John McClane

On Christmas Eve, John flies from New York to Los Angeles to see his wife, Holly, who moved there for her job at Nakatomi. At the holiday party, Hans Gruber and his men take over the tower. John is barefoot and armed with one pistol. Alone, he takes the crooks out floor by floor, helped by a patrolman on the radio, Al Powell. The cops outside don't help, and the FBI makes it worse. In the end John faces Hans, and his catchphrase, "Yippee-ki-yay", becomes the series' signature.

Two years later, John waits for Holly at Dulles Airport in Washington. A group of renegade soldiers seizes the control tower to free a dictator. John stumbles onto the plan, nobody believes him, and Holly's plane is running out of fuel in the air. He fights in the snow and ends up on a burning runway. Another ruined Christmas.

In New York, John is hungover and on suspension when Simon phones the police with a game. The lieutenant must obey or another bomb goes off. He teams up with Zeus Carver, a Harlem shop owner, and the two solve riddles across the city. John finds out Simon is Hans Gruber's brother. The man John killed in Los Angeles had a brother, and he wants revenge.

In 2007 John is a New York detective, estranged from his daughter Lucy. He's told to bring hacker Matt Farrell to Washington and lands in the middle of Thomas Gabriel's "fire sale" attack. John knows little about computers but plenty about people. The unlikely pair dodge helicopters, trucks and even a fighter jet. Gabriel wounds him in the shoulder, and John uses the wound itself to turn the tables.

John flies to Russia after learning his son, Jack, has been arrested. He still tries to be a dad, but Jack, a CIA agent, wants him out of the way. The two cross Moscow and Pripyat chasing a file and a nuclear secret. In the end John realizes his son isn't the kid he left behind. Father and son reconcile, and fly home together.

Bruce Willis plays John McClane in all five films. The line "Yippee-ki-yay" comes from cowboy lingo.