Ready Player One has been highly anticipated for the last several months now – it seems
like audiences may FINALLY be getting a video game movie – sort of – that is ACTUALLY
WELL DONE.
Directed by Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg, Ready Player One is STACKED with cultural
references and Easter Eggs, which is pretty great, considering our protagonist Wade’s
goal is to find the Easter Egg hidden by the creator of this virtual world, called Oasis.
So to get you hyped about the film, we’re counting down our top 10 Easter Eggs You Missed
in Ready Player One.
And of course, as with all of our easter egg videos, there’s some spoilers in here, so
you’ve been warned.
10 Back to the Future The iconic car from the Back to the Future
franchise, the DeLorean has made many an appearances throughout pop culture as a reference to the
famous sci fi film.
In Ready Player One, you can spot Parzival (par-ze-vall) driving one, with his name on
the car’s license plate.
The character also gets his hands on an artifact called the Zemeckis Cube, which looks like
a regular Rubik’s Cube but can turn back time.
Its name is a reference to Back to the Future director, Robert Zemeckis.
9 Star Trek When Oasis creator James Halliday dies, he
spawns the adventure that Wade – and many others – set out on – the search for the
Easter Egg that will award them half a trillion dollars and control over Oasis itself.
But his death is significant for another reason, too.
At his funeral, the film makes a big Star Trek reference - his ceremony being similar
to Spock’s funeral from Wrath of Khan.
8 Simon In 1978, a game called Simon was release.
Riffing off of the idea of ‘simon says’, it was a physical memory electronic game that
had four different colour panels.
A player would touch them in any order of their desire, and the other players playing
the game would have to mimic the order they touched the panels in.
It was initially based off of an Atari arcade game.
And it makes an appearance in Ready Player One.
You can notice it as an item in Halliday’s possession.
The character also has a Simon badge on his lapel later on.
7 Final Battle During the final battle of the film, there’s
a whole lot of video game characters who make an appearance as player avatars.
This includes the likes Link, Zelda, Ganondorf from the Legend of Zelda, A Big Daddy from
BioShock, MegaMan, Bayonetta, Smus Aran of Metroid (who also appears at the Distracted
Globe nightclub), the Iron Giant, Kratos from God of War, Ellen Ripley and a Xenomorph from
the Alien movies, and Hellboy, to name a few.
6 Joust From recent games to arcade classics, Ready
Player One has its fair share of old school video game references, including the likes
of 1982 Williams Electronics game Joust.
You play as a yellow knight riding a flying ostrich, colliding your jousting lance with
your enemies.
The game is mentioned in passing by some IOI nerds, and is a reference the use of Joust
in the book – avatars in OASIS have to play the game in order to win the copper key.
5 Getting Spooky Early on when news of Ready Player One hitting
the big screen came out, one of the earliest Easter eggs revealed was Freddy Krueger’s
came.
Turns out he’s not the only horror icon to be making an appearance.
Jason, Chucky and even Christine, the evil car from Stephen King’s novel of the same
name (and the 1988 film adaptation) pop up, with the latter appearing during the race
for the first key.
4 Screenwriter Shout Out During that same race, there’s a cinema
that appears in the background.
The name listed on the front of it is Jack Slater.
If you’re familiar with the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Last Action Hero, that name likely rings
a bell; it was the name of Arnold’s character.
But the reference goes deeper than just that.
The writer of Last Action Hero, Zak Penn, was also the screenwriter who adapted Ready
Player One alongside the book’s author, Ernest Cline.
Last Action Hero was the first theatrical writing credit Penn ever received.
What makes this Easter Egg extra awesome is that Penn didn’t even know the reference
was in there until he saw the film at its first screening.
3 The Iron Giant As we mentioned in an earlier number, the
Iron Giant makes an appearance in the film.
But the way that he goes down is a reference to another movie – T2, the second Terminator
film.
The Iron Giant falls down into lava, and gives a thumbs up, referencing the final iconic
scene of the film.
2 The Shining Stanley Kubrick’s iconic adaptation of Stephen
King’s book is considered by many to be a cinematic masterpiece.
Looks like Spielberg feels the same way, but more on that in a sec.
In one sequence, the film makes reference to The Shining’s Overlook hotel – the
characters enter a theatre with the name Overlook, and once they’re inside, the setting looks
identical to the interior of the Overlook hotel.
For the duration of the sequence the film is jampacked with more references to the film,
including the elevator scene, the horrifying twins and Room 237, with the naked lady in
the bath and Jack’s axe protruding through the door.
Spielberg was friends with Kubrick when the latter was still alive, and while this sequence
never appears in the book, this tribute is definitely a beautiful addition.
1 Jurassic Park Despite Spielberg saying that he wouldn’t
put any easter eggs to his own films in Ready Player One, GUESS WHAT MAKES AN APPEARANCE?
Hell yes T-Rex.
One of Spielberg’s most iconic films is Jurassic Park, and we get a T-Rex chase scene
early on in the movie that felt like a brand new take on the memorable scene from the first
Jurassic movie.
There’s also a few other Spielberg easter eggs sprinkled into the mix, which were actually
added by his crew behind his back - this includes Gremlins graffiti (he was the exec producer
on it) and an appearance of the book that inspired Spielberg to make Schindler’s List.
There we have it friends!
While it isn’t a totally comprehensive list of Easter Eggs – THERE’S A LOT IN THIS
FILM – we do hope you enjoyed the ones we mentioned!
Let us know in those comments below what your favourite easter egg from the film is!
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Catch you all in the next one.