I think the trigger for that is that 1992 was around the time of the first commercial VR headsets. They were hugely cumbersome and low res but they worked. I remember playing Dactyl Nightmare with my family circa 1991. It was probably in the mainstream press and some Hollywood executive got overly excited and decided to insert it into whatever project was on hand.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product)