8 Times Movie Censorship Backfired

3. Yippee Ki-Yay, Mister Falcon - Die Hard 2

Die Hard 2 Yippee Ki Yay
20th Century Studios

1988's Die Hard blessed us all with John McClane's immortal one-liner of "Yippee ki yay, motherf**ker", but it was Die Hard 2 that cemented it as a series staple - a pre-kill quip for Bruce Willis' character to utter before he rains all over the bad guys' parade.

And the finale for Die Hard 2 arguably has the best use of the quip, with McClane using his lighter to ignite the trail of aviation fuel and explode the mercenaries that have been terrorising the skies over Washington D.C. It's a great finale, underlined by the return of a beloved bit of dialogue from John McTiernan's original.

But it wasn't presented like this for television. Understandably (or not - the watershed is there for a reason), Die Hard 2 received a TV edit that toned down the violence and profanity. However, this TV edit is arguably one of the most infamous, due mainly to how it changed McClane's catchphrase. Instead of the traditional expletive, for Die Hard 2's TV edit, McClane says "Yippee ki yay, Mr. Falcon", in a tragic case of overdubbing.

The line itself makes about as much sense in context as it does out of it. While there is a Mr. Falcon in Die Hard 2 (Esperanza's call sign), that name is mentioned only very briefly and isn't likely to leave as big an impression as the actual named villains did. Throw in the terrible dub from a guy who sounds nothing like Bruce Willis, and you're left with an all-timer piece of bad television.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.