With Tron: Legacy opening wide today, we thought we’d share a little-known Lucasfilm connection to one of the film’s characters recently revealed by director Joseph Kosinski in a visit to LFL’s Presidio headquarters. Rinzler, a character introduced early on as one of the film’s chief villains, was apparently named after Lucasfilm Executive Editor J.W. Rinzler, author of several books including The Making of Star Wars, The Complete Making of Indiana Jones, and the recent Making of The Empire Strikes Back, among others.

“Friends told me about the fact that there’s this character Rinzler in the new Tron movie,” says Rinzler. “So I went online to see if I could figure out where they got the name. But I couldn’t find anything. There aren’t many Rinzlers in the States and it’s not a name that means anything, as far as I know… Then when Joe Kosinski came as a guest speaker I was actually on my way to the event before I realized this might be a chance to ask him. So I waited till after the q-and-a, went down to the front, and said I had a strange question but had to ask where he got the name, or where the writers got the name. And he said that he was sitting with the two writers working, and there was a book on the table ‘a Making of’ he said… ‘Oh yeah, it was Making of Star Wars by someone named Rinzler.’ So I said ‘that’s me’, thanked him, shook his hand and said I had to go out and buy a few action figures — needless to say, my kids are thrilled.”

Check out the official Tron: Legacy website here.