Gary Oldman's "EVERYONE!!" scream in Léon: The Professional is so iconic people yell it at him in the street. Turns out it started as a joke between him and Luc Besson. He explains: “What's strange is that it's become this sort of iconic line, and it was all done as a joke. And that was the thing, I played the scene…. And I had a relationship with Luc. Luc Besson was kind of mad in a way — I mean, we were shooting on film. He would say to me, "OK, do the scene again, but now do it as Robert De Niro." Or do it as... And he would shoot it for kicks, and his archive. So we had a fun kind of relationship… I said to Luke, "I just want to do one more, let me do one more." And I went to the sound guy and I said, "I'm going to be really loud, so be careful." And said “bring me everyone" — you know, EVERYONE like that. I just did it as a joke to make Luc laugh. I was a little shocked when I saw it in the film, yeah. It was just me fooling around — with intensity, with feeling — and yet it's become this line now.”

The iconic moment in Hard Boiled, when Chow Yun-fat slides down the banister dual-wielding pistols, was completely improvised on set. John Woo said he shot his action scenes without a script. When it came to shootouts, he “never had a specific idea or a story for a scene.” Instead, he would walk around the location and put himself in Chow Yun-fat’s position, acting out the scene: “If I am the hero, if I am in the same kind of situation, what will I do?” That’s how the staircase shootout came together. Woo imagined the character trapped on the second floor, under fire, and asked himself what he would do next. Then he saw the banister. “So I got to run down the second floor. But at the same time, I was stuck by a bunch of people. So, what should I do? Oh, and then I will figure out I can slide down by the banister, and slide and shoot at the same time to get those bad guys.” Quotes come from the commentary track on the Hard Boiled DVD.