As this game covers a whole human life, this will include painful or tragic parts of it.
- Being bullied in childhood. It can reduce your happiness, you'll be punished for standing up for yourself, and there's no guarantee your teachers will actually do anything to stop it.
- Dying as a child. Your potential is cut short and this will devastate your parents and siblings.
- One of your step-parents emotionally abusing you in childhood. It's especially sad if your parent refuses to protect you.
- Being sent to prison as a child. At best you'll just experience hardship during your sentence and a harder life later down the road. At worst you'll end up joining a gang and come out a criminal.
- Your pet dying. It may be small, especially if it's a pet that only lives three years, but it's still sad. It's even worse if the death narration states that it's due to a preventable accident, or if it's your character's first experience with death.
- It's possible to be born with an STD if your mother had it when you were born. Even if it's not life-threatening it'll adversely affect every romantic relationship you ever have.
- If you conceive a child and want to raise it, but your girlfriend decides to end it anyway. This can be especially hard for players with anti-abortion beliefs.
- Suicide, or as it's called in the game - surrendering. If you keep playing as your character's child then they'll start with 0 happiness.
- Getting divorced. Your life is thrown upside-down and you might be to have another shot at love. There's also the monetary costs; if you didn't get a prenup then you could end up giving half of your bank balance to an unfaithful ex.
- It's possible to get injured by landmines in the military, and for you to be dishonorably discharged because of said injuries.
- Getting fired from a job your character held for most of his life, over an untrue rumor.
- Your spouse abruptly cheating on you or divorcing you after years together, despite you having a great relationship with them.
- You parent dying and deciding not to leave you anything. It's clear they died hating you.
- Your parent dying and their funerary wishes being something you can't afford. Your father may have wanted to bury his body, but because you're in debt you have to donate his body to science.
- Immigrating to the other side of the world. You'll only able to spend time with your friends and family from your old home if you make an expensive flight. Even if you're immigrating to get away from them it's tragic that circumstances necessitated such an extreme choice.
- Surrogacy Pregnancy have a chance of the surrogate running away with both the money you paid her and the baby you produced by her. You can sue for breach of contract but even then you'll never get the chance to raise or even meet your kid.
- When you adopt a child, the options include how the child became an orphan. While some of the birth parents were unfit or abandoned their child, other times they died or were too sick or destitute to raise their child.
- The Modern Stasis can be sad if your character is in a country with unjust laws. Even if you become a country's head of state you'll never be able to decriminalize homosexuality, for example.
- If your son or daughter dies before you, even if you did your best to save him/her. It's harder, if he or she was still a minor.
- This is reflected in-game that your happiness will be emptied if your child dies.
- If you are lucky enough to have a long life, you may end up seeing how many of the friends you have had in your life die little by little. Depending on how long you live, it may be the case that all your friends die and you are alone.
- The game frequently reminds you that most of your friendships do not last forever. They require a lot of effort in order to maintain; and oftentimes, your effort to do so will result in little rewards and relationship improvements. You may go from being friends with so many people to only a few whom you regularly interact with.
- If you are a sports pro, practicing or training can result in a career-ending injury. You will have to leave your team and lose your job (and finding a new one, especially if you went into professional sports after high school and never went to university, can get tricky).
- Sometimes you can get falsely accused of a crime and receive a usually severe penalty. It can happen randomly and even if you have prepared the best lawyer, you can still lose the case and have your life ruined; your family will not trust in you as if you have actually commited a crime, and you will get a criminal record even if you appeal and succeed.
