Hans Gruber

Hans Gruber is the primary villain in the 1988 action film, Die Hard. He was once part of a West German terrorist group, but was ejected by them. In the film, he leads a group of mercenaries and takes over the offices of the Nakotomi Corporation. He makes it appear that he is protesting the imprisonment of various terrorist leaders around the world, but is really after the untraceable bearer bonds that are kept in the building's vault. Gruber takes advatage of the company's Christmas Eve party, when only a limited number of people are in the building. His men take out the limited group of security guards, seal off the building, and cut the phone lines. He then leads his men to the party upstairs and takes all the guests hostage except for NYPD cop John McClane, in town visiting his estranged wife Holly, who was a high-level executive for the company. He was in the bathroom when the attack began, and managed to make it to a stairwell and head upstairs into the unfinished portion of the building. Gruber first becomes aware of someone messing with his plans when McClane set off a fire alarm, and the henchman sent to investigate was found killed with the message "Now I have a machine gun Ho-ho-ho!" written on his chest. Gruber simply sends more men after him and proceeds with his master plan, which involved waiting for the FBI to intervene. Gruber knew they would cut the power, which would open the final magnetic lock on the vault. The hostages would then be sent up to the helipad on the roof, which would be blown up with C4, confusing the feds and allowing the villains to escape. Although the charges had been put in place, McClane killed a henchman and took the detonators he had been carrying. A cat-and-mouse game proceeded between McClane and Gruber's. McClane and Gruber communicated via the walkie-talkies that the thieves had brought with them. Gruber found out who McClane was through the assistance of a Nakotomi executive who met McClane before the attack, but he didn't find out McClane's relation to Holly, who was using her maiden name Gennero. In an act of desperation, Hans headed up to the unfinished floors to retrieve the detonators, where he ended up meeting McClane. Using an alias and an improvised accent, he tried to convince McClane that he was an escaped hostage, but he gave himself away by holding his cigarette in European fashion. His henchman arrived, and they retrieved the detonators, but McClane escaped. Gruber then had the hostages sent up to the roof. The explosion still went off, but McClane managed to save the hostages. Meanwhile, Gruber had accidentally discovered Holly's relation to McClane, and held her hostage in the vault room. McClane managed to kill the remaining henchmen and shatter a window. Gruber died when Holly and McClane pushed him out of said window. Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson uttered Gruber's immortal epitaph: "I hope that's not a hostage!"