Catchphrase
Throughout the films, John McClane delivers his catchphrase "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" usually when he is about to or has just defeated the main antagonists.
McClane adopts the phrase in the first film, Die Hard, when the main antagonist, Hans Gruber, says "Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?" to which McClane replies, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker". At the end of the film, before his death at the hands of McClane, Gruber echoes the phrase in response to McClane saying "You made a pretty good cowboy yourself, Hans".
McClane repeats the phrase in the two following films. At the end of Die Hard 2, he delivers it before lighting a trail of fuel to destroy the airplane that the antagonists are in, and at the end of Die Hard with a Vengeance, he says it in a low voice after shooting down the helicopter which the main antagonist, Simon Peter Gruber, is flying.
In the fourth film, Live Free or Die Hard, when the main antagonist, Thomas Gabriel, is holding McClane captive with a gun to his shoulder, he says "Your tombstone should read 'always in the wrong place in the wrong time'", to which McClane replies, "How about 'yippee-ki-yay, motherfu****'?" (the last two syllables are drowned out in the gun shot since there was a significant absence of use of the word "fuck" in the film, the only film in the series to receive a PG-13 rating) before pulling the trigger, shooting himself in the shoulder and Gabriel in the heart in the process. In the unrated version, the "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" line was left uncensored before McClane shot and killed Gabriel through his shoulder.
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