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


Director Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One has transformed audiences into die-hard Gunters overnight as they scour the film for every pop-culture Easter egg. It's a search that will undoubtedly continue, frame by frame, with the eventual digital and Blu-ray release. But even now, eagle-eyed viewers might spot a nod to the greatest samurai actor of all time, Toshiro Mifune, hiding in plain sight.

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Warner Bros. release a list of 33 licensors just before the film's theatrical debut, leading to an analysis of each property Spielberg was granted permission to use. Some of the entries indicate which character or vehicle is included; a couple of the companies have only one major property, so guessing what they contributed isn't difficult. However, a number of them require further investigation.

ready player one Toshiro Mifune

The Estate of Toshiro Mifune and Mifune Productions are among the entities, which points to the legendary actor who starred in 16 of Akira Kurosawa’s most influential films, including Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Rashomon, Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo and its sequel Sanjuro. While he possessed the range to play anything from a physician to a Yakuza gangster to a Mexican peasant, he was best known for his samurai roles. Outside of his work with Kurosawa, Mifune is also remembered for his performance opposite Richard Chamberlain in the Shōgun television miniseries, and for his portrayal of Niiro Tsurichiyo in Kihachi Okamoto’s Samurai Assassin.

RELATED: Ready Player One Actually Has More Than One Nod to a Spielberg Movie

Most die-hard Star Wars fans know that 1977's A New Hope was heavily influenced by Kurosawa’s works, specifically Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress. A lesser-known fact is that George Lucas respected Mifune so much that he offered the actor the roles of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader. The information was revealed by Mifune's daughter, Mika Mifune, at a 2015 event announcing the inaugural Tokyo Comic Con. “I heard from my father that he was offered the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he was concerned about how the film would look and that it would cheapen the image of samurai, on which George Lucas had based a lot of the character and fighting style,” she said. “At the time, sci-fi movies still looked quite cheap as the effects were not advanced and he had a lot of samurai pride. So then, there was talk about him taking the Darth Vader role as his face would be covered, but in the end he turned that down too."

So, the question is, which of many characters Mifune played was selected for Ready Player One? The most likely would have to be his roles that gained the attention of Western audiences, like the nameless rōnin in Yojimbo or Kikuchiyo in Seven Samurai. Then, it dawned on us, Daito wears a samurai skin in OASIS, and while the warrior’s face is covered most of the time, when you do see his visage, it's clearly based on Mifune. This skin could be a specific character, but judging by the above comparison, it seems more likely the Easter egg is a tribute to the career of this legendary actor.


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.