"Die Hard" for Diehards (Get It?), Part 1 Quiz

Answer: 11 years

The passenger seated next to McClane notices the handgun under his jacket -- hey, air travel was different in 1988 -- and McClane tells the man that he has been a cop for 11 years.

Answer: Harry

Joe Takagi, Holly's boss, introduces Ellis to McClane, and uses each man's full name when doing so.

Answer: Both children have lines in the film.

Young Lucy gets to talk to her mother on the phone early in the film, and later is interviewed by Dick Thornberg on television -- she says, simply, "Come home" to her parents. Little John (or is it John Jr.?) doesn't have any lines.

Answer: It's never revealed

We never learn where Paulina is from, but it's a pretty safe bet that she's an illegal immigrant, since she crumbles in the wake of Dick Thornberg's threat to call INS on her.

Answer: False

For some reason, the folks at IMDB think that the same bear appears in the two movies, but it's crystal clear, when comparing the two movies side by side (as I've done), that the bear in "Die Hard" is much larger than the one in "October", and its snout is much longer and darker. Check for yourself!

Answer: six months

McClane explains that he didn't feel comfortable leaving a six-month backlog of unsolved cases behind him, which he would have had to do in order to relocate with the rest of his family.

Answer: Jingle Bells

None of the other songs listed appear anywhere else in this film. Why is McClane whistling "Jingle Bells" out of the blue? Who knows? Maybe he was in the mood for more traditional holiday music after being exposed to RUN-DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" in the limo.

Answer: Director, Corporate Affairs

We see Holly's job title on the door to her office in several extended shots.

Answer: Argyle

Argyle calls John "Mac" numerous times, especially during the telephone call that takes place just before Hans Gruber and his men kill all communications in the Nakatomi building. No one else in the movie ever calls him "Mac."

Answer: They both have beards.

Gruber mentions shopping at John Phillips in London, not Brooks Brothers. Ellis never indicates that he speaks German -- in fact, at one point, he asks one of the terrorists "Sprechen sie talk?", which makes it pretty clear that he has no actual grasp of German. Ellis is killed by a gunshot wound, but Gruber is quite alive even after McClane shoots him at the end of the film: it's the thirty-story fall that actually kills him.

All that leaves is facial hair. Both men wore beards.

Answer: Arafat

The shop in question is John Phillips in London. "I have two myself," Gruber says to Takagi, in reference to the suit. Yassir Arafat was the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, an anti-Israel terrorist organization, for many years.

Answer: He pulls a fire alarm.

McClane actually doesn't do much for the first fifteen minutes or so that Gruber and company begin their takeover -- mostly, he observes and argues with himself aloud over what to do. After Takagi is killed, he pulls a fire alarm in the hopes that emergency services will arrive on the scene. It doesn't work, though: one of Gruber's men calls the fire department and says that it was a false alarm.
McClane does everything else on this list, but not until later in the film.

Answer: red castle

I found it strange that, after all of the drama over whether or not Hans would be able to get Takagi to tell him the password, Theo was able to ferret out the password in record time with zero assistance from (the deceased) Takagi. If it was so easy to figure out, why would Hans have needed Takagi's cooperation in the first place?

I used to think that there was an error in this scene -- namely, that Takagi's name is misspelled on the monitor when Theo is actually utilizing the password. The character's name is Takagi, but when Theo types in the words "red castle," we see the name "Akagi" on the screen. Fortunately, Funtrivia player Hagamonkey has provided me with an explanation for this apparent gaffe! Observe:

"Actually, Takagi translates to "tall tree." TAKA means tall, and KI (GI) means tree. As for the code, "Akagi" is the name of a small town in central Japan, and it does translate to "red castle." AKA means red and GI means, yeah you guessed it, castle. (Japanese has a lot of homophones.) I suppose just using his last name translated into English as a code word would've been too easy to break, so Takagi dropped the first letter and changed the meaning entirely. Pretty tricky, huh?"

Thanks a ton, Hagamonkey! I owe you one.

Answer: HO-HO-HO

Hans actually reads the message aloud, which is pretty funny, even considering the grim visual.

Answer: Twinkies

When we first meet Al, he is buying an armful of Twinkies. The convenience store clerk says "I thought you guys only went for donuts"; Al tells the clerk that the Twinkies are for his pregnant wife, but the clerk doesn't believe him. Since Al later demonstrates the ability to rattle off, from memory, the precise ingredients of Twinkies while on the phone with McClane, it's a pretty safe bet that Al himself is the Twinkie fan in the Powell family.

Stay tuned for part two of this quiz!