Dungeons & Dragons in E.T. (movie)

[aramis erak]

It's almost certainly a D&D-based reference. They were playing a pretty realistic (for teen boys) game of D&D in the movie, arguing about pizza and whether or not to let the younger brother play and ogling Elliott's mom (who had it goin' on long before Stacy's mom, at least relatively speaking). We caught the reference right away while watching it.

It's a reference that would have been lost on non-gamers at release. As others have pointed out.
I was a D&D player/DM at the time, and I didn't get it. But I wasn't looking out for D&D references, either.

It's real easy, 40 years later, to say that D&D was in popular media and think that people might have recognized it... but most had no bleeding clue what D&D was. The point where it was becoming known was mere days away when ET released...

ET released 11 June 1982; Irving Pulling's suicide was the 9 June 1982, and over the next few weeks the start of the satanic panic would arise. Right during the run of the movie... and, in the US, D&D was starting to get a name with the public.

 

[GreyLord]

And crack...i missed my save...didn't notice I was responding to a 12 year old thread!!

 

[MGibster]

It's a reference that would have been lost on non-gamers at release. As others have pointed out.
I was a D&D player/DM at the time, and I didn't get it. But I wasn't looking out for D&D references, either.

I suspect you're right that lot of people would have missed the reference. But D&D, or role playing games in general, were well known enough to make it into a motion picture intended for a wide release market. Spielberg could have used Monopoly, Stratego, or, hell, checkers or some other public domain game if he wanted to but he used an RPG. And it's not like Hollywood is usually on the cutting edge of trends.

T released 11 June 1982; Irving Pulling's suicide was the 9 June 1982, and over the next few weeks the start of the satanic panic would arise. Right during the run of the movie... and, in the US, D&D was starting to get a name with the public.

Rather than being the cause of Satanic Panic, Dungeons & Dragons simply found itself in the crosshairs of a movement that began before 1982. In 1980, a book called Michelle Remembers was the first published account of the Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) of children. The book made all sorts of outlandish claims including the existence of a worldwide Satanic organization that engaged in ridiculously over-the-top ritual abuse of children. These ideas were front and center in the McMartin Pre-School case, and, more recently, the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.