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Need for Speed: Most Wanted - TV Tropes

  • ️Wed Oct 15 2014

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (Video Game)

"Well, look what the underground let loose. Let's see how good you do in the daylight."

— Rog

The one that completely evolved police pursuits to a whole new level, featuring the iconic blue and silver car.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a 2005 open-world Racing Game developed by EA Canada and EA Black Box and published by Electronic Arts, and the ninth installment in the Need for Speed series. it was released in November 15, 2005 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, and Xbox 360, the last of which had this game as one of its launch titles. It gained fame for being the first tuner culture game by EA that lets the player drive during daytime and to be chased by the police, along with the return of exotics, countryside highways, and introducing a driving motivation for the player in form of an involved storyline. There was also a PlayStation Portable release called 5-1-0.

The main plot of the 2005 game involves the Player arriving in the city of Rockport with their blue and silver BMW M3 GTR (E46)note  alongside Mia Townsend, in her own Mazda RX-8. After a close encounter with Sergeant Nathan Cross, they run into resident Jerkass Clarence "Razor" Callahan, who doesn't waste a second to insult the player. Mia tells him to simply race against the player to prove who's better, but Razor simply reminds her that he's Number 15 on the Blacklist, and thus the player cannot challenge him until they have a notable reputation. The player begins building a fame, meeting Rog on the way, and eventually manages to challenge Razor, who reminds them that the winner gets the loser's car. Needless to say, Razor cheated and tampered with your BMW's oil system, causing your car to malfunction and therefore lose the race. Finally, to rub salt into the wound, you're arrested by none other than Cross.

Later on, Mia comes to pick you up from the police station after you're released due to lack of evidence,note  but of course, not before Razor skyrockets to the top of the Blacklist with your car. However, you can get your first car and have a crack at defeating the Blacklist, while evading the police. All you have are your skills, your Speedbreaker ability, your car, Rog, and Mia. You're going to need all that to beat the odds. It's you against the entire city, racers, police, and civilians alike. At the same time though, the player will receive indications that someone in their inner circle is not who they seem to be, and there appears to be some truth in that...

The next game of the Need for Speed series, Need for Speed: Carbon, is an (almost) Immediate Sequel that follows the continued adventures of the player. Rockport would be reused and modified in 2010's Need for Speed: World, along with Carbon's Palmont City. A reboot of the game, developed by Criterion Games, was released in October 2012.

"I want every single trope after the guy":

  • 11th-Hour Superpower: The Porsche Carrera GT - arguably one of the best cars in the game - isn't unlocked until you beat Ronnie, Blacklist #3. Same goes for the Ultimate series of performance parts, which are also unlocked at the same time (and of which are the only non-Junkman parts the Carrera can be fitted with anyway).
  • 100% Completion: Obtaining 100% completion by finishing both Career Mode and the Challenge Series, as well as achieving every top rank in the Rap Sheet, nets you the Chevrolet Corvette C6.R.
  • It's Always Spring: Inverted; the game is actually set during autumn for the entire plot, as evidenced by the orange trees scattered around Rosewood and the leaves spanning across Rockport's streets.
  • Accidental Misnaming: Mia consistently pronounces Rog's name with a hard G, making it sound as if she's saying "Rogue" rather than the "Rog" in "Roger" that it actually is. This may be a hint that she's an undercover cop.
  • Arch-Enemy: Razor, Cross, and the Player all hate each other.
  • Ascended Fanboy: Bull. He became Blacklist #2 because of his status as The Dragon to Razor.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: If you buy any car and later on try to sell it, buyers will only accept it for half the stock car's original price. That's right - modifications aren't counted. This is actually Justified; in real life, it's much easier to sell and fix a car that appears to have come from the factory vs. one that could have modifications of questionable nature and/or build quality that would take time and effort to decipher and/or fix. In fact, one way to earn more money in Most Wanted is to strip the car of the modified parts, sell them, and then sell the stock car.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • The ability to directly choose races from the menu helps so much for the pacing compared to how in Underground 2 you have to drive to the events you want to attend.
    • The type of stops are reduced to just three, the garage, the car lot, and the customization shop, where you do all from customizing appearance to the performance of your cars, instead of split into different type of shops like in Underground 2.
    • You can replay all the races you've previously cleared and earn the same amount of money as before, as opposed to Underground 2, where replaying a race already won will result in no money (something that happens again in Undercover).note 
    • The game introduces automatic refillable nitrous boost, as opposed of having only one nitrous charge per race that can't be refilled mid-race (like in Underground) or having to risk yourself with stunts to fill your nitrous (like in Underground 2).
    • During pursuit, if your vehicle was unintentionally flipped upside down around the cops, it'll automatically reset your car and the busted meter will roll back preventing you from getting busted instantly and giving you a chance to escape them.
    • Relating to the above, you can't restart a pursuit once you go into one under normal circumstances. Except for the very final pursuit when you take back your M3 GTR, in which case you're free to restart it as many times as you'd like.
    • Pursuit breakers automatically disable cop cars in a certain radius, without needing a physical collision. This is lampshaded by Rog in a message, where he says that pursuit breakers will at least make cops stop and assist, even if they don't crash (even though they're always clearly shown destroyed in actual gameplay).
  • Artificial Stupidity: Don't be surprised if the police magically forgets where you are, and moves away from you while they're doing a search quadrant. If you're going for a bounty or chase challenge, this can lead to the odd situation of you chasing the police.
  • Artistic License – Cars: The BMW M3 GTR in-game is known for its distinctive V8 noise and transmission whine coming from its straight-cut gears. While the whine used for the car is correct, the engine sounds more like a 1999-2003 TVR Cerbera 4.5's AJP8 instead of a P60B40 that the real deal uses.note 
  • Big Bad: Razor, of course. Him winning the player's car through Vehicular Sabotage is what kickstarts the plot proper, and the goal of the game is to clear the Blacklist so that the player can challenge him again to win their car back.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: While Razor is clearly the game's Big Bad, Cross also qualifies as an antagonist, although he's more of a secondary villain than a proper one, as he opposes the player because as a police sergeant he's against street racing, which is illegal, making him more of a Hero Antagonist.
  • Big Rotten Apple: Like Olympic City in Need for Speed: Underground, Rockport is vaguely based on New York City and New Jersey, Unlike Olympic City, its depiction is far grittier and having more emphasis on the "Jersey" area due to the larger part of countryside and rural areas.
  • Bowdlerize: A lot of the game's music is censored, which makes sense, considering their nature; in particular, the in-game version of Celldweller's "One Good Reason" is completely instrumental due to the song's subject matter.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Pretty much the raison d'être for the Chevrolet Corvette C6.R, a very powerful car, but one that can only be awarded after achieving 100% Completion.
  • Broken Bridge: There's a road that's sealed out until the final pursuit. There are mods that leave it open at all times, though. There's also the holo-barriers that block access to Camden Beach and Downtown Rockport in the earlier parts of the game.
  • The Bus Came Back: The 2005 game brought back two series staples from the classic eras, countryside racing and exotics, which the two Underground games omitted. Note that the developer also developed the PS2 version of Hot Pursuit 2.
    • Exotic cars and grand tourers are back to the roster, although they're unlockable through completion per series-standard.
    • Police pursuits are back as intended, and has been staples in future games involving illegal street racing.
  • Bullet Time: The main crux of the Speedbreaker ability is that it allows you to temporarily slow down time. It would appear again in Carbon and Undercover.
  • Bullying a Dragon:
  • Call-Back: Bayview, the setting of Need for Speed: Underground 2, is mentioned twice in the 2005 game:
    • In Career Mode, Rog tells you that a lot of people are placing bets in the imminent race between you and Razor, and that "people as far as Bayview are throwin' cash down on this".
    • In one of the challenges from the Challenge Series, you're actually working for the police, and it's stated that you're trying to beat the Bayview police's time.
  • Casanova Wannabe: Razor, he constantly hits on Mia (even when other girls are around him) and tries to pry her from your side. He fails miserably, but keeps insisting. He even tries to flirt his way out when she is arresting him, and when that fails, he goes in for a kiss, but gets taken away by an officer at this exact moment.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Courtesy of Rubber-Band A.I..
  • Controllable Helplessness: What happens after you drive over a spike strip. Sure, you can still drive but your car is now so much slower and more difficult to control that it is practically guaranteed you will be busted shortly afterwards.
  • Cool Car: They're Need for Speed games. Do you expect anything less than this trope?
    • The main car of focus in the 2005 game is none other than the BMW M3 GTR (E46), with its pretty-looking blue and silver* livery. It's become the series' most famous (and yes, wanted) car ever since, that it's even worthy of getting its own character page. It got to the point that not only did the Most Wanted 2012's mobile version had it as the last unlockable car, it would later appear as the "Most Wanted" car for the main version's Need for Speed Heroes pack.
      • Fans of competing series Forza were happy when the car was not only a DLC car for Horizon, but the free car of its DLC pack for the month of its release. Oh, and yes, you can easily find recreations of the famous livery in Horizon's vinyl marketplace.note 
    • Pretty much any car can be this if you modify them, and the later ones can be awesome even when stock!
  • Cosmetic Award: Being one of the Xbox 360's launch titles, 2005 has only fifteen achievements, each one for defeating a member of the Blacklist. That's it. No achievement for the final pursuit, no achievement for the challenge series, and (thankfully) no multiplayer achievements.
  • Crapsack World: If you take a critical look at Rockport, the amount of illegal street racers is rampant, there's a lot of damage caused by them, and to top it, there's also a lot of economical unbalances in the city.note 
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Blacklist #6, Ming's pre-race cutscene shows him beating a Mitsubishi Eclipse and Subaru Impreza, two mid-range cars, in his Lamborghini Gallardo.
  • Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Hitting a cruiser's front half in a roadblock is usually considered suicide.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • Compared to both Underground games, Most Wanted takes place in daylight and the settings are even worse, with added police pursuits and Serious Business tones to dial in.
    • Also to the first-era games, for same reasons. While III: Hot Pursuit kicked this trope in the franchise for making exotic supercar racing a Blood Sport, this one takes further.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Getting busted in the races and in penultimate mission allows you to restart again or quit the race without penalizing you with fines and impound strikes to your car; however, the number of times you get busted will be counted on your total career statistics.
  • Defeat Means Playable: Beating a blacklist member rewards their car to be unlockable in Quick Race mode. If you manage to get the pink slip bonus marker, the blacklist's car is yours to use in Career mode.
  • Defeating the Cheating Opponent: Razor beats you in the race at the start of the game by unscrewing the oil sump of your car, and takes your prized car as his and uses it to get to the top of the Blacklist. After working your way up the ranks, you take him on once more where he clearly think he has the edge in your car and he can smoke you easily in a fair race. To say the least, he's not pleased when you manage to beat him and pay him back for his earlier stunt.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • There are an awful lot of lines for the police to use when they're chasing you. For instance, it's reasonable for them to call out when you're heading into a small, specific area, such as the bus station. However, there are also different lines if you ever return there. Also, if you hit the car that spots you before its driver can say his first line, rather than chasing you because you're a speeder, he'll say he's chasing you because you rammed him, complete with radio static before he recovers to let dispatch know he needs backup now because the player just used a deadly weapon, I.E. their car, to attack him. And if you destroy the police car, he will complain that it refuses to work and he cannot give chase.
    • If the player resets their car while in a pursuit in an attempt to avoid arrest, then the game will automatically fill their busted meter to 100%, leading to an immediate arrest.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Mastering the Pontiac GTO and the Vauxhall Monaro VXR is considerably tough. Most consider those two cars the worst for races as they have a slower speed, tricky handling, and their acceleration isn't really one of the best. However, if you can work around those flaws, they're the best cars for ramming, especially during pursuits.
  • Disc-One Nuke: Played with. Any car you get from the beginning of the game (i.e., Fiat Punto, Lexus IS300, Cobalt SS, etc.) can be this if you save up your Junkman part markers and/or enough money to buy the highest-performing parts available to you as you progress. The best example of this, however, would go to Blacklist #13 Vic's Toyota Supra if you're lucky enough to get it via Reward Cards. For absolutely nothing at all, you can get yourself a decent enough car that has some upgrades already installed, making it ready to go for the next member of the Blacklist, Izzy. Tune it up with Junkman parts, on the other hand...
  • Do Not Call Me "Paul": Razor Callahan's birth name is Clarence.
  • Donut Mess with a Cop:
    • One of the pursuit breakers is a donut shop, and running over the supports will have the giant donut fall on any cop cars chasing you. The same donut shop is seen during Vic's entrance; as you wait for Vic's arrival, a cop car can be seen parking in it.
    • One Freeze-Frame Bonus detail on the "Busted" screen◊ is a Post-It note that reads "pick up dry-clean" (possibly "pick up dry-cleaning", since it's partially covered by a marker) and, more clearly, "get a dozen doughnuts" (with "doughnuts" being underlined even).
  • The Dragon: Ronnie and Bull are Razor's most prized colleagues, it seems. Although Bull seems to be the preferred one.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: As detailed under Bullying a Dragon. The only one who even somewhat mellows down is, ironically enough, Razor himself.note 
  • Easy Level Trick: Exclusive Black Edition challenge can be done pretty easily by immediately making a 180 as soon as the challenge starts and heading for the pursuit breaker at the stadium. This will take out the entire horde of heavy SUVs that surrounds you at the start in one go which nets you the required 500,000 bounty thanks to combo bounty multiplier. Then you can just hide in the stadium until the cooldown finishes.
  • Elite Mooks: Undercover police vehicles, who appear at every other heat level. They are harder to disable, have more torque, and are more likely to use the Precision Immobilization Technique than regular police cars.
  • Endless Daytime: The game, which features a sped-up day/night cycle in the game world (PC and Xbox 360 version only), starts out in midday, goes to sunset, then time reversed to sunrise, and goes back to midday. The PS2/Xbox/GameCube version subverted into always midday.
  • Enemy Chatter: You have a connection to the police radio, letting you hear the police communicate with each other as they try to take you down. If you take the time to learn the codes, you can also hear them get notified of road blocks and spike strips, letting you prepare for them more easily.
    • They also have a lot of specialized chatter: they'll correctly identify your car color, occasionally identify your car (they have no problem with the more common cars, but exotics might just be called a "supercar"), and correctly identify where you are, what you've done, and the incredible level of danger you're causing. In addition, it's possible to get spotted by the police, but not have them identify your car: if you listen to the radio and they don't say the color and model of the car, you can evade a pursuit by not breaking the law around police cars, and they'll leave you alone (only possible at heat level 1 or 2).
  • Evil Laugh: Razor and his crew when they defeat you in the prologue. Cross also gets his moment once in the game.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Drag races. They are bloated with traffic coming in and out, changing lanes unexpectedly, and the occasional truck or van crossing the road requiring precision timing to nail the passage. It doesn't help that the entire race requires manual shifting and that the car usually refuses to steer no matter what. Here is an example.
  • Excuse Plot: The plot can be basically summed up as: You had a car. A guy stole your car (by rigging it to fail so he could win in as a bet in a race). He used it to be #1 on a list of most-wanted racers. You have to go through that list to get your car back. Have fun. You can pretty much ignore it for the most part.
  • Expy:
    • The level 6 police seems to be based on the FBI - black, unmarked corvettes reserved for the most dangerous suspects in the country.
    • Similarly, the level 7 police, with all of their SUVs, appear to be based on the SWAT.
  • The Faceless: The protagonist is always filmed from behind in live action cutscenes, his face is censored in in-game cutscenes when busted, and his character model seen in vehicles is shrouded in darkness.
  • Fame Gate: Another point of the game, you need to become notorious in the street racing scene to proceed.
  • Felony Misdemeanor: Inverted, oddly enough. During police chases, you can rack up infractions for doing crazy things, like Destruction of Property for blowing through a bench, or Resisting Arrest for hitting a police car. But the hardest infractions to get are the ones related to speeding: these require you to hit a certain percentage of your vehicle's maximum speed. While it makes sense to get the Speeding infraction for going 75 miles an hour in a low-tier car, it's a little ridiculous that you don't get it until you go more than 150 mph in a higher-tier car. Excessive Speeding requires that you get even more ridiculous speeds, and Reckless Driving, the hardest to get, may require you to hit speeds of 200+ mph! This is particularly annoying on Blacklist challenges that require you to get a certain number of infractions during a police chase, especially the last one that requires you to get all possible infractions in one chase.
  • Final Boss: Razor, unsurprisingly. The game's plot is to clear the Blacklist to have a rematch with him, who's #1 on the Blacklist, to get back the BMW M3 GTR that he won from the player through underhanded tactics.
  • Foreshadowing: Despite the game's Excuse Plot, there's some tidbits worth noticing, though you'd need to know the ending to catch them.
    • Rog mentions in one of his messages that Mia has a long record, which would suggest that she's a longtime racer. Then, Mia messages you, stating her surprise at the organization of racers in Rockport, which she never saw. As a racer, she should've seen it, regardless of her participation. This hints as to her not being a racer. Also note the phrasing of the following statement:

      Mia: I've rolled these streets for a long time, but I've never known the setup was this tight...

    • Whenever you access your Rap Sheet, you hack into the RPD database. This wouldn't be suspicious, except for the account you use? It's Cross's account.
    • When you first meet Cross, he mentions having "a beautiful surprise" in store for the racers. If one takes his words literally, Mia certainly is beautiful...
  • Funny Background Event:
    • Sometimes when you are evading the police and you reach Cooldown, you may hear the police radio say they have managed to arrest a suspect. Unfortunately for that suspect, it's Razor.
    • Occasionally, you may encounter some traffic cars colliding behind a trailer truck carrying either logs or vehicles causing those things to fall off.
  • Game Over: You actually have a limit in the earlier game on how many times a car can be stopped by the police.note  If you do get arrested, you have to pay all the fines you accumulated with that car, which, depending on how reckless you are, can render you bankrupt. Let's not forget that, if all your cars are taken by the police, you lose the game. There are ways to increase a car's "lives",note  and to make the police ignore the chase and let you escape scot-free but not only Lady Luck decides if you get those or not, but you only have fourteen chances to get them.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • It is stated in the prologue that you need to put your car on the line to challenge a Blacklist racer. This is not reflected in gameplay, and you keep your vehicle even if you lose. You also only get a 5 in 6 chance to get the opponent's pink slip.
    • Sergeant Cross’ car is noticeably different between cutscenes and during gameplay. The Corvette featured in cutscenes is a C6.R, although the car used during in-game pursuits is a variant of the Corvette Federal Cruiser.
  • Hero Antagonist: Sergeant Cross is simply trying to enforce the law, though his Cowboy Cop behavior pushes him towards Nominal Hero territory.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: It's impossible to evade the final pursuit - even if you break the line of sight you'll find that Evade meter will not fill so you won't be able to enter Cooldown. The real objective is to survive for five minutes until you receive Mia's phone call telling you to head to the previously inaccessible old bridge. Said call also seems to Hand Wave why you can't enter Cooldown, as she'll tell you that you can't go back to any of the safe houses, because Cross now knows about them.
  • Implacable Man: The player is essentially this in the game. You overcome all odds staked against you, defeat anyone who stands on your way, and never lets up on your mission to give Razor a good beating.
  • Improbably Cool Car: The player initially arrives in Rockport driving a BMW M3 GTR, which is a racetrack variant of the M3 (E46) that was made to compete in sanctioned endurance races like the American Le Mans Series. Needless to say, racing around the streets on a car that is purposefully meant for the racetrack is sure to draw a lot of attention, including one Jerkass street racer and one Cowboy Cop. The only other non-street legal car available in the game is the Chevrolet Corvette C6.R, a racetrack variant of the Corvette (C6) which also saw action in endurance racing.
  • Infinity -1 Sword: If you win Ming'snote  Lamborghini Gallardo, it comes with most of all of the final performance upgrades available for cars that aren't supposed to be unlocked until after you beat Ronnie. The car unmodified from its initial setup is enough to get you through the next few Blacklist targets easy, and it saves you money so you can buy one of the final cars when you need to. You will definitely want to Save Scum for this one. In fact, any Blacklist rival car after Ming could count, since they all have Ultimate parts everywhere except nitrous, but the Gallardo is by far the best handling one of them.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: Not the BMW M3 that you get for defeating Razor (it can't accept modifications and has a criminally low handling score when you get it backnote ), but any car that you modify. Even the initial three cars can be god machines if modified, and if you stockpile the Junkman parts that are available as extra prizes for defeating Blacklist racers and use them all on one car, that car will be leaps and bounds beyond even the best cars in the game, like the Porsche Carrera GT (normally an end-game car).
  • In Medias Res: The prologue is exactly like this. It starts in the first race between you and Razor, then as soon as Mia notifies you of the leaking oil, the game skips back six days earlier to show how you got tangled in all of this mess.
  • Jerkass: Razor. a bossy, cheating sore loser who doesn't seem to be too thankful for its entourage..
  • Joke Character: A few of the Challenge Series events lets you play with NPC traffic vehicles, which are pretty slow and you have to win time trial challenges with them, except for two that use a garbage and cement truck that are used for pursuit challenges.
  • Leitmotif: Each member of the Blacklist has a particular song from the game’s soundtrack that plays for them in their introductory video as well as their pre-race cutscene:
    • Sonny has “Tao of the Machine (Scott Humphrey’s Remix)” by BT and The Roots.
    • Taz has “Blinded in Chains” by Avenged Sevenfold.
    • Vic has “Decadence” by Disturbed, although this only plays during his introductory video.
    • Izzy has “I Am Rock” by Rock, although this only plays during her introductory video.
    • Big Lou has “My Hood” by Suni Clay.
    • Baron has “Barrier Break” by Dieselboy and Kaos.
    • Earl has “Feed The Addiction” by Ils.
    • Jewels has “We Control” by Hyper, although this only plays during her introductory video.
    • Kaze has “You Must Follow (Evol Intent VIP)” by Stratus.
    • Ming has “Broken Sword” by Evol Intent, Mayhem, and Thinktank.
    • Webster has “Nine Thou (Grant Mohrman Superstars Remix)” by Styles of Beyond.
    • JV has “Let’s Move” by The Perceptionists, although this only plays during his introductory video.
    • Ronnie has “One Good Reason” by Celldweller.
    • Bull has “You’ll Be Under My Wheels” by The Prodigy, although this only plays during his introductory video.
    • Razor has “Shapeshifter” by Celldweller and Styles of Beyond, although this only plays during his introductory video.
  • Level in Reverse: A few tracks are exactly the opposite of another one, with the only other difference being the name.
  • Live-Action Cutscene: The 2005 game featured live-action actors acting in front of pre rendered backgrounds.
  • MacGuffin: The BMW M3 GTR that Razor took from you.
  • Marathon Level: Hastings is a 3-lap race on a 28.8km circuit that Razor has offered and takes around 10 minutes to finish, and NFS World Loop is a 16.9mi (27.2km) sprint race around the whole Rockport only available in quick race and multiplayer mode.
  • Mercy Invincibility:
    • Resetting your car after crashing will make it intangible for a short while, complete with a classic Flash of Pain. Inverted in pursuits, though, as resetting will automatically fill the busted meter to full as an anti-cheating measure.
    • With the Jump camera enabled, your vehicle will turn invincible for a short moment after using the pursuit breaker, allowing you to plow through any objects and other vehicles (except spikes) until there's none of any objects to hit where your vehicle turns into normal.
  • Mighty Glacier: Challenge #46 featured a cost-to-state mission where the player has to drive a garbage truck. Sure, it's hilariously slow, but its huge size and ramming power makes it very easy for taking down any cop that dares get in your way.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Mia has the tendency to wear clothes that don't cover much of her body. This is taken to the apex in the first race against Razor in the prologue, where she is wearing a bikini top. Never mind that it's autumn, considering how most characters seem to have no problem in wearing T-shirts.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Blacklist is apparently fond of these: Taz, Big Lou, Kamikaze, Bull, and Razor.
    • Of course, there are the aversions. "Sonny" isn't likely to frighten anyone. Probably because he's fresh on the Blacklist.
    • Another aversion is "Earl", which is considered by some players as a formidable Blacklist member.
    • Lampshaded in the PSP version 5-1-0; the Deadpan Snarker who writes each Blacklist member's bio sarcastically mentions it must have taken Razor all night to come up with that name.
  • New Weapon Target Range: After the final race against Razor, the player is back in control of the BMW that was the game's A Taste of Power, but it's better than ever and supremely upgraded. Good thing too, because your wanted level just rose to 6. Every. Single. Unit. of the police force is chasing after you in a climatic playable Chase Scene which ends with you performing a literal Broken Bridge Ramp Jump that the police can't make.
  • Nitro Boost: This game has a more-or-less traditional version.
  • No Fair Cheating: If you quit out of the game during a pursuit to avoid being busted, the car's heat level will be reduced once you reopen the game. Since it's easier to earn bounty and complete milestones at higher heat levels, this means you will need to work your way back up.
  • Noodle Incident: It's never explained exactly at what point Razor had the opportunity to sabotage the player's M3 GTR prior to their first race together, as the car arrives at the race start already sabotaged (as hinted by Ronnie's snide "how's your car running?" comment) and the game never hints at this before the race itself.
  • No One Could Survive That!: When you ram and make a police car flip. Several times. Especially during roadblocks.
  • Not the Intended Use: Besides allowing you to slow down time, Speedbreaker makes your car temporarily heavier (probably since the developers intended for it to be primarily used to breach roadblocks), which makes it useful in multiple other situations:
    • Turning it on before a jump makes it fly closer to the ground and land without losing as much speed and traction.
    • If you have no time to avoid a crash with traffic or a destructible object it will let you keep more momentum.
    • Using traffic that's at a roadblock as a battering ram (provided it isn't the garbage, cement, or semi-truck). Since the game doesn't recognize the player's car as having hit the roadblock, less speed is lost than if the roadblock was directly hit and eliminates the risk of the front wheels being thrown into the air and getting the car stuck.
    • Hitting posts or objects while diving into the corner will help you cruise the sector without letting off your acceleration due to reduced speed.
  • Oireland: The back of Ronnie McCrea's (Blacklist #3) car says "Kiss me I'm Irish" in big letters. The car itself is a British made Aston Martin DB9.
  • Old Save Bonus: As detailed above, you'll get $10,000 if you have Underground 2 installed on your computer or have a save file on your console's memory card, allowing you to use the Volkswagen Golf GTI as your Second Hour Superpower.
  • Optional Traffic Laws: When you attract police attention, your police scanner will let you know if the police are looking for a reckless driver in general, or your car specifically (the difference between "caller did not get a good look" and "suspect is driving a [color] [make]"). If they don't have your vehicle description, and you follow traffic laws, they won't come after you. But when you're in a car that can go 250 miles an hour, driving under 35 is difficult, to say the least. (You're still in first gear! Not even pushing 4000 RPMS!)
  • Pop the Tires: Spike strips. Losing even one tire is an almost-guaranteed Game Over, but it is still barely possible to escape the cops if you're lucky and good enough. Lose all of them, and it's definitely Game Over.
  • Post-Climax Confrontation: After you finally beat Razor and get your BMW M3 GTR back, you have to escape from Rockport as Cross orders every police unit in the city to go after you.
  • Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Ronnie, blacklist #3. His poses, his clothes, his car, his mannerisms, speech patterns, everything about him screams "White trash, gangsta wannabe" Lampshaded by his Blacklist bio.

    Rog: You know Ronnie, he's one of those rich freaks that think he's ghetto...

  • Press X to Die: During police chases, if you reset your car while there are cops nearby you will instantly get busted. This does not happen if your car is reset automatically after flipping over, however. It may still be worth trying a reset as a last ditch effort if you're swarmed, however, since it will sometimes respawn your car far enough from the police for it to be outside of their arrest range. Respawning will also fix any popped tires, which are otherwise a death sentence on higher heat levels anyway, so there's no harm in trying.
  • Prison Rape: After arresting the protagonist in the prologue, Sgt. Cross states that "they are gonna love [him] in the big house" and blows a kiss.
  • Product Placement: The player uses a Cingular (which today would be AT&T) cellphone, and there's plenty of Burger King ads scattered around: shops, ads, even blimps. There was also a Burger King franchise in Camden, and there were even some inaccessible garages themed with Castrol branding on them. Also, let's not forget the many decals of car mod-producing companies such as Brembo and HKS that you can add to your car. At this rate, you can probably create a NASCAR replica!
  • Rank Up: The main focus of the game is to climb up the ranks of the Blacklist until you reach Razor, who is #1.
  • Real Is Brown: This was abused very much by the game, to promote a "ghetto" feeling of a corrupt city. This is even more present in cutscenes, and taken Up to Twelve in beta screenshots.
  • Right for the Wrong Reasons: Razor claims the player character is working with the cops. It's obvious to the player and to Rog that this is transparent slander. It's revealed in the final pursuit that Mia was an undercover cop all along, shadowing you as a gambit to arrest Razor and wrap up the entire Blacklist.
  • Road Block: Probably one of the best ways to ramp up your Bounty and Cost-to-State. Just watch out for the spike strips and the Rhino SUVs.
  • Scenery Porn: Averted, considering how Rockport is a city falling apart.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Bull is not actually a great racer, and in fact is only #2 on the Blacklist for two reasons: 1) he's Razor's second in command, and 2) he has enough money to win races through superior cars. He drives a completely unmodified SLR McLaren, which even Rog points out is a pretty bullshit car for street racing.note 
  • Second Hour Superpower: The Lexus IS-300, the Fiat Punto and the Chevrolet Cobalt SS are the first options for you at the end of the prologue, and they have their strengths and weaknesses. However, if you played the previous game (Underground 2) on a non-Xbox 360 platform, you get an additional $10,000 bonus at the end of the prologue, which allows you to purchase the Volkswagon Golf GTI. While the IS-300 has better handling but lacks acceleration, the Punto has better acceleration but lacks top speed, and the Cobalt SS has better top speed but lacks handling, the Golf GTI has all three, lacking in nothing, and can wreck the early Blacklist races with no problem. It also handles modifications extremely well.
  • Self-Contained Demo: The game's demo for the PS2 is for the most part a simplified version of the game, but also made significant changes that don't appear in the final game, including making Rog a vastly different character than that of the released game. Whereas in the game proper Rog is a friendly racer who drives a 2005 Pontiac GTO and helps the player after having raced with them, in the demo he's an antagonistic racer who drives a 2005 Ford Mustang GT (albeit with the same paint job as the Pontiac GTO) and is even the #16 member of the Blacklist (it only went as far as #15 in the finished game), complete with having the Blacklist members' signature intro video and his face even being shown there.
  • Sequential Boss: All Blacklist members are raced in Rival Challenges featuring multiple events. All members from Sonny to Ming have 2 races; Webster, JV, Ronnie and Bull have 3 races; finally, Razor has 5 races, making him a Marathon Boss of sorts.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The game's most famous line appears to be a reference to The Professional.

      Cross: I want every single unit after this guy.

      Partner: ...everyone?

    • One wonders if Blacklist no. 7 (Kira "Kaze" Nakazato) is related to a certain other Nakazato who is also well-known for his temper...
  • Situational Sexuality: In a voicemail, Razor suggests that the reason Rog is so inexplicably friendly and helpful towards the protagonist is that they met in jail, and says he is not judgmental.
  • Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: A 4, as although you have a good amount of freedom to do various events in Rockport, you have goals to follow in order to progress through the career mode. If you don't do enough in events and police chases, then you can't go against the Blacklist members and get your BMW back from Razor. You also have to unlock access to the Camden and Gray Point area, and then Downtown Rockport later on.
  • Sore Loser:
    • Razor; it's bad enough that the guy's a cheating bastard who gyps you out of your precious ride at the start of the game by unscrewing the oil sump. But once you rise through the ranks and beat him in a fair race (while he's in your prized ride, no less), the guy refuses to give back the car, plans on taking back the #1 ranking from the player, and his cronies are gearing up for a fight. Luckily, Mia is there to prevent this from happening. Helps that she also happens to be an undercover cop: as soon as she takes down Razor and reveals her badge, everyone backs way off.
    • Cross as well: he actually pulls you over at the beginning of the game (in a cutscene) as you enter Rockport and get into an impromptu race with Mia. He clearly identifies your car as illegal for street drivingnote , but gets called away by a police call to stop an active street race. He gets mad and decides to key your car as he leaves. Later, after you lose the race to Razor and your car, he arrests you, but has to let you go (as Mia points out, it's hard to arrest someone for street racing when they don't even have a car) and makes it his personal mission to take you down along with the rest of the Blacklist in revenge. When he fails to catch you at the end, the following game Carbon reveals that he later quitted the police force and became a bounty hunter just to take you down.
  • Supermodel Strut: In an early cutscene, Mia sashays to the protagonist's car in slow motion in a very exaggerated manner.
  • A Taste of Power: The BMW M3 GTR GT, before you lose it in the sabotaged race. Later it returns as the 11th-Hour Superpower in the final pursuit. With custom performance mods added by Razor!
  • True Final Boss: After the player defeats Razor, Cross and the entire Rockport police force appear to arrest Razor, the rest of the Blacklist (offscreen) and to attempt to do the same to the player, revealing that the game's true final challenge is to avoid being arrested by them, and ultimately escape Rockport with Mia's help.
  • Under the Truck: There is enough clearance under the semi-trucks for you to drive under with any playable vehicle.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Turns out that Razor was sort of right all along about you working for the police, although since you're legitimately not a cop, you didn't know what was going on until after you beat him.
  • Vanity License Plate:
    • All cars in the 2005 game have "NFSMW" in their license plates. Even the police.
    • Razor also added a vanity license plate to your M3 as shown in a cutscene, spelling - you guessed it - "RAZOR". Although in-game, the license plate still shows "NFSMW" like all others.
  • Villain Protagonist: The Player. After all, competing in illegal street races is a crime. Which makes their rivalry with Razor to be Evil Versus Evil, or at the very best, A Lighter Shade of Black.
  • The Voice: Rog. We only hear his gruff voice, and race him just once, yet he's always with you all the way from Sonny up to Razor himself. He never shows his face.
  • The Voiceless: The player.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Foreshadowed in the first stages. Rog calls you up to tell that someone is spreading a rumor that you're working for the police. Later on, Razor calls you and reveals his identity in which he was the one who's accusing you of working for the 5-O. He then "turns the tables" and gets the car you're using to Police Heat Level 5, the highest at the time. Then, at the final stage, Razor is so desperate that he calls you to attempt to insult you, but just demonstrates that he's flipping out.
  • Wanted Meter: Introduced the "Heat Levels" to the franchise, which ranges from 1, the municipal police Mooks, to 6, the undercover federal police. This was reintroduced to its sequel, Carbon, and followed suit through Undercover, World, and was eventually reused in the 2012 game.
  • Water Tower Down: The game uses water towers as pursuit breakers. Drive through the supports and the tower falls on the pursuing police cars.
  • Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?:
    • It's insane to believe that the government would use expensive Corvette C6s as FEDERAL cruisers. Since they are reserved to be used against the most dangerous drivers, it's natural for the governmental bill to climb into the millions.
    • The protagonist's BMW had a production run of ten machines.
  • Wide-Open Sandbox: Rockport.

"Everyone?"