Trivia / Die Hard with a Vengeance

• Actor-Inspired Element: Zeus's look in the film was Samuel L. Jackson's idea after he'd done extensive research on his character by studying books on Malcolm X.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Samuel L. Jackson was thrilled at being in the film, having "seen the first Die Hard maybe 30 times."
• Bad Export for You: And while Fox provides acceptable home editions stateside, Disney's ones are a Vanilla Edition. In some markets, they didn't even release the Blu-Ray!
  • The film was released in the UK with the violence toned down and even some swearing dubbed over to get a 15 rating. The first UK DVD release was even worse, cutting entire scenes with violence instead of the offending few seconds and rendering some scenes incomprehensible. For example, cutting straight from McClane talking to the two truck drivers to him looking through their ID with their dead bodies in the background. The elevator fight was also made an Offscreen Moment of Awesome. The 2-disc Special Edition corrects this to the less-censored UK theatrical version. Fortunately averted with the totally uncut Blu-ray release (which also included most of the extras from its US counterpart). Here's a detailed look at how the film was edited for its UK releases
• Blooper: When Katya murders the security guard, the configuration of his shotgun changes between frames.
• Channel Hop: A partial case, as this is the only movie in the series not to be solely made by 20th Century Fox - it was a co-production with Cinergi Pictures, which is why the movie was mainly released outside North America by Buena Vista International. Disney (the parent company of Buena Vista International) would later end up buying 20th Century Fox and completely own all the rights to the entire Die Hard franchise.
• Completely Different Title: In France, the movie is known as "A Day in Hell".
• Creator Backlash: Bruce Willis revealed in his conversation with Kevin Smith on the Live Free or Die Hard set that in retrospect, he didn't like the second and third movies as much as the first. He by no means hated them, but he thought Live Free or Die Hard was the best of the sequels.
• Deleted Scene: A deleted sequence included on an issue of DVDVision in the early 2000s revealed something that was previously only read about in the novelization. During the car chase, Zeus admits to John that his brother died because he was trying to bring Zeus home from a gang party, only for the police to arrive and shoot him dead during the chaos. Another short removed sequence had John attempting to find commonality with Zeus as they are jogging, by commenting that they both grew up eating the same diet (macaroni and cheese) every night.
• Dolled-Up Installment: The film was based on an original screenplay titled Simon Says. It was also considered for use as Lethal Weapon 4. At another stage, it was a sequel to Rapid Fire, with Brandon Lee's character paired up with a black activist played by Angela Bassett. Before that, it was a reworked spec script called Troubleshooter, which was abandoned due to similarities with Under Siege.
• Fatal Method Acting: Averted. According to John McTiernan, a bus came six inches from crashing into Samuel L. Jackson's head. About half of that traffic was actually real and the other half was added in edit.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Pop singer Sam Phillips plays a character who never speaks.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Michael Kamen's expanded score for the film (which was highly requested by fans) was released in the early 2010s by La-La-Land Records in a 2-disc expanded edition, featuring material that was cut from the final product. That release was limited to 4,000 copies and went out of stock not long after, leading fan preservations to be the only other way to get the material.
  • The visual effects featurettes produced for the original "Special Edition" release are no longer present on Blu-Ray releases, despite being one of the largest sources of behind-the-scenes footage for the film.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: When some TV edits changed McClane's "I Hate Niggers" sandwich board so it read "I Hate Everybody", rumors emerged that it actually originally read "I Hate Everybody" during filming and the writing was changed in post-production editing. Not exactly; in reality, it was blank, and both phrases were added in post.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: After shooting wrapped, Bruce Willis shaved his head for his role in 12 Monkeys. He was later called back to reshoot the ending, which is why John McClane is wearing a baseball cap in the closing scenes, but nowhere else in the film.
• Scully Box: Some of the bad guys are big, but some of them are standing on boxes to loom over McClane even more.
• Technology Marches On:
  • Simon makes John and Zeus drive all around Manhattan to answer specific payphones, then bluffs the police off their radios by insinuating some of the bombs were keyed to police frequencies... then he locks up the entire New York switchboard by calling a popular radio station about the fake bomb he planted in a school, to destroy the other means of communication the NYPD could've had. Cell phones would've beaten all three methods in a second (but then, knowing Simon, he probably would've had something for that eventuality as well).
  • The riddles would also be a lot less suspenseful if John and Zeus could've just Googled the answers on their smartphones.
• Wag the Director: Bruce Willis was adamant that this film ought to be able to stand by itself, and so demanded that any references to either of the two previous films be kept to an absolute minimum. This results in the only direct connections to the first film being Holly having a brief voice cameo, Simon being the brother of Hans Gruber (and even then, Willis insisted that revenge actually not be Simon's primary motive), and a scene where the circumstances of the Nakatomi incident ("That thing in the building in LA") are briefly referenced before John briefly recaps the incident to Zeus; Die Hard 2 isn't explicitly referenced at all.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Sean Connery was John McTiernan's very first choice for the role of Simon Gruber. He turned down the role, saying that he didn't want to play such a diabolical villain. David Thewlis was also considered, but he was busy with Dragonheart.
  • Laurence Fishburne turned down the role of Zeus Carver. He reconsidered, but by that time Samuel L. Jackson had been cast.
  • The first version of the screenplay was based on a spec script by James Haggin called Troubleshooter which involved terrorists seizing control of a Caribbean cruise ship while John and Holly are on a honeymoon cruise. The idea was abandoned after Under Siege went into production (this script later became Speed 2: Cruise Control). In 1992 John Milius was hired to write another version of the story. In 1993 Doug Richardson and John Fasano simultaneously worked on two separate Die Hard 3 scripts which were both rejected by Bruce Willis. This time the plot was concerned with terrorists taking control of the L.A. subway system (the ending to Richardson's script was later used in Speed).
    • The spec script Dreadnaught, which became Under Siege, was offered to Fox as a possible Die Hard 3, but was rejected and instead purchased by Warner Bros.
  • Shane Black turned down an offer to write the screenplay after the original Troubleshooter draft was discarded.
  • While the deleted alternate ending is well known, another original ending was Simon and his men seemingly getting away on a helicopter. Simon would realize they have an extra case and open it to reveal the "gallon bomb" he'd used before that McClane hid on the copter. The movie would close with Simon calmly asking "Does anyone have a four-gallon jug?"
  • One draft had McClane's daughter Lucy being captured by the villains. This was used in Live Free or Die Hard.
• You Look Familiar: Anthony Peck appeared as a random L.A. cop ("Something about a double cross!") in the first film and now reappears as NYPD detective Ricky Walsh.

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