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Ready Player One’s Best Easter Eggs Didn’t Make The Movie
When Ready Player One skips over its final challenge, it means some of the best Easter Eggs stay completely hidden. That may sound like an exaggeration since the total count on cameos, references, and inside jokes is at 120 on our Ready Player One Easter Eggs list. Even so, fans will want to know how many incredible references they didn’t get to see prior to the final battle breaking out at Anorak’s Castle – just one of more than a dozen iconic locations where the final war could have taken place.
The bad news is that discovering, traveling to, and unlocking the secrets of Anorak’s Castle is actually skipped over in the theatrical cut of Ready Player One. The good news? If you keep your eyes peeled for the movie’s best secret, the iconic geek castles that the villains explored before Anorak’s can be enjoyed by everyone.
Once again, the minds behind Ready Player One just couldn’t help themselves.
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We’ll offer a brief explanation, since many viewers may not even have noticed that Ready Player One never actually solved the third clue to the final key (and Halliday’s last Easter Egg). That’s because the “Oologists” of IOI finally earned their paychecks on that one, solving the clue that referenced Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and deducing the final challenge could be found in Sector 14 – Planet Doom.
Viewers are told that IOI agents brute-forced the problem by checking every single castle in the sectoruntil they found the right one. But in the first shot of the IOI Egg-Crackers at work, a whiteboard behind them reveals the other castles they searched before finding their prize
The castles visible include Hyrule Castle, the royal home of the title characters of The Legend of Zelda. Miraz’s Castle, also known as “Caspian’s Castle” in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Princess Peach’s Castle from the Super Mario game series. And finally, the fortresses of Isengard, Minas Morgul, and the Hornburg from the Lord of the Rings books and films.
Despite reducing these references to a line of text each on a background workboard, the properties are sure to satisfy fans who loved them in their youth (or adolescence, or adulthood). A mention of Princess Peach’s iconic castle will help soothe the pain of no other Mario cameo amidst the avalanche of game references. Otherwise, the contributions made by JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis in particular are more than fitting.
So it’s nice to know the worlds of Narnia and Middle-earth play a role in Halliday’s final challenge (even if audiences didn’t get to see every one of them searched in real time).
Beyond the fun shout outs, the board paints an incredible picture of Planet Doom and Sector 14 as a whole. Wading into war against waves of demons, giant scorpions, and enemy players is one thing. But doing it to defend Minas Mogul, Isengard, or Helm’s Deep? That’s the kind of role playing every gamer could appreciate.
