Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One is filled to the brim with visual references to classic '80s movies, video games and even DC Comics.
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The filmmaker's production designers had free rein to go bananas with homages to pop culture in Ready Player One's virtual world, with one exception: Spielberg didn't want any references to his own films.
(Harley Quinn and The Joker Ready Player One)
That restriction forced his cheeky production team to sneak their Spielberg-produced movie nods into the background, in hopes that he wouldn't notice — including graffiti of a Gremlin and even inclusion of the book that inspired the director to make Schindler's List.
"We had a sly Fratelli's Diner [from The Goonies], but we got caught," production designer Adam Stockhausen told Entertainment Weekly. "He nixed it."
In the end, Spielberg surrendered to the DeLorean from Back to the Future being used in one key action scene, and conceded when he spotted that aforementioned Gremlin graffiti.
"I think a lot of the digital artists were trying to get some of their favourite '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 filmmaker seemingly had a full change of heart at some point while making Ready Player One, since a recent trailer was built around the T-Rex from Jurassic Park chasing Tye Sheridan through the virtual world OASIS.
Ready Player One's wealth of references were oft mentioned as one of the appeals of the film in the first reviews, but critics have also signalled it out as one of Spielberg's best in recent memory.
Ready Player One opens in the UK and the US on March 29. Watch a trailer below:
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Justin is a freelance entertainment journalist and writer. He first joined Digital Spy as a freelance entertainment reporter in 2010 and also worked as a sub-editor for the brand, serving as Night News Editor from 2016 to 2024. Over more than a decade, Justin has covered numerous major entertainment events from the US and has interviewed a wide-ranging group of public figures, from comedian Steve Coogan to icons from the Star Trek universe, cast members from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and reality stars from numerous Real Housewives cities and the Below Deck franchise. Justin has also been on the ground to cover major pop culture events like the Star Wars Celebration and the D23 Expo. He's written for titles across the Hearst network, plus the likes of CBR and Us Weekly.
