Vin Diesel (Dom) originally wanted to make the fourth and fifth films back to back, but Universal decided to take some time to see how the fourth movie would work out before moving on to a fifth. Diesel was allowed to direct an eighteen minute short film called Los Bandoleros (2009) set in the Fast And Furious world before this fourth installment, which is available on the DVD. The short introduces Leo and Santos (Don Omar and Tego Calderon), and establishes Dom's friendship with Han (Sung Kang) which was mentioned in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006).

When Mia is treating Dom's gunshot wound, she says the bullet is not inside, which means there has to be an exit wound. However, Dom hasn't one.

The end credits shows, an animated version of the beginning of Dominic's escape from Jail.

After initially being awarded a 15 rating, the distributors chose to make one cut for the UK theatrical release. The sight of a man having his head slammed into a marble wall, as well as the removal of the follow-on shot of his broken and bloodied nose, was edited in order to attain a 12A category. This pre-cut version was released on both the UK DVD and Blu-ray.

Edited into Fast & Furious: Gag Reel (2011)