12 Die Hard Easter Eggs You Probably Missed
10. The Arnie And Rambo Nods Are In-Jokes
It's impossible to imagine anybody but Bruce Willis in the iconic John McClane vest. The reason the hero of the original Die Hard stood out from the action stars of the era was because he wasn't anything like them; he's just a regular guy trying to survive, not a muscle-bound killing machine like, say, Rambo or The Terminator.
The film even directly addresses those comparisons. Hans Gruber witheringly referring to McClane as Sylvester Stallone's one man army, and John himself saying the explosives on the roof rigged by the terrorists are “enough to orbit Arnold Schwarzenegger”. Those weren't just sly digs at the competition, however.
Because perfectly cast though he is, Bruce Willis was actually seventh choice to play John McClane. After Frank Sinatra (rightly) passed on the role, producer Joel Silver took the script to two actors he'd worked with before: first Arnold Schwarzenegger, then Sylvester Stallone. So those jokes are actually really, really inside baseball jokes.