When Ernest Cline's novel Ready Player One came out in 2011, it was quickly dubbed the
"holy grail of pop culture" thanks to the truck loads of pop culture references and
Easter eggs stuffed inside its pages.
The entire story is one big search for a literal egg, so that should tell you something.
True to its roots, Steven Spielberg's film is also a basketful.
Ready Player One is so full of pop culture references that you'd be hard pressed to spot
them all with ten viewings, let alone just one.
Here are all the Easter eggs we found in Ready Player One.
Spoilers ahead, even if you've read the book.
Tomb of Horrors
The Ready Player One book made a big deal out of Dungeons & Dragons imagery.
When Halliday tells the world about his Easter egg challenge, he does so by mimicking the
cover of an old Advanced D&D Dungeon Master's guidebook.
Other references come into play here and there in the book's storyline, but the movie decided
to jettison most of them.
That said, there is still one very visual Dungeons & Dragons reference in the movie.
In the later stages of the film, Wade meets up with his OASIS buds in real life and spends
the rest of the time in Aech's converted mail van.
On the back of the van is an image of a demon figure with two horns.
D&D fans may have recognized it as a devil's head seen in a module called "Tomb of Horrors."
Femme fatales
Calling out every single character cameo in Ready Player One is an almost impossible task,
but we do have to give a shout out to the ladies on the screen.
In the moments leading up to the massive battle outside Castle Anorak you can see several
leading ladies charging into the fray.
Chun-Li from Street Fighter can be seen running right beside Tracer from Overwatch, and behind
them you can just make out Lara Croft from Tomb Raider.
Other heroine appearances include Ellen Ripley from Aliens as well as Samus from the Metroid
series, who shows up as one of the dancers in The Distracted Globe.
Even Zelda shows up during the final battle, fighting right alongside Link and Ganondorf.
Serenity
The cult series Firefly enjoyed a second life through the movie Serenity, and now Ready
Player One marks the second film appearance of the series' iconic ship, Serenity — or,
at least some kind of Firefly class spaceship.
It first appears outside The Distracted Globe, the dance club planet where Wade and Artemis
meet up.
The second appearance of Serenity comes closer to the end of the film, when it soars out
over the battle and then Daito leaps from its loading bay to join the war on Planet
Doom.
We still would have liked to see Captain Mal, but we'll take what we can get.
Star tributes
Spielberg apparently spent years getting the rights to use Star Wars characters in Ready
Player One, and after all that work, references to the sci-fi juggernaut are still incredibly
hard to spot.
"So if you look very carefully you'll see an R2-D2 somewhere, you'll see an X-wing somewhere."
But while Star Wars got a few character nods, Star Trek got an entire scene recreation.
Well… more or less.
The scene in question appears when Halliday's death is first announced and he releases his
Easter egg video to the world.
At the very beginning of that video, he's seen lying in a coffin reminiscent of Spock's
coffin in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The Starfleet insignia is even visible as a flower wreath during the scene.
Sneaking it past Spielberg
Despite all the references to Spielberg's films in the book, the director was keen to
leave those out of the Ready Player One movie because he didn't want the whole thing to
become "too self-referential."
Aside from some Back to the Future gags and the T-rex, there are no Spielberg-sanctioned
Spielberg Easter eggs in the movie.
But that didn't stop the production team — they just had to get even more creative.
For example, somewhere in with all those characters in the final OASIS battle, supposedly there's
one little Gremlin fighting in the mix.
"I didn't even notice the Gremlin until the couple of times I had been working on the
effects shots, you know."
"After about four times seeing the same shot, I said, 'Who snuck a Gremlin in this thing?'"
Zemeckis cube
Spielberg may have clamped down on references to many of his films, but Back to the Future
sure got a lot of love in Ready Player One.
The DeLorean that Wade drives in the OASIS is the most obvious example, and there was
this line:
"I'll wave to you from the finish line, McFly."
But there were several more obscure Easter eggs from the franchise hidden throughout
the film.
Inside Aech's OASIS workshop, eagle-eyed viewers can spot a hoverboard from Back to the Future
2.
But the best one has to go to the Zemeckis Cube, the magical artifact Wade buys in the
mall after finding the first key.
The name, of course, is a reference to Robert Zemeckis — who directed all three Back to
the Future films — but this Easter egg went another layer deeper when it turned out that
the Zemeckis Cube had the power to turn back time.
Jack Slater III
According to a theater marquee the cars pass in the big race scene at the beginning of
the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger is starring in in a movie called Jack Slater III.
If that name sounds vaguely familiar, there's a reason for it.
In the 1993 movie Last Action Hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Jack Slater, a character
in a cheesy action film franchise that exists only within that movie.
"You think you're funny, don't you?"
"I know I am, I'm the famous comedian, Arnold Groundschweiger!"
"Schwarzenegger!"
"Gesundheit."
The movie playing at the beginning of The Last Action Hero is — you guessed it — Jack
Slater III.
Meltdown
The Iron Giant was a fantastic addition to Ready Player One.
His appearance alone isn't an Easter egg, obviously, but he did get one good Easter
egg in.
After helping the crew reach Castle Anorak, Aech and her Iron Giant fall down and sink
into a pool of lava…but just before the metal man is gone for good, he gives them
all a thumbs up.
It's a recreation of the scene in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, where Arnie's T-800 shoots
John and Sarah Connor a thumbs up as he sinks into a vat of molten metal.
Madballs
If you spent any amount of time alive in the '80s, you probably had a Madball.
"Madbaaaalls!"
If you missed them the first time around, Madballs were these rubber balls with monster
faces.
That was about it.
So don't worry — you didn't miss out on much.
During one scene Artemis grabbed a living Madball and used it as a grenade, but the
things were all over the rest of the movie, too.
There's a detailed Madball painted on one of the trailers in the Stacks, and this behind-the-scenes
article from Entertainment Weekly shows another one painted on the walls of Artemis' rebellion
headquarters.
Weapon cameos
Madballs weren't the only weird weapons in Ready Player One.
One of the items that Wade picks up in the OASIS mall is the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch,
which you may recognize from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
He later uses the Holy Hand Grenade during the battle, although he doesn't even count
to three before throwing it.
"One, two, five…"
"Three, sir!"
"Three!"
There were plenty of other weapon cameos as well.
For an instant, you can see a Star Trek Bat'leth in one scene.
And in the ending battle, Wade whips out a Halo rocket launcher, which he fires at the
Sixer army from his speeding DeLorean.
Deadite party
Army of Darkness's Deadites are everywhere in the battle scenes of Ready Player One.
In the same scene with Chun-Li and Tracer, you can spot a handful of them.
This clip of Halo Spartans charging into battle?
Yup, Deadites there, too.
Granted, they're probably an easy model to use for filling out those massive battle shots.
Just repeat some sword-wielding skeletons a few dozen times, and you have yourself an
army.
But in the movie universe, you have to wonder why there would be so many Deadites.
Remember, each of those characters is ostensibly a real person who chose that form to play
in the OASIS.
The only explanation is that people in the future really love Ash and the Evil Dead.
And can you blame them?
"Groovy…"
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