Game On With These Ready Player One Facts Only Huge Fans Know

The future imagined by "Ready Player One" is so deep with lore that it's difficult to imagine how author Ernest Cline even began to establish the parameters of the story. In the documentary "Game Changer: Cracking the Code," Cline shares how he found his starting point from a unique pairing of seemingly unrelated entities of pop culture.

Cline always loved how videogame designer Warren Robinett hid his name in the Atari game "Adventure." The credit is considered to be the first videogame Easter egg. Also being a fan of Roald Dahl, Cline imagined a variation of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" that posed the question, "What if Willy Wonka had been a videogame designer instead of a candy maker?" Digging deeper, Cline then asked, "What if he held his golden ticket contest inside his greatest videogame creation?" This became the framework for "Ready Player One," in which James Halliday leaves behind his inheritance to the winner of a virtual reality quest consisting of challenges driven by hidden Easter eggs.

In "Game Changer," Cline says, "That got me excited because I realized that Halliday's passions in the story could mirror my own." Once Cline built out the story, the Robinett factoid became a major plot point and the key to Parzival winning the competition. Subsequently, the song "Pure Imagination" from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," the 1971 movie adaptation of Dahl's book, was used during the 2018 promotional campaign for "Ready Player One."

Steven Spielberg typically invites John Williams to score his movies, but Williams was too occupied with "The Post," another Spielberg film, to come onboard for "Ready Player One." Instead, Alan Silvestri composed the music, bringing experience from his work on a handful of the iconic '80s films that the story references. Silvestri, for example, wrote the famous score from "Back to the Future," a movie that "Ready Player One" nods to frequently. This came in handy when Silvestri received instructions from Spielberg around some of these moments of tribute: "I don't want it to sound like 'Back to the Future.' I want it to be 'Back to the Future.'" Silvestri relays charming anecdotes like this in the Blu-ray bonus feature "High Score."

Silvestri says, "It was great because I had met Steven many years ago, but had never worked with him in this way. It was a very thrilling event for me." Silvestri's participation was seemingly written in the stars. Wanting to be fully immersed in '80s pop culture, author Ernest Cline says he listened to Silvestri's soundtracks while writing the original "Ready Player One" novel.

"Ready Player One" was filmed at the UK's Leavesden Studios, where the "Harry Potter" movies were made. Steven Spielberg acknowledged this and compared the inherent fantasy of the two productions in a speech he gave to the cast and crew on day one of filming. It's tradition for Spielberg to prepare a toast on the first and last days of production for each of his movies.

"Being here at the 'Harry Potter' studio, you all know that what you see ain't what you get in the movie theater," Spielberg told the cast and crew on day one, as captured in the documentary "Game Changer: Cracking the Code." For "Ready Player One," the production began by filming all the scenes that take place in the OASIS, requiring actors to wear motion-capture suits, before filming anything that took place in the real world. Spielberg continued in his speech, "So you're gonna start in a very abstract world ... Feel free to look at the monitors to get an idea of the art direction and the direction that the movie is headed, but in the meantime, this is going to be a lot of interesting confusion, and that's a good thing. Hopefully, sparks will fly."

"Ready Player One" is a love letter to the '80s, and its novel counterpart includes many references to period-appropriate Steven Spielberg films. In adapting the story for the screen, Spielberg felt awkward about any self-indulgence toward his own work, as he shares in the Blu-ray bonus feature "The '80s: You're the Inspiration." Spielberg says, "I can't celebrate myself. Maybe I can take one or two references from my own films, but leave out all of the rest. So I actually had to leave most of my movies on the cutting room floor."

As Spielberg notes, though, there are a few details connected to his filmography to be on the lookout for in "Ready Player One." Perhaps most obvious among them is the T-Rex from "Jurassic Park" that chases drivers throughout the race sequence. Perhaps less recognizable but nonetheless very cool is a ship from "War of the Worlds" that appears toward the end of the film.

Author Ernest Cline didn't write "Ready Player One" about the '80s just because: He's actually just as passionate about the decade's pop culture as Halliday. As such, Cline owns a DeLorean, the car model that famously serves as a makeshift time machine in "Back to the Future." Prior to shooting "Ready Player One," actor Tye Sheridan visited author Ernest Cline's home in Texas. There, Cline gave Sheridan the honor of being only the third person to ever drive his DeLorean, as the two discuss in the Blu-ray bonus feature "Ernie & Tye's Excellent Adventure."

The experience unexpectedly helped Sheridan while filming an important scene where Parzival drives the DeLorean backward. While there wasn't a real DeLorean on set, Sheridan sat in an outline of the car's structure. If he had never driven a DeLorean in real life, Sheridan admits he probably would have just looked out the back window of the imaginary vehicle while performing the scene. However, thanks to his time with Cline, Sheridan knew this would have been physically impossible. Instead, Parzival needs to actually open the car door and peek his head out of the car to properly see where he's going.

Even for scenes taking place outside of the OASIS, the audience may wonder how much of what they see is a real set and how much is CGI. The Stacks, the huge tower of trailer homes where Wade lives, was actually partially built for real, despite its imposing structure. Filmmakers give a peek into the set's development in the mini-documentary "Effects for a Brave New World."

Sure, some of the wide shots showing the vastness of the Stacks' trailers as they stretch out into the horizon were digitally added in post-production, but much of the hodgepodge of houses were actually there for actor Tye Sheridan to climb around as Wade makes his way to the ground from his home high above. Even the interiors of the homes Wade passes by were really there, the little vignettes of story moments being performed in real-time. The windows and their glare were added in later, as real windows would have reflected the camera crew.

In addition to writing the "Ready Player One" novel, Ernest Cline wrote the first draft of its script. After this, Zak Penn — who co-wrote 2006's "X-Men: The Last Stand" and wrote 2008's "The Incredible Hulk," among other films — built out the "Ready Player One" screenplay as it appears in the finished film. In situations such as this, one might wonder how much access the new writer had to Cline, if the author approved or disliked any changes made to the story, and how collaborative or independent the writing process was. While Cline and Penn didn't necessarily write the script together, Penn frequently called Cline to discuss changes or additions in the narrative, as the two discuss in the "Game Changer" documentary.

Rather than being completely cut off from the screenwriter, as is the case for some book-to-movie adaptations, Cline was fully in the loop as Penn tweaked and abridged story moments here and there, some small and others quite significant. One of the most pivotal revisions from the book is Wade meeting Samantha in the real world much earlier in the story, and the pair of them spending a lot of time together. In the novel, they only meet in reality at the last moment of the story. It's comforting for fans of the novel to know that not only did Cline approve of changes made for the movie, but he might have helped inform them from their inception.