Fridge Brilliance
- In the first Hot Pursuit, the cops will call out your make of car on the scanner as you pass. EG "In pursuit of a Lamborghini." "In pursuit of a Chevrolet." But if you flash by in an El Nino, they just say "In pursuit of a sports car." Seems confusing, until one realizes that the car is so rare and exotic in-universe that the cops couldn't even recognize it.
- If the game is modified to allow the use of Ferrari or Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Hot Pursuit mode (which are normally not drivable in this mode), they'll also be referred to as "Sports Cars", presumably because the developers never anticipated that players would alter the game for such a purpose, and thus the relevant voice lines were never recorded.
- Most Wanted (2005)
- Playing the game again and knowing that Mia was an undercover cop, it becomes apparent that the first time you meet her and Sergeant Cross, that it was a rather smart sting operation. Think about it. When you come to the intersection that Cross is at, Mia immediately leaves the scene as if she knows that that is a police car. This also allows her to keep her alibi as a street racer due to the fact that if she was arrested, people would be wondering how she got off so easily compared to the player. The race between the Player and Mia go through a seemingly abandoned shipping yard (in order to reduce the risk of civilian casualties). The location of the race is also smart as there are many places in the shipping yard that not only allow for the players to hide from the police, it also allows for police vehicles to hide from the player. This would allow a quick arrest should the player crash his car.
- Unlike the succeeding game, you do not lose your vehicle if you reach maximum impound strikes or fail to pay a fine. That's because the Rockport PD likely has impound facilities, whereas Palmont PD does not and likely just chooses to auction off/scrap impounded cars.
- Tying into this, why does Rockport PD have a proper impound facility? Because they have a much higher budget compared to Palmont PD- not only does Rockport PD have proper impound facilities, they also have a helicopter, spike strips that completely disable a racer's car (as opposed to just impairing their handling) and a higher level of training (being able to identify in which borough a suspect was last seen, as opposed to just direction)- all of which Palmont PD lack.
- As for the higher budget, this is because Rockport PD has to deal with a group of street racers who gauge their reputation based on how wanted they are by the police- including for things like damaging/wrecking cop cars, dodging/plowing through roadblocks, spike strips, Rhino SUVs, or helicopters. All of which cost money to deploy/maintain/replace. This also nicely explains why the police charge a fee for getting your car out of impound- they need the money. Palmont PD, on the other hand, is facing street racers who are mainly more concerned about crews and territory. They only deal with cops if they absolutely have to, but are otherwise not making a game out of causing headaches to the police budget-wise.
- There is also some Gameplay and Story Integration involved; the story of Most Wanted mostly involves climbing up the Blacklist to get back the M3 GTR that was stolen by the guy at the top. Since the Blacklist uses bounty to gauge reputation, that inevitably includes tangling with the police and coming out on top. The story of Carbon, on the other hand, is more about conquest and expansion of crews and territory- cops randomly intervene in races, but you are not required to get through them to challenge the various bosses.
- JV, #4 on the Blacklist, is the first Blacklist rival to face you in a Speedtrap race when you challenge him. Considering his profile states he blasts through radar traps wherever he can, it makes sense the first Blacklist member to challenge you to such a race would be someone known for their skill in it.
- Bull, #2 on the Blacklist, uses a black SLR McLaren with red tinted windows- meaning that his view from inside will take on a red hue. It's a Stealth Pun on the expression bull seeing red; which is ironic because out of Razor's Co-Dragons, he's the less impulsive one.
- You might wonder why there's always a small roadblock on the finish line in Hot Pursuit (2010), until you realise that if the Police caught wind of the race early on, they would have tracked down the very obvious flares that signal the finish line, and likely dispatched a roadblock on the finish line as a last ditch effort to stop the Racers should the Interceptors fail.
- For the 2014 movie: why does Tobey only get two years in jail over the street race that got Pete killed? Because Pete's car, when retrieved, must have shown distinct damage from the impact that sent him off the bridge, and Tobey's car did not have corresponding damage, meaning there was proof his driving didn't cause Pete's death. He was probably sentenced for dangerous driving leading to death, rather than actual manslaughter. Given he was the only person left to punish, his lawyer probably made some kind of deal, although it's debatable how good the deal was given Tobey could actually prove he wasn't part of the accident.
- In Payback:
- Out of all the race classes in the game (Race, Drift, Drag and Off-road), only Drift does not have a House-associated Street League. There are two reasons for this:
- Drifting, as Underground Soldier explains, involves toying with control of your vehicle as its very premise. The House seeks to control the outcome of every race i.e rig them in its favor. This represents an obvious clash of philosophy between the two sides, so the House is warded off rigging drift races.
- There's also the problem that unlike the other disciplines, drifting does not involve racing against other cars at the same time, whereas the other three do. The House rigs races by informing the other drivers to let a specified driver lead after a certain point in the race, and solo drift is by its very nature difficult to rig in this manner.
- The Non-Standard Game Over you get if you throw the final leg of the Outlaw's Rush makes a lot of sense when you think about it:
- Tyler would be not so different to Lina Navarro if he did that, betraying everyone, including his crew as well as every friend the three of them made so far for what the Collector offered him. Which is how Lina started out.
- The Collector is in no obligation to keep his end of the promise. This is just as well, because the last time he did, Lina wound up losing everything (at that point in the race, The Collector has already chastised Lina for about to cause him losing him everything because of "her damn vendetta").
- Out of all the race classes in the game (Race, Drift, Drag and Off-road), only Drift does not have a House-associated Street League. There are two reasons for this:
Fridge Logic
- In the 2005 Most Wanted, changing appearance of your car's gauges will contribute to heat level reduction, even though it's a part of the car no one but you can see.
- Even though your character is a criminal, in Hot Pursuit 2010, you are invited to try out luxury cars.
- In Most Wanted (2012), one of the available vehicles is a Tesla Roadster. It can accept any mod that the other cars can and that includes nitrous. However the car has no fuel system to inject the nitrous into as it is a purely electric car (and otherwise the car is as accurately portrayed as a Need for Speed game can do, up to and including the lack of any sort of exhaust system so when you use the nitrous it doesn't purge from anywhere, but the car still has it installed and it still improves performance anyway).
- In Need for Speed: Nitro, the Tesla Roadster can use nitro like any other car, but instead electricity purges from the car instead of flames.
