9 Facts About the Greatest Christmas Movie Ever

Holiday spirit hitting bottom? Can’t feel warmth in the cockles of your heart? (You should get that checked; I lost an uncle to poor cockle health.) Nonetheless, if you’re just not feeling the festive cheer, do what I do and get merry with a bare-footed, one man anti-terrorist unit in the greatest Christmas movie ever made: Die Hard.

1. Die Hard started out as the sequel to the Arnold Schwarzenegger '80s action staple Commando. Goes a long way to validate the opinion that all action movies are the same.

2. How perfect is Bruce Willis as John McClane? Not very, if you asked the producers at the time. Other actors considered before Willis include Arnold Schwarzenegger (in the Commando sequel version), Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, and Richard Gere.

3. Want to take a picture of Nakatomi Tower while you’re in LA? Good luck. The Fox Tower, which played Nakatomi in Die Hard, became such a popular tourist attraction taking photos of the building is now prohibited.

4. Look closely when you watch the movie and you will see Bruce Willis’ feet are occasionally unnaturally large. During the “running barefoot on broken glass” scene, Willis wears barefoot shaped rubber shoes that make him look like a Hobbit.

5. Despite Sgt. Al’s affinity for Twinkies, actor Reginald VelJohnson despises them. After the success of Die Hard, people constantly teased the actor for his character’s obsession with the yellow tube cakes.

6. Deputy Chief Robinson says that John McClane "could be a f------ bartender for all we know," which actually was a true statement. Before becoming a successful actor, Willis worked as a bartender. If you happen to meet him, ask him to make you a Screwdriver. I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.

7. While no fan would argue the original Die Hard isn’t the best movie in the series, Bruce Willis would. Willis’ favorite of the four Die Hard movies is Live Free or Die Hard, which is just excruciating sacrilege as Live Free is the only non-R rated film in the bunch and therefore doesn’t (technically) include the line, “Yippee Kay-yay, Motherf-,” which to many means Live Free isn’t “technically” a Die Hard movie. Why don’t you make John McClane a vegan while you’re at it?

8. Speaking of "Yippee-ki-yay, mother-----!," it doesn’t have the same bite in other languages. In Urdu the line comes out "mother, here eat this." Sounds more like John McClane offering the bad guy home baked cookies rather than bullets, though I don’t doubt his ability to kill someone with a Snickerdoodle.

9. Speaking of languages, the phrase “Die Hard” didn’t exactly translate in other countries, so like with most films, it was retiled. In Spain it’s "The Glass Jungle.” The Hungarian title is "Give your life expensive," the title of the sequel is "Your life is more expensive," and the third part is "The life is always expensive.” The best, however, comes from Poland where the title translates to, “He Dies Slowly” which sounds more like a lengthy drama about a man bleeding to death from a paper cut.