Tron, released in 1982, follows programmer Kevin Flynn as he hunts down evidence proving his work was stolen. This work includes multiple video games that are now incredibly successful, yet he saw no compensation for. The perpetrator, Edward Dillinger, is now the CEO of the company both he and Flynn once worked at, Flynn having jumped ship and founding an arcade. In working with some other employees at ENCOM, Alan Bradley and Lora Baines, Flynn gets transported into the digital world where he must face the Master Control Program (MCP). The MCP not only controls a general named Sark in the digital world, but Dillinger in the real world too. It hunts for absolute power of its own. Flynn teams up with two other programs being forced to play games on the grid, one of which being the titular Tron, to find his evidence and save the innocent programs of the grid from the MCP's tyrannical rule.

The ENCOM grid, also called the game grid by some, started the series as we know it today. Kevin Flynn would not have created his own grid if not for what he discovered on those ENCOM computers, nor would he have made lifetime friends in the form of both humans and programs. Tron and Clu, the latter being a program he initially created himself to snoop around for evidence, had their code and programming brought to Flynn's grid upon its creation. Though the game grid is no longer interacted with directly in new Tron media, it's still extremely integral to the story we know today.