Trivia / Need for Speed Unbound

• Ascended Fanon: One of the new customization options is to remove parts of the car's body, an option previously featured only in Project Unite, a group of Game Mods for the series's three previous games (which were developed primarily by Ghost Games). Can also count as Ascended Glitch, as Heat did feature a bug early on that caused car body parts to disappear (which the fandom at the time even joked was a new customization option).
• Author's Saving Throw: With the 5.1.0. patch, Criterion finally listened to the fanbase's request of being allowed to disable the Driving Effects in favor of more realistic visuals.
• Content Leak: Unbound might probably have the record for the Need for Speed game with most info about it being leaked even before even its first trailer was released.
  • On December 2021, a tweet by Helene Kiji, a producer at Criterion who recently joined the studio, expressed her thanks for a welcoming gift she received from Criterion via Twitter. Alongside the thank you message, two images of a Criterion/NFS branded tote bag were included with the tweet, of which two posters of unreleased media relating to Criterion's then-in-development Need for Speed were underneath it, which fans noted had punk rock-like elements that looked similar to visuals used in ProStreet. The tweets were deleted soon after they were reposted.
  • On April 2022, a user on a Discord server posted images from a development build. One of the images includes a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX parked near a body of water with a view of the Lakeshore City skyline, and the another of a map for the game's setting with debug segment zones overlaid on top of the road network.
  • On August 2022, a post on the r/GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit listed event types believed to be featured in game. Also included in the reddit post was short clip of a Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Coupé apparently trying to jump a structure, with drawings of wings emerging from both sides of the car.
  • On September 29, 2022 (roughly a week before the reveal trailer was released) an article by Tom Henderson published on Insider Gaming revealed the game's title as Need for Speed Unbound, with an official reveal likely to take place in early October 2022 in the form of a 90 second trailer including music by rapper A$AP Rocky, and that it would be released on December 2, 2022.
• Distanced from Current Events:
  • The license plate name generator when customizing cars censors usage of swear words and insults, but also includes words relating on racism, mostly on white nationalism, like "TRUMP", "MAGA" and "WLM"^note White Lives Matter seemingly as a result of the polarized political climate in the U.S. of the late 2010s/early 2020s.
  • In the wrap editor, the Russian flag decal was omitted in the game as a response to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• Fake Nationality: A majority of the racers of Lakeshore City are of various nationalities from outside the U.S., but are played mostly by Americans or actors based in the U.S.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: The driving effects were designed by Chicago-based mural and street artists, such as Sentrock and JC Riviera.
• Recycled Script: Unbound's storyline takes cues from L.A. Rush.
  • The beginning with Rydell's Rydes, a garage with a large collection of cars, getting numerous cars stolen from it, is similar to the premise of L.A. Rush where Trikz Lane owns a luxurious mansion full of his prized car collection, which was later repossessed and left the mansion in ruins.
  • The Grand, an ultimate high-stakes event segmented with 3 weekly qualifiers with the Grand itself held on the fourth week, and held by Yaz is nearly identical to "Lidell Rey Street Slam", held by Lidell Rey himself and segmented into 4 stages.
  • The player being given the location of some of the cars that were stolen from Rydell's Rydes and having to deliver them to a certain destination, is akin to how Ty Malix, Trikz Lane's friend, proviides Trikz the locations of the missing cars and bring them back to his mansion.
  • The story begins with the player and Yaz refurbishing a junker that gets pimped and souped up, which plays an important plot of the story. It's similar to how Trikz gets his original car, the blue Nissan 240SX, which gets the same treatment.
• Release Date Change: The game was originally slated to be released in 2021, but the COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in it being pushed a year to 2022. In addition, EA also delayed the game so that Criterion could assist DICE with Battlefield 2042.
• Working Title: According to a German Let's Player LPN05, one of the pre-alpha leaks stated the game used the codename "Excalibur" (as hinted by the license plate of the player's car) as a placeholder before going for Unbound as the final title.