THE ULTIMATE READY PLAYER ONE EASTER EGG COMPILATION

It became the sensation of the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con; the daring and dazzling mosaic of iconic 80s and 90s properties in Warner Bros 123-second trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One the stuff of comic geek fantasy and nostalgist dream. The Greatest Living Director’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s VR tech-epic doesn’t drop until March 30 2018, but the challenge to spot all the ‘easter egg’ nuggets of pop culture gold became the convention’s favourite past time. So here they all are…

“I live here, in Columbus Ohio”
Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) navigates ‘The Stacks’ (trailer homes piled on top of each other) on his way to his VR den, home to such pop culture touchstones as a Nintendo ‘Zapper’, iPod, Commodore 64 joystick and He-Man lunchbox, as well as iconic 80s ephemera from The Garbage Pail Kids, Gremlins, Watchmen, Q-Bert and Tim Burton’s Batman;

“It’s the only place I feel like I mean anything.”
When Watts (as his virtual avatar Parzival) enters the VR universe known as Oasis, characters adopted by the global online population are gathered. He is greeted by Harley Quinn and Deadshot (pictured, above); in the crowded room, Hagar the Horrible and Conan the Barbarian can be seen. To the strains of a reworked version of ‘Pure Imagination’ from Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory (a nod to the narrative similarities between Cline’s book and Raold Dahl’s family classic), Gandalf dances high above the din;

“A world where the limits of reality are your own imagination.”
The Iron Giant (pictured, above) from Brad Bird’s 1999 animated classic plays a major role in helping Parzival and his egg-hunter offsiders Daito and Shoto hunt for the virtual prize that will give them control of the Oasis. The brown structure to the right of frame is The Temple of Syrinx, a reference to the 1976 album 2112 by Canadian band, Rush, the epic track forming the basis for one player’s quest in the novel. The soft-metal group’s discography is a source of inspiration for OASIS creator, the late James Halliday (played by Mark Rylance);

In his guise as ‘Napoleon’, Parzival rides a mecha-scorpion (perhaps a reference to a similar creature in the vid-game, Ultrabots) while fighting a battalion of warrior ostriches, lifted from the 1982 Atari arcade classic, Joust (pictured, above);

Wade’s best friend Aech (Lena Waithe), reimagined in Spielberg’s film as a Rings-like Orc warrior, comes under fire from Duke Nuk’em as he lays waste to Mortal Kombat’s Kitana and Nightmare on Elm Street’s villain Freddy Krueger (whose demise frees up an inventory of weapons from the game Borderland, including Sledge’s Shotgun and Krieg’s Buzz Axe). Aech’s weapon of choice is the MA5 assault rifle from Halo;

“A modern day warrior / Mean, mean stride / Today’s Tom Sawyer / Mean, mean pride”
Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ pulsates as we are introduced to a VR army of ‘Sixers’ (so named because their avatar numbers begin with 6, visible on the uniforms and car roofs). Gathered for a mammoth road race are the 1966 Batmobile, Mad Max’s modified Ford Falcon Interceptor, the Red F1 car from the Pole Position vidgame (the blue car is glimpsed later); right of frame, Lara Croft leans on the 1958 Plymouth Fury from Stephen King’s Christine, talking to Dizzy Wallin from Gears of War in front of the van from The A-Team (also in the mix is Ryu, the key protagonist from the Streetfighter franchise);

Legendary offroader Bigfoot, the first of the great monster cars since it debuted in 1979, lays to waste some sixer vehicles, including one with a QR code on its bonnet that, when scanned, leads to http://www.jointhequest.io, the Innovative Online Industries recruitment site;

“No, his mind is not for rent / To any God or government”
As the road carnage unfolds on what is revealed to be a Hot Wheels track writ large, Kaneda’s light-cycle from the anime classic Akira emerges, driven by Parzival’s online ally Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and adorned with stickers for Hello Kitty, Atari, SEGA and Taito (original manufacturers of Space Invaders).

The ‘Parzival’ number plate confirms our hero is driving Doc Brown’s time machine from Back to The Future, which appears to have been modified with the in-car AI known as K.I.T.T, from Knight Rider. Inside the Delorean, the dashboard reads ‘Feb 11 1945’ – the day Wade/Parzival finds the copper key in the novel – as well as key dates from the B.T.T.F. trilogy;

The final and ultimate ‘easter egg’ is the Ready Player One logo itself. It is a maze, with the goal being an egg inside the ‘O’ of the word ‘One’. A masterful piece of marketing, the design reflects the essence of Cline’s plot and Spielberg’s adaptation.

Screen-Space acknowledges The Nerdist, Geekritique, VR Scout and Collider as sources in compiling this article.