It’s not uncommon for actors to make special requests for their characters. Even Cage wanted a real bat on the set of “Vampire’s Kiss,” but settled for eating real cockroaches when they couldn’t make that happen. As it turns out, however, Cusack had a doable, yet odd inquiry in mind.

In Empire’s celebratory retrospective for “Con Air,” screenwriter Scott Rosenberg talks about how Cusack jumped on board not because of the script itself, but because of what starring in a bombastic summer blockbuster could do for his career. He had one unique request in mind, which involved his footwear:

“He was like, ‘I wanna create the very first action hero who wears Birkenstocks. Charlton Heston wore sandals and he kicked ass. I wanna do the same.’ Thus, Larkin wears sandals.”

There’s so much anarchy going on in “Con Air” that I seemed to have missed that little detail. I’ll give it to Cusack. I genuinely can’t recall the last action star whose prime footwear was Birkenstocks, let alone with crew socks on. Of course, you have outliers like Bruce Willis having no footwear in “Die Hard” and Bryce Dallas Howard wearing heels in “Jurassic World.”

“Con Air” is currently available to rent and buy on multiple VOD streaming platforms.