WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, in theaters now.


Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One is bursting at the seams with nods to popular culture, both retro and current. The plethora of references draw from three primary sources -- movies, videos games and, of course, comic books -- and serve a critical role in the movie, which largely takes place inside the OASIS, the vast, digital playground of computer engineer-turned-reluctant digital god James Halliday.

The OASIS is under siege when the film opens. Halliday is long dead, but his last act was to create a contest: Anyone who finds three Easter eggs (in the form of keys) hidden throughout the OASIS becomes its new owner. That leads to teams of Easter egg hunters, called gunters, picking over every second of Halliday’s life, scrutinizing every piece of media he ever enjoyed in hopes of gleaning a clue.

Comic books were integral to Halliday’s formative years, so it is no surprise references to them are everywhere. Here's a rundown of the most overt references to comics in Ready Player One.

Batman

One of the earliest pop-culture nuggets in Ready Player One features the Dark Knight himself. The moment comes when the film’s protagonist, Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), describes for the audience exactly what players can do in the OASIS -- which is pretty much anything, it turns out.

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One of Wade’s examples is that you could even scale the side of a treacherous mountain in the dead of winter … with Batman. The Caped Crusader in question looks to have come from Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman, starring Michael Keaton. The reference is just the first of many nods to the heroes and villains of DC Comics’ expansive roster.

Kaneda’s Bike

Although James Halliday is dead and gone, he did leave behind clues about how to solve his elaborate contest. One of those hints comes in the form a massive race designed to confound, but anyone who gets to the finish line acquires the first of three keys needed to take control of the OASIS.

Gunters and Sixers (employees of the evil IOI corporation run by the film’s antagonist, Nolan Sorrento) run the race daily, with Art3mis riding her red bike, taken from the pages of Katsuhiro Otomo’s seminal manga and anime Akira. The bike belongs to Kaneda, the story's protagonist, and is maybe one of the most iconic motorbikes in comic book history.

1966 Batmobile

Not everyone brings such a lithe and versatile vehicle to the race, however. At one point during the twisting, turning, treacherous course (which includes dangers like wrecking balls and the T-rex from Jurassic Park), one racer is shown trying to maintain control of a 1966 Batmobile. Sadly, it doesn’t work, and the classic car is blown to bits.

Superman

Gunters are infatuated with Halliday; they have to be, if they want to win the contest. Most have memorized seemingly trivial details about the man’s life in the hopes that their obsession will bear fruit and lead them to a key. Wade, who goes by the name Parzival in the OASIS, displays his Halliday knowledge for Art3mis after the race, recounting Halliday’s favorite quote of all time.

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It's from 1978's Superman, and is delivered by Lex Luthor, played by Gene Hackman: “Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story; others can read the ingredients on a chewing-gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.”

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Clark Kent’s Glasses

ready player one superman tribute

With the first key acquired, Wade gains a new level of celebrity status. But with that comes hordes of onlookers who want a glimpse of the first person to make a dent in Halliday’s challenge.

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{laying the role of the concerned friend, Art3mis convinces Wade he needs to disguise his identity. What better way to do that than with Clark Kent’s glasses? If it works for Superman, then it must be good enough for Parzival.

Joker & Harley Quinn

Wade’s quest to find the second key takes him to one of the first places ever built in the OASIS, a nightclub called The Distracted Globe. A three-way shootout erupts between IOI’s Sixers, the mercenary i-R0k, and Wade and Art3mis, but not before the audience gets a good look at all the avatars in the club.

Two of those will no doubt be familiar to comics fans, as it's easy to see both the Joker and Harley Quinn in the crowd. Harley gets more screen time, as she and her posse are told to vamoose when i-R0k commandeers their private booth.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The final showdown between Wade’s crew and IOI’s goons sees the whole of the OASIS pitted against the sinister company’s henchmen. Plenty of comic book-inspired avatars are present in the mix, including the latest cinematic renditions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

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It is nice to see the turtles in action, but, if we are being to so open with our nostalgia, would it have been so hard to include the weird, rubbery suit version of the gang from 1990's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ah, to dream …

Spawn and Batgirl

It's not only the Turtles showing up to party, though -- there are plenty of other comic book characters in the mix. There's no telling just how many are present at the final battle (that will take a home release and a lot of scene-by-scene scrutiny), but the camera does linger on both Spawn and Batgirl, an unlikely duo who almost certainly took down their fair share of Sixers.

Hopefully this brief scene is the kickoff for the weirdest buddy-cop movie ever made.

Madballs

What the heck was that thing Art3mis threw into the eye of Mechagodzilla, vanquishing Nolan Sorrento’s avatar as the film drew to a close? That, my likely young friend, was a Madball. First released in the mid-1980s, Madballs were bouncy balls with a variety of strange faces that, when squeezed, deformed in gross-but-hilarious ways.

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OK, fine. Madballs are not explicitly from the realm of comic books, but did you know the squishy, weird-faced little balls had their own line of comics? That's right: Marvel imprint Star Comics released 10 issues of Madballs between 1986 and 1987. The comic’s main villain was named Dr. Frankenbeans, if that tells you anything.


In theaters now, Ready Player One is produced and directed by Steven Spielberg from a script by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline. The film stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Win Morisaki, Lena Waithe, Hannah John-Kamen, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Ben Mendelsohn, TJ Miller and Ralph Ineson.