The 2012 reboot of the Twisted Metal series was originally developed as a PSN-exclusive multiplayer title with no singleplayer component, similar to Warhawk and SOCOM Confrontation. It was only at Sony's behest that it was expanded into a full retail title with a story mode.

Models for more vehicles, such as Twister, Spectre, Mr. Slam, Crazy 8, Yellow Jacket and Pit Viper were created for the game but not implemented due to the developers' choice to forgo DLC. These vehicles are not playable and cannot be accessed by any means.

Several cuts were made to the game in the European release. Cutscenes involving Sweet Tooth were the only ones to include censorship, with a total of 124 seconds of footage being removed. With regards to gameplay, Meat Wagon and Shadow's special weapons had their live hostages replaced by corpses.

A rumor was circulated that the game was based on ideas left behind from another game, Twisted Metal: Apocalypse, which was cancelled after the tragic death of 6 members of the the creative team, who passed away in an airplane crash.

This story was perpetuated by Lead developer David Jaffe during an interview to promote a future Twisted Metal release. In it he states "there were a number of people who were working on the team -- and I wasn't working with the team -- that were killed. They died in a plane crash in Utah on a ski trip." However, he later rescinds that comment in a back and forth with a reporter from 1up.com. During that, Jaffe says, "We never used- and I never would- a tragedy (real or fake) to promote ANYTHING. The story of the developers dying in the plane crash (totally fake) was never used to promote that game."

Calypso's trophy case is filled with items from previous Twisted Metal games. These include:

• Twisted Metal: The mysterious recordings that Agent Stone and Commander Mason were looking for, Needles Kane's paper bag, and Charlie Kane's immortality potion.
• Twisted Metal 2: Amanda Watts' Helmet, Mike and Stu's plane tickets, and a few bricks from Simon Whittlebone's tower.
• Twisted Metal: Black: Raven's Voodoo Dolls, No-Face's boxing glove, the key to DollFace's mask, the teddy bear of the little girl killed by Agent Stone, and John Doe's Spoiler:FBI badge.