Ready Player One: Difference between revisions

 

What follows is a story about life, adventure, and a love letter to the 1980s wrapped up in a science fiction plot that's a blast to read.

* [[Abusive Parents]]: {{spoiler|Aech's mother abandoned her when she found out that she was a lesbian.}}

* [[Allegedly Free Game]]: OASIS is free to play, but doing just about anything costs money. IOI is treated as villainous because they want to, among other things, charge a subscription fee.

* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: Some of the planets have Latin names. Incipio (Latin for 'I begin') is the starting planet. Ludus (Latin for school) is the planet where Wade and Aech go to school.

* [[Black Best Friend]]: {{spoiler|Aech turns out to be one}}.

* [[Butch Lesbian]]: {{spoiler|Aetch, who behaves so similarly to a boy her age that no one seems to doubt her gender, even her best friend}}.

* [[Cheaters Never Prosper]]: IOI seeks to win the contest by any means possible such as cheating, bribing participants, and {{spoiler|even going as far as to kill off participants in the real world. In the end, they still manage to lose when Wade outwits them and still wins the contest}}.

* [[Eccentric Millionaire]]: James Halliday easily qualifies as this. Some parentheticals note that he may have had a form of Asperger's Syndrome.

* [[The Eighties]]: A large focus of the plot is almost every single trivial detail about Eighties pop culture.

* [[Expy]]: The author compares Halliday to a Bill Gates-esque figure. Meanwhile, Halliday's longtime friend Ogden Morrow is a thinly veiled Steve Wozniak.

* [[Fun With Acronyms]]: Wade Owen Watts spells out W.O.W.

* [[The Metaverse]]: The OASIS.

* [[Moon Logic Puzzle]]: Solving the puzzles requires not only knowing every detail about 80's pop culture, but also being able to follow Halliday's train of thought. This is why it took five years for the first key to be found.

* [[Only Smart People May Pass]]: The Easter Egg requires Encyclopedic knowledge of 80s pop culture.

* [[Parental Abandonment]]: Wade's real parents died when he was young. Even his single mother, who did seem to care for him, didn't have time to do much beyond set him up with OASIS.

** The book is divided into three sections, referred to as levels.

* [[Scoring Points]]: The scoreboard tracks everyone making progress in the hunt.

* [[Serious Business]]:

** The OASIS video game is serious business, since it's ensnared almost the entire world's population and is apparently the world's most valuable resource.

* [[Shout Out]]: Half the point of the book.

** The vehicle Parzival uses to go to Ogden Morrow's party. It's a [[Back to The Future|Delorean]] with an onboard computer named [[Knight Rider|KITT]], complete with flashing light and it has [[Ghostbusters|Ghostbusters decals]] plastered on the side.

** The mechs at the end include Mechagodzilla, Gundams, Voltron, Evangelions, and tons of other classic giant robots.

** Almost all of the planets are shout-outs themselves. [[Gary Gygax|Gygax]] is a [[Dungeons and Dragons]] world, [[World of Warcraft|Azeroth]] exists as does [[Ever Quest|Norrath]].