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“
You hear that? TALK TO ME! Where are my detonators? Where are they, or shall I shoot another one? Sooner or later, I might get to someone you do care about!
„
~ Hans threatening McClane after murdering Ellis.
“
Mrs. McClane. How nice to make your acquaintance.
„
~ Hans Gruber before capturing McClane's wife, Holly.
“
What was it you said to me before? "Yippee-ki-yay, motherf**ker."
„
~ Hans, mocking John right before getting shot out of a window.
Hans Gruber is the main antagonist of the 1988 action thriller film Die Hard and the posthumous overarching antagonist in its 1995 threequel Die Hard With a Vengeance.
He is the leader of a group of German terrorists who organized the takeover of the Nakatomi Plaza skyscraper in Los Angeles, and the younger brother of Simon Gruber. Hans was a cold-hearted and calculating mastermind with high intelligence.
He was portrayed by the late Alan Rickman, who also played the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
He was apart of the Volksfrei terrorist group for an unknown amount of time, before being outcasted for an unknown reason two years before the events of the movie.
He took over the Nakotomi Plaza on Christmas, holding over 30 of the customers hostage as he schemed a way to access their vault and steal 640 million dollars in barer bonds while tricking the police and FBI into thinking they were terrorists, and planned to set up a false release for the hostages on the roof, in actuality planning on blowing it up and killing everyone so he can fake his death and escape with the money.
The take over of the Nakatomi Plaza ended up killing a receptionist and a random individual.
He showed no sympathy for Karl after McClane killed his brother Tony, insisting that the priority is the plan.
He murdered Joseph Takagi in cold blood when he refused to give him the codes for the vault.
He had John McClain hunted down by his minions to be killed, ambivalent to causalities suffered.
He has a couch moved to accommodate a pregnant hostage, but this is only because he wants to keep the hostages calm, especially since he was already planning to kill them all.
He murdered Ellis after he tried to reason with John by using his life and lives of the hostages as bargaining chips for John to surrender, causing panic to the hostages.
He didn't care whatsoever that Karl was still on the roof when he detonated the explosives.
He was indirectly responsible for the helicopters on the rooftop being blown up and killing everyone in them due to them being too close when he detonated the explosives.
He pretended to be a hostage in an attempt to gain John's trust and kill him, only failing because John saw through him and gave him an empty gun.
He held John McClane's wife hostage while trying to escape with the stolen bonds, before attempting to kill her and John after he was hanging from a ledge, trying to take them down with him as a last resort.
While his brother cared for him, or at the very least wanted to avenge him, because Hans never once mentions Simon, there is no indication that Hans cared for his older brother.
His actions are the reason for the action movie baseline, with him becoming the archetypical action movie villain.
Trivia[]
In the second revised draft, Hans directly ordered the shooting down of police choppers, and shot an old lady dead once she panicked upon finding out his plans to blow the place up. If this was the chosen script, Hans would've been much worse.
His article here and his article on the Villains Wiki were headlined exactly one year apart.