I watched Die Hard with my family the other night. It's been ten years since I last saw it. Of course there's a famous scene early in the film where McClane kills one of Gruber's goons, then writes on his shirt, "Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho!" I could have SWORN there was an iconic callback to this scene later in the movie, when Gruber steals McClane's gun and disappears into a nearby elevator. Just as the doors close, Gruber says, "Now *I* have a machine gun! Ho, ho, ho!" with a delivery that brought down the house at my last theatrical screening in 2014.
I spent the whole film waiting for this moment, my favorite moment in the film. And it never happened. Thinking maybe I had somehow zoned out and missed it, I googled the scene after the movie and ... I seem to have made it up? Imagined the entire sequence? It's a very surreal feeling, like learning that Robert Mitchum never sings "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" in The Night of the Hunter. Thinking back on it, I suppose if Gruber had stolen a machine gun, he would have simply shot McClane and the film would've been over.