The novel Ready Player One is filled to the brim with references to other works of fiction. For shouts out in the Film Adaptation, See Here
- The vehicle Parzival uses to go to Ogden Morrow's party. It's a Delorean with an onboard computer named KITT (complete with flashing light), an oscillation overthruster and Ghostbusters decals plastered on the side.
- The Beta Capsule appears as a Infinity +1 Sword, turning its user into Ultraman for three minutes.
- The mechs at the end include Mechagodzilla, Gundams, Voltron, Evangelions, Leopardon, and tons of other classic giant robots.
- Almost all of the planets are shout-outs themselves. Gygax is a Dungeons & Dragons world, Azeroth exists as does Norrath.
- Wade has two space vessels on his asteroid base: an X-Wing and a Firefly-class ship.
- At one point, the elections in the OASIS are held and Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton are re-elected as President and Vice-President. This becomes doubly funny when you realize that the audio book is narrated by Wil Wheaton himself. It also doubly counts for Doctorow, who written a novel called For The Win, that many consider to be a counterpart to RP 1.
- Sorrento's employee number, 655321, is Alex's prison number from the film version of A Clockwork Orange. In the audiobook, Wil Wheaton even pronounces it "Six Double-five Three Two One" like the film.
- Wade's alias Bryce Lynch is a young hacker character from Max Headroom. While living under this alias, he uses Max Headroom as a virtual servant.
- Wade's IOI employee aliases are Sam Lowery and Harry Tuttle, from Brazil, who also fight a massive bureaucracy.
- Wade's first passphrase to access the OASIS is "You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada."
- Wade's second passphrase is "No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful."