The virtual reality open world of the OASIS is a staging ground where characters work out their complicated relationships with pop culture and nostalgia. For example, on the planet devoted to Rieko Kodama, Shoto and Wade restore the gender of Sega Princess’s female protagonist, which American executives changed to court Western audiences more effectively. On the Shermer planet, Art3mis restores John Hughes’s original ending to Pretty in Pink, in which Andie ends up with a kind man with whom she has chemistry, as opposed to one of the more misogynistic characters. And on the Afterworld, Aech is able to relish each version of Prince she loved in her youth, frozen in time and unsullied by the artist’s later anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiments.

The Big Red Button is a self-destruct button that only Wade can access. Wade frequently dreams about pushing it, which reflects a subconscious hatred of the platform he so vigorously defends to Art3mis as the button would cause the entire OASIS to go offline. However, the destruction of the OASIS would also send real-world markets and governments into instant turmoil, risking the fall of civilization. Thus, the button represents a kind of societal death drive and the dangers of a technocracy, where outsized power is invested in information companies that may not have humanity’s best interests in mind.