Hans Gruber

Hans arrives at Nakatomi Plaza with a crew on Christmas night. He wears a well-cut suit, a European accent and the air of a man who's already won. He pretends to be a terrorist with political demands so the police and the FBI will believe him. What he really wants is the bearer bonds in the building's vault. Theo, the crew's hacker, handles the vaults, and Karl, who wants revenge for his brother Tony, becomes Hans's right hand. When the executive Takagi refuses to give up the code, Hans shows he isn't joking.

Hans doesn't shout or lose his cool. When the vault opens, the music is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He quotes Alexander the Great, who wept because there were no more worlds to conquer, and jokes about the benefits of a classical education. Alan Rickman, who had never made a film, gives him a cultured, ironic tone that plenty of action villains copied later.

The two talk on the radio before they ever meet. When they do, Hans passes himself off as an escaped American hostage and nearly fools John, until he asks for a gun. John hands him one with no bullets, and Hans pulls the trigger without hesitating. That's when the war gets personal. In the end, Hans takes Holly as a shield, but John has a pistol taped to his back. Hans falls from the tower, and the scene became one of the most quoted in action cinema.

Hans is dead, but the Gruber name still carries weight. In New York, the man who calls himself Simon is actually Simon Peter Gruber, Hans's brother and a former East German army colonel. The revenge on John works as a smokescreen for a gold heist. Simon uses a game of "Simon says" to keep John busy and the police away from the real target, the Federal Reserve vault. The style is the same for both: terrorist disguise, thief's plan. Hans only returns in memory, but his legacy drives the film.

Alan Rickman made his film debut as Hans Gruber.