Goofs for
Die Hard (1988) More at IMDbPro »

• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the SWAT team is trying to break into the front door of the tower they first try picking the lock to no avail. Then we see a SWAT team member carrying a metal cutting torch attempting to cut through the lock. The SWAT team would have just broken the glass to get in and not waste time using a metal cutting torch to cut the door lock. The glass is obviously breakable as shown in the same scene when the terrorists fire upon the SWAT team.
  
  
• Continuity: There is clearly no ambulance in the truck when the terrorists first arrive, but Theo drives an ambulance out of the truck near the end of the movie (error acknowledged by moviemakers).
  
  
• Continuity: The bloody wound on officer Al's head disappears completely, shortly after the terrorist shoots at his police car.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: The eyes of the dead terrorist in the elevator close just before Gruber touches his face.
  
  
• Continuity: The Christmas tree on the table that Karl hides behind is lying down before it gets knocked over by McClane later.
  
  
• Continuity: The first and second rocket attacks both blow out the same window on the APC.
  
  
• Continuity: McClane swings through the window on the hose and lands on his back. In the next shot, he's on his chest.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first close up where Hans is hanging from Holly's wrist, there is blood on Holly's face from John's arm. In the second close up this blood is missing.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious stunt double for McClane (missing a tattoo on the shoulder) during the fight with Karl.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious stunt double for John McClane during the fight with Tony.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: John's vest is white when he enters the vent system and brown when he exits. It got dirty. This is actually a part of a deleted scene where McClane opens up a vent in the duct, where it was dusty and dirty.
  
  
• Continuity: When McClane is having a gun fight on the roof of the building he slides down a slide with his machine gun in the right hand; the next shot he has the gun in the left hand.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Squibs are visible on the metal door that McClane goes through when Karl shoots at him during their final fight.
  
  
• Continuity: Early in the film, shortly after the terrorists have launched their assault, McClane glances out a window and sees a woman in the building across the street. However, previous and subsequent long shots of the building he's in show that there are no other buildings close by.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): On the ambulance used for the escape near the end, "Department" in "Fire Department" is misspelled "Deparment". But, it isn't a real ambulance, and furthermore, it was painted by people who don't speak English.
  
  
• Continuity: When McClane goes to the roof to get the hostages off, he is not wearing his undershirt, but in the view from the helicopter when he is firing into the air, you can see him wearing a white undershirt.
  
  
• Factual errors: Several times during transmissions with the two-way radios, characters interrupt each other, which would be impossible given the type of radios they were using.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When jumping off the roof at Nakatomi Plaza just before it explodes, you can clearly see John McClane's "rubber shoes" that were used to protect his feet. While the people are being held hostage, he is supposed to be barefoot. His support wire is also visible in addition to the fire hose.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: Just after we are first introduced to Johnson and Johnson, Hans is seen walking on the top floor in, looking up and shining his flashlight. In the Forward Tracking Shot, just before he climbs the wall, the shadow of the boom mic is visible just above his shadow on the far right of the screen in the widescreen version of the film.
  
  
• Continuity: Al's patrol car has had the spotlights removed, but in the overhead shot of Marco's body crashing through the windscreen, there are dual spotlights visible.
  
  
• Continuity: Holly's maiden name is Gennero. This is misspelled in the credits as "Gennaro", and also on the Nakatomi computer that McClane uses at the start of the film. Furthermore, when he hits the touch screen button with her name, it suddenly changes from "Gennaro" to the correct "Gennero".
  
  
• Continuity: Trim on the rear doors of Al's patrol car disappears and changes style.
  
  
• Continuity: John's tank top changes from white to gray in various scenes.
  
  
• Continuity: When John is first hanging from the hose from the roof, he ends up right next to a band of stone between floors, in the next shot he is directly in front of a window.
  
  
• Continuity: When Karl steps out of the elevator after Hans and John's conversation, he appears on the right, then left, then right side of the hall.
  
  
• Continuity: In the fight between John and Karl, John jumps onto Karl's back and knocks him onto his stomach on the rolling cart. In the next shot, however, Karl is lying on his back.
  
  
• Continuity: When Karl's brother comes to apprehend John, we see a close-up of his weapon when he flicks the light switch. The charging handle is forward (the bolt is closed). In the next shot, however, it's back, and the bolt is open. We later see him slap the handle forward.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Near the end of the movie, when McClane walks through the large hall (where the hostages had been held captive earlier), you can see a shadow of someone behind the Christmas tree just after the tree falls.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Right after John states his name as John and is told to hold tight, the drill on the safe is restarted and the sparks start coming out before the drill starts moving. Also the sound of the drill is at a way higher RPM than the drill itself is moving once it does start moving.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the shots that we see of John McClane when he asks the hostages where his wife has been taken to by the terrorists, you can see the pyrotechnic charges taped to the roof that are about to be used. When the helicopter swings overhead and a soldier uses his machine gun, you can see the charges detonating and the fact that they are charges being used to simulate M-60 bullets hitting the roof.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): After the terrorists blow the roof up, and the hostages are running down the stairs, one of the hostages gets hit in the head with a softball-sized rock and it doesn't faze him.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When John is first chased by a terrorist, up on the floor still under construction, he turns on and off a radial arm saw. The very distinct sound of the blade running against either a kerf in the fence or a kerf in the table can be heard. However, when the terrorist finds the saw, it can be clearly seen that the blade is running free.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Hans reads "Now I have a machine gun, ho...ho...ho," and then rolls the dead guys head, you see him blink.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the swat team is trying to enter the building and they fail to pick the lock, a swat team member clearly lights a cutting torch to burn the lock. A few scenes later you can clearly hear a grinding sound indicating a drill or grinder is being used to try to break the lock.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Theo updates Hans on the police activity, he reports that "the four assholes [are] coming in the rear in standard two-by-two cover formation." The SWAT team members are not in '2x2 cover', they're all running together single file (more or less).
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Argyle first learns of the Nakatomi takeover, he is pouring a glass of whiskey just off screen with the appropriate sound effect. However, when the glass reappears on screen a moment later, it is empty.
  
  
• Continuity: As Hans falls out of the window the window breaks and there is no glass on the sides of the window. Then by the next shot you can clearly see glass on the left side of the window.
  
  
• Continuity: Prior to climbing down an elevator shaft staircase, McClane (who is supposed to be barefoot) is clearly seen wearing shoes as he jumps through an elevated service door.
  
  
• Continuity: McClane's shirt goes from white and then to a dark grey and then to a mixed color or dirt, blood and white.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Holly's office is used as the command for Hans Gruber. Early on, the office is located down the hallway with the door on the right hand side of the office and Hans would not be able to see Holly, with the rest of the hostages, from the office. When Hans realizes that Holly is married to John, the office location changes so that the office is now a corner office, the door is on the left hand side and Hans' view of Holly McClane is direct and unobstructed.
  
  
• Factual errors: Although a reporter refers to the terrorists radios as CB radios, the walkie-talkie is either a VHF or UHF, not HF radio, therefore not capable of transmitting in the 27.065MHz emergency channel of the Citizen's Band (Channel 9)
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When Hans is holding onto Holly's watch out of the window and then falls, he is shot in slow motion but the paper that is falling in the background is moving at normal speed.
  
  
• Factual errors: When McClane drops the monitor with the C4 down the elevator shaft, he has time to jump away from the door as the explosion rises. The gases from C4 actually expand faster than the speed of sound, so his face would have been melted off.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When reporter Richard Thornburg is listening to his police scanner, he hears Officer Powell screaming for backup. At this point the red lights on the front of the scanner are continually blinking from left to right. However, on this particular model scanner the lights would cease blinking, and remain solid on a single channel as long as it was active.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When the terrorists are first walking in as a group looking very serious and sinister, the one on the viewer's far left is clearly on a collision course with the wall! But it cuts away just before he walks into it.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Hans reaches out to turn the dead man's head in the lift, the man's head moves to the left before Hans has actually touched him.
  
  
• Factual errors: As in most movies, the C-4 explosive is packaged incorrectly. Real 1.25 pound blocks of C-4 are packaged in dark green (olive drab) plastic wrapping with yellow markings.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Takagi speaks to the employees at the party they erupt in loud applause. Looking at the employees, none are clapping their hands.
  
  
• Factual errors: Channel 9 (CB distress channel) is monitored by Radio Emergency Associated Communications Teams (REACT), not the police department. If someone were calling for help on Channel 9, they would talk to a REACT operator, who would then call the authorities. Either way, it would not be an FCC violation.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Theo and Karl first enter the Plaza Lobby, and Karl shoots the security guard, Theo says into his walkie-talkie "Okay we're in!". The next shot shows Heinrich in the truck in the basement car park replying but nothing is heard.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the beginning, while at the party, it's mentioned the time is 5:40 p.m. on Christmas Eve. While Argyle is driving John to Holly's work site at presumably the same time, it is very much daylight. In LA, on Christmas Eve at that time, it would be dark already.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: As John is fighting Karl towards the end of the movie, Karl's harness is clearly visible as he is dragged across the room by the chains which are supposedly round his neck.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Karl shoots the second security guard after first entering the building, you can see the outline of the fake blood packets under his shirt.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Sgt. Al Powell first arrives at Nakatomi Tower, the security guard says he is watching a live broadcast of the annual USC vs. Notre Dame football game. The film takes place on December 24, but college football's regular season has concluded by then. The latest in a given year that the Trojans and Fighting Irish have ever met is December 10th, and they generally meet in October if the game is in South Bend, or in late November if it's in Los Angeles.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Just after discovering the dead terrorist in the elevator, Hans barks something at the other terrorists which translates into English as, "What did I tell you? We have no time..." The German word for time is "Zeit" (rhymes with "kite"). Hans pronounces it "Zeet." A native German speaker would not make this mistake.
  
  
• Continuity: When Argyle rams Theo's van, the front end of the limousine is thoroughly wrecked. When he comes through the gate at the end of the movie, it's more or less intact. (The gate itself also would have caused more damage than is visible.)
  
  
• Continuity: After McClane fires in the air and it shot at but not hit by one of the FBI men, the other agent Johnson (the white guy) says "Swing around again - I'll bag this little bastard" and both agents are looking toward the camera as if the roof is to their left. But the roof of the Nakatomi building can be seen through the window *behind* them, to their right, and the next jump cut indeed shows the building in front of them, not behind.
  
  
• Factual errors: Police officers allowed to carry firearms concealed carry because of their state law enforcement license. Police officers are allowed to operate within the borders of their state. The fact that he is in a plane traveling from New York to Los Angeles takes him out of the state and his police license is n/a out of state and in effect his right to carry concealed his n/a. Federal agents are the only ones allowed to carry on commercial flights.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Holly McClane asks the nanny, Paulina, if Mr. McClane called, she responds with "No Mrs. Holly, no telefono." This is incorrect Spanish; the English translation is "No Mrs. Holly, no telephone." To say he or she did not call, a native Spanish speaker would use "No llama."
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Gail Wallens is discussing the hostage situation at Nakatomi Plaza with Dr. Hasseldorf, the term "Helsinki Syndrome" is mentioned. Harvey Johnson, desperate to join the conversation, replies "As in Helsinki, Sweden". The fact is that he wasn't that far out with that remark. The condition that Dr. Hasseldorf is talking about is actually called the "Stockholm Syndrome", and Stockholm is in fact the capital of Sweden. (This was a joke about usual incompetence of so-called TV "experts".)
  
  
• Continuity: After the FBI orders the power to the grid to be cut, and all power to the Nakatomi building is off, the computer monitor is still on, showing the status of the electromagnetic lock on the vault, and several security monitors are still operating as well.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Hans repeatedly and pointlessly pulls the trigger of the Beretta and the gun appears to be empty. An experienced user of an automatic pistol would naturally pull the slider back manually as there may be bullets in the magazine. However, before McClane hands him the gun, he clearly racks the slide after putting in a new magazine. If there were any rounds in the magazine at all, one would've already been in the chamber, which an experienced user of handguns would know.
  
  
• Plot holes: Sgt Al Powell is dispatched to check out the prank call at Nakatomi Plaza and is seen in a marked LAPD squad car. Later he tells John MacClane that he was on his way home from a desk job at the police station. Desk personnel NEVER get dispatched on service calls when off duty, let alone take a marked squad car home.
  
  
• Factual errors: Much of the "word play" between" McClane (Bruce Willis) in the building and Sgt. Powell outside made reference to Roy Rogers, by calling each other "Roy" and with McClane shouting "Happy Trails" (Roy Rogers' theme song) at the terrorists. However, the phrase "Yippee Ki O" to Hans is a famous line from the Pop Country standard Ghost Riders In The Sky, a song more associated with 'Gene Autry' than with Roy Rogers. It was written by a Stan Jones a friend of Gene's and was the title song to the Autry feature, "Riders In The Sky" (1949). Gene bought the rights to it and was one of the first of many to record it. It became a million seller for Vaughn Monroe in 1949. Roy Rogers never recorded it.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the APC blows up and you are viewing the outside view of the vehicle exploding you can clearly see a camera man standing in the window where the rocket was shot from.
  
  
• Continuity: Twenty minutes passes by - the time it took for John to get from the airport to the Nakatomi Plaza to join the party - and the orchestra is still playing exactly the same piece.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the terrorist car first pulls up to the Nakatomi Plaza, the noise from the brakes is not consistent with the movement of the vehicle.
  
  
• Continuity: After Gruber kills Takagi, the mess that it made on the window is virtually gone in the next shot.
  
  
• Continuity: After John kills the first terrorist and John is collecting stuff from him, the terrorist's glasses appear and disappear between shots.
  
  
• Plot holes: When the terrorist takeover is first reported to Powell, he walks away from his patrol car and looks at the Nakatomi Plaza, where he (and we) can clearly see the gunshot flashes on the top of the roof between John and Karl. Thus, Powell's demeanor and suspicion is totally unbelievable when he arrives at the Nakatomi Plaza and failed to check out the roof, and furthermore, even from a mile away where he first received the call, he would have heard the gunshots and certainly would not have been so nonchalant.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): After Powell did his sweep at the Nakatomi building to report the "wild goose chase" (even though he saw the gunshots on the roof from the convenience store), the dispatcher did not follow proper procedure and respond to Powell's transmission, when Powell said, "...everything here is okay, over." Dispatchers always have to echo or respond to the last transmission.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Harvey at the News desk is grimacing back at Thornberg's "Eat it, Harvey!", Harvey then gets his five-count cue to go live on the air. The last two counts (and sometimes the last three counts) are always silent and are never called out loud.
  
  
• Continuity: Before the second rocket attack on the police armored vehicle, the flames from the first rocket attack, which occurred only a few seconds prior, are all but extinguished.
  
  
• Continuity: The flash and fire from the second rocket attack on the police armored vehicle originate from under the vehicle - something impossible from a top-down rocket attack which struck the roof of the vehicle, and furthermore, a frame-by-frame analysis of the shot shows no shell whatsoever hitting the vehicle.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The $640 million worth bearer bonds that are snowing on the disaster scene after Holly and John escape are nothing but blank pieces of paper.
  
  
• Plot holes: Both John and Holly would have been treated by EMT's and been taken away in an ambulance at the end, and furthermore, would not have been able to have gotten a ride in the limousine that somehow shows no damage after two collisions - the first with the ambulance (which, by the way, was not evident at the beginning), and second, after ramming through the metal gate.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Powell is driving away from the Nakatomi tower, the dead terrorist that John tossed out the window crashes through a pane glass windshield, which went out of use as early as 1919. All vehicles, including Powell's police car, have laminated windshields and there are no deadly shards as with pane glass.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: In the battle scene with the police, Alexander's first shot with the anti-tank gun breaks the glass. However, the second shot also breaks the same pane of glass.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: Several times over the course of the film, it is demonstrated that the windows of the Nakatomi building all contain safety glass - glass that is coated with a polymer that: A) like the windshield of an automobile, will break into tiny fragments or rounded beads, and B) will remain a continuous sheet due to its special coating, even though the glass within is shattered. Near the end of the movie when Hans is shot, however, the window he breaks and falls through, unlike all the other previous windows, shatters as a normal untreated pane would do - breaking into large dangerous shards instead of the normal safety glass fragments.
  
  

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