A people simulator from Maxis, the creators of the insanely popular SimCity. Players are in charge of the lives of everyone in a neighborhood, though you can only play one household at a time. For that household, mind the Sims' needs (food, sleep, entertainment, socialization, hygiene, and the like) as they guide them through the daily grind of dealing with work, chores (and the kids, if you're inclined to get your Sims to start a family). Sometimes things go awry, and your Sims won't listen to you, or they'll have nervous breakdowns. It can be more fun to let this happen if you're feeling sadistic, or just like to see your Sims implode, have their house catch on fire, or die en masse. Alternately, you can set up your own little Soap Opera, or recreate your favorite fictional characters, or even just play normally.It's a game about Real Life. It Will Never Catch On.Here are the main titles in the franchise so far:
The Sims (2000). The first game introduced the core features of the franchise: simulation of households; a large neighborhood of families you could control and intercontrol; purchasing increasingly-expensive and increasingly-efficient household objects; a comprehensive house-building feature which even trained architects enjoy using. Sim personalities worked on a Point Build system using five ten-point scales with a total of twenty-five points to distribute between them: Outgoing/Shy, Grouchy/Nice, Playful/Serious, Neat/Sloppy, Active/Lazy, which tied in with star signs based loosely on the astrological signs of the Western Zodiac; an engine that is very receptive to Game Mods. Having said that, there was no aging in the game: children remained children forever, nobody died (unless you caused them to), and once you had made your Sims fat and rich there wasn't much else to do to or with them.
The second game, The Sims 2, was released in 2004. It introduced three interconnected concepts: aging, Wants and Fears, and Aspiration. Sims now age through various stages—infant, toddler, child, teen, young adult, adult, elder—and could be created in any stage except the first. They also came with an "Aspiration," an overall goal for their life: Family, Romance, Wealth, Popularity, Knowledge, and (eventually) Pleasure. Starting with the first expansion pack, this would assign the Sim a (randomly-generated) Lifetime Wish, which keeps them happy for the rest of their lives if they achieved it. In the meanwhile, it also controlled what Wants and Fears would pop up; these were general life events, from "Have First Kiss" to "Eat Trademark Favorite Food". These would contribute not only to a Lifetime Aspiration Score, which could be used to purchase various loosely realistic in-game objects (the most basic of which being a literal Money Tree), but also to the Sim's real-time Aspiration meter. This corresponded roughly to self-esteem or general mood, and could override a Sim's physical-needs total if it was high enough. Of course, it also lost XXX points every few hours, and if it hit bottom the Sim would have a Heroic BSOD (Played for Laughs). Fulfilling the Sim's lifetime wish would fill their Aspiration bar to the max for the rest of their lives, but (of course) you get a certain amount of time to do this before they croak. Meanwhile, personalities continued to be calculated on the five scales/star sign model, but gradually more features were added through expansion packs, such as the ability to gain or lose personality points under certain circumstances and the introduction of memories, turn-ons, turn-offs, attraction/chemistry, interests and hobbies.
The Sims 3 (2009), placed more emphasis on the neighborhood by making it all accessible in realtime and making all families age and evolve along with yours, but this could be turned off. It did away entirely with the Aspiration meter and removed Fears; instead, when you fulfill a Want, it just adds a positive "moodlet" to your physical-needs total, thus streamlining gameplay immensely. Lifetime Aspiration Score is retained, but the prizes you get from it are mostly modifications to the Sim's capabilities instead of physical objects (Bladder of Steel, The Casanova, etc). The Point Build Personality was removed in favor of five "Traits" which had direct and practical effects on gameplay: for example, an Athletic Sim learns the Athletic skill faster and gets more enjoyment out of their workouts; a Clumsy Sim trips everywhere, which can add a lot to transit times; and an Evil Sim can gain enjoyment from messing with other Sims, or use a coffee machine to make Evil Lattes. Relationships were simplified, with Sims sharing a relationship bar so both parties have the same opinion of each other, no longer allowing unrequited feelings. Finally, The Sims 3 added significant flexibility to the Sim and object design and customization options, though at the cost of very reduced support for user-generated, made-from-scratch objects, clothing and hairstyles.
The Sims Medieval (2011) is a standalone Total Conversion that put the Sims in a Medieval European Fantasy. The game departs from The Sims formula to some extent, increasing the strategy and roleplaying aspects and removes the daily hindrances, such as the need to urinate, but still retains much of The Sims gameplay. The "Sim" the player nurtures throughout the game is the kingdom itself, though the populace can be customized as well. It is also one of the more violent games, featuring Religion, Alcoholism and Murder, themes not present in the older series without mods.
The Sims 4 (to be released in 2014). EA and Maxis have announced that this iteration of the Sims series will celebrate "the heart and soul of the Sims themselves" and have the Sims show more personality than in previous installments. The game will feature new tools to customize worlds and share them with others. Unlike SimCity (2013), The Sims 4 is being billed as a single-player offline experience.
All the mainline games have had, as of 2013, at least seven Expansion Packs each, all of which add new features, permutations and gameplay options (such as the ability to become vampires or plant-creatures, go to college or on vacations, own pets, open your own business, and so on). The two sequels also have a number of "Stuff Packs" associated with them; these only provide new objects as opposed to gameplay functions. According to EA, the franchise passed the one-hundred-million-units mark during the Sims 2 era, but they're probably counting the expansion packs, which they maybe shouldn't.If you want altered forms of play, there's MySims for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS, which has the dressings of The Sims but lacks a lot of the essentials of the game. Instead, it's more like Animal Crossing, but for people who prefer to work with cute chibi humans instead of a bossy tanuki. There's also The Sims Social on Facebook. It combines the stamina meter and profusion of pickups from Farmville with a more social and collaborative gameplay experience, including several forms of currency and various crafting reagents that either Randomly Drop or must be donated by friends of yours who also play the game.The Sims is known to be extremely addictive in most and/or all of its variants. The game includes tools which allows you to export your houses, Sims, and neighborhoods as Downloadable Content for other people; and, as mentioned, there is a huge variety of unofficial Game Mods which change the way the game functions. It has been used to create several works of fiction: Rooster Teeth Productions, creators of Red vs. Blue, were employed by EA to make "The Strangerhood" using The Sims 2 as a marketing effort; and a British college student created a homeless-father-daughter drama blog called "Alice And Kev" using the third game.
Any Medium or Dark Sim in TS1 or TS2, would probably qualify as Ambiguously Brown, since Sims don't really have any ethnicity unless you give them a name that implies they have one. (This also makes the lighter-skinned Sims Ambiguously White.)
However, the range of customization options in The Sims 3 makes it perfectly possible to create a classically African-looking, or northern Chinese-looking, or Japanese-looking, or whatever, Sim if you so wish.
An Interior Designer Is You: You can design houses from the ground up, planning up almost everything about them. Great potential for cruelty exists here, naturally.
In the first game, Sims always seemed to be programmed to take a dip in your pool...when they barely know you.
The third game has a couple weird quirks. Sims always follow you to public lots whenever you visit them. Specifically this is to keep say, the city park from being too empty. The problem comes in when you come in at weird hours and people with no reason to be there show up. They proceed to mill around until their schedules take them elsewhere.
Toddlers regularly sit on the doorstep in their houses.
They will also crawl over to the top of the stairs and sit there, if they're on the second floor, for example. This almost always happens when someone else has been told to pick them up.
In the first and second games, visitors would sometimes play with a baby without even knowing the baby's parents. This was fixed in the third game.
Sometimes the friends of your Sims can break into your house for no reason when your Sims are sleeping, and then proceed to mingle around and annoy your pets, and then go home only when they get exhausted. This can also fit in Artificial Stupidity.
Artificial Stupidity: In spades. In the original and both of its sequels, Sims are very, very stupid creatures: running towards a fire and doing a panic dance two feet away from it instead of pulling out the fire extinguisher, screaming and panicking when a burglar breaks in instead of grabbing the phone and calling the police, pigging out on the contents of the refrigerator when their hunger bar is full but the others are critically low, and many more equally idiotic stunts that would get a normal person killed fairly easily.
Sometimes the Sims do things that no sane human would ever do, ranging from the mildly eccentric to the vaguely creepy to the batshit insane. These include:
Flirting with and kissing someone else's significant other in their house, right in front of that person.
Picking up someone else's baby and playing with it.
Having no circadian rhythm. They will go to bed at eleven AM if that's when they're tired, and then wake up at ten PM the next night fully rested and not mind at all. They will never have any trouble sleeping, except for Sims with the Light Sleeper trait in The Sims 3.
If you put them in a swimming pool with no ladders, they will swim around until their motives drop, they get exhausted, and sink. They don't even have the artificial intelligence to float on their backs autonomously, which would probably use up less energy.
Sims with the "Absent-Minded" trait in The Sims 3 sometimes will "forget what they're doing" while they're panicking because there's a fire. Or forgetting that they are going to the Hospital because they're currently in labor.
Sims never seem to have heard of "stop, drop, and roll". It takes them an hour to burn to death, and they jump up and down screaming the whole time, not even trying to put out the fire.
Playing some game until they're about to wet themselves, and then ''do'' because it takes them an hour to walk inside.
And finally, the motherof all stupid actions, running directly towards a burning fire or other disaster, then standing shrieking until the fire burns out. Fire safety is not big in SimNation.
They can study Fire Safety, but the only difference between a Sim who has studied Fire Safety and one who hasn't seems to be that one who has will carry babies and children out of the house, then resume screaming about the fire indoors.
If your sims are woken up by a robber (which usually doesn't happen, despite his hammy laughter), they'll panic about the robber instead of calling the police. Even funnier, is if the robber sets off an alarm, who then panics and wakes up any sleeping sims, who then come into the room just to panic about the robber, who happens to be panicking over his inevitable arrest, instead of trying to bolt out of the house.
Subverted somewhat in the first game in that the descriptions for railings in build-mode state: "[Railings] keep Sims from walking off the edges of balconies and stairs," continuing: "(Really, Sims aren't that dumb, but balustrades are pretty all the same.)" At least that's something to their credit.
The third game has improved their intelligence a bit. Rather than igniting their kitchen when they try to cook, they'll more likely just burn their food or cook really bad quality food. That is, unless you forget about the food in the oven or deliberately steer them away from it...
Brave and Dare Devil Sims will quickly grab the fire extinguisher and put out the fire before the Fire Fighters arrive.
Cowards are actually smart enough to run away from the fire, which is pretty impressive.
And unlike the previous two games, Sims in The Sims 3 can climb out of pools without ladders. They can't climb out if you surround the pool with objects, though.
The Sims Medievallampshades this in the opening cinematic. As it turns out, Sims aren't too good at maintaining a civilization without outside help.
"Watching these events led you to an epiphany: people are dumb."
Bottomless Bladder: Averted; you have to help your Sims fulfill needs for things like food, bathroom use, sleep, fun, and social interaction. Although it's more like inverted — Sims seem to have bladders the size of peas since they have to go to the bathroom roughly every couple hours for about five to ten minutes each time. It's not as egregious in The Sims 3, with Sims generally only needing two bathroom trips a day.
Also played straight in The Sims 3: one purchasable lifetime reward, Steel Bladder, gives your Sim a literal bottomless bladder.
Boy Meets Ghoul: Particularly in the second and third generations. Your normal human Sims can fall in love, and have sex with various undead creatures, including zombies, vampires, mummies, and ghosts.
Breakout Character: Basically any pre-made character who becomes popular with the fans. In the original PC game in particular, the intended focus was very much on the player creating their own characters and thus only twelve pre-made Sims were included: The Newbies (Bob and Betty), The Goths (Mortimer, Bella and Cassandra), The Pleasants (Jeff, Diane, Daniel and Jennifer), The Roomies (Chris and Melissa), and Michael Bachelor. All proved to be incredibly popular with players, particularly the Goths and the Newbies, and got a fair amount of back-story and development in later games. (With the exception of Chris and Melissa, whose follow-up appearances were limited to having their surnames confirmed in the console version before developing Chuck Cunningham Syndrome in the sequels, much to the displeasure of their fans.)
Bug Catching: Sims can catch bugs and get a collection box with pictures of the species they've caught in 2 and 3.
The Sims 3: That opportunity the Science Lab gives you to resurrect the dead? Take a wild guess what happens.
Can't Have Sex, Ever: Not until you're an adult, so that's never if you've disabled aging. It makes sense when it comes to children and younger, but lacks verisimilitude when it comes to teenagers - and this in a game where physical assault and profiting from crime are acceptable.
This can be disabled with mods in Sims 2 and 3, most famously the Inteenimeter mod in Sims 2.
Allegedly, teenage sex was excluded because it would have upped the games rating to 'M', which would have substantially hurt sales and kept the games out of a lot of stores.
The Sims 3 has several, although they're usually more Casanova Wannabe to begin with, with two or three romantic interests at most. Tied in to the Heartbreaker Lifetime Wish, which involves having ten consecutive romantic relationships.
Surprisingly subverted by Castor Nova. Even though he's being romantically pursued by every girl on campus, he's actually just very friendly and charismatic, and seems unaware that the attention he receives from his female friends goes beyond the platonic.
Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Quite a few Sims from TS1 do not appear nor are even mentioned in TS2, and tons of Sims from TS2 don't appear in TS3.
Cloudcuckooland: The entire 'verse, in the original and both sequels. Planting eggs in your garden and growing "eggplants", garden gnomes that come to life at night, men giving birth to alien babies...and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Creepypasta: Is the subject of a few of these. Notably Sonny the Tragic Clown, Your Friend: Sims 3, Sim Albert, and Why You Should NEVER Make Sims Based Off Of People You Know.
Don't Come A-Knockin': Sims WooHoo this way in every setting, be it a bed, shower, tent, sarcophagus, photo booth, haystack, or public establishment.
The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Averted in The Sims 3. Let's put it this way: By the time your Sim is promoted to an executive chef, your boss is still going to be a line cook.
A lot of "aversions" in The Sims 2, as well. Thanks to Seasons, streakers at University will run around fully clothed if it's cold outside. University in general was forgotten about a lot in the later expansions.
Everyone Is Bi: Sims can engage in romantic interactions with members of either sex, although there's a couple of places where, given the same relationship values, it assumes a romantic relationship for opposite-sex pairs and a platonic one for same-sex pairs. The Sims 2 changed this by providing a sliding scale of sexuality. Pregenerated characters start with a given sexuality and the sexuality value is primed for initial pairings in a family, but after that, their interactions with other Sims determine whether their value increases or decreases. Notably, this only impacts a few things, such as their Wants and their autonomous behavior; a player-controlled Sim will never turn down a romantic interaction, or refuse to do one if directed by the player, with anyone (aside from direct family members) that they have a sufficient relationship with. A happily married male Family Sim with three children will readily accept his male friend's romantic behavior toward him while his wife is in the room, no questions asked. (Said wife may not be so tolerant of this behavior.)
There are mods which allow the player to give Sims specific sexualities; Gay, Bi, or Straight and mods to allow checking the internal value, and there are several premade characters that are generally played gay, most notably Pascal Curious (who is actually set as straight), Beau Broke, Nervous Subject, and Frances Worthington III.
Frances actually starts out with no sexuality. Him being gay seems to have become fanon though. (Could be the fault of Strangetown, Here We Come. Frances and, by affiliation, Beau, are almost the mascots. Besides Jo Phe Ripp and Sugar Tits the World's Most Useless Servo, anyway.)
Strangetown especially is a breeding ground for this. Most of the characters there are "passively" bisexual without the player's input(They won't autonomously flirt with someone of the same gender, but will not react negatively to one flirting with them). Buzz and Tank Grunt, as you probably figured, start the game rigidly straight, and they're pretty much the only ones. Nervous Subject, on the other hand, very much prefers men and reacts negatively to women flirting with him.
There are no premade women in TS2 who have strictly gay scores; Circe Beaker, Titania Summderdream, and Ariel Capp are all bisexual, while the former two are in love with/married to men. Meanwhile, Nervous Subject, Kent Capp, and Jason Cleveland are arguably bisexual because while their preferences suggest they're exclusively gay, they have storylines pairing them with women with no hint that there is a conflict there.*
Nervous is given a girlfriend in The Sims 2 PSP and cares deeply for her. Jason is married with a child and starts with a near-perfect relationship score with his wife. Kent does not start with any romantic attachments but is nudged toward Bianca Monty anyway in the household descriptions — although it's only said that Bianca has affections for him, not the other way around, and Kent's bio calls it a friendship.
In The Sims 3, Gobias Koffi is preset as gay (though, as with anyone else, it's possible to have him fall in love with a woman.)
This page of The Sims Wiki provides a few more examples of premade Sims with preferences of the same gender
Fictional Currency: The simoleon is the series' standard currency and its mark is represented as a section sign (§).
Forum Pecking Order: The official forum has its own variations and categories. The Gurus (those on The Sims team) are highest in the pecking order. Users with popular designs on the Exchange and users with technical know-how are also high rankers (and possibly the most likely to answer posts concerning glitches and bugs).
French Maid: The maids wear this costume. The female ones anyway.
Frothy Mugs of Water: Likely intentional as the Sims has always had a sort of tongue-in-cheek nature to the world in which it's set but there are two examples from the third game; Nectar (a 'censored' wine expy) and Juice bars (which apparently involve Flare bar tending for making cocktails when a mixologist is at work).
Averted in The Sims Medieval, where there's not only beer and wine, Sims can also get drunk.
Gasshole: Sloppy Sims (or Sims with the "Slob" trait in 3) burp and fart randomly.
Gayborhood: Possible with The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, though it will only work so far without the use of hacks, mods and/or Sim PE.
Gold Digger: Dina Caliente and Jessica Peterson from The Sims 2. Also, it's a lifetime wish in the 3rd Installment, with Kurt Shallow and June Shallow being premade Sims with this want.
Instant Gravestone: All of the games use this, specifically it will be an urn if it's indoors and a tombstone outdoors, and it will change if the player moves the grave marker. If a sim's grave is on a lot, that sim's ghost may show up at night.
Instant Home Delivery: There's no need to wait for your furniture, major appliances, or even your entire house to be delivered and installed.
Leaving Food For Santa: Since the games don't keep track of dates past the day of the week (and the first game not even that), the only conditions for invoking a visit from Santa are placing appropriate furniture items, including a nice plate of cookies.
Loading Screen: The more expansions you have, the longer it will take. The screen displays various phrases, which start out normal in The Sims, but get sillier and sillier with each additional expansion added on, with the exception of "Reticulating Splines", which has been used as a standard Maxis loading screen phrase since SimCity.
The seventh (FreeTime) expansion for The Sims 2lampshades this—-one of the phrases is "Writing Startup Scrolling Text Strings".
Splines get reticulated, re-reticulated, scolded for reticulating...
In Apartment Life, they get asked to reticulate more quietly.
The "Reticulating Splines" thing is silly too; it's a running gag that originated from the loading screen from SimCity 2000 as a placeholder for other serious phrases, which was left as the initialization step.
In "Teen Style Stuff" the Reticulating Splines line is "Like, totally reticulatiing splines, dude."
In The Sims 3, Sims can write books on their computers, where the player selects the genre and a window pops up asking you to write a title, or giving you the option to stick with a pre-generated title. One of the pre-generated titles in the "nonfiction" genre is "Reticulated Splines: A History".
The Sims 3: Ambitions gives us Sneaking Cookie Dough.
Loads and Loads of Loading: Maxis is working on addressing these with each new game, and in The Sims 3 once you are in the game there is very little to no loading. Starting the game and saving when you're finished, however, is a long wait.
Lying Creator: Several times, creators have stated that new installments would include specific features. When the games were actually released, these features were nowhere to be found. For example, that Sims in The Sims 2 would be able to recognize which bed was theirs.
Meaningful Name: Don Lothario, Angela and Lilith Pleasant, the Caliente sisters, and numerous other examples.
Almost every single premade Sim has a name that means something. The Pleasant family, for example, goes far beyond just Angela and Lilith. Their parents names are Daniel (judged by god) and Mary-Sue (A term for a character who is portrayed in an overly idealized way). Mary Sue is a workaholic perfectionist, and Daniel is cheating on her with the Maid (In fact, the very first day you play the family, unless you ignore the chance card that pops up (it's rigged) , Mary-sue is sent home from work early and catches Daniel cheating on her if the player doesn't stop him from doing so).invoked
In Greek mythology Ambrosia is a food said to be the gods source of immorality. In the Sims 3 Ambrosia is a special dish that resets the life state and revives ghosts. And how do you make Ambrosia? You catch a Death Fish using an Angel Fish as bait then add a Life Fruit (who even has a halo for that matter). It should be noted that eating Ambrosia grants the Simmer the "Divine Meal"-moodlet. EA really shown their work when they came up with this.
Modern Stasis: It's always The Present Day in SimNation. This results in a bizarre "timeless" world in which the great-grandparents of the current generation grew up with exactly the same technology.
Most Gamers Are Male: One of the greatest subversions of this stereotype. A majority of The Sims fans are female, and the series has been credited with bringing more women into gaming and breaking down the gender divide.
Pixellation: Female Sims are pixellated shoulder-to-knee when showering or using the bathroom, male Sims from waist-to-knee.
It's a simple matter to remove it, though. There was even a console command to do it at one point, but it was disabled, for obvious reasons.
In the console ports, your Mom calls out Malcolm Landgrabb with a pixellated middle finger and bleeped Simlish.
Polar Opposite Twins: Throughout the series, several premade twin pairs are said to be this (whether their actual personalities back this up varies). In TS2 there are the Pleasants, the Curious sisters, the Rubens, the Davises, and the Cordials, while TS3 so far has the Avillas, the Durwoods, and the Nelsons. Additionally, while the Calientes are not said to be opposites, their personality points are exact opposites of each other in TS2. The player, of course, can create more of these pairs.
Real Life Writes the Plot: The game's creator, Will Wright, lost his home in the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm. It was while assessing what he had lost and figuring out what he needed that led him to think about the value put on material possessions, which in turn led to a game where Sims constantly buy and replace their home's goods, and where those goods have a large impact on their success.
Right Through His Pants: Sims do not pull their pants down when using the toilet, and in The Sims 2, they get out of bed after Woo Hoo still wearing underwear. This is strange in that in the The Sims, which had much less Getting Crap Past the Radar (the "Play in Bed" option was only on one type of bed, babies came from lots of kissing, etc.), people got out of bed after the "Play in Bed" interaction naked.
Scenery Porn: The destination spots in World Adventures. The maps make Sunset Valley look amateur by comparison.
The designers love to put lots of detail into things that aren't necessarily important.
Lunar Lakes may count as well. Many players agree that this is the best Neighborhood EA had ever made.
Lucky Palms counts as well.
Sunlit Tides counts definitely here. It's a tropical Hawaiian town with a huge blue cove, a volcano base, and a luscious green jungle.
Monte Vista, being based off of Italy, is undoubtedly beautiful with its architecture, ruins and sunsets.
Self Insert: It's possible to make a Sim based off of yourself.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: Truth be told; this was one of the more merciful examples. It was easier to make friends, but they would pretty much degrade rapidly if you didn't talk to them every single day. The later ones make it easier to keep friends, but it's harder to make friends. It's worth noting that unless you spent a bunch of hours into the game in the first one, you pretty much had to cheat.
Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The Goth family. Hardly a moment goes by when they aren't mentioned in a pop-up, description, or message, and more than half of the entire series' Easter Eggs are about them; the other half tends to be about the Landgraabs.
Stealth Pun: The Sims 2 introduces the possibility of giving birth to twins, and The Sims 3 allows triplets.
Castor Nova. Even though it's likely the developers intended this to be more of a pun on Casanova, fans have picked up on the more literal meaning of the name, to the point where Fanon usually gives him a twin brother named Pollux.
Too Dumb to Live: Sims left to their own devices tend to either do nothing on their own or do incredibly stupid stuff. Medieval flat out tells you in the intro that the Sims are "dumb" and have a tendency to doom themselves and their civilization without your guidance.
Trademark Favorite Food: Sims with the Grilled Cheese aspiration take this Up to Eleven, with their entire lives revolving around acquiring more of the orange stuff they crave. Their addiction is so powerful that they may eventually gain the ability to conjure a grilled cheese sandwich out of thin air!
Although favourite foods weren't properly part of game-play until The Sims 3, several characters in 2 have a note in their bios mentioning their favourite foods, for example the Caliente sisters (bread pudding for Nina, chocolate for Dina), Brandi Broke (grape juice) and Stella Terrano (cookies).
The Sims 3 adds the ability to set a character's favourite food, colour and music. When a Sim encounters their favourite food, they will briefly clap and look happy before tucking in, and the resulting Moodlet will be slightly more powerful.
Variable Mix: Each expansion for The Sims 2 remixed the original or University theme in a way relevant to that expansion's new musical genre; Club, New Wave, Country, New Age, World, Indie Wave and Techno. In The Sims 3 this theme goes orchestral.
Video Game Time: A minute of in-game time passes for every second of real-life time, so something as simple as walking from the bedroom to the bathroom can take half an hour, up to an hour if two people meet at a door and one has to step away. On the other hand, activities which in real life would take months if not years, such as building up strength through physical training, can happen over the span of a few day in-game. So, a Sim can learn to play the piano quite well in a few hours, but it takes him almost an hour to drink a coffee.
Taken to almost comedic extremes due to engine limitations in The Sims 2. It's possible for an entire neighborhood, save one person, to go through (to take a completely random number) three generations during the time it takes that one person to have a cup of coffee, and yet they'll still be able to interact with those three generations without aging a second.
The Sims 2, plus University and Seasons, equals academic years (Six days) being shorter than weeks (Seven days) which are longer than seasons (Five days).
Cars, hot tubs, photo booths and elevators in The Sims 2.
While touring some of the rabbit holes (the theatre, City Hall, the Science Lab, and the Military Base), in a sarcophagus, in a tent, and in a time machine in The Sims 3.
Also now in The Sims 3, you can woohoo in the shower and in the tree house. If you woohoo in the tree house, there's a possibility that the Sims will get a splinter.
Writers Cannot Do Math: There are a lot of age discrepancies with characters who appear in both The Sims 2 and The Sims 3.
You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Both Sims 1 and Sims 2 have non-natural hair colors to choose from, although in the latter's case they are not available in Create-A-Sim or Body Shop and thus can't be genetic; player-made hairs can bypass this. Sims 3 does away with that restriction and even allows all hairstyles to be changed to any color the player wants.
One of the pre-made townies at Sim State University in The Sims 2 is a blue-haired guy wearing an athletic strip. In The Sims 3 there are a few pre-made characters with blue hair, such as Amy Bull from Twinbrook.
The female Sim shown in most promo art for The Sims Online has blue hair with darker roots showing.
The Sims (and spinoffs)
Awesome Yet Practical: Making and selling lawn gnomes in the first game, with a maxed-out skill level, will allow you to make money faster than you ever could with a typical job. And you can work your own hours. In the second game, it's the snapdragons, which provides all your needs except sleep. In the third game, it's the Moodlet Modifier that provides all your needs period.
Bag of Spilling: The Sims Bustin' Out, which is a direct sequel to The Sims (console version), reduces the player back to being poor and jobless — only this time, you're freeloading in your mom's house.
Big Fancy House: The ultimate objective in the console ports.
Boring, but Practical: Benches for naps. Showers in the gym. Fruit and veggies in the community garden lots. Friends who have places you can Stay Overnight.
Brother-Sister Incest: Possible with Michael Bachelor and Bella Goth in this game, as they weren't revealed to be siblings until The Sims 2.
Burglar Wear: The clothes burglars wear are kind of obvious.
Classic Cheat Code: Press Ctrl, Shift, and C simultaneously and type rosebud for money. There are others that can be found easily—one cheat, called, "help" even lists a few of them for you.]]
There are ways to abuse that "Rosebud" cheat code. Typing a series of ";!;!;!;!;!" after that code, without a space, will generate an extra §1000 for each pair of ";!" you have (because each ;! "repeats" the previously-entered cheat). Typing a ":" after the last ";!" string you entered will cause an error and keep the cheat menu from closing, but you'll still get §1000 for each legitimate set of ";!" string. Hold the Enter button and watch your bank account soar. And try not to get bored at the game (since you no longer have to work for anything).
Before "rosebud", the original money cheat was "klapaucius".
Or a user can enter boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true in The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. This enables the player to access NPC clothing, alien traits, and to drag mood, relationship, and skill bars up without having to earn them. (For the former two, press Shift+N in Create-A-Sim after entering the cheat.)
Move_objects on! It lets you have such fun as deleting your Sims then clicking on their portrait to bring them back totally refreshed (Although this will permanently remove a character if done and then saved during The Sims 3), deleting unwanted people and pets, and moving objects while your Sims are using them! And yes, it does count as a nude code. In a sense.
The manual for The Sims 2 even includes a cheat code: "aging off", which does Exactly What It Says on the Tin. EA put it in the manual to ward off the inevitable barrage of They Changed It, Now It Sucks for people who didn't want their Sims dying on them (and who were presumably too incompetent to satisfy the Sims' wants enough to get Elixir of Life.) That, and Elders are restricted in their jobs and interactions. The skill meters and such are also designed for a Sim to build them since infancy, so it makes sense, at least for the first generation.
Cool Shades: Gnomes (along with red clothes and missile-shaped hats), after you max out your skill in The Sims Bustin' Out. Rocket Gnomes blast off and explode into a firework display.
Cosmetically Advanced Prequel: The third installment is set 25 years before the first one, but the objects you can buy are much more advanced than in the first, and the fashions reflect 2010s fashions in the third, compared to the first, which was more early 2000s.
Evil Laugh: In The Sims Bustin' Out, each level starts with Malcolm cackling maniacally while pointing the Repo Gun at objects.
Face Heel Turn: In the console versions, Malcolm Landgrabb goes nuts after the player's mom divorces him.
Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Each expansion tends to add more and more wacky elements; your Sims can be abducted by aliens, have wishes granted by a genie, and learn quirky magic spells.
All of which eventually makes a return in the sequel, and also adds the abilities to become vampires, werewolves, and plant people, befriend Bigfoot (and even ask him to move in with you), create your own robot butler/maid (who is a fully-controllable member of the family), and such.
Genie in a Bottle: Genies can grant your Sims' wishes - at the risk of backfiring horribly.
Never, ever, ever wish for "Fire." The backfire is... literally a fire. At least if "Water" doesn't go as planned Sims only have to mop up a flood.
Germanic Depressives: The Goth family are rather dour and spooky and though their nationality is never stated, Goth is a German surname.
Global Currency Exception: MagiCoins in the Makin' Magic expansion pack. Necessary to buy anything magic-related, up to and including the residential lots in Magic Town.
Hammerspace: Sims apparently carry around everything from screwdrivers to mops to shovels in their pockets and can whip them out as needed. Hell, you can store a piano in a Sim's inventory (in the sequel at least).
Hobos: Bobo the bum appears in the console versions. He will show at your door asking for food.
It's Always Spring: Sim children go to school every day, and the plant life is always leafy and green. (The Makin' Magic expansion pack breaks the pattern by being set in the fall, although the most you can do to bring the change of season back to the main neighborhood is to use its orange-leafed flora in regular lots.)
Days of the week exist in the core The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 games, including children not going to school on weekends and every job having at least two days off during the week. Seasons were added in the aptly-namedSeasons expansion pack of The Sims 2.
Laser-Guided Karma: Malcolm donates the player a spare mansion in the console version, only to evict you in the sequel. He is later chased out of his new house by your mom, allowing the player to move in.
Light Is Not Good: Malcolm Landgraab, the antagonist in the console games, is decked out in an almost entirely white outfit. This does nothing to prevent him from being one of the most evil Sims in the entire series.
Losing Your Head: The console version has a head in a jar as artwork that you can buy.
The original The Sims has a head in a jar on a vaguely human-body-shaped metal stand that can be bought as a statue.
Meaningful Name: A number, but Malcolm Landgraab wins points for not only having a punny surname but for even having the significance of his first name lampshaded in his bio: "If he were meant to be a good guy, he'd probably be called 'Benedict'" ('Mal' and 'Bene' being the Latin roots for a number of words connoting 'bad/evil' and 'good', respectively).
Remilitarized Zone: The Octagon. Unlocked if you pursue the Military career in The Sims Bustin' Out.
Rock-Paper-Scissors: In the expansions, pleading for a Sim's life would involve playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with death (though your chance to win was actually based off of how much the pleading Sim loved the dead Sim). The second game replaced this with a Shell Game type system.
Sad Clown: If you have his painting on your wall and one of your Sims gets depressed enough, Sunny the Tragic Clown will show up to try and cheer him or her up. Since Sunny is every bit as depressed as the Sim he's trying to cheer up, this only makes things worse.
The Slacker: Dudley Landgrabb. His mobile home in The Sims Bustin' Out is the second rung up from Mom's House.
Soundtrack Dissonance: When the raccoon El Bandito comes to eat from the outdoor trash can, the same scary music plays as when a burglar comes.
Although Simlish actually seems to have some aspects of a Con Lang: among other things, there is a set word for "baby" ("nooboo"), which works just like the English word (i.e. can be used to refer to an actual baby or as a term of endearment).
Take That: The congratulations prompt for attaining the "Broadway Star" job. Maxis can't resist the obvious jab at Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Talking Is a Free Action: Averted. Not only does it take up lots of time, but if you want to engage another Sim in a conversation, you can't multitask while doing so (Sims will chat if they find themselves eating at the same table or something, but you can't control the conversation that way).
Technology Marches On: Going back to the first game nowadays, the frequent use of the Comic Sans font will probably annoy you a lot more than it did back in the day.
Super Serum: In the Livin' Large expansion pack, Sims can create a variety of different potions using a chemistry set, which causes different effects when drunk depending on its colour:
Cruel Player Character God: Somewhat obvious given that you're taking almost complete control over the lives of several people. You can easily and intentionally kill your Sims through starvation, burn their house to the ground as a result of bad cooking, and if you prefer to keep them alive, prevent them from going to school, force them to flirt with their (attractive or unattractive) neighbors, drive them into bankruptcy, and start familial and neighborhood conflicts that last a lifetime. Also, this. Or this list detailing the various ways you can be cruel; the basement one is rather disturbing.
Absurdly Youthful Mother: Fans have noticed Brandi Broke was 22 days from becoming an Elder, which would suggest her as teenage mother (even though her memories tell otherwise).
Bella Goth, if you manage to get her back, will actually be younger than her daughter Cassandra unless you use Sim PE to fix their respective ages. (This is because dead Sims and NPCs are always on the first day of their respective age stage.) Even if you adjust it so that Cassandra is near the beginning of the adult stage and Bella is nearing the end, they'll still look like they're around the same age until Bella ages up, since there's no gradual ageing within the stages. The fact that a mother and daughter are in the same age group to begin with is unusual enough in TS2, and couldn't be achieved in-game without the use of cheats or the Elixir of Life.
Using the Inteenimeter mod, it is possible for a teen to have all adult privileges and interactions, including the ability to marry, Woohoo and have children.
Adorkable: The male teens/young adults. The teens are supposed to be violent and rebellious while the young adults are supposed to be rowdy, partying jocks, yet their voices sound incredibly sweet and innocent.
The nerdy Curious brothers from Strangetown. They might have unusual interests but they're still likable.
Wolves introduced in the Pets expansion pack behave exactly like dogs, doing unwolfish things like barking and wagging their tails.
Cats can be trained using the same techniques as dogs. While real-life cats can be taught to do tricks, they usually need a bigger incentive than just "Master wants me to do it."
All Birds Are Parrots: There are five possible bird "species" to stock your birdcage with. Four do, in fact, resemble species of parrot. One, however, resembles a falcon. Yet it's still possible to "Teach Birdname to Talk" and "Play With Birdname" although in real life you would not play with a falcon without protective equipment, nor can you teach one to talk.
Anal Probing: The (actually light green) Greys in The Sims 2 have pollination technicians, who abduct, probe, and impregnate Sim men.
Babies Ever After: Riley's story in the Life Stories spin-off concludes this way: having her give birth to her first child is the final story mode step before you can unlock free play.
A few of the other story-based console versions, notably Bustin' Out, require your Sims to have a baby near the end of the game to fulfill all the quest objectives.
In the main versions of The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, this is pretty much the life's goal of any Sim with the Family aspiration or the Family-Oriented trait. They'll keep rolling wishes/wants to have more and more children, with no apparent cap (whereas Sims without these traits usually start to actively fear having more children after three or four). Most of their lifetime wishes/wants will require them to get Happily Married before having a minimum of three children (sometimes as many as ten!) and raising them up to adulthood. Then they'll start to want grandchildren...
Ascended Fanboy: Drew Carey. One episode actually had the characters of The Drew Carey Show behaving as Sims. Check The Cameo below as well.
Baby Doll Baby: A Family Sim who falls into Aspiration Desperation will draw a face on a sack of flour and start cradling it/talking to it like it's a baby.
Back from the Dead: You can plead with the Grim Reaper if your Relationship Values are high enough. In the University EP you can earn a career reward that will allow you to buy back the dead.
In the Gamecube version of The Sims 2, it is very easy to kill your Sims. But a dead Sim is fully playable as a ghost Sim, and can barter for their life back from the Grim Reaper who hangs around a dead Sim's house. The contest of choice? A Fiddle Duel.
Banana Republic: The "Tropical" holiday destination. It has Mayincatec ruins, a rainforest location but has hula dancing and Carribean-esque food. Similarly the Far East vacation has a mish-mash of East Asian culture but has real Japanese food. The Woodland is a bit better and is based off of the Rocky Mountains - but in many European releases it's a strange mix of Scandinavia and Canada.
Barbie Doll Anatomy: What goes on underneath the pixelation, if you use a hack to remove it.
Leading to a situation where men have nipples, yet women do not.
So, of course, the Internet being For Porn, people developed custom content to avert that, too.
Brother-Sister Incest: While not technically in the game, it has been noted the Curious Brothers only recognize Jenny Smith as their sister, and do not recognize their half-sisters, Chloe and Lola, as siblings. This means, any of them could marry if they wished.
Bubble Pipe: The University expansion of The Sims 2 introduces colorful bubble blowers that raise the Sims' fun meter at record speed and make them giggle a lot and eventually float in the air.
But Thou Must: The game storyline "suggests" that Tank Grunt would like to get a job in the military track in an effort to please his father. Players will soon find that the career search is rigged for him to only display and choose that career track. If a player wants to give him another job, they have to use cheats.
Also, in a similar example, when you're playing the first tutorial in the game featuring Tutorial Joe, when you're giving Joe a job the only job in the career search is in the athletic career.
The Cameo: What a rockin' party. Wait... is that Drew Carey coming to find out what all the fuss is about?
Canis Latinicus: The magic spells introduced in Apartment Life.
Comic Book Time: You can play for 20 generations but the game still retains (mostly) early 21st century technology and aesthetics.
Companion Cube: Sims with certain aspirations will interact with specific inanimate objects (such as a volleyball wearing a mortarboard cap for Knowledge Sims) if they slip into Desperation mode.
Cultural Translation: The Bon Voyage expansion pack logo contains a globe. North America is displayed in all releases except for the Chinese release—instead, mainland China and Australia are shown.
Cursed with Awesome: The Grilled Cheese Aspiration. You can rack up aspiration points really quickly by doing various very simple tasks involving grilled cheese sandwiches. With Free Time you can get a benefit that allows your Sim to conjure grilled cheese out of thin air, meaning you never have to worry about cooking again and you'll achieve the Lifetime Want (Eat 200 Grilled Cheese Sandwiches) in no time.
Dark Is Not Evil / Light Is Not Good: Angela and Lilith Pleasant are pretty much the same, only different because of their uneven treatment by their parents. Angela's described as "patient and dutiful", and even her name means "angel", while Lilith's name means "demon from the night" and she's a rebellious teenager who wears dark clothes and spike bands. Despite that, Lilith's seen as a woobie by most players while Angela's seen as an annoying Mary Sue (just like her mother!)
Death from Above: If a Sim spends too much time Stargazing without a Telescope, they might get crushed by a satellite. Which can then be sold for §1,000.
Dinner Deformation: After a Sim is eaten by a Cowplant, it will bulge in its throat.
Distaff Counterpart: Blossom Moonbeam to Jared Starchild and Zoey Rosenfeld to Cyd Roseland are the two most obvious examples. The Frio brothers also function more or less as Spear Counterparts to the Caliente sisters, despite the names suggesting that they're complete opposites.
Opposite-Sex Clone: cloning your Sim a baby (using hacks or cheats) will always result in a child of the opposite sex but with identical genetics to his/her one biological parent. Unless her pregnancy is modified, Brandi Broke's third child will always be this due to the fact that Skip's DNA is not used in the pregnancy.
Divorce Requires Death: Or rather, death instead of divorce in most cases in The Sims 2. Mostly applies to couples with kids: weirdly, there are loads of single-parent families in The Sims 2, but it's always the result of one parent dying, not relationship breakdown. The only exceptions are Lyla Grunt, who divorced the father of her three sons (but then died very soon after anyway), and Armand De Bateau, who adopted a daughter on his own after a childless divorce. For some reason EA really broke their backs in a bid not to show children of divorce in TS2, to the point where it seemed quite improbable that so many kids had lost parents at such a young age. (Take Pleasantview: five pre-made families with kids, three of which had lost one parent!)
The Sims 3 averts this heavily, as most of the single-parent families are implied to be the result of divorce or separation, or even complete abandonment by the second parent, but only a handful of single parents are outright stated to have been widowed.
Of course, it's always possible for the player to avert this or play it straight themselves in-game.
Don't Fear the Reaper: He's a pretty amicable guy, offering discounts on children's resurrections, occasionally bringing back dead Sims as zombies if their loved ones lose the wager with him, and if your aspiration meter was high, showing that the afterlife is really more of an endless vacation to Hawaii. Literally.
He's as much of a human as any other Sim; he can use your toilet, and allegedly have sex with and impregnate a female Sim.
Shenanigans reveal that Nervous Subject's mother only remembers Woo Hooing one Sim - the Grim Reaper himself. So there is, in theory, a way to do that, it probably just involves cheating.
Don't Split Us Up: Mentioned in the family description of the Newsons, a pack of six minors that were adopted and share no blood with each other (aside from the toddlers, who are twins). Their options after their adoptive parents died were to either go back into foster care and possibly be separated, or to go on living together without any adult guidance. They chose the latter.
Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The second game takes this one even farther: your Sims can plead with The Grim Reaper for the life of a fellow Sim, get abducted by aliens (and become pregnant if they're male), become a werewolf, vampire, or zombie, get swallowed by a Man-Eating Plant, find Bigfoot (and even ask him to move in with you), learn ninja teleportation, have wishes granted by a genie...
Frothy Mugs of Water: Kegs and Bars are always described as "juice." Juice that under the hood reduces the relationship value needed for romantic interactions to succeed.
Functional Magic: Apartment Life lets Sims become witches and warlocks.
Vampires and werewolves don't seem to have any particular built-in antipathy towards one another, although in Moonlight Falls in The Sims 3: Supernatural there is an ongoing feud between the patriarchs of the Von Gould (vampire) clan and the Wolff (werewolf) family.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: In order to keep the game rated T, themes that would be considered adult were replaced with 'kid-friendly' substitutes. The word "woohoo" was used in place of "have sex." Hookahs were presented as bubble blowers that actually made bubbles, but also made Sims literally float while using them. Kegs and bars are always referred to as "juice kegs" and "juice bars," or "nectar" in the case of the wine bar.
Bubble blowers and nectar bars were introduced in expansions for The Sims, and "Play in Bed" is the equivalent of Woohoo, although you can only do it in a specific one of the beds.
While bubble blowers don't feature in The Sims 3: University Life, members of the Rebel social group can gain reputation with their friends by adding... um... herbs to drinks, recipes and bonfires. Of course, when it actually comes to collecting said herbs you'll find that they are flavourful additions like lavender, ginseng and chamomile. What kind of herbs were you expecting?
On the roof of Don Lothario's house is a telescope. Don has absolutely no interest in the logic skill. His next-door neighbors are the incredibly attractive Caliente sisters. Any guesses at what he uses the telescope for?
A few chance cards in the Politics career make references to entire speeches somehow getting replaced with the contents of Titus Andronicus. Though only the title is mentioned in-game, it's a real Shakespearean play about a brutal spiral of revenge involving murder, rape, mutilation, and cannibalism. Knowing this, it's unsurprising that one chance card can result in the Sim being fired after accidentally replacing one speech with the first two acts (and this is the same chance card Mary-Sue Pleasant will get and always fail the first time her household is played!).
Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have: Olive Specter is known for being one of the most beautiful Sims in the game, despite already being an elder. Jennicor Tricou, the matriarch of the mysterious deceased Tricou family, is also quite a looker.
Half-Human Hybrid: Alien Sims in The Sims 2, as they are the half-human offspring of an alien pollination technician and the male sim who was abducted. Technically any children that those alien sims go on to have as well.
Zigzagged in The Sims 3; alien sims are purely alien genes, as "Mr. Mom" is basically a surrogate for an alien baby. However, alien sims, both abduction-born and those that occasionally land and can be made to move in, are capable of having children with human sims and passing on their genes, whereas most "supernatural life states" can't do that.
Heroic BSOD: Aspiration failure. When a Sim's worst fears come true, they'll have a gibbering breakdown from which they have to be rescued by an imaginary psychiatrist. Who gives them a brief pep talk and then gets them to do something silly.
Hospital Hottie: Don Lothario, Pleasantview's local womanizer, works in the medical career path.
Hot Mom: Bella Goth - she must be at least fifty-five by the time of The Sims 2 (indeed, her eldest child is well into adulthood herself and about to marry) and yet she is still shown to be as attractive and desirable to other characters as she was twenty-five years before.
Although not a mother in-game, Kaylynn Langerak should be at least Bella's age (since they were children together in TS3), and is maybe a little older, meaning that she could easily be the mother of adult children. And still, the young men of Pleasantview are falling over themselves to Woo Hoo with her.
Humble Goal: In The Sims 2, it's possible to change a Sim's Lifetime Aspiration to "Grilled Cheese".
I Just Want to Be Normal: Sims who don't have a knowledge aspiration react this way if you get them turned into a monster. Even a witch, which makes a Sim Cursed with Awesome and carries no harmful side effects whatsoever.
This can be changed if you know what you're doing - open the wanttrees.package file in Sim PE and look for the ones related to wanting or fearing being turned, cured, etc. and just switch the True and False properties next to the aspirations listed to make their wants and fears similar to those of Knowledge sims. Just back up the wanttrees file first.
I Love the Dead: You can choose zombies as one of a Sim's turn-ons.
I'm a Humanitarian: The Cow Plant kind of causes this. It eats people, then produces milk which can be drunk. Some Sims will express a desire to drink milk made from certain Sims they don't like.
The Inspector Is Coming: Critics can review your establishment in the Open for Business expansion pack, and they can give you either positive or negative reviews.
I Was Told There Would Be Cake: Overlaps with The Cake Is a Lie - the cow plant reward taunts Sims with a slice of cake, only to eat them instead. It then produces milk that extends a Sims' life.
Kiss of the Vampire: Sims are hypnotised, and then visibly smile while being bitten by a vampire. The "Neck Bite" interaction also causes a major relationship boost.
It gets much, much worse if you have a lot of custom content.
At least it can be played in windowed mode.
Longevity Treatment: The game features a carnivorous plant (the cowplant) that produces a substance that, when drunk, gives a Sim an extra day of life.
There's also the most expensive aspiration bonus, Elixir of Life. It adds three days to the life of a sim who's in platinum aspiration. You don't want to know what it does if they're in the red.
Love Floats: The cinematic that plays when a Sim gets his or her very first kiss has the kissing Sims levitate briefly.
Luck-Based Mission: If you want your Sim to be anything besides a vanilla human, you've only got so much control; regardless of what you want to turn them into, some portion of the process involves waiting (sometimes in a specific place) and hoping that the RNG will smile upon you.
A popular mod exists which allows same-sex couples to impregnate each other...which, of course, would lead to this on the male end.
Can be done without a mod if you turn on debug mode via a cheat code and spawn a special item.
Multi Ethnic Name: The random character generator is notorious for producing townies with names like Juan McCullough or Kiyoshi Centowski (when the names it comes up with aren't just plain bizarre, like the infamous Goopy Gilscarbo) and having no relation whatsoever between looks and the ethnic background of a Sim's name. For example, the aforementioned Kiyoshi is a Dark-Skinned Blond with blue eyes.
Nightmare Fetishist: Knowledge Sims roll wants to make zombies, get abducted by aliens, have a Near Death Experience, and become various types of supernatural creature.
If you have Seasons, they can roll wants to get hit by lightning.
Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The Sims 2 allows the player to have aliens, zombies, vampires, werewolves, plant/human hybrids, and combine them as he/she deems cool. Vampire/werewolf/zombie robots are even possible. (Click here and here to see.) And add to this the fact that you can learn to teleport from a ninja...
Vampire plantSims are, against all logic, easier to play than normal Sims. Sun lamps don't burn them.
No Flow in CGI: Averted with the majority of hairstyles. Played straight with the clothes and many fan-created hairs.
Noodle People: A cheat code, 'stretchskeleton' followed by a numerical value, allows you to make your Sims as noodly as you want them to be.
Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: Technically any child of a relationship between a human Sim and a supernatural, although they will either inherit their supernatural parent's appearance and powers or be a straightforward vanilla human: there's no chance, for example, of a vampire-human child who has all the benefits of an extended life-span but can still go out in sunlight.
Office Golf: The career reward for the business career track in The Sims 2 is a small golf hole.
Our Ghosts Are Different: method of death determines behaviour of the ghost and its effect on the game, as does personality.
Drowned Sims turn blue and leave puddles and may leave bubbles in bathtubs.
Electrocuted Sims randomly jitter with electric shock.
Sims who burned to death turn red and occasionally leave piles of ash.
Sims who starved to death will attempt to raid the refrigerator.
Additionally, the ghosts in the Sims are haunters who can scare other Sims badly enough they wet themselves. Or die of fright, which produces a pink ghost.
And rather than call a ghostbuster or someone of that nature, simply moving the gravestone can get rid of a Sim Ghost.
They become playable characters in The Sims 3 once you complete a certain opportunity. They control more or less the same as normal Sims, though they can walk through walls and other objects, as well as have a creepy sound effect on at all times. They're also immune to most forms of death. By making ambrosia, you can fully restore them to life. They are also capable of having ghost children.
Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires in The Sims 2 sleep in coffins, smolder in the sunshine, and potentially live forever, but they subsist on regular food, not blood. They are also eligible for the Undead Scholarship.
Our Zombies Are Different: The University expansion pack can let Sims bring back the dead by cheap resurrection. Teen zombies can even get an undead scholarship for university.
Parent with New Paramour: Jules O'Mackey does not get along with Patricia Wan, her father's new girlfriend. It's not specifically stated why this is the case, however, and it's mentioned that the two are more alike than they realize.
Poke the Poodle: "Evil" magic spells are not very harmful and are mainly just annoying, even the ones that the most powerful evil Witches and Warlocks can cast.
Power of Love: If two Sims love each other enough, it's trivial to plead with the Grim Reaper.
Product Placement: By default, the only video game your Sims can play in The Sims 2 is SSX 3, though SimCity 4: Rush Hour and The Sims Bustin' Out can be purchased and added to your household's library. In Free Time, each family is presented with a computer preloaded with The Sims 3, plus they can buy Spore, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, EA Sports FIFA 2008, and My Sims.
Plus, if you look closely at the scenes in some of the paintings you can buy, you will see places of even a character from the My Sims games.
Not to mention the IKEA and H&M item packs.
Ford vehicles are downloadable from the official EA site as add-on custom content.
Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Vincent's Story in The Sims Stories is partly about his attempts to put his relationship with an Ax Crazy woman named Samantha behind him. She tries to spring a "surprise wedding" on him in Chapter One and then simultaneously floods his house and sets in on fire when he breaks things off with her in Chapter Nine. Other characters refer to her having a Slasher Smile, too, although the game's graphics are (mercifully) not up to showing that.
Punny Name: Olive Specter's multiple dead husbands (e.g. Hugh Thanasia), all of whose names are puns for things related to death or murder.
Kind of a combination Sanity Meter and Happiness Meter, really. Sims at particularly high aspiration levels aren't more sane, just in better moods. When the meter hits rock bottom, they suffer...
Sanity Slippage: ... in which they'll collapse in a total gibbering breakdown with deranged laughter, while doing a Aspiration-related lunatic act; for example, a Family-minded Sim will drop to the floor, and start cradling a burlap sack with a face scrawled on it, cooing manaically and treating it like a real baby. This can encourage players further to be total dicks towards their Simjust to see them driven to madness
Sibling Seniority Squabble: Mentioned in the biographies two twin pairs: The Davises (Almeric being older by two minutes and actively using his seniority to win arguments against Aldric) and the Larsons (Jodie being older by three minutes and thus believing it's her duty to be in charge even if it overwhelms Jason).
Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: In either The Sims 2 or The Sims 3, the relatively short baby/toddler/child life stages compared to the teen life stage can cause this. For example, your first kid might be nearly a teenager when you get around to having your second child, but the odds are still good that both children will be in high school together for a while, due to the teen life stage being as long as the previous three combined.
Even more noticeable if you have The Sims 2: University installed. Once your college-aged kids have moved out they won't age until you play them again, meaning that you can have a baby after your other kid has left for college and still have them be Freshmen together.
Speaking Simlish: The Trope Namer. Sims speak in a made-up language called "Simlish." This "language" was made up on the spot by the recording artists. There's even a sound clip that's supposed to sound like the Sim is speaking a French variant of Simlish. Written Simlish is usually represented by Zodiac symbols, a little Greek, and a few that seem to have been made up by the creators.
Stop Helping Me!: The Nanny NPC can be like this. She usually will a) not take care of your children at all, instead she will bake cakes (and ignore them if the baby starts crying, thus causing a fire) or watch TV Or b) she will pay too much attention to the baby, waking them up to feed and bathe them (when their hunger or hygiene motives are full), and then putting them on the floor instead of in a crib.
Supernatural Phone: The Resurrect-O-Nomitron is a phone you can use to call The Grim Reaper and pay him to bring back to life a deceased Sim.
Suspiciously Similar Song: Averted in The Sims 2: Open For Business, where a new radio station is added entitled "New Wave", which features acts such as Depeche Mode and Howard Jones - who actually rerecorded their 80s hits in Simlish for the game.
Tangled Family Tree: There is one in Strangetown: Glarn Curious married Glabe (either that or they are siblings), then he was impregnated by Pollination Tech 9. After having the twins Lola and Chloe, he left Glabe and married Kitty Hoglegs. After having 4 kids by Kitty, the oldest, Jenny, marries Pollination Tech 9 and has kids (Johnny and Jill) by him...which means that her kids are also her stepsiblings and Lola and Chloe are their aunts and half-sisters at the same time. It's also pretty easy to create one of these since the game does not recognize great-grandparents(if they're still alive), 2nd cousins, or stepparents as relatives.
A relatively simple example also appears in Pleasantview: Dina Caliente married Michael Bachelor, the brother of Bella Bachelor/Goth, making her the aunt of Cassandra and Alexander. With Michael dead and Bella missing, Dina is now in a relationship with Bella's husband Mortimer; the pop-ups that appear upon loading the Caliente house encourage the player to have them immediately get engaged and married. If successful, she then becomes the stepmother of her niece and nephew. Complicating matters further is that Dina is also in love with Don Lothario, the fiancé of Cassandra; pop-ups at the Goth house encourage her to marry him immediately, although he's very likely to leave her at the altar. Don is also seeing Dina's sister Nina on the side and once attempted to make out with Bella.
Teleporters and Transporters: As of the last expansion pack, Apartment Life, there are at least three ways of in-game teleportation. In the base game, meditating for 24 hours lets you teleport anywhere, even to places the next two types can't. The Bon Voyage expansion lets you learn teleportation from a ninja, complete with puff of smoke. The Apartment Life expansion lets Sims become witches or warlocks, and the spell Magivestigium teleports you faster than the first two. Then there's the fan-made content...
Theme Tune Cameo: Sims with Music & Dance enthusiasm in Free Time will whistle the game's theme tune, and the Buy Mode music from The Sims.
The Thing That Would Not Leave: Due to some kind of bug in the game, a guest might stay until three in the morning, and then the player would get this dialogue with the guest's portrait in it that says "You invited me to spend the night, but then you didn't let me get any sleep! I'm leaving!", just because the player didn't say 'goodbye'.
Unfortunate Names: Mary Sue. It's highly unlikely that the creators of the game are familiar with the fannish term, but if it was intentional it was meant to be ironic. Still, plenty of players have decided that anyone named Mary Sue must be one, even though her biography simply describes her as an optimistic workaholic mother, which would be a pretty unusual type of Mary Sue to see in a fanfic.
Also Nawwaf Leelaporn, a premade headmaster in Belladonna Cove.
Urban Legend of Zelda: Several alleged methods of getting twins, including the nonexistent "twinzR2cute" cheat. A "forcetwins" cheat was added to throw the fans a bone, but not until Open For Business.
Not to mention the abundant rumors that female Sims could WooHoo (and be impregnated) by the Grim Reaper.
Urban Segregation: Belladonna Cove. There is an inner city area with run down, small apartments, a trailer park, and tower blocks, leading into the suberbs which are nicer and wealthier. Overlooking on a hill is a glossy, wealthy area.
Vampires Are Rich: Moving In a Grand Vampire will bring in §50,000. Plus, they are parodies of Dracula, with all of their names being preceded by Count or Contessa.
Vampires Own Nightclubs: Not exactly, but the only way to find Grand Vampires is at Downtown lots at night.
Western Zodiac: Sims are now assigned an astrological sign depending on what their personality-point totals are.
Wild Mass Guessing: Who is Glabe Curious, and how and why did she end up raising the Singles twins?
Not really, Glabe Curious has been identified as the first wife of Glarn Curious, who abandoned her, along with his twin daughters, and she was forced to raise them
Zombie Gait: Animations for zombies in the University expansion pack.
Affably Evil: Any Sim with a combination of the "Evil" and "Friendly" traits.
Ascended Extra: Kaylynn Langerak was just an NPC in The Sims 2, but has a family and backstory in The Sims 3. Goopy Gilscarbo was merely a TS2 townie but in TS3 has a food named after him, an appearance with his family in Monte Vista, and even an implied ex-wife and daughter in Barnacle Bay.
Alternate Reality: The neighborhood the game ships with is set 25 years prior to the events the first Sims game, but there are a few differences that make The Sims 3 universe irreconcilable with the other two games (see below.)
It's worth adding that you can play those 25 years, or the generations equivalent to that time. You can play, for instance, Bella Goth through all her life until she dies of old age surrounded by grandsons, while never having married Mortimer nor moved out of her home town, nor having gone mysteriously missing. Thus creating an undeniable alternate reality where the people and towns of the other games never existed.
Methods of resurrecting the dead have been around since the base game. Add to that the introduction of youth potions (in Generations) and Time Machines (in Ambitions) and anything is possible.
You can create this yourself; any Household created in Create-A-Sim is added to a universal game bin where their original versions will always be, and you can put them in several towns. For example, you can make a Cassanova style sim and put him in Sunset Valley first and have him develop multiple relationships, jobs, kids, skills, memories, all the good stuff. But then, you can also put his original, skill-less, childless, memory-less, and dateless form in another town and play him as a Casanova Wannabe instead.
Supernatural adds several new skin tones of various colors, including but not limited to: orange, pink/purple, and black.
Ambiguously Gay: Gobias Koffi from Sunset Valley. Ayesha Ansari, also of Sunset Valley, is Ambiguously Lesbian.
If you have Blaise Kindle give Alma Drill a hug, she will often get a wish to kiss her.
Their household description also says: "Will their friendship be strengthened by the fact that they are living together or will it lead to things they never could have expected?" which could mean that they are meant to become a couple.
Aurora Skies gives us Jesper Sandstrom and Viktor Valquist, who seem a lot like a gay couple raising an adopted child together (the one who officially adopted her even gives her a Portmanteau Surname) but are presented in-game as best friends.
Anachronism Stew: The Sims 3 contains anachronisms within its own universe. The game is set 25 years before the first Sims game, making Bella Goth a child, but your Sims can go down to the library and read a book titled Where's Bella.
Another book that you can find is called A Pleasantview Murder by Alexander Goth.
There are no aliens in the base game of TS3, yet in TS2 there are premade sisters in the same town with an alien ancestor. And then there's Don Lothario's time machine... The Sims 2 did mention that the Caliente sisters moved into town after Bella disappeared.
The Tragic Clown is a ghost in TS3, yet can be encountered alive in the original Sims.
Also, the introduction of laptops when they are canonically absent in TS1 and TS2.
Egyptian mummies in China and France. Slightly justified for France, given that Napoleon ordered the archeologic explorations of Egyptian ruins. For China, not so much.
Awesome, but Impractical: Ambrosia, which when eaten increases lifespan by a huge amount, gives the second best moodlet in the game, and turns playable Ghost Sims into regular Sims— but it requires a Life Fruit (rare, requires Gardening skill of at least seven), a Death Fish (easy to find, hard to catch, requires a very high fishing skill or suitable bait, which requires suitable bait , which requires suitable bait, which requires suitable bait, though the starting bait in the series is easy to get) and a Cooking skill of ten, plus the recipe costs 12,000 Simoleons! With some work, though, you can guarantee yourself a steady supply of the ingredients.
By spreading the work amongst a few Sims it becomes very doable. Of course, the family will still have to acquire the recipe and ingredients and reach the necessary skill levels, but no one Sim needs to have all the requisite skills or ingredients. However, it's completely possible for an individual Sim to create ambrosia before they even age to adult, without cheats or any help from other Sims.
Ambrosia becomes somewhat more practical if the player is willing to make use of a glitch with the Food Replicator lifetime reward. The Replicator isn't supposed to be able to replicate ambrosia, but if you halt the cooking process for ambrosia while it's at the bowl stage, it can be replicated anyway.
The Philosopher's Stone lifetime reward can convert items into gold bars for profit. The problem is that not only is it very expensive (costs you 40000 lifetime points) you are limited to only converting small, portable items into gold and that gold bars are actually worth less than some items. Not only that but the Philosopher's Stone has a rather high chance of failing and can end up either deleting your item, or turning your Sim into a gold statue and killing them in the process. *
Sims turned into a statue by the Philosopher's Stone can be sold for a lot of money, so hey at least their deaths didn't end up being that fruitless.
Awesome Yet Practical: A Sim with the Unlucky or Loser trait can be used to fix and upgrade anything in your house easily without risk of death, due to Death being cheap with any Sim with either of these traits. An easy way to counter an Unlucky Sim's increase of accidents occurring to the household can easily be remedied by having another Sim with the Lucky trait.
The train set from Supernatural. It is very cheap (only §100), fun to look at, and if you have a fairy in your household, you can have them shrink down & ride the train, which recharges their magic meter.
The alchemy skill from Supernatural. You can easily make potions that not only refill your motives but prevent them from ever dropping. Not only that but the ingredients for the motive refilling potions are quite easy to find, especially if you have the Gardening skill. Top that and you can easily end up with a Sim that never needs to sleep or get stressed ever again.
Baleful Polymorph: (Supernatural): Witches can learn a curse that turns other Sims into toads (but just their heads; they still walk around like normal Sims, though).
Bamboo Technology: The items are very customizable, down to the texture and material. If you wanted to take this trope literally, you could change pretty much every object, wallpaper and floor covering into bamboo...Even stairs can now be changed.
Banned In China: In-universe example. With World Adventures, if your Sim is a writer, you can get an opportunity saying that your books have, literally, been banned in China.
Being Evil Sucks: The Emperor of Evil is one of the best-paying jobs in the game in terms of salary-to-work-hours ratio. It also causes your Sim to emit a red glow that causes their relationship with all nearby Sims to steadily plummet. This causes the Emperor to slowly lose all their friends, especially if they're in the Emperor's household and therefore near him or her a lot of the time.
Additionally, Evil Sims, if left on auto-pilot, will periodically insult or attack nearby Sims (even their friends!), which really hurts their relationship values.
Bookworm: It's a trait. Sims with it read books faster, have more fun doing so, and often get wishes to read a certain number of books. They also make good writers, especially in the vaudeville genre.
Bumbling Dad: To an extent, Dustin Langerak and Beau Andrews.
But I Can't Be Pregnant!: Reaction of male sims to being abducted and made alien pregnant; the alien pregnancy moodlet is called "Unexpected Weight Gain" to reference this disbelief. Persists even if the sim in question has had an alien baby (or more than one) before.
Card-Carrying Villain: The Evil trait, complete with the ability to steal candy from babies.
Cast Full of Gay: This can happen sometimes in The Sims 3 as the AI for NPC Sims seems to norm to whatever orientation the player's Sim(s) might be (possibly from reacting favorably to low-level "Romantic" interactions such as being complimented on their personalities or casually asked if they're single), which can result in neighborhoods with a lot of same-sex couples after a while.
The Casanova: Hank Goddard, Parker Langerak, and Xander Clavell all aspire to be this.
Casanova Wannabe: Give your sim- at minimum- the Flirty, Loser, Inappropriate, and Unlucky traits and then add a 5th trait of your choosing and voila! If you play them this way, you'll have this trope down to a tee. For Bonus Points, make your sim a Pretty Boy with a cheesy French name and dorky clothes.
Celebrity Endorsement: Katy Perry is a huge Sims fan, and has collaborated with the Sims 3 team multiple times, including her own stuff pack (never mind the fact that it's often regarded as the worst stuff pack ever...)
Continuity Snarl/They Just Didn't Care: One of the biggest complaints among older fans in The Sims 3. Many characters origins are off, ages are inconsistent with TS2, and the preference for random new Sims and time-travelling TS2 Sims over old fan-favorites from TS1 are some of the reasons as to why TS3 has a large Fanon Discontinuity.
In The Sims: Hot Date, Agnes' deceased husband was Robert Crumplebottom, a famous puppeteer. In The Sims 3, he's a completely unremarkable man named Erik Darling.
Frida Goth, Gunther's sister in The Sims 2, does not appear in The Sims 3. At all.
At least, not until the Supernatural expansion, where she appears as a ghost in Moonlight Falls.
In The Sims Bustin' Out, Bella Goth's family (the Bachelor family) was described as being made up of "occultists, mystics and decadents" and Bella was the only neighborhood Sim to appear in Magic Town in The Sims: Makin' Magic, strongly hinting that she has magical powers of some sort. This was further hinted at in The Sims 2: Apartment Life, in which a statue of her appears in the mystical town of Belladonna Cove. In The Sims 3, she and her family are as mugglish as possible, and it appears that the Goths are now the magical ones.
Creepy Child: Any Baby/Toddler/Child with the Evil trait. Premade examples include Belisama Hemlock.
Creepy Doll: A bad CC item known as "The Girl Dressed Doll" or "The Girl Doll Dressed" can be considered this.
In fact, it IS considered this amongst many simmers, mainly due to the damage it does rather than its appearance.
For some simmers, the imaginary friend doll newborn sims get in the mail is considered this. It's harmless, but just creepy.
Cursed with Awesome: If your Sim has the Loser or Unlucky Trait, things that would normally kill a Sim will instead lead to them being spared by the reaper. Also, Loner Sims' social need bar will drop much slower.
Cute Kitten: a Sim who uses the "Awwww" interaction on a kitten will receive the +10 moodlet "Kittens!" for one Sim hour. A cat that had just given birth to a litter of kittens will give herself and her family the +80 moodlet "New Kittens" for one Sim day.
Date Rape: A witch is able to use a love charm that makes the Sim fall in love with the first person they talk with. In addition, If you use a Potent Friendship elixir on a Sim affected with a love charm then interact with them. The Sim has no choice but to love you.
Dark Is Not Evil: Give your Sim the Grumpy, Loner, and Inappropriate traits and dress them in Gothic clothes and give them Delinquent Hair; but, also give them the Friendly and Good traits and you'll end up with this trope.
Deadpan Snarker: Sims with both the Grumpy and Inappropriate traits.
Death from Above: Possible with the Ambitions expansion pack. When a Sim is outside, there is a very rare chance of an immense shadow blanketing them. This is your cue to move them as far away as possible. Thirty seconds later, a Gigantic Space Rock will crash into the ground.
Death Is Cheap: The Science Lab will offer opportunities to resurrect recently-deceased family members, and with Showtime, a genie wish can be used to resurrect them. The only Final Death in regards to playability is dying of old age while already an old age ghost.
Disappeared Dad: If one checks the famiy trees for the Mc Irish or French families, River Mcirish and Sandi French have mothers, but no fathers, living or dead, nor are they ever mentioned.
Disproportionate Retribution: Performing mostly harmless pranks in Generations (like placing a whoopee cushion on a chair) will sometimes result in a severe punishment such as revoked privileges or being grounded for two days without being able to leave the house at all, even to go to school.
Also, if your Sim has the appropriate level of Inventing skill, and something breaks, they'll often get a Wish to Detonate the broken object.
Dropped a Bridge on Him: Occasionally while playing a different Sim, a neighbor will randomly "die on a bus", despite the lack of buses in the game. The "moving out" event, which effectively erases your Sim from history, also applies.
Elegant Gothic Lolita: There are two "Harajuku Fashion" packs for The Sims 3 — they're identical, except that one is for adults, and the other is for children and teens. The female outfits from them fall into this category.
Emo Teen: Teen Sims with the Brooding, Loner, and Shy traits are this. You can even style any sim to look like one.
Expy: Gobias Koffi is Tobias from Arrested Development. The name comes from when Gob and Tobias came up with a business plan to invest in coffee shops under the moniker Gobias industries. The name was an unintentional portmanteau of Gob and Tobias and was said as "Go buy us some coffee."
Jebidiah Wilson from Riverview bears a strong physical resemblance to another Dr J. Wilson, of House fame.
The new Supernatural EP and its new neighbourhood take this Up to Eleven (see below).
Extreme Doormat: Bessie Clavell is strongly implied to be one.
Fanservice: So much more in this installation. Starting from bunk beds and strollers to breast sliders and body hair.
Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Death is still around, and you can get cursed by a mummy (or even become one), build a Robot Buddy (or a time machine), meet (or become) a vampire, own a living doll or unicorn, or get a genie in a lamp (which, unlike in previous versions of The Sims, can be set free). And that's just before the Supernatural expansion came out...
Fantastic Racism: Only hinted at. If celebrity sleeps with non-human sim (vampire, werewolf, witch etc.) he or she may get publically disgraced. Even if they are Happily Married to said non-human sim.
Feelies: The Collector's Edition comes with a plumbbob-shaped flash drive.
Fiery Redhead: Any redheaded Sim given the Hot-Headed trait, really. Claire Ursine is a premade example.
Foot Focus / Does Not Like Shoes: The Sims 3 has footwear as a separate category, allowing you to have your Sims barefoot constantly. Originally, work uniforms overrided this temporally, by forcing your Sims into footwear; however, patch 31 added the option to fully customize your work uniform(s), so you can now invoke this even at work.
Free-Range Children: Sim children are able to go everywhere the town alone with a 10:00 pm curfew. (In The Sims 2 kids had to go with an adult or teen)
Free the Frogs: It's one of the pranks a teenager can pull in their school in Generations.
Game-Breaking Bug: Oh, where to start. The cumulative corrupting and memory-sucking effects of a number can force a player to play an entirely new neighbourhood. Compounded with all the minor (and major) bugs introduced by new expansion packs and patches, playing, even with fixes by modders, has become more of a hassle than its worth to some fans of the series. Lag and memory issues can reach a point where the entire town is stuck standing outside restaurants, peeing themselves and starving to death. A comprehensive list of bugs in The Sims 3 can be found here.
Routing issues are the biggest trouble-makers. Dealing with the routing of a few sims isn't too bad, but considering the game is calculating the routes of the entire town, it can and is a real drain on resources.
Toddlers, other sims interacting with toddlers, and tourists (introduced by World Adventures) have especially terrible routing, often going into another room or outside to start or continue an interaction when there was more than enough place in the first room.
Though the school buildings have multiple doors, sims will only head through the middle one. Cue children and those in the education career missing work, dropping their actions, and having their performance go down.
Certain parts of many of EA's worlds, particularly the ones introduced in World Adventures, have unroutable terrain. Any sims that get in whilst collecting rocks and bugs will be stuck, and the game will attempt to recalculate their routes individually. As many of these spots are outside lots, you'll have to either resort to using the resetsim cheat (which can corrupt sims and objects they're interacting with) or evict that sim from their current house and move them back in. The maps haven't been fixed officially, but a modder has created fixed ones.
Reposims will repossess anything, including objects that a sim is currently using. The sim will often be left inaccessible and must be reset.
The update by the Ambitions expansion pack and its patch have left most excavation sites in World Adventures inaccessible.
The love letters and presents introduced by the 1.42 patch and the wedding gifts introduced in the Generations expansion pack can make mailboxes unusable, if sent by a sim no longer in the town. Good luck paying your bills, and say hello to the reposim.
You can't really play if your entire user interface is gone. This is caused by save file corruption, which can be caused by countless things.
The UI is modified in non-English versions of the game to accommodate more text. Sometimes the localisation breaks the code and leads to certain interfaces simply not showing up.
Occasionally, sims' outfit information becomes corrupted, leading to invisible, unclickable, underground sims. This was exacerbated by the Late Night expansion pack and its patch. Compared to the other bugs in the game, this one is easy to fix—just edit their wardrobe. However, this requires the target sim's household to be active, resulting in the previous households' sims dropping wishes. Even disregarding that, switching household is a hassle that requires many clicks, unless you have a mod that lets you modify inactives' wardrobes. The wardrobes of sims who aren't residents of your town can only be fixed with mods.
Sometimes, when a sim visits a lot, they leave their vehicle on the road and are given a copy in their inventory. In a short amount of time the neighbourhood will be overrun by abandoned cars, sucking up resources and causing lag. This isn't preventable, and all the vehicles must be deleted one at a time through having testingcheats enabled (or, if you have the Ambitions pack, by detonating them for scrap metal) after the fact. Thankfully there's also a mod that periodically cleans up your town.
Adult sims taken to jail can go missing, but baby and toddler sims are the ones that are most susceptible to disappearing.
The most common cause of baby disappearance is kidnapping by a baby-sitter. The baby-sitters are oblivious to the fact that they're taking them, though.
The babies and toddlers of inactive households often disappear on their own.
If you have the World Adventures expansion pack, you can travel and leave your baby behind. There's no guarantee they'll be there when you come back.
The travelling system in World Adventures is bugged to the point people don't recommend buying the expansion pack, or at least to never vacation. Sims travelling to another country may not actually arrive, leaving the player with no active household to control and stuck in that neighbourhood unless they reload an earlier save. Visiting sims that return home are often corrupted and have new family ties and surnames from the vacation country.
When a sim moves into a new home, the game saves a copy of that sim in a sort of clipboard. Once the sim is moved in, the game often fails to clear that clipboard. Homeless sims (sims that don't live in the town but do various jobs around the town) are often created from that clipboard, making lookalikes. This isn't a game-breaker by itself, but when copies are made of sims returning from vacation, they have the original family ties and surnames of that (now foreign) returning sim. This effectively ruins household structures and relationships.
Simply travelling can actually corrupt your save, leading to issues like a missing user interface and invisible, underground sims.
Late Night and its patch broke the game's moodlets, or buffs and debuffs system. Sims are given an invisible, semi-permanent negative mood impact after completing a certain action (such as sleeping) or a certain number of certain actions (twenty social interactions). This applies to all sims, even NPCs, and eventually causes the entire town to be cranky, depressed, and refusing to do things like homework and cleaning. A modder has created a hot-fix which recalculates the proper mood impact of a sim's moodlets every time it gets a moodlet.
Most of the careers in the game involve a sim reporting to work and disappearing into non-customisable setpiece buildings, termed "rabbitholes". The Late Night and Ambitions expansion packs introduced task-based careers taking place outside rabbitholes, and they're all broken in one way or another.
Gig opportunities for bands aren't pushed, and are extremely rare. A sim who has spent their entire adult life in a band may only see two or three gigs.
As an architectural designer, one can occasionally get a job from a sim that doesn't exist. If you finish the job and call them over to finalise it, your sim is stuck with that one job forever, eternally waiting for a client who doesn't exist to show up. And you can't cancel it from there.
There actually aren't that many fires for firefighters to put out. That's very good for the city, but not for the sim that has the lifetime wish to save 30 sims in the firefighting profession. It's the same problem with the band career—these opportunities aren't pushed and are extremely rare.
For whatever reason, the presence of vampires (introduced in the Late Night expansion pack) causes stuck sims who must be reset. Players are recommended to not have any, or at least closely control their population.
Taking a picture with any sim in the Photo Booth from the Showtime expansion pack instantly makes the two romantically involved. Yes, even parents and children.
Infinite baby loop. Pregnant sims are given the option to name their newborn baby. Over and over again. Creating more babies. Resetting the sim may or may not work. The only sure fix is loading a previous save. This bug has become more common with the Generations patch.
The Late Night expansion pack modified skill learning to make vampires learn faster, but a bug in it prevents some other sims from improving their skills at all.
The Generation expansion pack and patch reintroduced a missing and beloved feature from The Sims 2—memories! The new feature quickly became a bane to many players. Why? Because memories of insignificant things like visiting the grocery store were generated each and every time a sim, including tourists and homeless sims, visited, causing massive save file bloat and resource sucking. And there's no way to disable memory generation. Of course, shortly after mods were made for the sole purpose of disabling it.
It's not clear if this is plain bad design or bugs, but the game's in-built story progression, which maintains the town and lives of inactive sims, is terrible. Inactive households that the active household has a good relationship with and are invested in are sometimes forcibly deported, making them gone forever. Population control is haphazard, inflating population numbers by impregnating many sims within a short span of time, suddenly realising the town is overpopulated when all those babies are born, then scaling back by killing off many of those same babies and toddlers.
The Seasons expansion pack introduced festivals, and with them, pie and hotdog eating contests! The catch is that anyone participating may die of starvation.
This was removed in the latest patch.
Genius Bruiser: The goal of the "Perfect Mind, Perfect Body" Lifetime Aspiration is to perfect both the Logic and Body skills.
Genki Girl / Keet: Sims with the "Excitable" and/or "Party Animal" traits, notably if they are children.
In High End Loft Stuff, there's a giant heart-shaped bed called the "Vibromatic LN3000". If you have your Sims relax on it, there's an option to make it vibrate, and there's an increased chance of getting pregnant when you have sex in it.
Glamour Failure: Supernatural sims cannot hide their nature from animals. They know.
Global Currency: With the World Adventures expansion, your Sims can travel to China, France, or Egypt. No matter where they are, Simoleons are the currency of choice.
Which becomes Universal Currency with the new Lunar Lakes neighborhood, since it is located on an alien planet.
Global Currency Exception: With the World Adventures expansion, each of the three foreign locations features a Special Merchant who sells adventure-related items, ranging from pemmican to a luxury tent. The payment they each require is Ancient Coins, which are gained by going on adventures and exploring tombs. Also an example of Global Currency, because ancient coins gained in one country are no different from those gained in another.
The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Beatrice and Bianca Crumplebottom of Moonlight Falls, with their sister Belinda caught in the middle (both in age and in the middle of all their fighting).
Hand In The Hole: These show up in some tombs in World Adventures. Some contain treasure, some contain switches that deactivate (or activate!) traps, and some contain bugs that will freak out all but the bravest Sims.
Hell-Bent for Leather: Oh-so-possible, since you can put a leather texture on just about anything you like.
Hide Your Gays: The treatment of Viktor Valquist and Jesper Sandstrom from Aurora Skies comes off as this; their arms are around each other's shoulders in the household image, they're said to be inseparable and often visiting parks and restaurants together, and Viktor even adopted a child named Linn Valstrom. And yet, according the in-game relationships, they're just "best friends forever".
Hikikomori: Any Sim with the "Hates the Outdoors" and "Loner" traits. The most notable premade characters having these traits are Beau Merrick and Wogan Hemlock, both are vampires from Bridgeport.
Hipster: Any Sim with the "Avant Garde" trait in University Life. They get special interactions like "Condescend the Mainstream" and "Enthuse About Obscure Music".
Humanity Ensues: You can make an Imaginary Friend into a real human with the help of a potion. The Imaginary Friend turned human will become a part of the household and get moodlets for doing "human things" for the first time such as eating or using the toilet.
You can also gather several canopic jars in World Adventures to get a mummy to join your house, and then have them sleep in a Blessed Coffin of the Kings until they become human again.
Hybrid Overkill Avoidance: SimBots cannot become vampires. Mummies cannot become vampires. SimBots and vampires cannot become mummies, although one of their traits turns into the Evil trait if they try anyway. Any of the above, however, can be turned into ghosts and then made playable with an opportunity. Of course, this can be averted somewhat with a core mod.
Jerk With A Heart Of Jerk: Death will revive Sims with the Loser or Unlucky trait, but only because their mishaps provide too much amusement for him to take them away too early.
Kid from the Future: If a Sim travels in time in the Ambitions expansion, it's possible they might end up with one of these.
Or the past. Which can look strangely like their parent, leading us to...
Lamarck Was Right: Sims' offspring will have whatever hair color the parent Sims currently have. So, if you create a black-haired Sim, later give her purple streaks, then have her conceive a child, this child may very well be born with purple streaks. This effect also extends to facial features, if you use Awesome Mod to edit the Sim after creation. (And thank goodness it does.)
When babies are born, the genetics will trace back at lease 5 generations in your Sim's family tree. This means, your Sim's parents may not have the same genetics, but they will be somewhere along the tree.
This applies even to adoptions. Blue haired woman adopts a kid with ordinary black hair, who himself has children via the normal method? There's a very real chance the grandchildren will be looking like a grandmother to which they have no biological relationship at all...
This is also how the offspring of vampires or imaginary friends inherit their traits. If both of them are paired together, you can even have Imaginary Friend-Vampire hybrid children.
Sometimes hair and eye colors can appear in children even if their parents (or any related family member) don't have them.
This is◊ a couple that has and always had dark hair. Their two older children have dark hair but their youngest child is blonde.note The white-skinned Sim on the far right of the picture is unrelated to the family, but the blond kid in the middle is a game-generated child.
Loners Are Freaks: Played very straight with Sims that have the Loner trait as well as any socially negative traits such as 'Mean-Spirited', 'Evil', 'Inappropriate', etc. Otherwise averted if they don't but especially so if they have the 'Good' trait.
Mad Bomber: In Ambitions, a Sim with a high enough Inventing skill to detonate objects may get wishes to detonate a certain number of objects. If Late Night is also installed and the same Sim is a celebrity, they will become infamous via public disgraces and have a hard time maintaining friendships if they decide to act on their wish. Bonus points if they are also Evil, Mean-Spirited or Insane.
Mad Libs Catch Phrase: "Play with X". Whenever the trailer for a new expansion is released, the trailer will show you how you can play with several different things (i.e. spring flings, the night, romances, pets) at the end of the trailer it will scroll through all of these very fast, and end with "Play with Life".
Mid Life Crisis Car: As of Generations, anyone undergoing a Mid-Life Crisis will occasionally wish to buy a car worth 10,000 Simoleons, and doing so grants a lot of Lifetime Happiness points.
Miser Advisor: Any Sim with both the Friendly and Mooch traits.
Misplaced Wildlife: You can find a wide array of fauna ranging from tropical birds to falcons in the wild all in your base neighborhood.
Missing Mom: Leighton Sekemoto in Sunset Valley has a son, Sam. However, no mother is mentioned, nor is there one in the family tree
Mundane Made Awesome: Sims with the Daredevil trait can do things like "Take Extreme Shower until Extremely Clean," and "Have Extreme Half Soy Chai with Cinnamon Sprinkles".
Neat Freak: Neat or Snob Sims will gain stronger negative moodlets from messes than other Sims.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: Sofia Carlton, of Twinbrook, shares some subtle (and a few not-so-subtle) similarities with Paris Hilton.
No Steam Version For You: Sims 3 DLC post Showtime has not been available on Steam due to Origin finally being complete and EA decided to deny any Sims 3 DLC for Steam. Doesn't apply to expansion packs.
No Social Skills: The sim trait "Inappropriate" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, as it'd mess up their social interactions. It's not uncommon for an inappropriate sim to tell stereotypical jokes about robbers to sims in the criminal career. University Life introduces the "Socially Awkward" trait, which is also Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
One Game for the Price of Two: Many fans believe that EA deliberately left content out of the game to charge for it via The Sims 3 Store, due to the scarcity of furniture on the disc and the amount that was in the Store on launch day. And the price of Store content. Yeesh.
The Sims 3 expansions Late Night and Showtime each contain half of the content of The Sims 2: Nightlife.
One of the Kids: Any adult with the Childish trait. They play with toys, play tag, and do other things only kids would do. Premade examples include Zelda Mae, Madison Van Watson and Molly French.
Online Alias: There is a Sim in Sunset Valley who goes only by his online alias, "Cycl0n3 Sw0rd".
Our Ghosts Are Different: They act pretty much like living Sims, other than being see-through, floaty, and (if you don't get a certain opportunity to "restore" them) only coming out after midnight. They can even have "ghost babies" with living Sims.
Our Vampires Are Different: In Late Night, vampires have glowing skin and bright-colored eyes. They do not die from sun exposure, but temporarily lose their vampiric powers, which include reading the minds of regular Sims, making regular Sims think of the vampire-in-play, running at "speed 5," and learning skills faster than regular Sims. Vampire Sims survive off of plasma (blood), which they can obtain from biting a Sim, drinking a plasma juice pack available in refrigerators, or eating plasma fruit; dying from thirst is the vampiric equivalent of a regular Sim dying from hunger, although the ghost is a deep red color. They are also negatively affected by garlic, and can sleep on a platform that makes then float (or they can sleep in a bed).
Pet the Dog: The Sims Pets expansions (Unleashed in The Sims and just Pets in The Sims 2 and The Sims 3) make this literal.
Pixel Hunt: Looking for seeds scattered on the ground around the town often turns into this.
Playing with Fire: A Sim that is the legitimate offspring of a firefighter has access to 2 hidden traits. The first is Fireproof, which pretty much falls into Boring, but Practical territory, but it does gets very interesting when it is combined with the second trait, which is (ironically enough) Pyro Maniac, a trait that enables the Sims who have it to set everything they want to on fire, and even get a happiness boost for doing so. Daredevils can also survive being on fire for 3 hours (others die after one).
A Unicorn in the Pets expansion pack can also ignite anything they want to at the cost of magic points.
In Supernatural, witches can use the Fire Blast spell to set things (and other sims) on fire
Pregnant Badass: There is nothing stopping a heavily pregnant International Super Spy from raiding the 'secret' criminal base.
President Evil: Any Sim with the Evil or Mean traits who happens to be at the top of the political career.
Prequel: Set about 20 years before the first game, the default neighborhood features Bella Goth (neé Bachelor), Mortimer Goth, and Kaylynn Langerak as kids, and Michael Bachelor as a teenager. Mrs. Miss Crumplebottom is a playable adult.
Riverview continues this with Betty Newbie (née Simovitch) and Bob Newbie as teens and Skip Broke as a child.
Product Placement: The University Life expansion pack changes playing games on a computer from some no name game of an unknown genre to giving Sims the option to play several games. All of which happened to be published by Electronic Arts.
Poke the Poodle: Evil Sims can... TAKE EVIL SHOWERS! And then they can MAKE EVIL WAFFLES, and wash it down with an EVIL LATTE! MUAHAHAHA!!! You can also take candy from a baby, beat people up, and imply one's mother is a llama.
Psychopathic Man Child: Any sim with the combination of "Evil" and "Childish" traits. Premade examples include VJ Alvi of Sunset Valley.
Put on a Bus: Unplayed Sims can randomly "move away", being deleted from the neighborhood, or randomly die. A mod to fix this (and a lot of other quirks) arose almost immediately, and in the tool to customize said mod, Pescado used to reference these tropes directly ("nobusdeaths", etc.)
Sad Clown: Drinking an Origin of the Tragic Clown elixir will force your Sim to become this. Anybody in the same room as your Sim will start sobbing hysterically.
Sadist Writer: Mean spirited Sims seems to be VERY good at writing stories that are focused on belitting or making fun of people and/or their political affiliation.
Screw Yourself: There is a bug that creates two copies of a person in one town. When they then meet at work or school, they quickly become best friends due to having the same exact interests. Naturally, this leads quickly to romance.
Also the Clone Drone Elixir
Separated at Birth: fans have speculated that Davy Cho and Dany Shue in Hidden Springs are really twin brothers, due to their similar age and appearance and the fact they are both adopted
Sibling Yin-Yang: Oh boy... Miraj and VJ Alvi, Connor and Jared Frio, Ethan and Lisa Bunch...
Skip of Innocence: Children can do this. Some Sims can do it in adulthood if they have enough playful points. Oddly enough, they do it with a very stoic face.
Slobs Versus Snobs - Both "Slob" and "Snob" are traits, but this is actually averted; the trait that conflicts with Slob is "Neat" and the trait that conflicts with Snob is "Easily Impressed," so not only could two Sims with each trait get along (depending on their other traits), a single Sim could have both.
Technicolor Eyes: Create-A-Sim will let you give your Sim eyes of any shade and color you want.
Technicolor Fire: You can give any fireplace an upgrade to give you blue, green, or purple fire. It will still have regular fire if it sets your house on fire though.
Tsundere: Any Sim with the "Hopeless Romantic" trait combined with either "Mean Spirited" or "Unflirty".
Undead Child: It is quite possible to have so-called "ghost babies" by either having a female sim get impregnated by a male ghost or by killing off a female sim while she's pregnant.
Unicorn: Available in the Pets expansion pack, but they are rare.
Unnamed Parent: Quite a few, such as Miraj and VJ Alvi's mother and Leighton Sekemoto's father.
Vegetarian Vampire: Vampires with the vegetarian trait. There are "plasma fruits" they can harvest and eat instead of drinking Sims' blood. Even more traditional vampires can't kill Sims they drink from, nor can they accidentally turn them.
Virtual Paper Doll: There's even more customization options than in the first two games, and the Ambitions expansion pack lets your Sim become a stylist and change some of your neighbors' outfits.
Weapons That Suck: The Banshee Banisher from Ambition's Ghost Hunter career.
Also the above mentioned evil lattes and evil chai.
Played straight in the Supernatural expansion. Every full moon your town will become overridden with zombies who will attempt to infect other sims. If you bought the limited edition you can buy peashooters to defend your house.
If you have Late Night, it's possible to have a vampiric variant. Just having even one vampire lounge in town can lead to the entire town's conversion, as the game's default story progression doesn't regulate (or does a very poor job of regulating) the town's occult ratio. If there are no plasma fruits, the entire town could starve to death.
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