During development, Segata Sanshiro, the character played by Hiroshi Fujioka for the Sega Saturn ad campaign in Japan, was considered to be a playable racer. Concept art had been drawn for Sanshiro, including one of him riding a Sega Saturn.

Sumo Digital had tried to get ToeJam & Earl in the game as well. However they were unsuccessful with obtaining the rights for both All-Stars Racing and its sequel All-Stars Racing Transformed.

On the early releases of the game, Sonia from the non-canon animated series "Sonic Underground" appears on a playing card representing the Queen of Diamonds which can be spotted on the ground of the race track, Roulette Road. Sonia's head was taken from a piece of fan art from DeviantArt drawn by a user formerly known as Lightning_duchess (now RianaLD). Game director Steve Lycett commented on the cameo by saying: "We take these things seriously at Sumo and will be contacting the original artist directly to offer our sincere apologies to her, this was entirely unintentional. Not much else I can really add!" This image was only supposed to be used as a placeholder.

During loading screens, Sonic appears with a "Sonic Says" hint, a reference to The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon.

Jacky and Akira are the only characters in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing to have reused artwork. In this case, their artwork was taken from Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown.

During early development the developers experimented with having each character have a different way of racing, with Sonic running, Dr. Eggman in the Eggpod, and Gilius Thunderhead from Golden Axe riding on top of a Chicken Leg. This idea was abandoned when they found that the gameplay just wasn't enjoyable, mostly due to the racers being different sizes, as well as problems getting characters on foot to drift the same as characters in cars.

This is the last Sonic-related game to use the 4Kids Entertainment voice actors for the series' cast, who, with the exception of Mike Pollock as Dr. Eggman, were all replaced with the Studiopolis voice cast in July 2010.

The House of the Dead series, despite being featured quite prominently, has rarely been namedropped in SEGA crossover games.

In Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, Zobio and Zobiko's character bio shortens their debut as "HOTD EX" (despite games with longer titles such as Billy Hatcher & the Giant Egg and Alex Kidd in Miracle World not being shortened).

In Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Sega Superstars Tennis, and Sega Superstars, all instances where a House of the Dead logo would be placed are instead swapped for a logo reading Curien Mansion in the same style as the series' logo.

Sega Heroes would be the game to finally break the trend, referring to the games by their title and with their original logo.

This may be due to the series being banned in Germany.