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| “ | I've passed the point of no return, Beth. Do you know when that is? That's the point in a journey where it's longer to go back to the beginning than it is continue to the end. It's like...you remember when those astronauts got in trouble? and they were going to the moon and something went wrong? I don't know, somebody screwed up, and they had to get them back to Earth. But they had passed the point of no return. So, they had to go all the way around the moon to get back, and they were out of contact for like...hours. And everybody waited breathlessly to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side. And. That's me. I'm on the other side of the moon now. Out of contact. And everybody is just going to have to wait until I pop out. Did you know, Beth, that in certain South American countries it's still legal to kill your wife if she insults you? | „ |
| ~ William Foster threatening his ex-wife over the phone. |
| “ | It's my little girl's birthday today. We were going to have a barbecue like you guys, Adele was going to play outside, my wife would hold my hand, and we'd talk about grown up things. And then when it got dark, we'd all go to sleep together. We'd all sleep together in the dark. And everything will be just like it was before | „ |
| ~ Foster to the caretaker and his family at the plastic surgeon's mansion. |
| “ | I'm the bad guy?...How did that happen? I did everything they told me to. Did you know I build missiles? I helped to protect America. You should be rewarded for that. But instead they gave it to the plastic surgeons. They lied to me. | „ |
| ~ Foster reflecting on his actions. |
Bill Foster, also called D-FENS, is the main anti-hero protagonist of the 1993 film Falling Down. He was a mentally unstable man who went on a rampage through the streets of Los Angeles using a bag of weapons he stole from Latino gangbangers.
He was portrayed by Michael Douglas, who also played Gordon Gekko in Wall Street and Nick Curran in Basic Instinct.
Biography[]
Past[]
Prior to the events of the movie, little is known about the life of Bill Foster. He was in an unspecified branch of the United States Army for a considerable time, as displayed by his crew cut, military bearing, photos of him in the military, and a plaque on his wall briefly seen that says, at some point, he received a Purple Heart. It's unknown where or how he would have been injured, but it's plausible that it could have been Vietnam. Following his discharge from his military career, he continued to work in the defense of the country he loved so much, getting a job as a white-collar defense engineer at NoTec, the nearby defense plant. It's likely he was a technician of sorts while he was in the military, which provided some job security for him. There, he built missiles to "protect [America] from the communists" for seven and a half years.
At some point in the 1980s (as evidenced by a photo of him and his family dated 1988), Bill married Elizabeth "Beth" Trevino, and they had a daughter named Adele. After Adele was born, Bill began to display an inability to control his temper, as evidenced by a home video of their daughter on her birthday, where Bill angrily demands Beth to put their crying daughter on a toy horse. When Beth objects to this, Bill freaks out, clearly displaying signs of mental health issues. Worried about Bill’s rage and concerned that he has a propensity for violence and that he would hurt her and her daughter, Beth divorces her husband and places a restraining order on him, claiming he "didn't feel like waiting around for it to happen." Sometime after the divorce, Bill moved in with his mother. Unfortunately for him, after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union, the DOD began downsizing, and he was laid off for doing his job too well. He hid this fact from his mother and continued to pretend that he was going to work every day when he wasn't.
Present[]
Over a month after he was laid off in 1992, Bill gets caught in a Los Angeles traffic jam during the hottest day in the city's history. After waiting for several minutes in the sweltering heat and having to put up with the numerous disrespectful people around him and an annoying fly, Bill finally gives up and abandons his car in the traffic.
He goes to a convenience store and attempts to ask for change so he can place a phone call. But, Mr. Lee, the Korean store owner, refuses unless he buys something. Bill grabs a can of Coca-Cola, and Mr. Lee says the soda costs 85 cents. Bill complains about the price, saying that it won't leave him enough money for the phone call he wants to make. He insists he will only pay 50 cents for the soda, but Mr. Lee refuses, demanding he either pay the 85 cents or leave. Further annoyed, Bill complains about Mr. Lee's accent, remarking, "You don't have v's in China?" to which Mr. Lee tells him he is Korean. Bill then rants about Mr. Lee's imperfect English and how his people are taking the United States' money, yet when asked by Mr. Lee how much money South Korea has taken from the United States, Bill cannot answer. Mr. Lee once again orders Bill to leave, and when Bill asserts he is not leaving, a frustrated Mr. Lee goes to grab his baseball bat. Both have a short scuffle, but Bill gains the upper hand and stomps on Mr. Lee's stomach to wrench the bat from him. Enraged, Bill smashes one of the nearby shelves, and a terrified Mr. Lee repeatedly begs Bill to take his money. Offended that Mr. Lee thinks of him as a thief who would rob him, Bill accuses Mr. Lee of being the real thief for overcharging the items in his store. Bill then walks around the store, and asks Mr. Lee of the prices of various items in the store; each time Mr. Lee responds, Bill would get upset by the high prices, and violently destroy his merchandise with the bat. He then asks Mr. Lee again for the price of the soda; Mr. Lee begrudgingly agrees to Bill’s proposed price of 50 cents, and Bill pays for the drink at his price and leaves with the bat.
Foster rests on a hill with Hispanic gang activity to drink his soda and read the classifieds in the newspaper and search for a job; he promptly rips up the newspaper to fill a hole in his shoe. Right after, two gang members accost him and accuse him of trespassing and loitering on his property. Foster points out the lack of any signs, to which one of the gangsters points to a piece of graffiti and asks what it is. When he calls it graffiti, the gangsters become annoyed and angrily tell him to leave their territory; they are further vexed when he quips, "Maybe if you wrote it in fucking English I could fucking understand it." Foster, now wanting to de-escalate tensions, attempts to reason with the gangsters, offering to leave peacefully if they give him no trouble. However, the gangsters demand that Foster hand over his briefcase, and when he refuses, one of them threatens him with a butterfly knife. Exasperated, Foster reproaches the gangsters for being so petty to the point where they couldn't let rest for a little bit on their "piece of shit hill," and he appears to reach for his briefcase. However, he instead reaches for the bat he stole from Mr. Lee and promptly scares off the gangsters. Before leaving, he picks up the butterfly knife one of the gangsters had threatened him with.
Later on, Foster uses the payphone to contact his ex-wife Beth. She is exasperated that he is still trying to reach her, and tells him her home isn't his anymore. However, Foster declares he is coming home for his daughter's birthday, against Beth's will. While on the phone, the two gang members from earlier spot him while they were driving their car with two other friends. They attempt to kill him in a drive-by shooting but miss, instead hitting several bystanders. The vehicle gets into an accident, and Foster walks up to the site of the wreck. Picking up a submachine gun belonging to the gangsters, Foster tells the sole survivor of the crash, the blue shirt gangbanger who had confronted him earlier, that he missed. However, when Foster tries to shoot him he misses too. He then aims a second time, while the gangster begs for his life. Foster chooses to shoot him non-fatally in the leg, before taking the gangsters' gym bag of guns. He tells him, "Take some shooting lessons, asshole," before nonchalantly walking away.
In the next scene, Foster tries to get onto a bus, but cannot get on due to the high volume of passengers. His anger rising, he walks the other way, but a nearby rude construction worker tells him that he can't walk that way, as they are doing construction for the subway line. As Foster is walking back through a park, he encounters an obnoxious panhandler who begs him for money. The panhandler claims he drove from Santa Barbara the day before but he couldn't find his friend who owes him money, so he ran out of money to return home. When Foster asks him for his driver's license, the panhandler says he doesn't have one, and when he asks to see his car registration or car, the panhandler gives up, knowing Foster has decimated his lies. Shortly after, however, the panhandler returns, and criticizes Foster for coldly dismissing a veteran from the Vietnam War. Foster retorts, "What were you, a drummer boy?" as the man is visibly too young to have served in the war. Desperate, the man professes he hasn't eaten anything in three days, despite eating a sandwich in the moment. He continues to pester Foster with increasing hostility; Foster grips his bag of guns tightly, seemingly intending to kill him. However, he decides otherwise and gives up his briefcase to him. The panhandler was initially excited, but became upset when all he found was Foster's lunch and no money.
Now without his lunch, Foster walks into a nearby Whammy Burger fast food restaurant. He asks for breakfast but is told by the cashier, Sheila, that they're no longer serving breakfast. Annoyed, Foster asks to speak to the manager Rick, and attempts to convince him to serve him some breakfast, but Rick tells him that they stopped serving breakfast at 11:30, and he'll have to order something from the lunch menu. Foster checks his watch and sees that it's 11:33, only three minutes after breakfast service concluded. Further irritated, Foster sets his bag of guns on the counter, and tells Rick that "the customer is always right." Rick replies that that isn't their policy and mockingly apologizes. Foster then says that he is sorry as well, before pulling out the submachine gun he obtained from the gangbangers. With everyone panicking at the sight of a weapon, Foster attempts to restore order. He calls out a man for attempting to escape and abandon his wife, orders him to sit down, and encourages the customers to eat their food as if nothing is wrong. However, he accidentally discharges his weapon into the ceiling, further terrifying the people around him, and he frantically tries to calm everyone again by telling them the gun has a hairy trigger. Foster repeats his breakfast request to a petrified Rick, who acquiesces; shortly after, however, he tells Rick and Sheila he's changed his mind and he's going to order lunch instead. As the Whammy Burger employees assemble his lunch, Foster walks around the restaurant and asks the scared patrons if their food is okay. A woman stress-vomits, and Foster jokes that "she doesn't like the food", before going to the counter to pick up his lunch. However, Foster becomes once again indignant when he sees his burger, as it isn't like the one advertised on the menu. He turns around and asks the perplexed and terrified customers what's wrong with the burger.
Foster leaves the restaurant and buys himself a snow globe as a gift to his daughter. He then encounters a man dressed in the same clothes as him protesting with a "Not Economically Viable" sign due to being denied a loan. Foster seems to hold great sympathy for the man, as they are both in similar predicaments. The police then take said person away into a police car for domestic disturbance, and as arrested man and Foster briefly exchange gazes, he tells Foster not to forget him (which Foster has evidently not, as he later describes himself as "not economically viable"). Foster then goes to a phone booth and tries to call his ex-wife again. However, an impatient man rudely accuses him of taking too long, hounding him and calling him a " selfish asshole." In retaliation, he quickly draws another submachine gun and shoots down the phone booth to pieces, so the man couldn't use it.
Foster then stops at an army surplus store to buy himself a new pair of shoes to replace his worn-out ones. The owner, Nick, offers him some boots, while not-so-subtly insulting a pair of gay men in his store. Just as Foster is trying on a pair of boots, Detective Sandra Torres arrives, and Nick hides Foster in the fitting room. Torres tells Nick she is looking for a man in his late 30s, with a white shirt and a tie and carrying a gym bag, and Nick lies that he hasn't seen anyone who fits that description. After Torres leaves, Foster inquires why Nick didn't turn him in, to which Nick claims he's his friend and he wants to show him his stash. Nick brings Foster to the basement of his store, which contains an extraordinary collection of Nazi paraphernalia. He shows him a WWI gas mask, a used can of Zyklon-B, and finally a rocket launcher which he wants to gift to Foster. When Foster asks why, Nick tells him he heard about the incident at the Whammy Burger, which he assumed was full of black people, and thus concluded that Foster was a fellow Neo-Nazi. Disturbed and angered by Nick's bigotry, Foster asserts they are not the same, calling himself an American. Provoked by Foster's contempt, Nick becomes livid and prevents Foster from leaving. Foster maintains his freedom of speech and his "right to disagree," which enrages Nick further and galvanizes him to violently push Foster onto a counter. As he searches Foster's bag of weapons, he finds the snowglobe Foster bought for his daughter, and destroys it to Foster's dismay. Nick tells Foster he is going to jail, and creepily fantasizes about him getting raped by another inmate, now believing Foster to be homosexual after he disagreed with him. As the Nick attempts to place Foster in handcuffs, Foster takes out the butterfly knife he got from the gangbangers and swiftly stabs his attacker on the shoulder. Stunned, Nick takes out the knife and observes that it's not his, before going in front of the mirror. Grabbing a gun, Foster briefly lectures Nick on how empowering exercising one's own rights is, before shooting him dead.
Foster then changes into army fatigues after killing Nick and stuffs him into the store's display case. He calls Beth again, and proclaims to her that he "passed the point of no return." He feels that the journey to her home is better completed than to go back to the beginning. Foster also mentions that in certain South American countries, it's legal to kill your wife if she insults you, implying that he's going to murder her. He tries to get Beth to put his daughter on the phone, but she hangs up on him, now fully terrified of him.
Walking past a traffic jam to his home, Foster knocks out a rude man, before approaching a road repair crew tearing up a road. Foster inquires what exactly the crew is repairing, and one of the crew members rudely tells Foster off. Pointing out how the road was in good condition two days prior, Foster asks if it had really fallen apart that quickly, to which the worker sarcastically replies, "I guess so." Foster calls the worker's bluff, explaining how they're only tearing apart the street so that the construction companies can spend enough to maintain their budgets. When the worker rudely tells Foster off, Foster pulls up his jacket, revealing a gun he had tucked into his pants, asking the worker once again what is wrong with the street. The worker becomes nervous and tells Foster that he thinks it's an issue with the sewer; when Foster calls him out again for lying, he finally confesses that there's nothing wrong with the street. Proud that he's deconstructed the worker's lies, Foster tells him he'll "give you something to fix", and pulls out the rocket launcher, causing the worker to flee in a panic. Foster struggles to figure out how to fire the weapon, but a young boy, who thinks that the construction site's a film set, instructs him how to arm the weapon, claiming that he saw how to use it on TV. Before he can aim, Foster accidentally fires the rocket launcher by pressing the trigger button prematurely, hitting the mobile crane in the distance and destroying much of the construction site.
Foster then cuts across a nearby golf course. Two golfers in the distance in front of him, Frank and Jim, spot him. Frank yells out to Foster to get off "his" golf course, as he paid to use it, and it shouldn't be used as a sidewalk for other people. Jim warns Frank to stop insulting the man, as he doesn't like the look of him. Frank refuses and attempts to strike Foster with a golf ball, but misses. Foster angrily takes out a sawed-off shotgun and begins ranting about how the golf course should be a park or a petting zoo, and not some wasted piece of huge land for "a game for old men with nothing better to do." Foster then shoots the tires off of a nearby golf cart, causing it to roll down the hill and into the nearby lake. Frank suffers a heart attack from the shock, Jim runs off to retrieve Frank's heart pills from the golf cart, but it's submerged before he can reach it. Foster cruelly mocks the elderly golfer, telling him that he's going to die wearing that "stupid little hat", and asking him how it feels, before walking away leaving the man to die.
Foster then climbs over a barb-wire fence and into a nearby household, ranting to a family barbecuing at the swimming pool about entertaining themselves seeing innocent people being hurt. He then ushers them into the shelter just as he hears police sirens. The man admits that he's not the owner of the mansion but rather the caretaker. Hearing police sirens in the distance, Foster takes the daughter of the family by his hand, and heads to a shaded area. Foster converses with the family after he calms down, discovering the mansion belongs to a plastic surgeon, and subsequently lamenting on his financial struggles. When he sees blood on his hand, he panics as he thought he accidentally hurt the girl, but the father reminds him he cut his hand on the barbed wire. The father begs to be taken hostage instead of his children, but Foster angrily tells the family that he has no intention of harming them, insulted. He then says that he was going to go back home and reminisces about how his daughter would play while he and his ex-wife "talked about grown-up things". Foster then says that they were all going to go to sleep together in the dark, and everything would be just like it was, foreshadowing his intention to murder Beth and Adele and then commit suicide.
Foster then arrives at Beth's house after calling for the final time, but she had already fled with Adele, knowing he was coming. He decides to sit down and rewatch some old tapes of him and his family. He initially enjoys them, but when he sees himself getting furious at his daughter and his wife, he appears contrite. After, the tapes shows him talking to Beth about her favorite place, the Venice pier. Foster looks out the window at the pier, spots Beth and Adele, and angrily leaves the house with a pistol. However, Sergeant Martin Prendergast and his partner Torres arrive before he can get out. While Prendergast attempts to get into the house from the front door, Foster escapes by fleeing out the back door, running into Torres. Foster shoots Torres in the torso, wounding her, and then heads to the pier in hot pursuit of his family.
After cornering them at the end of the pier, Adele is happy to see him, but Beth is still afraid. Foster, who believes that they are still married, forcefully kisses the uncomfortable Beth, but when Beth demands that he leave, Foster loses his smile and prepares to draw his gun, scaring away the onlookers. While Foster is hugging his daughter, Prendergast arrives and gets some popcorn from a snack shack, before nonchalantly approaching Foster. Foster insists he would like a private moment with his family, but Prendergast does not give in, gently playing with Adele and talking about the death of his infant daughter. Prendergast gives his popcorn to Adele, who in turn offers some to Foster, who puts his pistol down. Realizing Foster is distracted, Prendergast nods to Beth, who kicks his gun away and throws it in the ocean, before escaping with Adele to the crowd of spectators. Prendergast draws his revolver and confronts a ruffled Foster. Foster and Prendergast talk, and the detective attempts to persuade Foster to come with him and meet some cops, referring to them as the "good guys." Foster then realizes that what he did throughout the entire day makes him the "bad guy", shocking him. Foster tries to excuse his actions, saying that he helped to build missiles and defend the country, but he wasn't rewarded but instead lied to and tossed aside. While Prendergast acknowledges Foster's problem and shows some sympathy towards him, he doesn't accept it as an excuse for Foster's actions, and tells him the only special thing he has going for him is his daughter.
Foster contemplates for several seconds, seemingly accepting that he is the "bad guy," before telling Prendergast he has another gun on him. He asks if they want to draw, but Prendergast refuses and asks him to give himself up. Foster comments on how poetic it would be to have a "showdown between the sheriff and the bad guy." Reluctant to resort to shooting him, Prendergast explains while his daughter is dead and he no longer has a choice, Foster still has Adele and has a choice. Foster declares Prendergast has two choices: get killed by him, or kill him so Adele could receive his life insurance policy money. He counts "one," and Prendergast still attempts to reason with Foster, asking if he wants to see her grow up. Foster replies that seeing his daughter from prison wouldn't be worth it, and counts "two." Prendergast tells him one last time to give up peacefully, but Foster counts "three" and reaches into his pocket to supposedly draw a real gun, forcing Prendergast to shoot Foster and send him tumbling back onto the railing. Foster reveals that the weapon he pulled was not a real gun but Adele's water gun. Dying and smiling, he jokes to the detective, "I would've gotcha", before his corpse falls off the pier into the ocean.
Personality[]
| “ | "I lost my job. Actually I didn't loose it, it lost me. I'm overeducated, underskilled...Maybe it's the other way around, I forget. But, I'm obsolete. I'm not economically viable. I can't even support my own kid." | „ |
| ~ Foster explains his situation to the caretaker and his family at the plastic surgeon's mansion |
William Foster is a deeply troubled man who, as a result of losing his family and job, wishes to relive the world as it used to be, and is in denial of the inevitable changes which come. His primary motivation for his journey back home is to see his daughter again for her birthday, and to experience the joy of having a happy family again. As well, his longing for working for his country is evident through him going out each day to pretend to his mother he was still employed. However, Foster's mentality of being stuck in the past also manifests itself through the courses of violence he takes throughout the film. He lashes out at the world around him because the previous world he lived in was now gone, one where prices were more reasonable, people were less hostile and more forgiving to each other, and most importantly (to him) hard-working citizens who protected the nation were valued for their efforts.
A major factor in Foster's disillusionment is his pride for the United States. He seems to be particularly nostalgic for the 1960s (as evident by his comment to Mr. Lee that he's "rolling back prices to 1965"), a time where the American Dream was a prevalent value. This would explain Foster's desire for being rewarded for defending his country and living an idyllic life with a loving family. Foster's nationalism becomes key in a couple of the interactions he has. When arguing with the Korean store owner, Mr. Lee, Foster berates him for not being able to "speak his language" (despite him being able to speak English decently, even if not perfectly), and asks him how much money the United States has given to his country without knowing the answer himself, exemplifying his prejudice to foreigners. Additionally, when the bigoted surplus store owner Nick tells Foster they are the same, Foster rejects his view by declaring himself an "American" and him a "sick asshole" to distance himself from him.
It is evident that Foster is incapable of regulating his emotions. The film demonstrates multiple times that although he is superficially calm, he will easily fly into a rage when he doesn't get what he wants. His mental health issues have proven ruinous to his relationship with his family. When his daughter cried because she didn't like the rocking horse he bought, he begins to furiously berate his wife and his daughter. Additionally, his mother admits that she was so terrified by his propensity for anger she was scared of even eating around him, lest she provoke him. His anger issues were severe enough for Beth to place a restraining order against him. It should also be noted that Foster becomes more unhinged as the film progresses. Toward the beginning, he was initially was willing to reason with the gangbangers who confronted him. However, much later he almost immediately pulls out a gun after the golfer swings a golf ball his way. Yet, Foster's wrath comes not from a place of psychopathy or heartlessness, but from his own mental unwellness. Judging by the fact he goes out each work day to hide from his mother his unemployment–an act which can hardly be considered rational–Foster likely had some mental health issues which went untreated. Even Beth admitted her ex-husband was a "sick man" who should have received help before it was too late.
Although Foster is partially a victim of uncontrollable circumstances, he is also a victim of his own undoing. Several incidents in the film epitomize his sense of entitlement. He believes that the store clerk should accept his approved price of 50 cents. He believes that he deserves breakfast even after breakfast service has concluded, and that "the customer is always right." He believes that because society is rotten in many ways, he has the right to deliver justice in his own unhinged ways. But most importantly, he believes that he is entitled to an unconditionally loving family, even when he is verbally abusive (and possibly abusive in other ways) to them, and that he has the right to kill them because they left him. As a consequence of his entitlement, he not only brings about profound destruction across Los Angeles, but also fails to realize that although him losing his job was out of his control, him destroying his marriage was entirely his fault. Ultimately, Prendergast criticizes Foster for thinking he had a "special right" to commit the violent acts that he did.
The combination of a disillusionment in society, mental instability, and an entitled attitude result in a man who is disturbingly delusional. Foster seems to be seldom aware that what he is doing is immoral, and judging by the dreamlike and nonchalant manner in which he talks about reuniting with his family and "sleeping together in the dark" (which heavily implies he was going to kill them and then kill himself), he genuinely seems to think of his actions as justified. It's only when Prendergast holds him under arrest that Foster begins to fully realize how much in the wrong he was. His face and tone when he realizes he is the "bad guy" is not indicative of someone who is cowardly trying to maintain innocence so they can weasel their way out of being punished, but someone who had truly believed in his righteousness to the point where he did not stop to think about how unethical he was being. Upon receiving this reality check from Prendergast, Foster seems to accept his role as the "bad guy," and, realizing he has nothing to live for, opts to commit suicide by cop.
With all of this being said, Foster is not completely devoid of humanity, as he does possess a spotty sense of morality. Although he sees nothing wrong with smashing the Korean store owner's merchandise just so he could pay the soda at his ideal price, he refuses to steal the money from the cash register, and took offense at being thought of as a thief. He does try to reason with the two gangbangers instead of immediately resorting to violence (although later on he is quick to use violent means to get what he wants). Although he does hold the Whammy Burger customers and staff hostage, he tries to reassure them (with limited success) that he has no intentions of killing them, and even goes around attempting to make conversation with them. He empathizes deeply with the "Not Economically Viable" man as he is in a similar situation financially, and even uses the phrase "not economically viable" to refer to himself later. Although he was prejudiced toward Mr. Lee, he wasn't fanatically racist, and expressed disgust towards the neo-Nazi store owner's bigotry. While he sees nothing wrong with blowing up a construction site (with the potential to kill or injure several innocents), he does shield the kid who taught him how to use the rocket launcher when it fires prematurely. Although he coerces Prendergast to shoot him by telling him he can kill him or get killed, he pulls out a water gun instead of a real one to shoot him, indicating he was never intending to kill Prendergast. And most of all, despite how he berated his family in the past, he still holds some genuine love for his daughter. He purchases a snow globe for her birthday, and he becomes especially enraged when Nick the Neo-Nazi callously destroys it. And ultimately, Foster's suicide by cop, while partially prompted by the fact he didn't want to face jail time, was also motivated out of his wish for his daughter to receive his life insurance policy money, so that a sliver good could come out of the harrowing brutality he waged.
Ultimately, Foster operates by a set of twisted principles, and isn't utterly heartless. Nonetheless, his mental health problems and sense of entitlement, combined with unenviable circumstances which are a combination of external forces and his own flaws, result in a profoundly disturbed and hazardous individual who is impelled to spread destruction in a horribly misguided sense of justice and retribution against those who he perceived as having wronged him.
Weapons used[]
Here is a list of the weapons Foster uses.
- Shortened concealable baseball bat (used to wreck the convenience store merchandise and attack gang members)
- Butterfly knife (used to stab the surplus store owner)
- Uzi submachine gun (used to shoot a gang member in the leg after the car crash)
- MAC-10 submachine gun (used to destroy a phone booth after someone demands rudely to use it)
- Sawed-off Remington 870 pump action shotgun (used to shoot Frank's golf cart)
- Colt Mk IV Series 70 1911-style pistol (used to scare the road worker, shoot Sandra Torres and hold his family hostage)
- Taurus PT92 pistol (used to shoot the surplus store owner)
- Intratec TEC-9 pistol converted to fully automatic (used to hold up the Whammy Burger; accidentally discharged into the ceiling)
- M72 LAW rocket launcher (used to destroy a road construction site)
Known victims[]
Victims that Foster encountered on his rampage:
- Mr. Lee (wrecked his store with a baseball bat)
- Hispanic gang members (beating them with the baseball bat, later encounters them again after most of them die in a car accident. He non-fatally shoots one of the gang members in the leg)
- Sheila Folsom (held her hostage but didn't kill her)
- Rick (held him hostage but didn't kill him)
- Other Whammy Burger employees and customers (held them hostage but didn't kill them)
- An impatient man (terrified him after he opened fire on a phone booth)
- Nick the Neo-Nazi (stabs him in the shoulder and then fatally shoots him multiple times in the back)
- Construction workers (accidentally destroys their crane with a M72 LAW rocket, causing the workers to run)
- Frank (likely dies of a heart attack after Foster shoots his cart containing his pills, causing it to roll into a lake)
- Caretaker and his family (held them hostage but did not kill them)
- Detective Sandra Torres (shoots her in the stomach with a Cold Mk IV Series 70, she doesn't die)
- Elizabeth Trevino and Adele Foster (Attempted to kill them in a murder-suicide with a Colt Mk IV Series 70)
Trivia[]
- In real life, Foster's criminal actions, especially his suicide by cop moment, would leave Adele and Beth with nothing, because it is illegal for insurance companies to pay out benefits for any losses incurred during the commissions of felonies, even where the survivors are legally innocent of the felons' actions.
- Screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith got the idea for Falling Down after reading a news story about an angry truck driver who started ramming and shoving people off the road. Ebbe said that he thought thematically Falling Down was about where the extra ordinary meets the ordinary.
- Of all the roles Michael Douglas has done, he considers this to be his personal favorite. Douglas said that when he first got the script in 1991, he thought it captured the whole zeitgeist of what was going on in that particular time in our world. It was the end of the Cold War, and all of the defense industry plants were based in Los Angeles. And when the USSR came down and the Cold War ended, all these people in the defense industry were given pink slips and weren't needed anymore. So, in a way, Falling Down told the story about an American whose life began to crumble.
- Ebbe Roe Smith originally wrote a scene where Foster forces a plastic surgeon's wife to strip and show all her surgeries, humiliating her in front of her children and in front of everyone. Director Joel Schumacher decided to change the scene because he felt that would make audiences loose connection with Foster, especially since he was making her strip in front of her children.
- During the shooting of Falling Down, the 1992 Los Angeles riots happened. They were a series of disturbances that occurred from April 29 to May 4. The riots started after the four policemen that assaulted Rodney King were acquitted.