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 Rápido y furioso: Reto Tokio (2006).
Ron Yuan suffers from vertigo. For the scene where his character David Park hanging out the window, the reactions on his face are natural. Director Justin Lin in the commentary said that he really wanted to get this scene done since they were losing the natural lighting. He jokily threatened to hang Ron himself if he didn't do the shot right away.
Due to Universal Pictures moving the release date up from June 12 to April 3rd, composer Brian Tyler only had three days to record the orchestral score.
Around 240 cars were built specially for the film.