When Warner Bros. announced Steven Spielberg would direct the film adaptation of Ready Player One — Ernest Cline's 2011 book overflowing with pop-culture references — fans immediately wondered if he would reference his own work. After all, the book does, and often. But Spielberg quickly answered such questions early on in the production process, claiming he would leave references to his films out of the movie.

Finally, just shy of the film's March 29 release date, Spielberg admitted that viewers would get to see a single reference to a movie of his. Now that the film has hit theaters, however, audiences are realizing there's actually more than one reference. Either Spielberg was being coy, or he didn't want to give away the surprise. Of course, the film's first trailer made it apparent Spielberg was willing to negotiate somewhat on film's he produced rather than directed. After all, the DeLorean from Back to the Future, a film directed by Robert Zemeckis and executive produced by Spielberg, makes a prominent appearance in the initial teaser.

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Production designer Adam Stockhausen has also discussed how he attempted to insert props and scenery hailing from Spielberg's oeuvre. He tried to sneak in some Gremlins graffiti art on a wall, and a copy of Schindler's Ark (the book that inspired Schindler's List) in Wade Watt's trailer home. He even attempted to include a Fratelli's Diner in the film's car race scene, a reference to The Goonies, another film Spielberg produced and based on the story he wrote. Other than the book, which would be hard to spot in the film, Spielberg nixed the additions.

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Spielberg admits that once the film moved on to the digital post-production part of the filmmaking process, reigning in the CG artists was difficult. Which makes sense considering a majority of the film takes place within the story's digital world of the OASIS. The film's finale is a large-scale battle between the villainous army of Sixers from IOI (Innovative Online Industries) and the users of the OASIS, fighting to retain their digital freedoms. Because OASIS users can choose any avatar they desire to represent them in the virtual world, the battle is populated with more pop-culture characters than can be visually absorbed in any single screening.

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“I think a lot of the digital artists were trying to get some of their favorite ’80s cultural references in there, you know," Spielberg said. "And having seen every shot 30 times as we go through all the different steps from pre-viz to animatic to final, I started noticing little things. They snuck a Gremlin in.” The director didn't catch the Gremlin in the battle scene until it was too late to cut, so it got to stay in the film, though, anyone who sees the film will find it challenging to spot considering the enormity of the battle and the sheer amount of characters onscreen.

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Now that the film has released, however, viewers report Spielberg had us all fooled. Whether his crew talked him into it, the digital effects artists convinced him, or he'd secretly been planning it all along, Spielberg makes one very obvious and colossal allusion to a film he directed.

In an early scene of Ready Player One, the main character Wade enters the OASIS as his avatar Parzival and participates in a car race, the first challenge in the five-year-long Easter egg hunt he and other Gunters (egg hunters) have engaged in. The winner of the car race wins a bronze key and a clue toward getting the second key. The car race involves a risky Hot Wheels-style course and multiple huge obstacles doing their best to destroy the vehicles. One such obstacle, seen in the trailer, is King Kong, who grabs at the cars and destroys the road making it hard for gunters to reach the finish line.

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But if there is going to be a monster-sized animal chasing tiny humans (avatars), Spielberg pretty much left himself no choice but to include the one he made most famous: The T-rex from Jurassic Park. Parzival and the other gunters swerve out of the way of the massive dino, who is raised onto the street from a platform resembling the one the sacrificial goat rose up on in the film as the T-rex's supper. It's a brief but well-placed nod to Spielberg's biggest worldwide-grossing film, and only one of many examples of the movie expanding beyond the book's '80s pop culture focus to appeal to a broader demographic.


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.