History Headscratchers / DieHard

** I always assumed the young policewoman who was talking to him didn’t have enough experience to know exactly what gunfire transmitted over a radio sounds like, so she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a prank. It could have been Kevin McAllister setting off fireworks in a pot. If it was true, then that would provoke a rather large response (as seen later), so she’d be understandably hesitant to bring that about without further proof. And sending a single car was smarter, actually, since it wouldn’t necessarily tip the terrorists that the police knew about them and wouldn’t be more targets for them to shoot at.

*** As I understand it, depending on the jurisdiction police patrol cars can operate in a similar fashion to, say, a company car; as long as there's a vehicle available, the officer signs it in and out and obeys the department's rules and regulations for using it on top of the street laws (presumably, such not misusing the emergency lights and siren for personal convenience outside of an emergency situation), they're allowed to use it as a personal vehicle. Apparently doing so even has certain advantages (it enables the officer to act more efficiently if they come across an emergency situation when off-duty or commuting, local neighbours are reassured by the presence of a patrol car in their area, etc.). I imagine the LAPD is not exactly short on patrol cars, so presumably Al filled in the paperwork and was assigned a vehicle for personal as well as professional use.

** Probably because he wasn't the one who had the radio conversation with [=McClane=]. Anyone may doubt what seems to them like anedoctal evidence and conjecture, but Powell had a strong hunch that McClane a) was on the level and b) was a "Badge" and as it turned out, his gut instinct was right on the money. Furthermore, even if he wanted to question what Powell said (a reasonable impulse, like you say), he could have done so without putting their relationship onto an immediate confrontational footing by dousing his questions in heavy snark and rhetoric.

* Why did John have to send Karl's brother's dead body down the elevator to let the bad guys know that there is someone they missed that is armed and has the ability to kill them? True, he used it to learn some of their names, but wouldn't it have made sense to hide the body? Once they found the body, the terrorists went to a defensive mode and started hunting him. If he didn't send them the dead body, they would've had no clue John was there and would've continued like they plan was working. True, it wouldn't worked for long as someone would've noticed that Karl's brother wasn't around or answering his radio, but that extra time would've given John a chance to find shoes, possibly pick off more terrorists, or maybe find a way to get help.

** It's part of [[Creator/JohnMcTiernan John McTiernan's]] SignatureStyle. He never uses subtitles, because he'd rather then audience pay attention to the actor's performance rather than read the bottom of the screen.

*** Well, the way I saw it, they pull up in the van, and they activate/upload some kind of "virus" which causes the computer to lock up. When the hackers hit the delete key to try and clear the bug for whatever reason, it detonates the block of C4. They try and focus it a little, to make sure they get the guy. If for whatever reason the C4 doesn't detonate, they call in the french guys to finish the job. It's a little convoluted, but then again, this is from the mind of a guy who initiated the world's largest ever cyberterrorism attack ''as a cover'' to stealing loads of money.

*** I always thought the explanation was disturbingly simple. Gabriel is an arrogant, sick, fuck who simply enjoys the thought that these other lesser nerds will actively end their own lives by failing to notice he is the uber-nerd and has rigged their own computers against them. The whole thing is as much about his salving his wounded ego as it about the money.

** The virus wasn't transmitted by the van. It was transmitted in the final transaction between Gabriel's people and the hackers. The van was just there to make sure it went off and observe.

* I can't locate the reference for this on cracked.com,but here's something that has always bugged me: The crimes that all of the villains commit in the entire Die Hard series are so much worse than the crime that they are trying to cover up.\\

*** not to mention, if the "small amount of C4" goes off, the holding tanks would be breached. Back to the "all over the floor around your feet" theory.

* Did John and Jack drive all the way from Moscow to Chernobyl? Across the border? I really hope I'm missing something here..

* In the first film, the criminals are pretending to be terrorists to hide the fact that they are actually trying to break into an electronically sealed vault, and their plan specifically requires the FBI to believe their ruse and cut the power. They are communicating with CB Radios, and it's fairly important at several points in the movie that this communication is not anonymous; when John, the police, or the crooks speaks on the radio everyone can hear it. Yet in one scene Hans goes right from demanding terrorists around the world are released, to asking Theo how he's coming on those locks. Isn't he worried the cops heard that?

*** This troper just watched Die Hard for the first time a few days ago (Merry Christmas), and this was absolutely my interpretation: Hans 100% knew what Takagi looked like; he was just increasing the tension to prove a point.

** John did not shoot at Al, it was one of the terrorists opening up with a M-60 now that their ploy to make everything seem normal for now had been undone and sought to kill him before he could radio for help. You even see John watching the shooting and snarkingly say "Welcome to the party, pal.".

** He's also posing as a political terrorist, and in that time period, many of them were Marxist, including East German and sympathetic West German. The accent is part of the 'sell.'

* How are Hans & co planning to exchange all the (let alone one) 100 000 $ papers without people noticing?
** Easy, Hans stated in the movie the true "treasure" they are looking behind Nakatomi´s safe is not money in regular paper, they are after the $640 millions in '''bearer''' bonds. This is an economic issue: bearer bonds are different from "normal" (registered) bonds since no records are kept of the buyer/owner, or the transactions made with them (like if you sell one of them to another private investor, even in a dark backalley), and they must be honored (paid) by the issuer up-front cash with no further questions. A smart move from Hans... (and this is why now bearer bonds are prohibited in most countries in the world, and all transactions with bonds and similar papers need to be registered, also as an anti-money laundering measure)

** There IS a gas called Brown's Gas that is capable of accelerating the rate at which radiation decays, reducing the amount of time before the area is safe to be outside of a hazmat suit, but it does not work NEARLY the same way as was shown in the movie. scientists estimate that it will be 20,000 years before the area around chernobyl becomes habitable again, and if Brown's Gas were used then it would reduce that time... to a few hundred or a few thousand years, This Troper is not sure how much it would accelerate the decay. And even if it DID work the way it was shown in the movie, they would need to spray ALL of Chernobyl and the entire surrounding area with that spray, not just the small area we were shown, an operation that would take weeks or months without a crop duster and a huge crew of people.
*** Also, the claims that Brown's Gas can even do this are somewhat disputed, after looking a few things up on google, I found that it's wikipedia page lists this under "Fringe Science." There were several sites that said the gas CAN be used this way, but none of them looked like trustworthy sites.

* As pointed out by ''WebVideo/CinemaSins'': "Nakatomi has $640 MILLION in bearer bonds? After the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Equity_and_Fiscal_Responsibility_Act_of_1982 Fiscal Responsibility Act]] was passed in 1982? After this revelation I'm not sure John [=McClane=] is killing the right people in this movie. I mean sure, Hans Gruber aand his crew are a bunch of murderous thieves, but what kind of shit is Nakatomi involved with?"

*** As clarification: Schiessen means 'to shoot'. Scheiss means [[spoiler:'shit']]

* It has been some time since I watch the fourth movie (which i consider the worst of the series), but I do vaguely remember a scene where the Big Bad reads aloud all the info about John [=McClane=]. That is his cop pension and family information, but NOTHING about John being a virtual superhero, who fought off three terrorist threats in the past. For that matter, how did John manage to remain a regular detective after all of the events in previous films?

*** That would have been a ''hilarious'' BilingualBonus if he had been saying "Scheiss die Fenster" instead of "Schiess die Fenster". (apologies in advance for any grammatical or spelling errors introduced. Been a long time since I've seen the scene or studied German.)

** I got the impression that the guy just couldn't hear him. It's easier to give the order in english quietly so it couldn't be heard by [=McClane=], than in German, maybe? Or maybe the guy's not German. It's not really clear that they're all German.

** If you remember, that specific firefight was taking place in a datacentre. Generally, you do NOT want stuff you can trip on when lugging disk packs and magtapes around (I suppose it could have been the disaster recovery suite). The whole thing was on false floors..

** I've considered the situation a lot, actually, and figured there was nothing he could do. He had to be GenreSavvy to suspect the terrorists would shoot the glass, and wrap his feet in some clothes before (or just so not to have other disadvantages, like stepping in stuff that could hurt you without shoes, if not necessarily glass. But at that tension, it's amazing he had the ProperlyParanoid idea to disguise his name and his reason for being there in the first place. Probably wrapping his feet in something would have made him too much of a {{Chessmaster}}, or Creator/BruceWillis with his feet in clothes would have been too {{Narm}}y. Take your pick. Also, yes, he tried the shoes of the first terrorist and they didn't fit, so he thought "[[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong What the hell, I'm fine barefoot]]".