Trivia

Brandon Lee was a self-confessed Jackie Chan fan, who in turn was a fan of Lee's father Bruce Lee. Brandon pays homage to Chan by incorporating key moves from Police Story (1985) and Dragons Forever (1988) in the final fight scenes.

Brandon Lee stated in an US Magazine interview shortly after filming completed, that he had filmed a scene where he had to kick open a large oak door. He stated "we filmed this scene where I had to nail this huge oak door, so I go to do the scene and I broke one of my toes. My foot swelled up to the size of a watermelon and we had to end filming for the day." Adding insult to injury, he said, the scene was never included in the film.

Brandon Lee originally wanted Hong Kong director John Woo to direct the film. however, the studio wanted a martial arts film rather than the type of films that Woo made. The director role then went to Dwight H. Little. However there are stylish homages in & out to The Killer (1989), A Better Tomorrow (1986), and Hard Boiled (1992), as well as Legacy of Rage (1986), Lee's only film made in Hong Kong directed by Ronny Yu.

After delivering Fox a hit with Marked for Death (1990), director Dwight H. Little was the prime candidate to helm the picture.

Soon after the film came out, there were discussions about possible sequel. While Brandon Lee was working on The Crow (1994) in early 1993, 20th Century Fox were planning on casting him as lead in the action thriller based on the new hot spec script they bought, Simon Says by Jonathan Hensleigh, which was about police detective who is forced by mad bomber to run around the city and find the bombs which he planted in various locations, and only help detective has is the shop owner who got involved by accident.

There were plans for the story to be re-worked into Rapid Fire sequel instead, and around the same time the screenwriter of original film Alan B. McElroy was working on possible other ideas for sequel, but following Lee's death during filming of The Crow those plans were canceled, and months later Simon Says script was changed and used for Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), but only about first half of it, and new main plot involving robbery of Federal Reserve Bank was added while lot of the darker and bloodier parts of it were toned down or removed from the final script for the film.

Joel Silver also tried to buy the Simon Says script to have it re-written into fourth Lethal Weapon film while different scripts for that film were being developed between 1993 and 1997, which is why it's often thought that Die Hard with a Vengeance was originally going to be fourth Lethal Weapon film, which was never the case.