When you’re going 200mph, it’s easy to miss Easter eggs. In Need for Speed Heat, there are Easter Eggs and other small details hidden in the road signs and buildings. This only adds to the feeling that the game’s world is very complicated. But if you want to find these references as you walk around Palm City, you have to know where to look.

Some of the references in Need for Speed Heat are from earlier games in the series, but not all of them are. There are also hints about other games. Even so, each of these Easter Eggs is fun to find. Keep an eye out for the following small details as you explore Need for Speed Heat’s open-world setting.

Olympic City

On the north side of a bridge in downtown Palm City, you can find a sign that says Olympic City is 98 miles to the northeast. Olympic City is a made-up town in Need for Speed: Underground. It has a downtown, a market district, an airport, Chinatown, and a port.

This is not the only place that Heat talks about. You can also find a sign that points to Port Murphy in Olympic City. This makes me wonder what a map that includes both Olympic City and Palm City would look like.

Dead Space

In the south of Port Callahan, outside a hotel, you can find Sun Cola and Refresco vending machines. At first glance, this might not seem like much.

But if you’ve played Dead Space before, you’ll remember that soda is served everywhere in the game, like on the USG Ishimura, Aegis VII, and Titan Station. The drink is orange, and its slogan, “Taste the Sun,” is well-known. Electronic Arts is the company that puts out both Heat and Dead Space. This link also makes me wonder if this means that Dead Space and Need for Speed Heat take place in the same universe.

Haunted Barn

One of the strangest things in Heat is the haunted barn. In the Fort Callahan area, there is an old barn that has been left empty.

Strange things have been said about the barn, but the first thing you’ll probably notice when you get there are the creepy sounds. When you turn off your lights and engine, strange things start to happen. Sometimes a truck you don’t know will pull up and sit there to watch you. There have been other times when cars have crashed into the barn.

Rami Malek

In Need for Speed: Heat, one of the characters looks just like Rami Malek. The character who wears a white and blue jacket, on the other hand, is not identified as Rami Malek.

This seems to be a small nod to Malek, who played Finn in the Need for Speed movie that came out in 2014. Malek isn’t new to the world of video games, and he was also in Until Dawn.

Burnout Paradise

A car that has been left behind is parked against a building in downtown Palm City. When you look more closely, you can see that the car’s license plate says “TAS-SAL1.” On a license plate, where the state name would usually be, you can find the words “Paradise City.”

The 2008 open world game, Burnout Paradise is set in the fictional town of Paradise City. The Electronic Arts game was very important, and it’s likely that it had a direct effect on the people who made Heat. Burnout Paradise was a big deal, so it makes sense that Heat talks about it.

Ronnie McCrea

You can find a Guanabana (Soursop) stand in Sandino Ranches. It looks like someone named Ronnie owns it.

This probably has something to do with Ronald (Ronnie) McCrea, who is one of the main bad guys in Need for Speed: Most Wanted. If you played Slope Game, you might remember Ronnie because he challenged you to races in his yellow Toyota.

Ghost Studios

This Easter Egg is hard to find, but it is still an Easter Egg. In Heat, there is a building called the Devil Culinary Institute. Its symbol is more than just a small nod to the logo that Ghost Games used.

From 2013 to 2020, Need for Speed was run by Ghost Games Studios, which was based in Gothenburg. During this time, Need for Speed Payback and Heat, which were remakes of the first Need for Speed, came out. Electronic Arts shut down Ghost Games in 2020.

EA Games

Electronic Arts is one of the biggest and most well-known companies that makes games. Need for Speed is also made by this company. So it makes sense that there is a reference to the company in Heat.

On the same building, there are several signs that say “EA Games.” “Play EA games” is written on one colorful sign, and “Game On!” is written on another. A third sign says “Color Console” and has a picture that looks a lot like the symbol for the Dreamcast. In the year 2000, Need for Speed V-Rally 2 came out for the Dreamcast.

TFK Logo

In a grassy yard in the eastern part of Fort Callahan, there is an abandoned car with a TFK logo.

The TFK crew is a group from the Need for Speed: World game from 2010. Wolf is the man in charge of the TFK. Wolf is forced by TFK to work with Darius, who used to be his boss in the game. Members of TFK often drive expensive cars in the game, which is fitting for a group called the Fortune Kings.

Universal Studios

Monolithic Studios makes a reference to a bonus course in Need for Speed 2, which is kind of like a double Easter egg.

The bonus course makes references to many famous scenes from movies, such as the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the trench run in Star Wars: A New Hope, the dystopian setting of Blade Runner, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, and a shark that eats boats like the one in Jaws. The symbol looks exactly like the Universal Studios logo.