The Ready Player One meme primarily draws from the 2018 Steven Spielberg film and the original novel by Ernest Cline. The template usually features the protagonist, Wade Watts, donning his VR haptic gear to enter the OASIS, symbolizing an escape from a dystopian reality into a digital utopia. It gained viral traction as a way to comment on the 'Metaverse' hype, the immersive nature of modern gaming, and the humorous contrast between a user's heroic digital avatar and their mundane physical surroundings. Additionally, the movie's poster itself became a meme due to a photoshop fail involving the character's disproportionately long leg, leading to a wave of parodies across Reddit and Twitter.