Dwayne Johnson’s heavily derided new Christmas movie Red includes several tributes to classic holiday films and a subtle Easter egg to Bruce Willis’s 1988 Die hard.

Rednow in theaters, is about a kidnapped Santa Claus (JK Simmons), whose top agent (Johnson) must team up with a skilled tracker (Chris Evans) to find him and save Christmas.

While the tone couldn’t be more different from Willis’ action thriller about a New York City police officer who becomes involved in a terrorist attack on Christmas Eve, Red manages to recreate a popular scene from the first film of the Die Hard franchise.

At the end of the film, a montage shows Simmons’ Santa army crawling through air vents to hand out gifts to homes. This moment seems to be a reference to one of Die hard‘s most memorable scenes see Willis’ John McClane forced to crawl through the vents of Nakotami Plaza to escape Alexander Godunov’s East German terrorist, Karl Vreski.

As he makes his way through the tunnel, John pops open a lighter and says the iconic line, “Come to the coast, have a few laughs.”

The tribute likely stems from Johnson and director Jake Kasdan’s love for Die hard. Kasdan called recently Die hard a ‘great’ film that ‘stands up any time of the year’.

Johnson’s 2018 film Skyscrapermeanwhile, was also inspired by Willis’ eighties thriller.

“I wanted to make a film that paid tribute and respect to the classic action films that inspired me and entire generations – Die hard Unpleasant Towering hell Unpleasant The fugitive,” Johnson shared Cinema mix at the time.

The Moana actor also co-starred with Willis in 2013 GI Joe: Retaliation. At a British press conference for the action sci-fi, Johnson praised Willis, calling him “the ultimate man’s man…Bruce and I have been friends for a long time.”

Willis, 69, has since retired from acting in 2022 after being diagnosed with aphasia – a brain condition that affects a person’s cognitive skills. The following year, his family announced that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia FTD.

“We now have a more specific diagnosis: frontotemporal dementia (known as FTD),” his family said in a statement in 2023. “Unfortunately, communication difficulties are just one symptom of the disease Bruce faces. Although this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis.”

In October, The fabric star Demi Moore, who was married to Willis from 1987 to 2000, said he was in a “stable place” amid his battle with dementia.

“You know, I’ve said this before. The disease is what the disease is. And I think you have to have a deep acceptance of what that is,” Moore said during a discussion at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2024. “But where he is now, he is stable.”

Moore and Willis have three children: Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 30. In 2009, the Sixth sense actor later remarried Emma Heming Willis, with whom he shares two daughters: Mabel, 12, and Evelyn, 10.