YMMV / The Hard Way

Film

• Awesome Music: "Mama Said Knock You Out" plays over the end credits. Also, the end credits music for the Film Within a Film at the end (called "The Good, The Badge And The Ugly" on the soundtrack album).
• Complete Monster: The Party Crasher is introduced calling the police to cheerfully inform them of his intent to commit a murder at a nightclub before invading it, gunning a man down and escaping. Targeting petty criminals and drug dealers, the Party Crasher initially claims he is doing police's work for them, but his sadistic demeanor and cruelty reveals this to be a lie, with carnage and fame his real goal. Murdering a prostitute soon after, the Party Crasher takes a gun dealer hostage and later executes him before escaping and attempts to fire on an innocent crowd, killing at least one man. When police lieutenant John Moss confronts him, he reveals the Party Crasher murdered a 4-year-old-girl in the past, to which the Party Crasher only laughs that one sacrifices pawns. Taking Moss's girlfriend hostage, the Party Crasher holds her on the theater rooftop to lure Moss to him, with the intent of murdering them both, along with Moss's partner, actor Nick Lang.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Nick complains that no one takes him seriously as an actor, that none of his work is on the same level as a Shakespeare play, and that Mel Gibson is only beating him out for the part of Ray Casanov because of his "ass." Gibson starred in Franco Zeffirelli's film adaptation of Hamlet the previous year.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Penny Marshall appears as Nick's agent Angie, who says Henry V (1989) "won awards for that little Scottish fellow!" Marshall would later direct Renaissance Man (1994), in which the "St. Crispin's Day" speech from Henry V features prominently in one scene.
• Retroactive Recognition: Two in the pizza parlor scene:
  • Lewis Black is one of the bankers.
  • A very young Christina Ricci appears as Susan's daughter Bonnie.

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