Dominic Toretto

Dominic "Dom" Toretto is a fictional character and one of the three main protagonists of The Fast and the Furious franchise. He is portrayed by Vin Diesel and first appeared on film, alongside fellow protagonist Brian O'Conner, in The Fast and the Furious (2001). Dominic was created by screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson, who was inspired by an article on street racing that was published in the May 1998 issue of Vibe magazine, while Diesel was heavily sought after to play the character.

As the patriarch of a group of street racers, Dominic acts as an influential voice, being forced into the role as primary caregiver following his father's untimely passing. As the leader, he initially worked as an auto mechanic, but eventually progressed to orchestrating carjackings, a multi-million dollar heist, and illicit jobs for government agencies. Dominic embodies many attributes associated with his position: he is gruff, strong, and preaches morality and loyalty. In many cases, he is also seen to be affectionate and religious, but also possesses a volatile temper, especially when his family is in danger. He is married to Letty Ortiz, with whom he is raising a son. He is also implied to be the group's strongest racer, a title that is challenged persistently by Brian.

Dominic is one of the most popular characters in modern cinema and is widely considered among the primary reasons for the longevity of the film series. The role propelled Diesel to become a bankable Hollywood star. He won the 2002 and 2014 MTV Movie Awards for Best On-Screen Team with Paul Walker for his performances. Diesel has served as executive producer for the franchise's later installments.

Development
The Fast and the Furious film series was inspired by an article on street racing, "Racer X", that appeared in the May 1998 issue of Vibe magazine. Having witnessed his father's death in a stock car race, Dominic is left with the responsibility of watching his younger sister, Mia Toretto, and leading the racers dependent on him. Vin Diesel was reportedly paid $2.5 million to star as Dominic Toretto in The Fast and the Furious and $15 million to star in and produce Fast Five.

Appearances
Dominic Toretto is a fearless street racer, auto mechanic, and ex-convict. The character is the older brother of Mia Toretto and love interest of Letty Ortiz. Throughout the series, Dominic's crew has perpetrated many high-speed semi hijackings, stealing millions of dollars in merchandise. He has spent most of his life running from the law.

The Fast and the Furious
In The Fast and the Furious, Dominic runs his own automotive garage while Mia takes care of the family's grocery store in Echo Park. He also runs his own street race team, which consists of Letty, Vince, Leon, and Jesse. Dominic has a feud with Vietnamese-American rival Johnny Tran due to a business deal that went sour and Tran catching Dominic sleeping with his sister. Unknown to the public, he and his team drive black Honda Civic coupes and stage daring semi hijackings on the freeways, taking home millions of dollars in electronic appliances. He forms a friendship with rookie racer Brian Earl Spilner, who saves him from arrest when the LAPD raid a street race gathering. During the Race Wars, Johnny Tran blames Dominic for a raid by SWAT forces. The SWAT team came into his house, causing disrespect to his family. Dominic then attacks him and is promptly led away by Vince who then tells him to "chill out". During a hijacking job gone wrong, Dominic discovers Brian's true identity as undercover LAPD officer named Brian O'Conner. Following a drag race that ends with Dominic's 1970 Dodge Charger getting totalled, Brian hands him the keys to his Toyota Supra, as law enforcement have found out that Torretto has stolen millions in electronics with his crew. Dominic ends up escaping and fleeing to Mexico. Brian then is wanted for aiding in the escape of a wanted felon. Brian flees the state himself.

2 Fast 2 Furious
In 2 Fast 2 Furious, Dominic appears in an archived footage when Brian tells Roman Pearce about him.

Los Bandoleros
In Los Bandoleros, Dominic recruits Han, Rico Santos, and Tego Leo to help him complete a job that is seen in the beginning of Fast & Furious.

Fast & Furious
In Fast & Furious, Dominic, Letty, and their gang lead a successful hijacking of a gasoline tanker in the Dominican Republic, but he shortly abandons them to keep the authorities away from them. Dominic returns to L.A. upon hearing of the death of Letty at the hands of Fenix Calderon. He and Brian once again team up to take down Mexican drug dealer Arturo Braga, who had ordered Letty's execution following a drug run. He later finds out Brian was the last person who had contact with Letty; this enrages him as he attacks Brian before the latter could explain to him that Letty came to him for help in clearing his name so Dominic could return to Los Angeles. After successfully extraditing Braga back to the U.S., Dominic turns himself in to the authorities and is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison without the possibility of early parole. However, the bus carrying Dominic is ambushed by Brian, Mia, Rico and Tego; once Dominic is sprung out of the bus wreckage, the group flees out of the U.S. as fugitives.

Fast Five
In Fast Five, Dominic reunites with Brian, Mia and Vince in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They get involved in a dangerous crossfire with drug lord Hernan Reyes, who has them framed for the murder of three DEA agents during a drug run on a train. As a means to get even on Reyes, Dominic and Brian form a team with Roman Pearce, Tej Parker, Han, Gisele Yashar, Rico and Tego to stage a bank heist and steal Reyes' stash of US$100 million in cash. Elite bounty hunter and DSS federal agent Luke Hobbs is sent to Brazil to hunt down and capture Dominic and his gang, but when he is ambushed by Reyes' men, he forms an unlikely alliance with Dominic and helps the gang execute their heist. After killing Reyes, Hobbs allows Dominic and his gang to leave Brazil with their stash by giving them a 24-hour window. Hobbs' partner Elena Neves also leaves the force and becomes Dominic's new love interest.

Fast & Furious 6
In Fast & Furious 6, Dominic once again encounters Hobbs, who offers him a job to help him hunt down mercenary Owen Shaw and his crime syndicate, revealing that Letty is alive meaning Fenix must have failed to kill her and is working for Shaw. Dominic and Brian reassemble their gang (minus Rico and Tego, both of whom are in Monaco) in London for this mission in exchange for a full pardon on all parties and Letty's safe return. During the chase, Dominic is shot by Letty, and later on discovers that she is suffering from amnesia as a result of the explosion that nearly killed her in Fast & Furious. He saves her from falling to her death while the gang stops Shaw aboard a military tank on a bridge in Spain. Shaw, however, reveals his backup plan of kidnapping Mia and using her as leverage for his release and the handing of the top-secret microchip that was removed from the tank. Despite the death of Gisele, Dominic and his gang defeat Shaw and kill his men while saving Mia and the microchip in a daring chase at a NATO military airfield. Hobbs grants their pardons, and Dominic and his gang move back to his home in L.A. Seeing Dominic and Letty back together for good, Elena bids him farewell and returns to working with Hobbs. In a post credit scene, Owen Shaw's elder brother, Deckard Shaw, kills Han in Tokyo and calls Dom with a threatening message.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
In The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Dominic makes a cameo appearance at the end of the film by challenging Sean Boswell in a drift race with his gun metal silver 1970 Plymouth Road Runner, which he won from his late friend Han.

Furious 7
In Furious 7, it was revealed that Owen Shaw is still alive, and his older brother Deckard Shaw went rogue and hunts Dominic's team, which resulted in Han's death (this explains why he died in Tokyo Drift, bridging the story here) and his house being blown up. Determined to exact revenge on Shaw, Dominic decided to take him down alone, but was stopped by a Covert Ops leader and Hobbs' friend Mr. Nobody. Mr. Nobody offers Dominic a way to hunt Shaw by obtaining a software named "God's Eye" and save its creator named Ramsey from Mose Jakande and his men. Agreeing to the deal, Dominic, Brian, Letty, Tej and Roman led a daring rescue to Ramsey at the mountains of Azerbaijan and succeeds in doing so. Afterwards they figured out that the device was lend to a friend of Ramsey who lives in Abu Dhabi named Zafar. After a successful retrieval of the God's Eye (that also involved Dominic and Brian made a vehicle jump on three buildings), they found Shaw's hideout but also got into a surprise ambush that killed Nobody's men and him being injured. Afterwards, Dominic decided to take down the alliance of Shaw and Jakande on their home turf. This also led to Dominic and Shaw have an intense fight at the rooftop of a parking garage while Brian led the others to lure Jakande while Ramsey initiating a hack to shut down God's Eye for good. They succeeded in doing so but also paid with a huge destruction in the city and the death of Jakande when Dominic let his car crash on Jakande's chopper and hooking a bag of grenades on its skids before crashing his vehicle, thought that he died in the process. This prompts Letty's memories of her and Dominic restored (and also reveals that they were indeed married to each other somewhere in between the story of Los Bandoleros and Fast & Furious) and Dominic recovers from being unconscious. After this, Brian decides to retire from the crew in order to spend time with his family. Dominic leaves without saying goodbye, prompting Brian to catch up to him at an intersection and have one last drive before parting ways.

This also was done to give Brian's role a clean retirement and a send-off after the actor who portrays him, Paul Walker, died in a single vehicle accident back in 2013.

The Fate of the Furious
In The Fate of the Furious, Dom has betrayed his family and friends at the behest of a mysterious, seductive woman known as Cipher. After betraying his team to steal an EMP device they were assigned to recover, it is revealed that Cipher — the true mastermind behind both the attempted creation of the Nightshade device in Fast & Furious 6 and also the near-theft of the God's Eye hacking device in Furious 7 — has captured Elena and Dom's previously-unknown son, using them as blackmail tools to ensure Dom's cooperation. Despite Cipher's dismissal of Dom's views on family and her access to multiple surveillance systems, Dom manages to use his contacts to pass on a message to Magdalene Shaw, the mother of Deckard and Owen Shaw, allowing her to retrieve her sons and send them aboard Cipher's plane via a tracking device slipped into Dom's necklace. Once the Shaws retrieve his son — as Elena having been killed earlier for Cipher to make a point to Dom — Dom rejoins his team and destroys a Russian nuclear submarine Cipher was attempting to steal. Although Cipher escapes, Dom vows to protect his new son, naming the boy Brian after his brother-in-law and best friend.

Characterization
Dominic has been described as "a gruff but affectionate father to his loyal pack of renegades, providing them with barbecue, protection, and a rough moral code to live by." Vin Diesel has described Dominic as "a character who is strong, who is a caretaker." In contrast to Brian's estranged relationship with his father, Dominic is shown to "put family first" and be very protective of Mia. He is also implied to be religious, insisting that all members in a dinner table say grace and that the first person to take a bite must bless the meal.

In The Fast and the Furious, Dominic's volatile temper stems from a painful incident during his teenage years, when his father, a stock car racer, was killed in a race after a driver named Kenny Linder accidentally sent him to the wall at 120 mph. Distraught by his father's death, Dominic assaulted Linder a week later with a torque wrench and left him hospitalized with severe head injuries. Dominic served time in juvenile hall and was banned from racing for the attack. He nearly replicates the action while fighting Hobbs in Fast Five, only to (purposely) miss Hobbs' head by an inch when Mia begs him to stop.

In Fast Five, Dominic recalls the influence his father had on him. His father would help Mia with her homework everyday and sending her to bed, he would stay up late reading the next chapter, to make sure he could help her the next day. On Sundays, the family would attend church and host a barbecue for the neighborhood; those who did not attend church would not be allowed at the barbecue.

However, Dominic is also obsessed with racing. In the first film, he says: "I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters: not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less, I'm free." In The Fate of the Furious, Cipher repeats a similar phrase to Dominic to question his loyalty to his family.

Relationships
Dominic's main love interest is Letty Ortiz who he grew up with. During Fast & Furious 6, she comes back with amnesia. Dominic was with Elena Neves during that time. However, they rekindled their relationship and it is revealed that they got married a few years ago, and also explaining the iconic necklace.

Dominic's Charger
In four of the films, Dom drives his deceased father's black 1970 Dodge Charger. In the first film, Dom tells Brian that he and his father built the 900 horsepower car, but that he had never driven it, because it "scares the shit out of [him]." Dom uses it to help Brian by attacking one of Tran's henchmen. He later races Brian's Supra with it; however, he totals it when he collides with a truck.

In Fast & Furious he sees that Letty has rebuilt it for him, as she was hoping that he would return to the United States. Later in the film, Dom takes it to Mexico and shields Brian's car with it, but destroys it by running into a stack of propane canisters in the tunnels. In the final scene of the film, Brian is shown to have rebuilt it, and Dom recognizes the sound of the engine while riding in a prison bus. In Fast Five, it is shown that Brian brakes in front of the bus, causing the bus to collide with it and flip. Dom uses it throughout the film to win cars to test for their vault heist. Meanwhile, Hobbs uses it to track the location of Dom's gang by having his men check camera feeds for a 1970 Charger. When Hobbs comes to arrest Dom, he crashes his Gurkha F5 into his Charger, cutting it in half, which triggers a fight between the pair.

In Furious 7, near the end of the movie he goes to his home which was recently blown up by Deckard Shaw, and in the garage is his Charger covered up. He uncovers it revealing the slightly different new look. He takes the Charger to the top of a rooftop where he faces Shaw in a game of chicken. When the building is later collapsing due to missiles, Torretto ramps it off the building destroying it yet again.

The car goes through some changes. In the first film, it is chrome trimmed, while in the fourth film it is black trimmed, with an extra grill cover. In the fifth film it is matte black, with black wheels and the supercharger removed. In the seventh film, Torretto's Charger has the supercharger again. The car still has black trim but is no longer matte black but metallic black. Also a different set of rims. The car has been in a series of promotions: Car Town offered the versions from both the first and fifth films, while Mafia Wars offered the first.''

In Fast & Furious 6, Dom gives his nephew Jack a diecast replica of his black Charger, hoping to keep him away from Brian's habits of favoring imports. Later in the film, Dom drives a maroon Dodge Charger Daytona, which is acquired by Tej Parker at a car auction in London. While it is not the same car as his signature black Charger, it is a direct nod to The Charger.

At the very end of Furious 7 Toretto is seen with the Project Maximus Ultra 1968 Dodge Charger.

In The Fate of the Furious, Toretto drives an armoured version of his usual Charger in the film's final confrontation.