9 Movie Mistakes & Plot-Holes Confirmed By The Creators

6. How Did McClane Recognise That Hans Was A Terrorist? - Die Hard

The most interesting plot-holes in cinema are the ones that are opened by a careless editing mistake that leaves evidence of a deleted sequence or subplot. Consider the mention of the Giant Squid in the finale of The Goonies, which was cut and subsequently makes Data look like a fantasist as well as a bit of a weirdo.

The same sort of thing happens in Die Hard and screenwriter Steven E de Souza admitted to the mistake decades after it was released. In the scene that sees John McClane meet Hans Gruber, who pretends to be Bill Clay, the former somehow knows out of the blue that he's one of the terrorists.

How did he do that? Was it incredible police work? Magic? Nope, it was because of a mistake as de Souza confessed that the terrorists all wearing the same watches was key as McClane worked out they were important.

But a key scene that showed they had the same watches and had syncrhonised them at the start of their plan was cut because the script was changed to include the ambulance for the terrorists' escape plan. When that scene was shot, there was no ambulance, so it had to go.

“[Director] John [McTiernan] says to the editor, ‘Get the scissors in there. Cut as soon as you can when they get off the truck so we don’t see there’s no ambulance.’ Now without ‘Synchronize your watches’ all of these moments where Bruce looks at these guys’ watches makes no sense.”

That's how McClane knows to take the bullets out of the gun, he spots the Tag Heuer, but we were never to know:

“When Bruce offers the cigarette to Alan Rickman, Bruce sees the watch,” de Souza said. “You see his eyes look at the watch. That’s how he knows that he is one of the terrorists.”