"Wolf Requiem" Kiyoshi Onizuka and "Midnight Wolf" Tatsuya Fukuda belonged to the same team.
Both their bios mention a crash that killed a friend of theirs and caused the team they belonged to to dissolve. Moreso, both have "Wolf" as part of their street names, and both drive heavier sports coupès like the A80 Supra and the Skyline R33 GT-R. This last one might seem superficial, until you remember that the vast majority of teams tend to follow a theme, down to car selection."Wangan Runaway Locomotive" Akira Nagase's brother belonged to Top Level before his passing.
Top Level only accepts Lancer Evo drivers amongst its' ranks. Moreso, Nagase's brother's car had tuning on par, if not better, than some Top Level members, and Akira's bio suggests he used to be a street racer like his brother. Both Top Level and the Wind Stars run on the New Belt Line, which Akira would be familiar with if this was actually true. The one piece of evidence against this is how the Lan Evo is tuned — the Nagases' is clearly aiming for top speed, what with its blocked grill and bullet-shaped nose. Alternatively, Akira's brother was close to Top Level, but not formally a member of the team.Western fans really have the wrong timeline: the real one can be found through in-game hints.
Generally speaking, Western fans believe the game's timeline to follow the international release order, which is not helped in the slightest by Crave's mishandling of the translation. However, several elements in the original Japanese version hint at there being a bigger, and far more coherent, story than what's generally believed:- Purple Meteor's bios in 2 and Zero gives strong hints that he was the one who defeated the Four Devas and the Four Devils. It also declares him to be Jintei's mentor who briefly stopped racing between 2 and Zero when he was defeated by his student. Whilst it was a given that the first game in the series was the first chronologically, this confirms it but also makes a case that the first Drift game either took place right after it or alongside it, with 2 taking place after the first Drift game.
- The bio of Twister's second-in-command, Smile 0 Yen, changes ever slighty but meaningfully between the first and second game: in the former, it's stated that he moved from the Kansai Prefecture to the Kanto Prefecture one year ago, whilst in the latter, that goes up to two: that means that one year passes between the events of the first two games. Furthermore, the amount of years goes up to four in 3.
- Jintei's age is stated to be 18 in the first Drift game and 20 in Zero, putting the former two years before the latter.
- Related to Smile 0 Yen's bio mentioned above, this means Jintei was either 19 or 20 in 2, depending on whether Zero took place immediately after 2 or one year after. Smile 0 Yen's bio going unchanged for Zero strongly hints at the former.
- It's claimed that Jintei has been racing on the Expressway, or alternatively street racing as a whole, for five years in 3. This would make him either 25 or 23, depending on the reading, and puts the events of 3 some years after the events of Zero. Some bios, such as Shadow Eyes' and Smile 0 Yen's, give a time frame of two years between Zero and 3. Furthermore, the latter forcefully puts one year between Chain Reaction and the first game to account for his and Rolling Guy's move to Tokyo, which also puts Jintei's age at 23 during the events of 3.
- Satoru Kobayakawa is still Rolling Guy's leader in Chain Reaction, in spite of being replaced by his brother Akira in 3. This means that the events of the second game in the Drift sub-series have to take place before Satoru became Rolling Master.
- Related to this, Satoru's bio in Chain Reaction states that he's just "conquered" mountain pass racing, and that his next step is to move to the Metropolitan Expressway. That means that by Chain Reaction, Rolling Guy hadn't even become a presence in Tokyo, putting that game before the first game itself!
- All of this creates a very weird time window where Drift, Chain Reaction, TXR and TXR2 all take place in under three years, with an unspecified gap between the first two in which Rolling Guy quickly become a top-level mountain pass racing team. This also depends on when Smile 0 Yen moved to Kanto Prefecture.
- The Thirteen Devils broke up for the first time after the events of Zero. They reunited in 3 and Touge Wars, but there's no open-and-shut evidence on which takes place first. However, the Devils' return in 3 is very understated outside of Gloomy Angel's, whereas their appearances through-out Japan in Touge Wars cause a nation-wide freak-out. Had 3 taken place after Drift 2, the reaction wouldn't have been the same, so based on some very weak evidence, Touge Wars likely takes place shortly after 3, if not immediately afterwards.
- Import Tuner Challenge is the last game in the series (so far, possibly for good), which is not into question. What is into question is how much time passed between entries. However, based on several bios, a time frame can be put together: Snake Eyes challenged Jintei five years before the events of the game, at which point he was already in full Heroic B So D. Be Legend's members mention events dating back at least a decade. Finally, Purple Meteor claims to have been racing for over twenty years at that point, which means it's been around twenty years since the events of the first game and less than a decade since the events of Touge Wars.
Drift; Jintei is 18 > UNSPECIFIED TIME SKIP > Chain Reaction > UNSPECIFIED TIME SKIP > TXR; Jintei is 19 > ONE YEAR TIME SKIP > TXR2; Jintei is 20 ≥ Zero; Jintei is still 20 ≥ THREE YEAR MINIMUM TIME SKIP > TXR3 > Touge Wars > MINIMUM FIVE YEAR TIME SKIP, VERY LIKELY TO BE ATLEAST TEN YEARS > ITC; Jintei is nearing or in his forties
Related to the above, all player characters have reappeared as bosses starting from the following game, barring the ones from Zero, 3 and Touge Wars.
Don't believe it?- Purple Meteor's bios in 2 and Zero claim he appeared out of nowhere and defeated the Four Devas and Four Devils, becoming Tokyo's fastest. Meta-wise, it also makes a lot of sense: Purple Meteor "mentoring" Jintei can be seen as the playerbase buying the games, thus allowing Genki to develop sequels. His claims in Import Tuner Challenge of having driven the same car for decades can also be seen as the fanbase having stood by Genki for a similar amount of time, as ITC's Japanese release date was almost ten years after the first Shutokou Battle game.
- Jintei defeated Purple Meteor and White Charisma en route to becoming Tokyo's new fastest driver. The only one who could have defeated them is the player character in 2, as White Charisma's bio in it claims no one ever passed him before, nevermind beat him.
- Snake Eyes got his start by running through the entire Expressway, dominating other drivers and causing several teams to dissolve in the process: along the way, he defeated eight drivers, with whom he'd go on to create the PHANTOM 9. Although very far from a 1-to-1 match, his backstory is awfully similar to the plot of Street Supremacy, which'd make him that game's player character. The issue, as always with Street Supremacy, remain in clashing bios and the time frame, far too small.
- Forever Knights and Supremacy Murder are flat-out confirmed by both Word of God and their in-game bios to be the player characters of Drift and Chain Reaction.
Most of the Tokyo teams from 3 that weren't in Import Tuner Challenge dissolved because of the PHANTOM NINE.
Out Of Universe, those teams obviously got the axe because of technical, financial and design limitations. But In-Universe, things are likely different. Two drivers — Platinum Prince and Black Dragon — make it very clear that they lost their teams to the PHANTOM NINE and are looking for revenge. Moreso, speaking with Bloodhound will get him to reveal that the other members of the Thirteen Devils were either driven out of Tokyo or retired because of the climate of terror the PHANTOM NINE were spreading. Who says the same didn't happen to other teams?Secret Code's members aren't really secret agents, they're Chuunibyous.
All available pieces of information try super-hard to convince you they're real secret agents, cooler than what they actually are, but reading between the lines hints at something else. Their original meeting point to "exchange information" was an high school, for starters, not exactly the kind of place true agents would pick. One member claims his job for a computer company is a "cover" for his real job; another that the records of him going to Tokyo Metropolitan High School are "falsified", and that he disguised himself as "hundreds" of people as part of his spy job, and not as his failed attempt at becoming an actor; yet another that he was always a fan of the Fairlady Z since the days of the S30, a car that does not have much of a reputation outside Japan and the American West Coast (especially under the Fairlady name, and especially at the time of the game's release).