For the 2012 game, click here.
- Acting for Two: André Sogliuzzo voices both Rog and the RCPD Helicopter Pilot with hardly any change in voice.
- Cash-Cow Franchise: It was the most successful entry in the series, selling sixteen million copies.
- Denial of Digital Distribution: This game will likely never be sold digitally again, especially after the 2012 version came out. Though given its status as abandonware, the game will never be released again officially in any medium at all.
- Dummied Out:
- "More Human Than Human" by White Zombie was planned to be one of the in-game tracks in the 2005 game. Through a glitch that can be triggered very rarely by repeatedly restarting race, the unused string could call out the music title, artist, and album, but there will be no music at the time.
- An unused folder named 350Z appears in the game files, as well with mentions of it, and a Skyline, being present in the game code It's possible they didn't make into the final game due to Nissan possibly not wanting their cars to be featured in police chases, similarly to how the Skyline couldn't be used in Hot Pursuit mode in High Stakes. Both cars would be properly reintroduced in Carbon.
- A near-complete model of the non-GTR variant of the E46 M3 can be found in the files as well. It would later make its proper debut in ProStreet.
- Fake Nationality: In the 2005 game, Rosa Mendes, a Canadian with partial Costa Rican ancestry, portrays Isabel Díaz, who's implied to a Hispanic-American. Also doubles as Fake American.
- Inspiration for the Work: Paul Dzenkiw, the actor who played Ronnie, Blacklist #3 in the 2005 game, says that he was inspired by the song "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)" by The Offspring to come up with Ronnie's characterization.note Pretty appropiate, given that Ronnie is Pretty Fly for a White Guy incarnate.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes:
- PC version never saw a digital re-release. The only way to get it legally today is by buying a used retail copy from second-hand market.
- Xbox 360 version has been out-of-print since the 2012 game came out and was even delisted from the Xbox Live beforehand. As a result, pre-owned retail copies tend to sell at prices closer to the original MSRP than most other Need for Speed titles.
- The Other Darrin: Bizarrely, within the game, there is a particular cop who shows up on the radio during Heat Level Five chases at the same time when Cross's car does, who takes control of the pursuit and orders cops around. It's obviously supposed to be Cross, yet it's also very obviously not Dean McKenzie, the actor who plays Cross in the cutscenes and voices him in the few cell phone voice messages the player receives from him through the game and in the final pursuit. Unfortunate, too, as the actor who voices Cross on the radio is not nearly as good. Fortunately, McKenzie returns to voice Cross in his cameo in Payback.
