Video Game Cruelty Potential / The Sims

"PLEASE NOTE THAT I WOULD NORMALLY NEVER DO THIS KIND OF STUFF WITH MY SIMS!! I ONLY GOT BORED OF THE SIMS 1!!!" reveals a disclaimer on one video created by the unnervingly-named user StarSweetieSqueaker, who forced eight Sims to wet themselves before setting them alight in a single room decorated with circus wallpaper. StarSweetieSqueaker is probably not a deranged psychopath living out sick, twisted fantasies of murder and torture. They are, most likely, an ordinary person — or at least, an ordinary The Sims player.

— Amelia Tait, "'I want to cheat on him and set him on fire': why are we sadistic towards our Sims?"

The Sims is the Trope Codifier for the Life Simulation Game, and life can be cruel. As such, finding creative ways to kill, abuse, or otherwise torment Sims has been a long and proud tradition for fans going all the way back to the very first game. Not only does the Sims Wiki have a list of ways to do it, it's a Long List, too. In 2009, CollegeHumor even made a fake trailer for a horror movie based on The Sims in which ordinary people find themselves tormented by a Cruel Player-Character God — and as it happens, the page for that trope directly references The Sims in both the description and the page image.

Multiple games

• The simplest way to torment Sims is to not only refuse to tend to their needs, but to not let them do so either, whether it's by turning off free will, otherwise preventing them from acting autonomously, specifically not having certain need-meeting items on the lot, or blocking access to them. Watch as your Sims grow increasingly tired, cranky, filthy, lonely, and eventually, hungry.
• Alternatively, you can turn your game into a Soap Opera and wreck your Sims' social lives, engineering their interactions so that they all hate each other, are cheating on one another with everybody else, and generally can't stand to be around each other.
• The classic way to kill a Sim, to the point of Memetic Mutation, is the ladder trick. Step one: create a swimming pool. Step two: have a Sim jump in for a swim. Step three: remove all the ladders out of the pool (or don't put them in in the first place). Step four: sit back and wait for the Sim's energy meter to reach zero, causing them to pass out from exhaustion and drown in the middle of the pool. The Sims 3 made it possible for Sims to climb out of a pool without using the ladder, eliminating this trick, but all this means is that step three is now "build walls or fences encircling the pool."
• Fire is another classic. Have a Sim who doesn't know how to cook try to make something on the stove, put flammable objects next to a fireplace, or have your Sim light fireworks or use a grill inside. At best, they freak out and watch an expensive appliance get destroyed before the fire is put out. At worst, you've put them in a small, cramped room with no way to escape, meaning that they too will be consumed by the fire.
• An easy way to make a Sim slowly starve to death is to build walls around them with no door to escape and no source of food inside. That would be bad enough, but...
  • One simmer decided to give the room windows and a phone so that they could call for pizza, watch the pizza guy deliver it, and then watch the pizza go bad outside while they slowly starved.
  • Another one (replying to the last one) put a stereo in the room so that they couldn't sleep. One of the comments was simply "Found the Guantanamo guard."
• Do you have a broken electronic appliance like a TV or a toaster? Does your Sim not have any Mechanical skill that would let them fix it? No worry, just send them to try doing so anyway and watch them suffer a High-Voltage Death! Extra points if the ground they're standing on is wet (for instance, from a broken dishwasher).
• Urgencies and motive failures are what happens when one of a Sim's mood bars dips below a certain threshold. Comfort, Environment, and Fun simply put the Sim in a bad mood, but the others have more noticeable consequences. What's more, starting in The Sims 2, if Sims go to bed with low mood bars, they can have nightmares.
  • If Hunger reaches zero, the Sim starves to death.
  • If Hygiene reaches zero, the Sim turns into The Pig-Pen, with a visible layer of grime on them and stink clouds whiffing off of them.
  • If Energy reaches zero, the Sim falls asleep from exhaustion. If they're in a position where they need to be awake to remain safe, this can be fatal.
  • If Bladder reaches zero, the Sim has a Potty Failure and pees themselves, leaving a large puddle on the ground and, if done in public, a lot of embarrassment.
  • If Social reaches zero, then a number of things can happen. In the first game, if the Sim owns the Tragic Clown painting from the Livin' Large expansion, then they get paid a visit by Sunny the Tragic Clown, who tries to cheer them up but only makes things worse because he is himself depressed. He reappears in The Sims 4.
• Starting with The Sims 2, you can have your Sim try to eat spoiled or burnt food. Not only is it disgusting, it has a chance of giving them food poisoning, causing them to start vomiting.
• The second game's Apartment Life expansion introduced Murphy beds, and the third game's University Life and fourth game's Tiny Living Stuff expansions reintroduced them to those games. The gimmick is that they fold out from a wall and can be closed back up to make more room. Problem is, they can malfunction, and when they do so, the Sim who tried to open it can get crushed. In the fourth game, a Sim sleeping in a broken Murphy bed can also get crushed as it folds back into the wall.
• The second game's University expansion introduced the Cowplant, a rare and valuable Man-Eating Plant, and it returned in the third and fourth games. If it is not fed regularly, it will try to lure in unsuspecting Sims with a piece of cake on its tongue, then eat them when they get too close. It is possible to exploit this and feed Sims you don't like to the Cowplant, Little Shop of Horrors-style.
• Each game from the second one onward has its own take on vampires, but one thing they all have in common is that they have their own unique ways in which you can make them suffer. Having them awake during the day, especially out in the sun, is a great way to send their mood meters through the floor. Vampires also offer ways to do this to other Sims. For instance, in the second game, the "Bleh!!!" interaction will reduce the target's Bladder meter, and in the fourth, they can break into homes and hypnotize people in order to drink their blood.
• In the third and fourth games, the Evil trait means that a Sim takes active joy in the misery and misfortune of others, and is thus incentivized to inflict such. They can even steal candy from babies (complete with an achievement for it) and gain positive moodlets when they watch people they weren't friends with die (especially if it was somebody they hated).
• One simmer created the "Sweatshop Family". The lot has two buildings: one a mansion built in a plantation style inhabited by the wealthy owner named "Miss Jubblies" and her maid/girlfriend, and the other a filthy bunkhouse inhabited by her slaves, who crank out paintings to sell and are not allowed to leave the property. Also, the slaves are forced to wear hot dog suits.

The Sims 1

• Diseases:
  • The Guinea Pig Disease was introduced in the Livin' Large expansion, which let you purchase a guinea pig. If you fail to take care of it and then try to play with it, the guinea pig will bite your Sim and get them sick. The disease is curable, and it does go away with time if you tend to the infected Sim's Comfort and Energy meters, but if you have your Sim continue to perform strenuous tasks while sick, they won't recover and will instead die from their illness. What's more, the disease is contagious, meaning that the guinea pig can unleash a fatal plague on your neighborhood.
  • With the Vacation expansion, if your Sim eats at the buffet table with a low Hygiene meter, then they will get Montezuma's Revenge. While not fatal, it will cause a rapid decline in their Bladder meter.
• The Superstar expansion added an alternate version of the swimming pool death with the skydiving simulator. Have the Sim use it, then block the exit and wait for their Energy meter to reach zero, at which point they get blown out the top and disappear.
• A celebrity Sim in the Superstar expansion who undergoes repeated failures in Studio Town can suffer a nervous breakdown. Not only do their Comfort, Fun, and Bladder meters rapidly drop along with their Star Power, but to add insult to injury, it will be reported on in the tabloids.

The Sims 2

• The most expensive aspiration reward in the game is the Elixir of Life, a Fountain of Youth that reduces a Sim's age by three days (albeit only within their current life state)... unless they use it when their aspiration bar is below gold. If it's only green, then there's a 50% chance that it will instead age them up by three days, and if it's in the red, it's guaranteed. If an Elder who's close to death uses it...
• If you use the SimSanto Inc. Biotech Station with a low Logic skill, low Hygiene, or a bad mood, there's a chance your Sim will get sick with a highly contagious illness that, if not treated with either rest or a cure, can be fatal.
• Having a sufficiently filthy home, with trash and dirty dishes strewn all over the place and the toilets and showers uncleaned, will cause swarms of flies to spawn around the sources of the filth. This happens in all games, but in the second one, if they reach critical mass, they can eat your Sim.
• If your Sim lives in a Haunted House, then it's possible for them to be literally scared to death by following a ghost around for long enough.
• Similarly, with the Nightlife expansion, if your Sim decides to peer into a vampire's coffin when it's sleeping, then they could likewise be scared to death by it if their mood is too low.
• With the Seasons expansion, sending a Sim outside during a thunderstorm or a hailstorm is a great way to get them killed by a lightning strike or by being bludgeoned to death by hailstones. For the former, doubly so if they're in a pool or a hot tub.

The Sims 3

• By the time they reached the third game in the series, Maxis was fully aware of this trope and outright alluded to it◊ in advertisements, which focused on all the bizarre things you could force your Sims to do.
• If you make Twyla Summers a playable character, she will only eat key lime pie, and starve if you put any food in front of her except that.
• With the World Adventures expansion, a Sim who travels to Al Simhara and goes exploring tombs can get cursed by mummies, especially if they have low Athletic and Martial Arts skills and fail to defeat the mummy upon encountering it. If it's not cured after two weeks, it is fatal. What's more, that Sim's ghost will have one of their traits in life replaced with the Evil trait.
• The Ambitions expansion added meteor strikes as a very rare way for Sims to die. The Into the Future expansion added a way to direct meteor strikes. If you manage to craft a dystopian future, your Sim will be given a Meteor Magnet and told to summon a meteor three times. You can choose the targets for maximum casualties.
• The Supernatural expansion introduces the Philosopher's Stone as a reward for mastering the Alchemy skill. It lets you turn portable items into gold. However, should your Sim fail in their interaction with the Stone, there's a 12% chance that it will turn them into a solid gold statue. The best part? This is a great way to make money, as those gold statues are worth anywhere from 50,000 to 62,500 simoleons a pop!
• With the Seasons expansion, sending a Sim outside in cold weather and not letting them change into their outerwear will eventually cause them to freeze to death.
• With the University Life expansion, if a Sim tries to tip a vending machine to get an item they purchased out of it, it's possible for the machine to tip over and crush them.
• With the Into the Future expansion, if a Sim with low Advanced Technology skill tries to use the jetpack, they run the risk of fatally crashing it.

The Sims Medieval

• The Sims Medieval is a little less wide-open and a little more like a Role-Playing Game, so killing your active Sim rarely helps you. You can still have your Sims be all manner of nasty to each other, with options like dueling to the death and sending them to the pit. It is, after all, The Sims in a Medieval European Fantasy setting, and while it is only rated T for Teen, such worlds aren't exactly all fun and games.

The Sims 4

• It is possible for elderly Sims to die from overexertion, be it from working out or from WooHoo.
• With the Realm of Magic expansion, as a Spellcaster Sim performs magic, they will gain a magic charge. If it gets too high, they run the risk of accumulating curses, various negative traits whose effects range from awkward (being randomly compelled to hug people, having people burst out laughing around them) to the genuinely problematic (spells won't work or will rapidly build more charge, being targeted for violent attacks or magical duels). If a Sim gets overcharged, they face an overload, which can be fatal if it happens multiple times.
• The StrangerVille expansion introduces a new emotional status for Sims: possessed. Caused by the strange phenomena afflicting the new town added in the expansion, possessed Sims lose all control over themselves for brief moments and act like something is controlling them as its brainwashed puppets, complete with stilted movement and The Un-Smile.

Mods

• For as many avenues for sadism as the series offers, it is still rated only T for Teen. This does not stop the game's enormous modding community from adding every kind of depravity they can think of.
• The OMGWTFBBQ mod for The Sims 2 became so notorious that even many modders felt that it crossed the line, and as such it wound up banned from Mod the Sims, then the largest Sims modding website. What is it, you may ask? It's a unique grill that lets you cook and eat babies. Not just baby-shaped meats, but actual infant Sims who are then removed from the game and treated as having died.
• Sacrificial Mods is a modder for The Sims 4 who specializes in mods that range from the morbid to the outright cruel.
  • The Extreme Violence mod does exactly what it sounds like: adds graphic, M-rated violence and the ability to kill other Sims in dozens of different ways. The Torture & Chaos mod does the same, but with magic.
  • The Zombie Apocalypse mod thrusts your Sims into, well, a Zombie Apocalypse. Complete with the ability to play the villain who spreads The Virus.
  • The Life Tragedies and Sim Torments mods allow you to lay on the soap opera drama and trauma, including Sims getting bullied, kidnapped, robbed, drugged, sick, brainwashed, mutilated, tortured, and targeted by Serial Killers.
  • The Armageddon mod turns The Sims 4 into a Superhero game... complete with the option to play a Supervillain, which means killing and corrupting other Sims and spreading darkness and evil throughout the world.
  • The Deadly Toddlers mod turns child Sims into murderous Enfants Terribles.
  • The Haunted Mirror and Possessed Child mods let you summon horror movie monsters into the world of The Sims, where they will kill everyone who gets in their way.
• Basemental Mods is a suite of mods that lets you bring a more Grand Theft Auto-style experience to The Sims 4 by adding vices like drugs, alcohol, gambling, and gangs. Now you can watch your Sims spiral into addiction to hard drugs (as opposed to just the "juice" found in the base game) and join street gangs that get into petty scraps, bringing crime to your town! The developers, fortunately, donate the profits from their merchandise shop to charities dedicated to combating drug addiction.

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