once the chips are down. In Ellis' case, the increasing awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace and the rise of #MeToo in the decades since the film's release make this set up even more effective today at establishing him as a secondary antagonist that the audience dislikes upon first sight.
  • Vindicated by History: While audiences were largely pleased by the film on release, critics were initially lukewarm. The late Roger Ebert gave the film a two star review and was especially critical of the film's use of Police Are Useless, and several others considered the film too violent and simplistic. By the late 1990's, critical opinions had shifted drastically enough (thanks to sequels and other films copying its formula to lesser success) that Die Hard went under re-evaluation, and today it commonly holds the top spot on many "greatest action film" lists.

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