Adding another wrinkle to the “on what date did Tron actually take place?” confusion: When Dillinger talks to the MCP at the beginning on the film, there’s the following exchange:
MCP: “Hello, Mr. Dillinger. Thanks for coming back early.”
Dillinger: “No problem, Master C. If you’ve seen one consumer electronic show, you’ve seen them all. What’s up?”
The Consumer Electronics Show, or CES for short, has been running annually at different venues since 1967. If we assume that Tron is set in the year 1982, then the CES of that year was held in Chicago on June 3-6 (it was where the Commodore 64 was shown for the first time!). So if it’s this particular “consumer electronic show” Dillinger is referring to, presumably the film would take place in early June?
(Of course, it would be easy to simply say that in the movie universe, CES was held at a different date that year.)
(CES 1982 photos by Alan Light)