Every Pop Culture Easter Egg in Ready Player One - Trailer 2
Which is your favorite reference they've packed into the new movie?
The new trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One is here, and if you can look past Wade Watts’ extremely long leg on the poster, you’ll find yet another treasure trove of pop culture references from the upcoming adaptation of Ernie Cline’s novel.
Tracer of the Overwatch series is seen charging into battle, alongside Lara Croft, and Chun-Li of the Street Fighter series, which is well-represented throughout. Blanka, Sabat, and Ryu are all visible at one point or another.
That big battle sequence, of course, is full of other characters ready to take down the evil Sixers. The Iron Giant makes another appearance, having debuted in the first trailer, but we also get a look at an RX-78-2 Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam, not to mention the Battletoads! Chucky from the Child’s Play series executes a pretty slick digital throat slice against a Sixer. Parzival rouses the crowd by raising a boombox, a move he stole right from Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything… Chances are, that boombox is playing something a little more upbeat than Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes”. Speaking of sweet 80s tunes, we see King Kong jumping perfectly in sync with Van Halen’s hit, “Jump”. Watch the full trailer below:
This trailer suggests that the race for the Copper Key could be taking place in Delta City, from RoboCop. We get new looks at the A-Team van and the 1966 Batmobile, but now we can see Speed Racer’s iconic Mach 5 as well. As Parzival gets into his modded DeLorean from Back to the Future you can see he’s wearing a Thundercats belt-buckle.
The Joker appears next to Harley Quinn, and that hat is probably a reference to his iconic look from Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke. A bartender at this club is also wearing a pretty iconic hat - the flowerpot hat made famous by 80s synth band Devo.
In the chamber where OASIS creator James Halliday’s Easter egg is housed, there are statues of Mortal Kombat’s Raiden, Sub-Zero, and Scorpion on display, not to mention the dragon from the game’s logo.
The OASIS isn’t the only place where Halliday’s obsession with pop culture has taken hold. In this shot of the Stacks, you can see graffiti of a Madballs toy from the 80s. Halliday himself is showing some love for Milton Bradley’s Simon. Samantha, Artemis inside the Oasis, is wearing a Joy Division t-shirt and as she and Wade try to decipher the meaning of the third clue to Halliday’s hunt, we see they’re looking at Splash, The Dark Crystal, and the Helm’s Deep scene from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers as possible sources to investigate. We also see that Wade has researched how to access the very first video game easter egg, a hidden chamber from the Atari game Adventure.
Did we miss anything? If so, it’s possible that we already found it in our breakdown of the first Ready Player One trailer, so be sure to check that out and as always, be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you like to watch IGN.
Tom Jorgensen is a video producer at IGN and caught every Easter egg you might have missed in Stranger Things: Season 2 so you didn't have to. You can follow him on Twitter at @Tom_Jorgensen.
