Fast And Furious Storylines That Disappeared Without Explanation

Most fans would agree that the most memorable parts of the "Fast and Furious" movies are the increasingly ridiculous stunts the main characters engage in to save the world. But it's not all about surface-level flash here: The long-running franchise has also built a surprisingly dense mythos. Not only does the "Fast and Furious" saga utilize every character in its arsenal, throwaway lines of dialogue can springboard into full-fledged plotlines in later installments. Plus, nobody in this series ever seems to stay dead. The result is a gaggle of movies that reward loyal viewers who keep track of the exploits of Dominic Toretto and his band of allies.

Of course, just because the "Fast and Furious" movies pride themselves on continuity doesn't mean every storyline gets a satisfying resolution. In fact, over the years, many seemingly key plot threads and teases for exciting new developments have led to dead ends, rather than thrilling new roads. Even a franchise like "Fast and Furious," which is practically bursting with nods to the past, manages to lose track of things every once in a while. These are the "Fast and Furious" storylines that ended up disappearing without explanation.

After being introduced in "Fast Five" as Luke Hobbs' ultra-competent aide, Elena Neves struggles to find a consistent role to occupy in the franchise. An attempt to make her Dominic Toretto's love interest — the two bond over their shared loss of loved ones — gets cut short by the sudden return of Letty. Elena appears to find a new purpose in "Furious 7" when a potential job pops up. She excitedly tells Luke Hobbs about the gig, and the pair's closeness throughout the rest of "Furious 7" suggests that Neves is possibly being set up as a love interest for Hobbs, in addition to acting as a possible FBI contact (depending on what her new job actually is).

Those plot threads are abruptly abandoned by the time "The Fate of the Furious" rolls around, however. Neves is puzzlingly absent from this installment until she suddenly shows up as a captive of the main villain, Cipher. It's revealed that she's the mother of Dominic Toretto's kid before Cipher murders her. Right then and there, all "Furious 7" storylines regarding Neves meet their end. They're replaced with an awkward death that gives Toretto further motivation to hate a villain he already despises.

Though she appears to die in "Fast & Furious," Letty Ortiz is alive and well when "Fast & Furious 6" rolls around. Not only that, she's now working for the villainous Owen Shaw. How is this possible? Letty is suffering from amnesia: She can't remember anything about Dominic Toretto or her former friends. By the end of "Fast & Furious 6," however, she's back on the side of the good guys. "Furious 7" further explores the psychological fallout of her resuming a romance with a man she can't remember.

But this aspect of Letty's storyline is largely jettisoned after "Furious 7." If someone were to watch "The Fate of the Furious" without seeing any of the previous installments that reference her amnesia, that viewer could be forgiven for thinking Letty has never suffered any kind of memory loss. The abruptness with which this storyline is dropped is peculiar on its own, but it's extra puzzling given that abandoning this narrative leaves Letty without her own unique character arc in subsequent adventures. Much like Letty forgets her memories of Dominic Toretto at the start of "Fast & Furious 6," the "Fast and Furious" franchise totally forgets about Letty's amnesia.

When Sean first comes to Tokyo in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," he's an outsider struggling to connect with his new home. Eventually, though, Sean makes friends, and even strikes up a romance with Neela. This budding relationship signifies Sean's journey from being a stranger in a foreign land to finding a true home in Japan. While it isn't an all-time great silver screen romance, the relationship between these two "Tokyo Drift" characters does serve an important purpose in the narrative. Given how critical it is in that film, in fact, it would be understandable to come away from it thinking an important character like Neela must be a fixture of any further adventures Sean has in the series.

The producers behind the "Fast and Furious" movies don't agree with this assumption, however. Shockingly enough, Neela hasn't appeared in the series at all since "Tokyo Drift." This is despite the fact that Sean makes two further appearances in the franchise, while two of his best friends manage to return in a supporting capacity in "F9." The "Tokyo Drift" team has proven quite consequential to the series, in fact, even helping take it to space. But that prominence hasn't offered Neela a chance to return. Sean's dialogue in "Furious 7" and "F9" doesn't even contain any references to the woman who helps him find a true home in "Tokyo Drift."

If you stick around through the credits of "Fast Five," you get a big surprise. Not only does Luke Hobbs show up for one last scene, Monica Fuentes returns to the franchise for the first time since "2 Fast 2 Furious," which premiered nearly a decade prior. In "2 Fast 2 Furious," Fuentes acts as an important ally in law enforcement to Brian O'Conner. Beyond that, there are sparks of a romance sizzling between the two characters. While O'Conner returns to the series in a leading man capacity in "Fast & Furious," however, Fuentes vanishes, as does any trace of O'Conner having an important relationship with this character.

That all changes in the "Fast Five" post-credits scene. Her presence here suggests that Fuentes will be making an exciting return to the franchise. But since this tease hit the big screen, Fuentes has continued to be M.I.A. The reasons for this absence remain unclear. The most likely explanation is that Fuentes' actor Eva Mendes embarked upon a sabbatical from acting shortly after the release of "Fast Five." There's also the fact that the "Fast and Furious" movies have shifted towards stories involving espionage and rogue agencies, rather than specific law enforcement groups. Whatever the reason, the post-credits tease of Fuentes making a comeback is one of the most notable instances of an awkwardly dropped storyline in the entire "Fast and Furious" canon.

After serving as the main foe of "Fast & Furious," Arturo Braga returns in "Fast & Furious 6." Considering how many close connections he has with the main characters — especially as the one responsible for ensuring Letty gets amnesia — it's no surprise that he ends up factoring into this universe once again. However, this movie isn't about Braga's vengeance, as one might expect. Instead, the character comes back for a one-scene appearance when Brian O'Conner visits him in a Los Angeles prison to secure pivotal information regarding Letty. One conversation and a brief physical skirmish later, Braga vanishes from the rest of "Fast & Furious 6" and the franchise as a whole, despite still being alive the last time viewers see him.

If one is to hazard a guess regarding Braga's disappearance, the increasing scale of the "Fast and Furious" movies probably hasn't helped his case. While Braga is the main baddie in "Fast & Furious," at the time of that film's release, the "Fast and Furious" movies were still just car-centric action flicks. Since then, they've expanded into being heist films, spy adventures, and even crossed over into science fiction territory. The "Fast and Furious" adventures just keep getting bigger and bigger. Paradoxically, that means they have less and less room to feature the return of one of the franchise's integral villains.

Considering how important cars are to seemingly everything in the "Fast and Furious" world, you'd think that someone who can control cars would have everything at their fingertips. For a moment in "The Fate of the Furious," it looks like that's exactly the case when Cipher gets her hands on technology that allows her to "hack into" any car within a nearby radius. Suddenly, the central tool used by Dominic Toretto and his allies to save the planet is taken out of their hands. Furthermore, everyone's cars — not just the ones that belong to Toretto and company — are in the clutches of a dangerous criminal mastermind. Cipher's got the keys, and the planet is in for a crash of gargantuan proportions.

It's easy to assume such a tool would become a central fixture of the entire series, given that cars are the "Fast and Furious" franchise's bread and butter. But Cipher's ability to manipulate all automobiles never resurfaces again in "The Fate of the Furious." The climax of the film revolves around a submarine, rather than Cipher's vehicle-controlling mastery. This ability also fails to return as part of Cipher's subsequent appearance in "F9," the next installment in the "Fast and Furious" series. There are so many ways turning cars against Dominic Toretto could excitingly twist the status quo of this fictitious universe. Unfortunately, the "Fast and Furious" franchise has seemingly forgotten all about Cipher's uniquely useful tool.

The opening of "F9" is entirely concerned with the fact that a plane containing Mr. Nobody, an authority figure who plays a role in the prior two movies, has gone down. Dominic Toretto and his family proceed to pull off a rescue mission, with a valuable device stored inside the plane as their target. Though a brief mention is made of Mr. Nobody, regarding the likelihood of him surviving the disaster, the character is never seen again. It's never even made clear whether or not he manages to emerge from the crash intact.

Given that moviegoers never see a corpse on screen and Mr. Nobody is known for getting out of sticky situations unscathed, it seems quite likely that he's survived his airplane-based scrape. The fact that Han later returns and notes that Mr. Nobody helped him fake his death only draws further attention to the fact that "F9," despite running for over 140 minutes, never actually ties up the fate of this notable character. Perhaps later entries in the series will resolve Mr. Nobody's disappearance, but for now, the mysterious figure's status remains a perplexingly unresolved feature of the franchise's mythos.

Why would you risk it all for a boatload of cash? Each of the main characters in "Fast Five" has a distinct reason for attempting to steal untold amounts of moolah from a formidable gangster in Rio de Janeiro. For Tej, his motivation comes from a desire to open a garage that improves on all the shortcomings he's found in other, similar operations. This is a somewhat peculiar ambition, given that he is previously depicted operating a garage in "2 Fast 2 Furious," but that fact is immaterial as far as the plot of "Fast Five" is concerned. Once the impossible heist gets pulled off, a closing montage shows that all that money does, in fact, make Tej's dream come true. He gets his own shop, and he gets to run it exactly as he wants to.

It's clear from "Fast Five" that this location holds an enormous amount of personal importance to Tej. This makes the fact that the garage has utterly failed to reappear in the series ever since all the more peculiar. "Fast & Furious 6" finds Tej overseas, spreading his wealth around to people who could really use a cash infusion. His Robin Hood-esque antics are charming, but utterly unrelated to the garage he was so keen to create. Despite serving as his entire character motivation in "Fast Five," Tej's longed-for garage has proven to be inconsequential to the larger "Fast and Furious" narrative.

If you asked 100 people who all love the "Fast and Furious" franchise who their favorite character is, it's pretty likely that none of them would name Little Nobody from "The Fate of the Furious." An assistant to Mr. Nobody, Little Nobody is mostly around to serve as a straight-laced foil to the rule-breaking lead characters of the "Fast and Furious" series, such as Luke Hobbs and Roman Pearce. While this establishes a solidly entertaining comedic contrast, it also means that Little Nobody has no personality of his own to speak of.

With Little Nobody lacking much in the way of a distinct story or a memorable screen presence, it's easy to forget that he's even in "The Fate of the Furious." Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that "F9" opts to kick its story into high gear without any trace of the character in sight. There isn't even a joke to explain away his absence — he's just flat-out gone. Given that Mr. Nobody is M.I.A. for the majority of "F9," it's not shocking that his assistant also decides to skip town for this entry in the series. But for the one or two fans out there dying for a Little Nobody comeback, the truth is still brutal. All in all, his presence in this franchise has amounted to that of a peculiar and unfinished footnote in the larger "Fast and Furious" mythos.

There haven't always been sizeable roles for women in the "Fast and Furious" franchise, but Suki, who is introduced in "2 Fast 2 Furious," is a solid character uniquely interested in championing the ladies of her fictional universe. Suki is a racer who has an all-female team, offering the women of the street racing world the chance to play a role beyond acting as arm candy. When she isn't driving fast on tricky roads, she's engaging in a potential romance with Tej and helping out Brian O'Conner's climactic plan to foil the gangster Carter Verone.

While "2 Fast 2 Furious" characters Roman Pearce and Tej get to return as lead characters in "Fast Five" and its subsequent sequels, Suki has yet to return to the world of the "Fast and Furious" franchise. This is a strange choice for the films to make, given the connection she has with Tej. Tej has managed to become a central part of the series, yet Suki never comes back, or even gets referenced. It's part of a questionable trend evident across all of the "Fast and Furious" movies of women and their plotlines lacking the prominence and long-term presence their male counterparts enjoy. While Suki briefly provides an oasis for women in "2 Fast 2 Furious," the fact that she's never returned to the franchise since throws her accomplishments into shadow.

In the original "The Fast and the Furious" film, Dominic Toretto is surrounded by a whole different surrogate family. Rather than rubbing shoulders with Han or Roman Pearce, Toretto is best buds with folks like Hector. A fellow street racer, Hector is a notable part of the movie's earliest scenes, particularly involving Brian O'Conner, who Hector dubs a "snowman." Though his outsized personality and the emphasis placed on his comical lines make Hector a standout figure, he isn't a consistently prominent part of the production. Eventually, Hector vanishes so that the budding friendship between Toretto and O'Conner can blossom.

This gradually decreasing presence in "The Fast and the Furious" turns out to be a premonition for Hector's role in the larger "Fast and Furious" mythos. While other members of Toretto's initial social circle manage to return and enjoy prominent roles in later entries of the "Fast and Furious" franchise, Hector remains curiously absent. His only appearance since "The Fast and the Furious" is a cameo in "Furious 7" that's pretty much over before it even begins. Having him show up for such a brief moment (which sees him get socked in the face) only highlights how odd it is that a franchise so concerned with utilizing every element of its canon has never really made time to bring back one of Toretto's earliest allies in a significant way.