We are interested in the existence of distributional solutions for two types of nonlinear evolution problems, whose models are (1.1) and (1.2) below. In the first one the nonlinear reaction term depends on the solution with a slightly superlinear growth. In the second one we consider a first order term depending also on the gradient of the solution in a quadratic way. The two problems are strictly related from the point of view of the a priori estimates we can obtain on their solutions. We point out that no boundedness is assumed on the data of the problems. This implies that the methods involving sub/super-solutions do not apply, and we have to use some convenient test-function to prove the a priori estimates.