Trivia / Forza

• Blooper: In Horizon 5:
  • The prompt to switch to Radio Eterna when that station is playing a Skill Song still lists the station as Timeless FM, the station's counterpart in the 2 previous games.
  • Some of the accolades list cars that are not in the game in any form. Some non-existent cars listed in accolades are the 1977 Aston Martin V8 Vantage (last seen in 4 as part of the James Bond DLC), various Lancia models (all pulled between the game's first showing in June 2021 and when the game opened up for early access for Premium Edition owners 5 months later), and the Hoonigan Bronco (made its first appeareance in 4, but did not appear in 5).
• Cast the Expert:
  • Toddla T plays himself as the DJ of Ninja Tune Radio in Horizon 2, a parallel to his real-life show on BBC Radio 1.
  • Hospital Records Radio in the Horizon series is hosted by the label's co-founders Chris Goss and Tony "London Elektricity" Colman in the second, third, and fourth games. In the fifth game, Goss returns but Colman is replaced by Degs.
  • British DJ and radio presenter Peter "MistaJam" Dalton is DJ of Horizon Block Party in Horizon 4 and Horizon 5.
  • In Horizon 5, Horizon XS is helmed by American musician Angelica Garcia. The station also features one of her songs.
• Content Leak:
  • When the content update for the Super7 feature Horizon 4 was released in mid-December 2020, players discovered the addition of the Quadra Turbo R V-Tech, a car that was not revealed during the Forza Monthly live-stream for the feature that happened earlier in the week, either via perusing through the auction house search options, or spotting it being driven by a Drivatar in Horizon Solo free-roam or in a race where S1-class and/or Modern Supercars (The car type the V-Tech is categorized as in-game) were allowed. Modders inevitably illegitimately obtained the car early, and using the Super7 feature, would create Super7 challenges where players could "legitimately" test drive the V-Tech before it was to be officially revealed as part of the 2020 Video Game Awards show later that week. Crossing over with Not the Intended Use, Super7 would become the de facto way for players to try out vehicles that were not yet legitimately available, again via modders getting the car early and making a Super7 challenge with it, without risking sanctions on their account.
  • Horizon 5's first expansion was accidentally leaked on the Steam page for the game's Premium Add-ons Bundle June 9, 2022, ahead of the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase on June 12. Its second expansion, Rally Adventure, was accidentally made available for Steam users one day ahead of schedule for a few hours.
• Creator Provincialism: UK-based Playground Games shows quite a bit of a bias towards their home country and the European continent.
  • Forza Horizon is set in Colorado, yet the soundtrack is dominated by European artists, many of which are relatively unheard of in the US. The fact that it was developed in the UK might have something to do with it.
  • Horizon 2 at least justifies its soundtracks' continued European dominance with its Southern Europe setting. This is also the first game where the Horizon Festival director character is from the British Isles, with the British Ben Miller replacing American Alice Hart. British Amy Simpson makes her debut as the DJ of Horizon Pulse, replacing American Holly Cruz, and this is also the debut of Hospital Records Radio as one of the series's record label-based stations.
  • Mostly played straight with the soundtrack in Horizon 3; outside of the radio stations dedicated to American record labels Epitaph Records and Vagrant Records and the Australian label Future Classic, there are still a lot of European acts all over the soundtrack. Irish Keira Harrison also makes her debut here as the festival manager (remember that you are the festival director here).
  • Most prominently, Horizon 4 is set in Great Britain, where Playground Games are from. Keira returned, now being the festival director proper, and all the main characters and most of the Horizon Story characters are Brits (with Alex Strachan being Scottish). Real-life British DJ MistaJam also replaces the fictional American character DJ Spin as the DJ for Horizon Block Party, maintaining the role for the next game. In an ironic reversal of the first Forza Horizon, its soundtrack outside of Britain-based Hospital Records (now the only record label station in the game) was dominated by American artists.
  • While Horizon 5 does its best to emphasize its Mexican setting with several Mexican characters and a soundtrack containing several Mexican artists and tracks, including songs that are sung in only Spanish, there is still a British/European bias. The soundtrack still features a number of European and British acts, such as Dua Lipa with her hit song "Levitating" appearing on Horizon Pulse, the festival director is now the British Haley Jackson, some of Horizon 4's characters—all Brits—return, Hospital Records was again the only record label-based radio station until Epitaph made a surprise return in a later update, and the game establishes that you the Player—the same Horizon superstar from Horizon 4—is British, complete with the only two voice options for them being British voices.
• Dueling Works - Racing Games:
  • Most obviously against Gran Turismo as a first-party Console Wars competitor, along with bouts against the Need for Speed franchise (especially both ProStreet and the two Shift games).
  • In 2012, it was the first Forza Horizon versus Criterion Games's Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Although both games received some backlash from their main franchise's fanbases, they did pretty well with critics, sold decently, and each won racing game of the year awards. So short-term-wise, it was a draw. Long-term-wise, on the other hand, has proven Forza Horizon to be the ultimate winner thanks to its sequels, while NFS ended up getting rebooted again under a new developer in 2015 to mixed results, and having to be rebooted again in 2022 with Criterion back at the helm.
  • Neither GT or NFS gained new releases in 2014,^note Although Gran Turismo 6 was being regularly updated at the time, and NFS re-released its 2013 entry with all its DLC packed-in. new racing games Driveclub and The Crew went against Forza Horizon 2 for that year. Project CARS was also going to compete around the same time, but it was delayed to 2015. Horizon 2 eventually won out overall.
  • 2017 had Forza Motorsport 7 going against Gran Turismo Sport. The results were mixed in this battle, though. Although, Motorsport 7 overall did better with critics than GT Sport as seen on Metacritic, its use of loot boxes was a major sore spot for Forza players, forcing Turn 10 to apologize and eventually update the game to remove them (a year later).
  • 2018 has Forza Horizon 4 releasing three months after The Crew 2. Critical reception-wise, Horizon 4 has curb-stomped it.
• Dummied Out: Jeremy Clarkson was originally going to narrate the Halo Warthog Autovista experience, but it was cut from the game in favor of having Jen Taylor narrate it in-character as Cortana. However, the Clarkson Warthog narration can be viewed online.
• Executive Meddling: The reason why Porsche wasn't originally in Forza Motorsport 4. Electronic Arts held the rights to use Porsche vehicles in their games starting in 2000, and while they are allowed to grant sub-licenses to other developers to use Porsche vehicles in their games (eg. Bizarre Creations for the first 2 games of the Project Gotham Racing series, and Turn 10 for the previous Forza Motorsport entires), EA decided to pull Turn 10's Porsche sub-license in the middle of Motorsport 4's development. However, Turn 10 managed to compromise with EA, and an expansion pack was released in May 2012 containing all the Porsche vehicles from Motorsport 3, plus a handful of Porsche vehicles that were new to the franchise. After an absence from both Horizon and Motorsport 5, it returned in another expansion pack for Horizon 2, and also appeared after launch in Motorsport 6. Eventually, Porsche let their deal with EA lapse and Microsoft has leapt on the opportunity to make a multi-year partnership with Porsche, first by providing a car pack in Horizon 3 (with its cars being winnable for free during some #Forzathon events), and then having a brand-new Porsche gracing the cover of Motorsport 7.
  • DMC were irked by Clarkson's comments regarding the DeLorean in the Autovista mode, and an update caused it to be mysteriously removed without mention. The commentary still exists in print in the booklet shipped with the Forza Motorsport 4 collector's editions and in video form on YouTube. This is likely the reason the DeLorean, in spite of being a highly-requested car, has not appeared in other Forza games until Forza Street and Forza Horizon 5 in 2021.
  • Volkswagen cars didn't appear in Horizon 3 due to the company raising their licensing fee and Turn 10 subsequently backing out of the deal. They would later return for Motorsport 7 and Horizon 4.
  • Similarly, road-going Toyota cars are absent from Motorsport 7 because Sony Interactive Entertainment signed a Toyota exclusivity deal for Gran Turismo Sport at the time. In a bit of irony, Need for Speed Payback was hit by this restriction as well.
  • History repeated itself once more as Mitsubishi was not included when Horizon 4 initially released, and only added back in for the Series 5 update. Toyota and Lexus cars were also excluded again, although two of Toyota's Arctic Trucks and Ivan Stewart's Baja Truck made it through a Loophole Abuse, until Toyota and Lexus were confirmed to return in the franchise as a surprise at the end of November's Forza Monthly stream, starting with the 1998 Toyota Supra RZ for the Series 17 update as a permanently available car (Purchase through the Autoshow, or get a free one by earning enough Influence in The Eliminator to reach Tier 2), with at least one Toyota/Lexus from past titles being added for each subsequent series until Series 24, although Series 27 would bring 3 more of those.
• Follow the Leader: Microsoft and Turn 10 have never really pretended that the series was anything other than an attempt at making the Xbox's equivalent of Gran Turismo, and even Dan Greenawalt has explicitly said that. One of the few instances where this tactic actually worked.
• In Memoriam:
  • Forza Horizon 5 includes tributes to Gymkhana icon and Hoonigan member Ken Block, who was killed in a snowmobile accident on January 2, 2023.
    • Series 16, Fordzathon, whose contents had been announced a few weeks prior during the December 2022 edition of Forza Monthly, received a few additions in each week's Forzathon shop in Ken's honor when the series began on January 6, 2023. Players were also gifted Version 1 of Ken's Hoonicorn Mustang drift car.
    • Series 18, Horizon Wilds Takeover, had more Hoonigan related content available during the series, and each of the series' weekly challenges had players driving one Ken's cars for it. For example, Winter's weekly challenge tasked players in driving the Ford Focus RS rally-cross car featured in Gymkhana 10, with the last two stages of the weekly challenge requiring players to replicate scenes from said video in the in-game version of Guanajuato.
  • Forza Horizon 5, for its Rally Adventure DLC, includes a mural for Tom Gaulton, who was a lead engineer at Playground Games for 4 years prior to his passing in 2022.
• Killer App:
  • Motorsport helped move a lot of Xbox systems, mostly due to being the system's version of Gran Turismo.
  • In the case of the Xbox One, some people went as far as to say that the Forza games (especially the Horizon series) have become the console's saving grace in terms of console exclusives. By E3 2021, Forza Horizon has garnered so much prestige that Microsoft saved the announcement of Forza Horizon 5 as best for last for the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase,^note ignoring Redfall, which was a "One More Thing..."-style announcement, but that was announced with only a CG trailer, whereas Horizon 5 was announced with gameplay footage and the live chat on YouTube and Twitch were demanding to see Horizon 5 throughout the show. The fact that a racing game, a genre that typically doesn't garner as much hype as other video game genres unless it's pop-cultural juggernaut Mario Kart, was saved towards the end of an E3 press conference speaks volumes of how far the Forza Horizon series has come. By the time of its release, many gamers and critics called Forza Horizon 5 the first genuine killer app of the Xbox Series X|S, which was proven when over one million players played the game during the time that it was only available for Premium Edition owners^note including Xbox Game Pass subscribers who bought the Premium Add-ons Bundle but not the base game and had over 4.5 million players 24 hours after the standard and deluxe edition release, the biggest-ever launch for an Xbox Game Studios title. In a sense, it also was one for the Game Pass service, as Horizon 4 launched there on the very same day you could buy it. Horizon 5 followed suit by also being available on the service at launch.
• Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: Some of the games have a handful of cars that appear in trailers or even in-game, but are either restricted to the dev build, or are just not in the game at all.
  • Horizon 4
    • The 2015 Ford Mustang GT is featured on the placard for Modern Muscle blueprints set during the winter◊. The 2015 Mustang was super-ceded by the face-lifted, and new-to-Forza, 2018 iteration, with the former not even in the game at all. Likewise, the Festival Playlist for Series 7 had one of the Seasonal Events depict a Ford Focus ST◊, which isn't actually in the game.
    • The Jeep Grand Wagoneer and Shelby Raptor appear in the trailer for the Fortune Island DLC, but were not among the cars added by the DLC itself.
  • Horizon 5
    • The 2010 Porsche Boxster S was spotted in the Series 4 update trailer as the new Nio EP9 zooms past it. This marks the first Xbox One/Next-gen appearance for this car, as its last appearance was part of the Porsche DLC for Motorsport 4.
    • The placard for a blueprint for Dodge's RAM sub-brand◊ shows a Ram Rebel TRX. This truck was introduced in the previous game's Fortune Island DLC, but was cut from the playable roster in this game.
    • This image for the Canyon Fire danger sign◊ shows a Lotus Evora S, a car available in the Autoshow in the previous game, but did not return in this one.
  • Motorsport (2023)
    • An early 2023 trailer showed off various drift cars that competed in the Formula Drift series, with one of these cars, Fredrick Aasbo's Toyota GR Supra, even being shown in an in-game menu screen in the final product◊. Formula Drift cars are not part of the Day-1 car roster, and neither is the Nissan GT-R GT500 that the Supra is seen with in the same menu screen.
    • Various achievement images show cars that are also not part of the drivable car roster, such as the Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Each game starting from Motorsport 2 has one of them. Typically the game cover is a special Steelbook one and often features special cars and add-ons, otherwise unobtainable. Motorsport 4 also introduced some in-game perks for owners of collectors edition ("VIPs") in the form of more online upload slots for pictures and videos. For those that missed the collector's editions, the content in the special editions for each game was available to be bought for $5-10 a few months after the game came out.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • Series 14 of Horizon 4, released in late September 2019, is called the anniversary update and co-insides with the game's first anniversary. Each of this Series' four seasons are dedicated to each of the four Horizon titles that have been released up until then.
  • Playground Games is planning quite a big one for Series 13 of Horizon 5 in October 2022. Known as the Forza Horizon 10th Anniversary Update, the nostalgia-inducing series will include content based on and from the first four Forza Horizon games, with each season in the series being themed after each previous game. These include new title screen videos for each week in the series based on the original games' title screens, new temporary Horizon Outposts in the main game map, new EventLab props featuring models taken straight from the original games (even ones from the first game that explicitly mention the year 2012), a new Horizon Story called "Horizon Origins" that features missions based on the opening segments of each game, new accolades and achievements, new and returning cars including a 10th Anniversary Forza Edition of the 2013 Dodge SRT Viper GTS from the first game, the (permanent!) return of the popular Midnight Battles from Horizon 3, and the return of fifteen beloved songs from past games' soundtracks in a new radio station called Horizon Mixtape, including all four previous title screen songs ("Language" by Porter Robinson, "Nocturne" by Keeno, "Ingrid is a Hybrid" by Dusky, and "A Moment Apart" by ODESZA), but with a twist added in that you will have to earn those songs by completing seasonal events. (Phew!)
• More Popular Spin-Off: As of Horizon 3, it appears that Horizon has managed to surpass Motorsport in both sales and critical reception. This got to the point where the next major Forza game after Horizon 4 was not the next Forza Motorsport, which was first announced in 2020, but instead Horizon 5.
• Pre-Order Bonus:
  • Depending on which retailer you ordered from, Forza Motorsport 4 would come with a code for one out of a possible five exclusive cars. Regardless of where you preordered, the game would also come with a code including five additional cars. However, all of those cars could be purchased via Xbox Live until its DLC's were delisted in 2015.
  • Forza Horizon 1 again has one of five cars for you to choose from. Subsequent Horizon titles have pre-order variants of existing cars, with 4 being notable in that these pre-order cars came pre-tuned to the top of their respective PI classes. Horizon 5 averts this entirely.
• Promoted Fanboy: This is one of the reasons for the Regalia's appearance in Horizon 3 - During the development of Final Fantasy XV, Hajima Tabata and the dev team had used Horizon 2 as one of their references for what a road trip game should be like.
• Recycled Script: A lot of Clarkson's comments during the Autovista section are often taken from his own reviews on Top Gear, albeit slightly changed to avoid being too obvious.
• Referenced by...: The Forza Horizon series was referenced in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem when Donatello says that he got his driving skills from playing the games a lot.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: The version of the Warthog created for and featured in the Horizon games is the M12S CST variant, which lacks the four-wheel steering that Warthogs are usually depicted with. This is a consequence of Forza's handling system not allowing for easy implementation of four-wheel steering.
• Sequel Gap: After over a decade of Motorsport games being released in every odd-numbered year, with Horizon plugging the even-year gaps from 2012 onwards, Forza took a hiatus in both 2019 and 2020. Horizon 5 came a year "late" in 2021, while the eighth Motorsport game was released in 2023, six years after Motorsport 7.
• Sleeper Hit: The Forza series has always sold well, but a special mention should go to Horizon 3. While many expected it to be just another Forza game, its highly positive critical reception gave it incredibly long legs when it came to sales. Over one year later and on the same week Motorsport 7 came out, it was third on the UK game charts. Overall, it has only dropped out of the top 20 twice in its first year and has continued to have a solid performance since, which is no small feat especially when you consider that games within annual franchises typically have a short shelf life.
• Technology Marches On: The Autovista description of the DeLorean's interior describes how advanced its tape player and AM/FM radio is.
• Trolling Creator: The Torben Tuesday preceding the Series 23 update for Horizon 4 had 5 clues. Four of them were dead giveaways, being anagrams of 4 different Toyota models that were last featured in Horizon 3. The last one, "7-200" resulted in Wild Mass Guessing, with some guessing it referred to a car that could accelerate to 200 km/h or even 200 mph in 7 seconds, among other speculation, with the Renault Espace F1 being a candidate for the former. When the update dropped, it was revealed that this clue did not refer to a new car, but rather the addition of 7 achievements that were worth a total of 200 gamerscore.
• What Could Have Been:
  • When considering locations for Horizon 2, both Australia and California were brought up, with the latter being specifically dropped because the developers thought a non-American setting would be more unique. The concepts of Southern France and Northern Italy were also initially separate before they were merged due to their proximity. Australia would be Saved for the Sequel, and became the setting of Horizon 3.
  • A teaser for Forza Motorsport 4 had Clarkson giving his thoughts on the "specifications" of the M12 FAV Warthog before both the introductory narration and item descriptions were instead done, predictably, by Jen Taylor.
  • The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren is in Horizon 3's leaked Dev Build, meaning it was set to appear, but couldn't likely due to Executive Meddling.
  • Mitsubishi was originally planned to be in Forza Horizon 4 according to leaked game files and pre-release content, however, when the car list was officially revealed, their cars were nowhere to be seen. Eventually, Mitsubishi was added back from Series 5 update for free.
  • Early trailers and promo material for Horizon 4 had a different car other than the GRC Fiesta rallycross car being the car used in the "Car vs Motocross" showcase: the Rally-spec 2015 Subaru Impreza WRX STi.
  • During the Playground Games monthly stream ahead of the Series 20 update, it's mentioned that one of the cars being added into the game on said update, the Napier-Railton, was originally supposed to be the car that the player would drive during the Summer section of the Prologue.
  • The Mercedes-AMG One, or the Project-One as it was known back then, was on the leaked car list for Horizon 4. Due to the Project-One still being in the concept stage at the time, the car, or rather its production counterpart, the One, would be Saved for the Sequel and be the cover car for Horizon 5.
  • One of the many cars carried-over from Horizon 4 to Horizon 5 that had their engine audio re-recorded was the Lancia Stratos. However, keen-eyed players noticed that shortly before the official car list was being unveiled in phases, the direct feed footage from the linked stream was removed from the Forza channel, and then later, Lancia, as well as other Italian FCA/Stellantis brands such as Abarth, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat, were absent from the launch day car list.
• Why the Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
  • 360 titles with gifting feature:
    • In Forza Motorsport 4, due to modders illegitimately adding Unicorn cars to their account at will, a Real Money Trade market sprung up where illegally obtained Unicorns were being peddled around for actual cash. A later update nipped this in the bud by preventing the gifting of Unicorn cars unless the account doing so is on a whitelist (presumably one that contains accounts of developers and community managers that are allowed to gift Unicorns in the first place). This measure was carried over to Horizon 1, and the gifting feature would be entirely absent for Xbox One titles until Horizon 5. However, that game's Gift Drop option does not allow players to name a specific player as the recipient for the gift, seemingly to ensure that no RMT'ing happens. The only time there has been an exception to this rule would be during Series 2 (December 9, 2021 - January 6, 2022), where choosing to gift a car that was purchased from the Holiday Forzathon shop would show a players a list of 5 friends (picked at random from their list) they could choose to gift the car to.
  • Horizon 4:
    • Due to modders illegitimately obtaining pre-order cars (especially PO cars from pre-orders campaigns that ended up falling through and not happening in the first place, such as the pre-order Ford Focus RS) and distributing them to the rest of the player base via the auction house, all pre-order cars were added to the auction house blacklist as of Spring 2020, preventing them from being put up for auction.
    • In response to modders creating Super7 challenges with cars that are not drivable outside of specific circumstances, such as the Horizon Story versions of otherwise drivable cars, or cars that are not supposed to be drivable period, such as traffic cars and the McLaren P1 Owens' Edition, thus allowing players to "legitimately" drive these cars without risks of sanctions, these cars were added to the list of "Cars one may not create a Super7 challenge with".

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