Trivia / Def Jam Series

• Creator-Driven Successor: Vendetta uses the engine of AKI's N64 wrestling games with very few modifications. There's more difference between Vendetta and Fight for NY than there is between No Mercy and Vendetta, though even Fight for NY has a lot of familiar animations.^note Icon,of course, doesn't exist.
• Creator Killer: Happened twice, killing off two developers and multiple other games on the way. Icon was poorly received due to its gameplay shift and it failed to sell nearly as well as the previous games, resulting in the death of EA Chicago and the cancellation of Def Jam Icon 2 and a Marvel themed spiritual successor to the Def Jam games. Def Jam then re-sold the series' rights to Konami and Autumn Games, who created Def Jam Rapstar. Due to Rapstar's failure to sell and the legal shitstorm that resulted from it, 4mm Games died. Furthermore, the Skullgirls development team was laid off by Autumn Games, which forced them to create Lab Zero Games and the entire fundraising campaign for the game, which also ended up shutting down for reasons unrelated to the Def Jam series.
• Divorced Installment: Def Jam Vendetta was originally planned to be a WCW game, tentatively titled WCW 2000 or WCW Mayhem 2, depending on source, for the then-upcoming PlayStation 2. However, EA lost the WCW license after the latter company was acquired by the WWF in 2001.
• Dummied Out: Jervis and Starks, the two police officers seen arresting D-Mob at the start of Fight for NY, are playable characters. Even though they speak in the opening cutscene, they do not talk during fights as their dialogue is unused.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • The developers behind Def Jam Rapstar were sued by EMI over allegedly using 54 unlicensed tracks that EMI values at $150,000 each without their permission, which resulted in such a legal shitstorm that the game was pulled from circulation and killed 4mm Games in the process.
  • Good luck having either Vendetta or Fight for NY being re-released due to not only EA having to contract Def Jam and its parent company to use the name, but the sheer number of celebrity likenesses, licensed music, and royalties to spend under license from so many different companies and estates of the rappers or celebrities just to have them on both games isn't worth EA's time and money, especially with the company's modern-day thinking of releasing games.
• The Other Darrin: Many of the returning original characters in Fight for NY were given new voice actors.
• Troubled Production: Not with the series itself, but related to it. Konami and Autumn Games got hit with a lawsuit related to Def Jam Rapstar, and it caused troubles for Skullgirls, a game completely unrelated to the Def Jam label in any way. For more details, check out that game's Trivia page.
• What Could Have Been: At least five fighters were planned to appear in Fight for NY, but cut fairly late in development. These were Kurrupt (replaced with Slick Rick), Kelis, LL Cool J (though his theme remained in the game), and the returns of DMX and S-Word from Vendetta.

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