The music track "Rooftop Run (Night)" in Sonic Unleashed contains a well-known and common jazz lick (1–2–♭3–4–2–♭7–1) which would go viral and become known as "The Lick" in 2011, three years after Sonic Unleashed's release.

In the Xbox 360 release of the game, you can turn off a stage's music by playing personal music via the Xbox Guide and then pausing it, allowing for harder-to-hear ambient/field recordings that play in the background of certain stages to be heard. For instance, one spot in the Nighttime Spagonia hub area plays a sound clip of someone whistling while taking a shower; the song being whistled is Sonic Unleashed’s theme song "The World Adventure", and a shortened edit of the same whistling is featured in the first teaser trailer for the game.