The player must choose one of about five circuits to work on in one of the ship's critical systems: Engine, Power, Communications, Life Support, and the HAL 9000.
The title references the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which astronaut David Bowman disables homicidal computer HAL.
In Xanadu House, a HAL-type voice spoke when someone entered to make the intruder think someone was home.
Hal Roach | Hal Holbrook | Hal David | HAL 9000 | Hal Willner | Hal McKusick | Hal Linden | Hal Galper | Hal Ashby | James Hal Cone | Hal Ketchum | Hal Jordan | Hal Rogers | Hal Miller | Hal Clement | HAL | Shallow Hal | HP 9000 | HAL Tejas | Hal Patino | Hal Miller (actor) | Hal Hopson | Hal Hartley | Hal Bernson | Hal Abelson | Hal Wootten | Hal Smith (actor) | Hal Smith | Hal Pereira | Hal Niedzviecki |
Shortly after the novel was released, Tom Hanks expressed great interest in producing a film adaptation, with himself cast in the role of Floyd, and Keir Dullea and Douglas Rain reprising their roles as David Bowman and HAL 9000.
The name "HAL Institute for Criminally Insane Robots" refers to HAL 9000, a spaceship-installed robot from the Space Odyssey series that murderously turns against its human crew.
While the two machines play a cat-and-mouse game, Leela continues to attempt to shut down the brain by popping the tops of its carbonated logic unit similarly to Dave shutting HAL 9000 down in 2001: A Space Odyssey (also winning free admission to Six Flags), which makes the ship even less rational.
In this, HAL 9000, a computer controlling spaceship Discovery One, bound for Jupiter, discovers a plot to deactivate it by the mission astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole through lip reading their conversations.
Stanley Kubrick originally intended the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey to be a tetrahedron, according to Marvin Minsky, a cognitive scientist and expert on artificial intelligence who advised Kubrick on the Hal 9000 computer and other aspects of the movie.
His famous game (see article Poole versus HAL 9000) was featured in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey (the astronaut Frank Poole is seen playing chess with the HAL 9000 supercomputer).