[4] It serves as the end credits track of the 2007 science fiction blockbuster film Transformers, also appearing on its soundtrack.

[5] Being certified six times platinum by the RIAA, it is the band's most commercially successful single in terms of pure sales, and reached number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Chester Bennington described the track in a March 2007 interview with MTV: Joe [Hahn] came up to Mike and I and asked us to take the whole idea of Minutes to Midnight and apply that to how the band has changed.

On April 2, the song was featured streaming on the front page of their official website, with the video being added to the site shortly thereafter.

The remix was then included in the international tour edition of Minutes to Midnight, as well as a track in the Linkin Park Underground-exclusive CD Underground X: Demos.

[10] The music video for "What I've Done" was filmed in the California desert and was directed by Linkin Park turntablist Joe Hahn.

It features footage of the band performing in an area outside of the city, interspersed with footage showing many political movements and humanitarian issues including pollution, racism, Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan, abortion, terrorism, Holocaust, deforestation, poverty, drug addiction, obesity, war, destruction, rising gasoline prices, and crimes committed by humanity.

Some cutscenes, such as the traffic scene and the napalm exploding, were also featured in the Rise Against music video for "Ready to Fall".

"[14] As mentioned in episode 89 of MTV Cribs, Chester's jacket was lent to him by Yellowcard frontman Ryan Key.

[15] A second video, made exclusively for Australia, features a considerably different scenario from the first; instead of clips of human sin, the video tells the story of a woman (played by Emma Mullings) working at a government-run pharmaceutical company learning of a plan to develop a deadly new virus for "social control", and – with the help of several people dressed in black hooded sweatshirts with Linkin Park's logo on them – smuggles out several blood samples of a human test subject of the virus to expose the conspiracy.

In September 2023, for the 35th anniversary of Modern Rock Tracks (by which time it had been renamed to Alternative Airplay),[23] Billboard ranked "What I've Done" at number 64 on its list of the 100 most successful songs in the chart's history.

[24] "What I've Done" was featured in the 2007 science fiction film Transformers, where it appears in the final scene and the closing credits.