Ready Player One is a story that uses pop culture as a major part of its plot. For that reason, it's not surprising that even a single image from the film in full of easter eggs. The first shot of the upcoming Steven Spielberg movie has been released and while it focuses on star Tye Sheridan wearing his OASIS rig, it's the little touches around him that have caught our eye. Several hints as to the movie itself, as well as 1980s pop culture are visible everywhere.
The image comes courtesy of Entertainment Weekly and shows the "real world" version of Tye Sheridan's Wade Watts, the main character of Ready Player One. In the story, the real world isn't the greatest place to live, which leads most people to spend as much time as possible in the OASIS, a virtual world that started out as a video game and slowly subsumed the entire internet. The shot shows Wade in his "Fortress of Solitude," an old van in a junkyard which he has repurposed for his own needs.
On the left-hand wall of the trailer, we see several magazine covers and newspaper articles which are important to the story. There are references to Gregarious Games, the company which developed the OASIS, and James Halliday, the man behind the game, who will be played by Mark Rylance in the movie. The papers are actually a basic timeline of the events that take place prior to where the book picks up.
However, the real easter eggs that we expect to see a lot of in Ready Player One are references to 80s pop culture. The character of James Halliday was obsessed with it, and that passion made its way into the OASIS, and as people became more involved in it, they too started to love the 80s. On the right-hand wall of the van, you'll see a number of stickers stuck to it. One of these is a Garfield the cat sticker, but the really geeky ones are the Garbage Pail Kids. Those of us who were kids in the 80s surely got involved in that fad at least a little bit.
You'll also see an old school metal lunchbox not far from that wall. In the novel, Wade keeps his OASIS VR gear, in a Star Trek lunchbox. This one is actually from the old He-Man animated series, but the idea remains the same. We know that there will be at least a few changes to which parts of pop culture actually get referenced in the film as compared to the movie. Steven Spielberg has already said that any references to his own work in the original book won't make it into the movie. There's also a good chance that they won't be able to get all of the rights they need and may have to replace a few things here and there.
Ready Player One is likely to have more easter eggs than we can count when it comes out early next year. Hopefully, we'll get more than a single image to check out at some point during San Diego Comic-Con next week. If you find any other easter eggs we don't see, let us know in the comments below.
