Franchise / The Fast and the Furious

"Ride or die."

"Again the watchman reported, 'He reached them, but he is not coming back. And the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously.'"

— 2 Kings 9:20, The Bible (ESV)

Fast & Furious, originally named The Fast and the Furious, is a series of action films, which center on illegal street racing and (later) heists, produced by Universal. Here, the cars are fast, the drivers are furious, technology porn abounds and the cast of characters who eventually become "the crew" aren't just comrades, they're family. The movies are known for their unrelenting sequel escalation, steadily growing the films into one of the most popular, and financially successful, action franchises in recent memory.

Not at all to be confused with the 1955 movie also named The Fast and the Furious, directed by John Ireland and starring Ireland and Dorothy Malone.^note Incidentally, that film is also related to car racing, as it consists basically of a feature-length Chase Scene.

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Works

Films

The Fast Saga

• The Fast and the Furious (2001)

The first installment in the series follows Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), an undercover LAPD cop, who is tasked with discovering the identities of a group of unknown automobile hijackers and underground street racers led by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel).

The film was directed by Rob Cohen and written by Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist, and David Ayer. It was released on June 22, 2001.

• 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

Brian and his childhood friend Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) team up to go undercover for the U.S. Customs Service to bring down drug lord Carter Verone (Cole Hauser) in exchange for the erasure of their criminal records.

2 Fast 2 Furious is a sequel to the first film and is the only film in the main series not to feature Vin Diesel as Dominic. It also marks the first appearance of Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris as Roman and Tej Parker, introducing them to the franchise. The film was directed by John Singleton and written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. It was released on June 6, 2003.

• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

High school car enthusiast Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is sent to live in Tokyo with his father, and finds solace in the city's drifting community.

Tokyo Drift is a sequel to the previous films. Vin Diesel makes a cameo appearance as Dominic at the end of the film. It also marks the first appearance of Sung Kang as Han Lue in the franchise (though he'd previously appeared in a previous Justin Lin film, Better Luck Tomorrow). Although this is the third film released in the franchise, it has been retroactively placed as the sixth, with the subsequent three installments being set between 2 Fast 2 Furious and Tokyo Drift. The film was directed by Justin Lin and written by Chris Morgan, and was released on June 16, 2006.

• Fast & Furious (2009)

After his girlfriend Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) is murdered, fugitive Dominic returns to Los Angeles and teams up with Brian, now an FBI agent, to avenge the murder of Letty and apprehend Arturo Braga (John Ortiz), a Mexican drug lord, crime lord and heroin importer.

This film is set five years after the events of The Fast and the Furious, a sequel to 2 Fast 2 Furious, and canonically long before Tokyo Drift, as it features Sung Kang as Han, wanting to travel to Tokyo in the future. It features the return of the original main cast (Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, who portrays Dominic's sister Mia). The film was again directed by Justin Lin and written by Chris Morgan. It was released on April 3, 2009.

• Fast Five (2011)

Dom, Brian (now an ex-FBI agent-turned-criminal), and Mia plan a heist to steal $100 million from Hernan Reyes (Joaquim De Almeida), a corrupt, evil Brazilian drug lord and crime lord who owns and runs the city of Rio de Janeiro to secure their freedom and topple his criminal empire while being doggedly pursued for arrest by a dangerously lethal U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) lawman federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).

The film continues directly from the end of Fast & Furious, introducing Dwayne Johnson and Elsa Pataky as Hobbs and Elena Neves, respectively. It also features the returns of Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris as Roman and Tej from 2 Fast 2 Furious; Sung Kang as Han from Tokyo Drift and Fast & Furious; and Gal Gadot, Tego Calderón and Don Omar as Gisele Yashar, Tego Leo and Rico Santos, respectively, from Fast & Furious. Eva Mendes also makes an uncredited appearance as Monica Fuentes in a mid-credits scene, reprising her role from 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Fast Five deliberately departed from the street racing theme prevalent in previous films, to transform the franchise into a heist action series involving cars. The film was directed by Justin Lin and written by Chris Morgan. It was released on April 29, 2011.

• Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

Hobbs recruits Dom, Brian, and their team to help him defeat Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) and his skilled mercenary organization, promising to grant them full pardons for their crimes so they can return home to Los Angeles; Dom discovers that his supposedly deceased girlfriend Letty is still alive (albeit rather amnesiac) and working for Shaw.

It is the last film to be set before Tokyo Drift. In a mid-credits scene, Han's death scene from Tokyo Drift is replayed, with an added scene showing that his killer is Owen's older brother Deckard, portrayed by Jason Statham. John Ortiz reprises his role as Braga from Fast & Furious. Fast & Furious 6 incorporates elements of spy and adventure films into the franchise. The film was directed by Justin Lin and written by Chris Morgan. It was released on May 24, 2013.

• Furious 7 (2015)

After defeating Owen Shaw and his henchmen, Dom, Brian, and the rest of the team are eerily hunted down by his vindictively vengeful older brother Deckard, a rogue British special forces assassin seeking to avenge Owen by plotting to murder them all after killing Han in Tokyo and blowing up Dom's L.A. mansion using a letter bomb. The team allies with a Fed called Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) to rescue a hacker, Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), from a Nigerian terrorist, Mose Jakande (Djimon Hounsou).

The film is set after the events of Fast & Furious 6 and Tokyo Drift. It features the return of Lucas Black as Sean Boswell from the latter film, after nine years.

Furious 7 also marks the final film appearance of Paul Walker, who died in a single-vehicle crash on November 30, 2013, with filming only half-completed. Following his death, filming was delayed for script rewrites and his brothers, Caleb and Cody Walker, were used as body doubles (stand-ins) to complete his remaining scenes. John Brotherton also was a minor stand-in for Walker. These script rewrites completed the story arc for Walker's character, who was subsequently retired. The film is dedicated to him. It was directed by James Wan and written by Chris Morgan, and was released on April 3, 2015.

• The Fate of the Furious (2017)

With Dom and Letty on their honeymoon, while Brian and Mia having retired and the rest of the crew having returned to seemingly normal, peaceful lives, a sinister cyberterrorist named Cipher (Charlize Theron) seduces Dom to the dark side and coerces him to join her and betray his team, using his baby son as leverage, forcing the rest of the team to rescue Dom and take down Cipher.

The film is set after Furious 7. It is the first film since Tokyo Drift to not feature Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster as Brian and Mia. The film also marks the final appearance of Elsa Pataky as Elena in the series. The Fate of the Furious was directed by F. Gary Gray and written by Morgan. It was released on April 14, 2017.

• F9: The Fast Saga (a.k.a. Fast and Furious 9) (2021)

A few years after the events of The Fate of the Furious, Dom and his family must come out of retirement after they are dangerously hunted down and targeted by a deadly assassin at the behest of Cipher: Dominic's forsaken younger brother Jakob (John Cena), who also has a personal vendetta against him.

The film features the return of Sung Kang to the franchise, with his character Han revealed to be alive. Also returning are Jordana Brewster as Mia and Lucas Black as Sean, as well as Bow Wow and Jason Tobin, who reprise their Tokyo Drift roles as Twinkie and Earl respectively. This is the first film since Fast Five not to feature Dwayne Johnson as Hobbs, while Jason Statham only makes a cameo as Deckard in the mid-credits scene.

Justin Lin returned as director after not directing the previous two installments, while the film was written by Daniel Casey, marking the first time since 2 Fast 2 Furious that a film was not written or co-written by Chris Morgan. Originally scheduled to be released on May 22, 2020, F9 was pushed back to June 25, 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, though it did launch overseas earlier on May 19 that year.

• Fast X (2023)

Dom and the Family are faced with the greatest threat to their lives when an enemy from the past appears to confront them. Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), son of Brazilian crime lord Hernan Reyes, wants to take revenge against Dom by hunting down everyone he loves. As the battle lines are drawn, Dom must act fast before Dante can make good on his threat: to make Dom suffer before he dies.

Aside from Momoa, the film features the debut of Daniela Melchior, Brie Larson, Alan Ritchson, and Rita Moreno. Gal Gadot also returns to the franchise for the first time since Fast & Furious 6.

Justin Lin was originally set to direct the film, but bowed out shortly after production commenced, although he remained as a producer and screenwriter. He was subsequently replaced by Louis Leterrier. Dan Mazeau additionally co-wrote the film with Lin. It was scheduled to be released on April 2, 2021 before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, delaying filming until 2022. F9 originally took its release date until it was delayed again for two months. It was eventually released on May 19, 2023.

• Fast XI (2025)

Fast XI has been confirmed to be in development and has been confirmed to be the final mainline theatrical entry in the series, with Louis Leterrier set to direct the film.

Spin-offs

• Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

Hobbs and Shaw are forced to team up with Shaw's sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), an MI6 agent, to battle a cybernetically-enhanced terrorist named Brixton Lore (Idris Elba) who is threatening the world with a deadly virus.

The film is set after the events of The Fate of the Furious. Helen Mirren reprises her uncredited role from that film as Magdalene Shaw, Deckard and Hattie's mother. Hobbs & Shaw was directed by David Leitch and written by Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce. It was released on August 2, 2019.

• Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Reyes (TBD)

A spinoff set after Fast X was announced to be in development in June 2023, with Dwayne Johnson returning as producer and lead actor and Chris Morgan returning as writer.

• Untitled female-focused spinoff (TBD)

There is at least one female-lead spinoff in development. An untitled film focusing on female characters was first announced by Vin Diesel in January 2019, with writers already on board. In June 2021, Diesel announced that a spinoff focusing on Cipher is also in development. It is unknown whether these projects are distinct or one and the same.

• Untitled Hobbs & Shaw sequel (TBD)

An untitled sequel to Hobbs & Shaw was announced to be in development in March 2020, with Johnson and Morgan returning to star and write, respectively.

Short films

• The Turbo Charged Prelude for 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

A short film set sometime between the events of The Fast and the Furious and 2 Fast 2 Furious. It focuses on Brian as he goes on the run after helping Dom escape the LAPD, ending up as a street racer in Miami. It was released on June 3, 2003 as part of special home releases of the first film, and was screened in select theaters alongside the second film.

• Los Bandoleros (2009)

A short film set sometime between the events of The Fast and the Furious and Fast & Furious. It details how Dom, Letty, Han, Leo, and Santos end up living in the Dominican Republic in the latter film (which never shows it, instead opening in medias res). It was released on July 28, 2009, included in special home releases of the fourth film.

Tangentially Related Films

• Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)

This film is not a part of the franchise at all. It is a crime drama about a group of over-achieving Asian kids in Orange County turning to petty crimes out of boredom, only to have their criminal activities escalate until it leads to murder. The reason it is listed here is that the character of Han Lue, played by Sung Kang, is introduced in this film, and when director Justin Lin took over as the main director of the franchise, he transplanted the character of Han into the F&F franchise.

Theme park attractions

• Fast & Furious: Supercharged (2015—present)
• Unnamed Intamin-produced rollercoaster at Universal Studios Hollywood (2025)^note 

Video games

• The Fast and the Furious (2004 arcade racing game by Raw Thrills. Was later ported to Wii under the name Cruis'n, with all references to the film removed)
• The Fast and the Furious: Super Bikes (2006 arcade motorcycle game by Raw Thrills, and the first in their Super Bikes series; later Super Bikes games would do away with the film license)
• The Fast and the Furious (2006 open-world racing game for Playstation 2 and Playstation Portable developed by Eutechnyx and very loosely based on Tokyo Drift).
• The Fast and the Furious: Drift (2007 arcade racing game by Raw Thrills)
• Fast & Furious: SuperCars (2011 arcade racing game by Raw Thrills)
• Fast & Furious: Showdown (2013 arcade racing game by Firebrand Games)
• Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious (2015 standalone expansion of Forza Horizon 2)
• Fast & Furious Crossroads (2020)
• Fast & Furious: Spy Racers – Rise of SH1FT3R (2021): Video game based off the Netflix series.
• Fast & Furious Arcade (2022): Arcade racing game by Raw Thrills.

Western animation

• Fast & Furious: Spy Racers (2019—21)

An animated show focusing on the adventures of Tony Toretto (voiced by Tyler Posey), as he follows in his cousin Dom's footsteps to become a racing legend and hero. It is a co-production of Universal and DreamWorks Animation, and streamed on Netflix. The series consists of six seasons, each with a different setting.

Other

• Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)

Ben (Parry Shen) is a straight-A student who wants nothing more than to make the school basketball team, get with his cheerleader crush, and get into an Ivy League school. However his friendship with a group of other overachieving students become dangerous when out of boredom they start engaging in petty criminal acts which soon escalate.

Directed by Justin Lin, it was retroactively made part of the Fast & Furious franchise after Sung Kang reprised his role as Han in Tokyo Drift and other films in the franchise, with this film being considered his Origin Story. It was released on January 12, 2002 at the Sundance Film Festival and then released theatrically in the US on April 11, 2003.

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This franchise contains examples of:

A-M

• Actor Allusion:
  • Hobbs, being played by former WWE champion Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, gets to bust out a few wrestling moves - he pulls off a Doomsday Device with Dom in 6, and hits the Rock Bottom, his WWE finishing move, in Furious 7.
    • Hobbs' Bratty Half-Pint daughter alludes to Johnson's foray into the Action-Hero Babysitter genre (The Tooth Fairy, The Game Plan, etc.) — one that Vin Diesel also dabbed into.
    • In Fate, the last few syllables of Hobbs' haka for the Red Dragons may sound familiar for anyone who's seen Moana.
  • In back-to-back scenes in Fast Five, Dom jumps out of a convertible he's driven off a cliff and then is strung up by his wrists and menaced by a drug lord.
  • An indirect one when Suki can be heard yelling "Move, bitch!" in the second movie, the one that introduced Ludacris to the cast.
  • Charlize Theron being cast as the new villain in the 8th installment hot off the back of her acclaimed turn as drive-fast, fight-fierce heroine Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road made for a lot of good Fast and Furiosa puns. Coupled with the two movies' similar focus on cars, driving, fights, and action, the casting seemed particularly appropriate.
  • In Fate, Deckard mockingly calls Hobbs "Hercules". Guess who played the hero in the 2014 Hercules film?
  • Paul Walker's preference of Japanese imports in real life is reflected on Brian. In fact, the Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R from 2 Fast 2 Furious and the Toyota Supra from Furious 7 are his personal vehicles.
  • Martial artist henchman Jah has half of the name of another character also played by Joe Taslim, Jaka.
• Adaptation Expansion: The entire franchise was inspired by a magazine article.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: "Before I Decay" by The Gazett E is the Japanese theme song.
• Anachronic Order: Pull Tokyo Drift out of the lineup and stick it between 6 and 7, and you've got chronological order (i.e. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 3, 7, 8). The mid-credits stinger in Furious 6 is an extended scene from the middle of Tokyo Drift that puts it quite definitively between 6 and 7.
• Anachronism Stew: Even though the movies are all contemporary, with the third film happening after movies 4, 5, and 6, it creates a strange paradox when it comes to the contemporary models of cars seen in those movies. Either Tokyo Drift is set in the "future" of 2015 and everyone drives 2006 model cars or earlier for some strange reason or the rest of the series takes place in 2006 but people are driving models that won't be seen for another 3-9 years. Furious 7 confirms that Fast and Furious is set in 2009, as the date on Letty's fake tombstone says 2009, and Fast Five and Six take place immediately (mere days, months at the most) after it, meaning movies 4-6 for the most part are set in 2009-10, with The Fast and the Furious being set five years prior in 2004. Furious 7 takes place a few years later, as Brian's son Jack is a preschooler, meaning the events of Tokyo Drift can't happen any earlier than 2012 or so.
• Arc Word: Family, to emphasize the Fire-Forged Friends theme of the series, which has the cast work together and trust one another in order to overcome near-impossible odds.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • Nearly every jump in the series.
  • Drifting to go faster.
  • About once a movie, somebody starts driving in reverse during a chase scene or race. While cars can actually go pretty fast backwards, especially if modified, they're always depicted as going just as fast as they would be driving normally.
  • There are several instances where a chase scene only happens because every vehicle is depicted as being just as fast as each other, even when the heroes are in tuned sports cars and others are in luxury SUVs or even military vehicles.
• Author Appeal: Justin Lin, who directed all of the movies from Tokyo Drift up to 6 mentioned in the commentary for Tokyo Drift that he liked cars landing on their roofs after a big crash. If you watch the movies he's directed again, it's pretty glaring just how many of them actually wind up like that.
• Back from the Dead: Dom's 1970 Dodge Charger was wrecked and rebuilt before the events of the first movie, and history repeats itself several times during the course of the series.
• Badass Driver: Pretty much anyone with more than 90 seconds of screen time, but hilariously subverted with Tej, who is shown to be unable to even drive a remote control toy car without "getting into an accident." He overcomes this eventually.
• Badass Family:
  • The Toretto Gang of carjackers may be surrogate and multi-racial, but their love and loyalty towards each other is stronger than most Real Life blood families. In fact, they explicitly refer to each other as family rather than just "friends", particularly at gatherings and when saying grace at meals. (So this is a bit of a case of Friends Are Chosen, Family Aren't.)
    Dom: I don't have friends. I have family.
  • The Toretto family itself qualifies, consisting of Dom, Mia and their significant others, Letty and Brian.
  • Owen and Deckard Shaw are both sociopathic Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy Blood Knights. Their mother seems to be just as nasty.
• Bloodless Carnage: Starting with Furious 7, blood became noticeably absent in the series, likely due to the real life tragedy of Paul Walker and the series wanting to divorce itself from anything resembling that reality. For an example, go back and watch the Dom vs. Hobbs brawl in Fast Five and compare it to the bloodless fight of Hobbs vs. Shaw in 7.
• Blood Sport: It's a franchise mainly about illegal street racing.
• Car Cushion: All the time. A car hood seems to be the equivalent of a feather mattress in this world.
• Car Fu: What all the movies center around.
• Car Porn: As befitting a series about cars, nearly every car onscreen gets its own close-up treatment.
• Character Development: Everyone gets their fair share, mostly due to the fact that their lives are drastically changed by the increasing weight and consequences of their dangerous, illegal endeavors.
• Cliffhanger Wall: The third film, Tokyo Drift, was chronologically the last film for nine years — the next three movies would be interquels. It wasn't until the release of Furious 7 that the timeline moved forward again.
• Continuity Nod: The fourth and especially fifth and sixth films are loaded with them. The third film gets one retroactively when Dom mentions Han running with him.
• Conveniently Empty Roads: Played With like there's no tomorrow.
  • The Fast and the Furious (2001):
    • Invoked during the first street race, as it's shown that friends of the racers use their vehicles to block traffic from interfering.
    • Every time the crew pulls off a semi-truck heist, as the roads are conveniently clear of traffic. They do have to drive through construction during the first heist, however.
  • The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: Zig-Zagged.
    • Justified in the first race, since it takes place in a neighborhood where no one lives because all of the houses are under construction.
    • Averted during the chase in which Han is killed, as there is a decent amount of traffic on the roads.
  • Fast & Furious: Played straight. When Brian and the crew break Dom out of the prison transport, there are no other vehicles around. The same is true during the opening gas truck heist.
  • Fast Five: Downplayed. During the final chase, there is some traffic, but not nearly as much as you'd expect.
  • Fast & Furious 6:
    • Downplayed and justified during the London chase, which takes place at night.
    • Refreshingly averted during the tank chase, as the cars of several innocent bystanders are destroyed in the chaos.
  • Zig-Zagged in Furious 7.
    • Averted when Dom chases Shaw after the funeral, as both are forced to maneuver through traffic.
    • Played straight when the crew rescues Ramsey but justified because the chase occurs on a remote mountain road.
    • Downplayed and justified during the final chase, which takes place at night.
  • The Fate of the Furious: Defied when Cypher hacks and remotely controls dozens of cars in order to prevent the Russian Defense minister from escaping.
  • Played straight in the climax of F9, where Dom manages to successfully steer an upside-down armored truck onto a cliffside road just outside Tbilisi. Upon re-righting it, he drives it along the highway. There are no other cars using this road, which is a good thing because Dom next jack-knifes the truck and spins it around in order to use it like a whip to bring down an attacking remote-control drone plane with a UAV.
• Cool Car/Pimped-Out Car: Just about everything on wheels in the whole series.
• Criminal Found Family: Taken to meme-worthy levels as the main characters- especially the leader, Dom Toretto- routinely refer to each other as "Family" and justify all of their crimes and actions as being for the betterment of that family. While one or two of them are actually related, most are either childhood friends or outcasts that they basically "adopted" into said family. They use the phrase "Family" so often it is practically their catchphrase and a staggering number of joke sites and videos poke fun at the franchise for their overuse of the word.
• Darker and Edgier: Fast & Furious compared to the first. Its tone is grimier, about Dom getting revenge for Letty's supposed death. Furious 7 has Deckard Shaw apparently murder Han and has a revenge theme, which includes a Bittersweet Ending. The Fate of the Furious contains Cipher, the most dangerous villain in the series, who kidnaps Elena and brainwashes Dom into working for her, causing him to betray his family in order to save Elena and their son.
• Deadpan Snarker: Watch any of the films and try to locate someone who isn't one.
• Denser and Wackier: The Fast and the Furious was pretty much a straight cop drama that revolved around the world of street racing. Starting with 2 Fast 2 Furious, the focus shifted to the cars themselves, to the point where Tokyo Drift was almost entirely about the racing. Then, with Fast and Furious, it took another change in tone, this time becoming an over the top action flick, while Fast Five somehow took it even further to the point where it was just another completely absurd action movie that's closer to something like The Transporter. Fast and Furious 6 has a plot more reminiscent of a Bond film, only even more over-the-top. Furious 7 went up another notch, involving the team working for a top-secret spy organization against terrorists and a rogue spec ops agent out for revenge. Certainly a far cry from the first movie's original cop drama format. Taken up to eleven in Hobbs & Shaw, which introduces a genetically modified cyborg supersoldier, moving the franchise closer to something like G.I. Joe.
• Driving Stick: Shifting techniques in street racing are Serious Business.
  • Even better because just about any lesson on performance driving technique in the series is total nonsense and potentially harmful to your engine.
  • The first couple films are notorious for having characters up— or downshift more times than would be possible with their cars' transmissions.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first three films focused heavily on car culture amidst the relatively small time and contained criminal affairs of the plots. The fourth and especially fifth movies helped transition the franchise into the more action-oriented heist movies known today. Paul Walker was noted as feeling relieved when the changes occurred, believing that he had forcibly tried to look cool as per what the tuner scene needed.
  • The first film has Dom and his crew as the villains, even though Brian refuses to believe it until he catches them in the act. In later films, Dom's crew only steals from bad guys, and once they're cleared of all charges are happy to go legit and help the government.
  • Dom's initial crew consists of himself, Lettie, Mia, Vince, Jesse and Leon. For those last three, many may not even remember them, as out of all of them, we only see Vince after that, in Part 5, and he's not part of the crew at that point. No Roman, no Tej, no Han until Part 4 (technically Part 3, but that film takes place after Part 7), no Hobbs until Part 5 and no Ramsey until Part 7. For longtime fans of the franchise, who talk about Dom and "the family", it may seem odd just how far into the franchise it took for these characters to appear.
• Extremely Short Timespan: 4 and Five happen almost immediately after one another, with the final scene of Four being repeated and continued in Five, with the rest of the film's events occurring a few weeks following. 6, similarly, happens immediately after the ending of Five, which had a short Time Skip between the bulk of the action and the final scene, based on Mia's pregnancy. All of this allows 4, Five, and 6 to occur before the events of Tokyo Drift, allowing Han to be featured in them, but it essentially limits the events of the three movies within about a single year. So within the span of a year, Dom and co. lost Letty, avenged her by taking down the drug lord responsible for her supposed death, fled to Rio, took down the crime lord who controlled the city, fled overseas, then came to London and Spain and took down an international terrorist.
• Fanservice: Essentially any non-speaking female role could be counted as fan service.
• Hip-Hop: The series runneth over with this, even the third movie, which is set in Japan.
• Interquel: The fourth, fifth and sixth films, which are set after the second but before the third movie. The seventh film takes place after the events of the third film, finally catching up to continuity.
• Killed Off for Real: While the series has become notorious for its use of the Not Quite Dead trope, other characters have stayed dead after being killed in their respective films, like Jesse, Vince, and Elena.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: It's kind of hard to avoid the fact that Deckard Shaw becomes an ally for the protagonists, considering that he and Hobbs now have their own spinoff movie.
• Made of Iron: Just about everyone.
• Market-Based Title: Many foreign countries have regular Numbered Sequels instead of the word removal - only "Fast" or "Furious" - they got in English (at times with The Foreign Subtitle - for instance, Fast Five is known in many countries as Fast and Furious 5: Rio Heist). Likewise, Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious are known as just Fast and Furious 7 and Fast and Furious 8. However, all the films in the series so far has been released in Japan under the title Wild Speed instead.
• Matching Bad Guy Vehicles: Crops up occasionally, and not just with cars. In the first movie, Johnny Tran's mooks ride similar motorcycles and even wear similar helmets.

N-Z

• Never My Fault: The characters tend to blame Brian for their misfortunes, such as the team being ripped apart, Vince and Mia being fugitives and Letty being supposedly dead. They tend to ignore the fact that they have suffered because they are criminals and even if Brian was involved in their lives, they still would have experienced these misfortunes. Additionally, it is unfair for them to blame Brian for Letty’s death when she was the one who decided to become an FBI informant so Dom could be pardoned for his crimes.
• Nitro Boost: Used in all of the films.
• No Seat Belts: Oddly enough, the lack of seat belt use seems to have little effect on anyone's ability to survive catastrophic crashes. Until Furious 7, where characters are actually seen wearing belts and on one occasion, a helmet.
• Not Quite Dead: Letty, Han, and Giselle manage to live after what seems like definite deaths in 4, Tokyo Drift, and 6, respectively.
• Oddball in the Series: Tokyo Drift was set in Japan with an entirely different cast of characters. The only thing that connected it with the previous two films is the appearance of Dom in a cameo. Han would go on to appear in many of the sequels to tie it back into the franchise, but otherwise, it doesn't have much to do with the other movies.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: This has been taken to the point of, for lack of other fitting description, absurdity by this series: No two movies use the same numbering system. The series goes:
  • The Fast and the Furious
  • 2 Fast 2 Furious
  • The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
  • Fast & Furious (renamed in various markets due to its confusing nature, especially in languages that lack articles)
  • Fast Five (known as Fast and Furious 5 in the UK)
  • Fast & Furious 6 (some international versions have the title card simply read Furious 6)
  • Furious 7
  • The Fate of the Furious (or The F8 of the Furious)
  • F9 (a.k.a. F9: The Fast Saga or Fast & Furious 9)
  • Fast X (Fast 10 in Roman numerals)
• Practical Effects: From Fast Five onwards, the series has largely used In-Camera Effects for the stunts. Ironic, considering the Denser and Wackier Sequel Escalation the series undergoes at that point.
• Product Placement:
  • Well, they are good-looking cars.
  • Corona beer is featured prominently in all the films starring Vin Diesel. Funnily enough, Corona doesn't receive (or pay) money at all for it; when Corona first popped up in the original, it was chosen by the crew simply because that would be the beer of choice in a L.A. neighborhood like that. Corona has enjoyed the product placement so much, they still allow the series to use their products without compensation, letting the film's promotion speak for itself in terms of boosted sales.
• Rated M for Manly: The series runs on cars, manly heroes, and gratuitous shots of hot women.
• Revolving Door Casting: Since there have been several movies over the course of several years with a Retool here and a Soft Reboot there, it makes sense that the cast of characters would get shaken up. Some are Put on a Bus (with a few instances of The Bus Came Back) while others are Killed Off for Real or simply given Chuck Cunningham Syndrome. Not a single major character appears in every film (not including the spin-offs like Hobbs & Shaw) but a few come close:
  • Dom was the Deuteragonist in the first film but sat out for the second film and most of the third (he appears in a cameo in The Stinger). Since then, he has been the main character for the rest of the series.
  • Brian was in the first film as mentioned above and was the lone protagonist for the second film. He was not present for the third but was a major part of every movie until the seventh when Paul Walker unfortunately passed away. His character retired to be with his family.
  • Letty, Dom's love interest for most of the series, was in every movie except the second, third, and fifth films. In the fourth movie, she is supposedly killed early on. Her photo appears in The Stinger in the fifth film as it is revealed she is not dead as previously believed, but she does not appear in person.
  • Mia, like the most of the other characters, did not appear in the second or third movies. Since she ends up as Brian's love interest, she retired as well to be with their family. Because of that, she did not appear in the eighth movie. She returns in the ninth.
• Rice Burner: Although all the cars in the movies are high performance, they are commonly accused of responsibility for promoting this in real life. These days, the cars from the first and second installment look fairly tacky. Some would argue they did back then. The developers picked up on this, by having Hobbs make a remark about an aftermarket stereo on a classic GT 40 being as cheap as some neon lights during the fifth movie.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: In-Universe, Dominic was banned from (sanctioned and legal) racing after he savagely beat the driver responsible for his father's death.
• Rule of Cool: Some of the action and driving scenes are utterly ridiculous, especially in the later instalments... but does it really matter?
  • Not to mention how often the characters survive incidents that should have killed them...without a scratch. Lamp Shaded in F9 by Roman.
• Running Gag:
  • Brian never legitimately beating Dom in a race. He almost does in the fourth film, and Dom lets him win in the fifth film. He finally beats him fairly in 6.
  • Han is always eating something, needing to keep his hands busy due to being an ex-smoker.
  • Dom's 1970 Dodge Charger getting completely wrecked and Dom rebuilding it.
• Sequel Escalation:
  • The truck heists in the original movie are nothing compared to some of the jobs the characters pull in the later movies.
  • The cars:
    • The first had cheap, yet easily modifiable import cars.
    • The second included more desirable, newer cars from the tuner scene.
    • Tokyo Drift followed the same vibe as the second, though this time the cars were built solely for function, pretty decals aside.
    • The fourth mostly had classic muscle cars and the odd import thrown in.
    • The fifth followed the same route, however by the ending, the team are in high-end exotics and hypercars.
    • The sixth has an eclectic mix of classic cars (which serves as a story point). And a tank.
    • Furious 7 has the limited production Lykan Hypersport (valued at $ 3.4 million), also serving as a plot point in that film.
  • The villains:
    • The first film has Johnny Tran, a small-time criminal.
    • The second film has Carter Verone, a major drug dealer.
    • The third film has DK, also small-time but with a Yakuza uncle.
    • The fourth film has Braga, the leader of a major cartel.
    • The fifth film has Reyes, who has pretty much everyone in Rio in his pocket.
    • The sixth film has Owen Shaw, who has his hands in almost everyone's pockets, including the CIA and the DEA.
    • The seventh film has Owen's brother Deckard, a ruthless ex-Special Forces assassin and ghost proficient in both hand-to-hand combat and firearms who is also capable of racking up a terrifying kill count despite being on his own.
    • The eighth film has Cipher, a remorselessly sociopathic hacker-slash-warlord with a veritable god-complex who is fully able (and willing) to threaten the world with a global nuclear holocaust just to puff up her monstrous ego.
    • The ninth film features the return of Cipher, who now has a new evil sidekick: a master thief, deadly assassin and high-performance driver who just so happens to be Dom's forsaken brother.
    • Hobbs & Shaw has the series' first explicitly super-human threat: Brixton Lore, a cybernetically-enhanced Super-Soldier out to unleash a virus that will wipe out half of mankind.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: Starting from the third film, the series moves out from just being set in the US. Films three, five, and six are mostly set abroad, with films four, seven, and eight having sequences in other countries while remaining mostly set in the US.
  • Fast & Furious 4 mainly takes place in L.A. and its crowded city streets. The opening scene is set in the Dominican Republic, and a scene shows Dom living in Panama. Some scenes towards the end of the movie (especially the climactic car chase through the Mexican desert) take place in Mexico.
  • Fast Five takes place on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (actually filmed in Puerto Rico). Some scenes show Washington DC, Germany, Monaco, and South California.
  • Fast & Furious 6 is also set abroad in London, England and in Spain, including the Canary Islands. A few scenes show L.A. while a scene also takes place in Russia and China.
  • Tokyo Drift takes place in Tokyo after 6, just before the seventh movie.
  • Furious 7 is primarily set in L.A. (mainly filmed in Atlanta). A scene shows the team rescuing Ramsey by air dropping their cars over the Caucasus mountains in Azerbaijan (filmed in Colorado). The next 30 minutes take place in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East before returning to the home turf of L.A.
  • Fate primarily takes place on the NYC streets. Some scenes take place in Berlin, Russia, and Havana.
• The Series Has Left Reality: It started out as a grounded crime drama where the only intense action the film had was the street racing scenes. The moment Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is introduced is when the movie became the over-the-top popcorn action franchise it's currently known as.
• Shared Universe: As confirmed by Justin Lin, Han is the same Han who appeared in one of his previous films, Better Luck Tomorrow.
• Signature Move: Any film Dom appears in will have him drive so fast his car pops a wheelie, even in Part III, where he barely appears.
  • Luke Hobbs seems to favor any vehicle capable of driving straight through solid block walls, and he does it at least three times.
• Silly Prayer: The team has a barbecue and the duty of saying grace falls on Jesse for being the first to grab some food. It goes something like this:
  Jesse: Dear Heavenly, uh...
  Leon: Spirit.
  Jesse: Spirit. Thank you. Please bless this meal which we are about to eat. Also, thank you for direct port nitrous injection, four-core intercoolers, ball-bearing turbos, and titanium valve springs. Amen.
• Stealing from Thieves:
  • 2 Fast 2 Furious: Not a major haul, but Brian and Roman not only walk away with clean rap sheets for their help bringing down the villain, but even manage to grab some of the money he was laundering and sneak away with it once he's arrested.
  • Fast Five: The entirety of the film has Dom and Brian putting a team together to take on the crooked cartel boss they gained the ire of. Culminating in them literally stealing his money vault and dragging it through the streets of Rio.
• Team Kids: Roman Pearce, despite being a grown man, often behaves the most immaturely of Dom Toretto's entire Criminal Found Family. He's nearly always complaining and voicing doubts about their plans, thinks he could be a better leader, but always refuses to take charge when they offer it to him, gets into petty verbal sniping with Brian in the second film, takes the most Awesome, but Impractical orange Lamborghini just to look cool, and in the sixth film, he's more concerned about using the right British currency to get a snack out of a vending machine than listening in about the Macguffin of the week and what the Big Bad wants to do with it. Hobbs offers to help Roman get his snack by just shooting the vending machine open, like an indulgent uncle.
• Tim Taylor Technology: Nitrous Oxide injectors FTW. Or, as the characters once liked to say it, "NAAAAWS." As NOS is a trademark of Holley Performance Products, it was removed from the second film and replaced by generic "N2O" labels on the steering wheels and was verbally referred to as "spray" and "kick" after Holley got a bit stroppy about its appearance in the first one. The NOS brand returns in later films.
• Watch the Paint Job: Most installations in the series have some example of this.
• World of Badass: Every named hero is either a world-class stunt driver or a master martial artist, or both. The only exception is Ramsey, who might just be the greatest hacker and programmer in the world... and by Fast X, she's well on her way to being the former too.

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