The Sims

Where did the alien get a suit?

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 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. Finally, personality was reworked to a Point Build system using five scales: Outgoing/Shy, Grouchy/Nice, Playful/Serious, Neat/Sloppy, Active/Lazy.
  • 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. Finally, it 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.

All the mainline games have had, as of 2012, at least five 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.

Tropes used in The Sims include:

Entire series

  • Ambiguously Brown: Bella Goth.
    • 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.
  • Artificial Atmospheric Actions: Ho boy....
    • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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.)
  • Came Back Wrong: Losing rock/paper/scissors (The Sims) or being cheap (The Sims 2) results in some interesting undead tomfoolery.
    • 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.
  • Casanova: Don Lothario.
  • 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.
  • Dastardly Whiplash: Malcolm Landgrabb, the evil landlord.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 tolerable 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 (Maxis misspelled his name, not me) 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.)
          • I've noticed that with Autonomous Casual Romance installed and gender preferences RANDOMIZED Frances is ALWAYS gay in my game.
          • 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.
        • 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).
  • 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.
  • I Have to Go Iron My Dog: Most excuses for a Sim not visiting yours when you call to ask them over qualify, including "I have to feed my llama" and "I'm waiting for the... phone repairman."
  • Levitating Lotus Position: Meditating long enough also allows a Sim to levitate.
  • Man of Wealth and Taste: Malcolm Landgrabb. His tuxedo turns to white in The Sims Bustin' Out and The Sims 3.
  • Meaningful Name: Don Lothario.
    • Let's not forget 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).
  • 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.
  • Purely Aesthetic Gender: With the exception of urinals and pregnancy a Sim's sex is meaningless.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Stealth Pun: The Sims 2 introduces the possibility of giving birth to twins, and The Sims 3 allows triplets.
  • 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 Caring Potential: Generally the point of the games.
  • Video Game Perversity Potential - There are tons of sites dedicated to Game Mods for this, from just making females have nipples to hardcore sex mods.
  • 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).
  • WooHooing In All The Wrong Places: From The Sims 2 onward, Sims have a variety of places to Woohoo:
    • Cars, hot tubs, photo booths and elevators in The Sims 2.
    • While touring some of the rabbit holes (the theater, 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 Have Researched Breathing: Sims created at higher age levels have no skills, not even basic ones like charisma or cooking that are acquired and built up by everyday actions.

The Sims (and spinoffs)

  • And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating
  • 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.
  • 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.
      • Playing video games, fishing, or writing stories until they starve or pass out from exhaustion. Of course, it doesn't take Werner von Braun to work out how to torture them with this...
      • 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 mother of 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 Sim Nation.
      • 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.
    • 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 Medieval lampshades 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."

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Big Boo's Haunt: Goth Manor in The Sims Bustin' Out. Your objective is to exorcise the ghosts with organ music.
  • 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.
  • Bottomless Bladder: Averted; you have to help your Sims fulfill needs for things like food, bathroom use, sleep, fun, and social interaction.
    • More like inverted -- these Sims must 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.
      • The Sims 3 has 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.
  • Burglar Wear: The clothes burglars wear are kind of obvious.
  • The Cameo: Drew Carey arrives in his limo if your party is hoppin' enough. Yes, that Drew Carey.
  • Classic Cheat Code: This editor won't reveal anything for those who don't want to know, but they involve pressing Ctrl Shift and C simultaneously and typing rosebud for money, along with 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).
    • Or a user can enter boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true in The Sims 2. 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.)
      • this cheat was actually brought into The Sims 3 testingCheatsEnabled true can be entered at anytime and raise moods, and relationships.
    • 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.
          • A good alternative is to convert Sims into vampires instead of letting them age into Elders. This "retirement" allows them to stay around to watch future generations of their family grow up and give them the knowledge/rewards they earned.
    • EnableLlamas
  • Command and Conquer Economy: The micromanagement... the micromanagement...!
  • Cool Car: The Sims Bustin' Out actually grants the player a car. Completing each level unlocks a new vehicle.
  • 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.
  • Dramatic Thunder: The Goths' mansion in the console version.
  • 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.
  • Foot Focus/Does Not Like Shoes: The Sims 3 has footwear as a separate category, allowing you to have your Sims barefoot constantly (unless they get a work uniform).
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • It's a quest in The Sims Medieval.
  • 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.
  • Instant Home Delivery: There's no need to wait for your furniture, major appliances, or even your entire house to be delivered and installed.
  • 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-named Seasons 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.
  • 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 2 lampshades 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.
      • Spore takes this gag Up to Eleven with the loading screen "Reticulating Spines".
      • 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.
  • 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.
  • Modern Stasis: It's always The Present Day in Sim Nation. 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.
  • My Beloved Smother: "Mom" in the console version.
  • Potty Dance, Potty Emergency, and Potty Failure
  • President Evil: Any Sim with the Evil or Mean traits who happens to be at the top of the political career.
  • Prophetic Name: The Goth family.
  • Relationship Values
  • 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.
  • Speaking Simlish: The Trope Namer.
    • 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).
  • Sugar Bowl: The whole game world. Though one can easily make a Crap Saccharine World out of it.
  • 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 color:
  • 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).
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential
    • 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 it rather, disturbing.
  • Waistcoat of Style: Mortimer Goth. Also Drew Carey.


The Sims 2 (and expansions)

  • All Animals Are Dogs: Wolves introduced in the Pets expansion pack behave exactly like dogs, doing unwolfish things like barking and wagging their tails.
    • Until they bite your Sim...
    • Sims' 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.
  • 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 Caribbean-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.
  • Blind Date
  • 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.
  • Canis Latinicus: The magic spells introduced in Apartment Life.
  • Ceiling Banger: A major part of Apartment Life.
  • Christmas Episode: The Holiday expansion and packs.
  • Comic Book Time: You can play for 20 generations but the game still retains (mostly) early 21st century technology and aesthetics.
  • 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-Skinned Redhead: Nina Caliente
  • 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!)
  • Darkskinned Blonde: Ophelia Nigmos and Dina Caliente
  • Dead Artists Are Better: Paintings increase in value after the painter dies.
  • 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.
    • An absolutely horrific example of this can happen in the Ambitions expansion of the third game too. When your Sim is outside, there is a very rare chance of an immense shadow appearing under them. This is your cue to move him or her, as well as any objects near it, far away as soon as possible. Thirty seconds or so later, a Gigantic Space Rock will crash into the ground. Great if you get some distance and collect the rock afterwards, lethal to the Sim if they don't haul their ass out of there.
  • Dinner Deformation: After a Sim is eaten by a Cowplant, it will bulge in its throat.
  • 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.
  • Elevator Failure
  • An Entrepreneur Is You: The Open for Business expansion.
  • Everything's Better with Sparkles: Sparkles, sparkles everywhere.
    • With the Seasons EP, this is taken literally: If you have fresh produce in your fridge, you'll make sparkly food that raises the food motive faster.
    • Played Straight and Subverted with the Witches, both the extremely good and extremely bad witches have a sparkly aura.
  • Eye of Newt: In one case, literally.
  • Face Full of Alien Wingwong: Alien abduction, which for adult males (like Pascal Curious) leads to Mister Seahorse.
  • Fantastic Racism: How else to describe how normal non-knowledge Sims feel about the other life states?
    • In Strangetown stories, the Grunt-Smith rivalry is almost always portrayed as caused by General Buzz's racism (specieism?) against aliens.
  • 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...
  • Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Some of the clothing mods.
  • Freaky Is Cool: The core philosophy of a Knowledge Sim. Most Sims fear alien abductions, encountering Bigfoot, having a relative resurrected as a zombie, or getting turned into a werewolf, vampire, plantSim, witch, or any other non-standard state. Knowledge Sims utterly embrace all of the above, and all combinations thereof.
  • 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.
    • Playing with Fire: Inflammo sets things on fire, which is an easier option for flame-based torture.
      • (Un?)Fortunately, you can only use Inflammo outdoors and only on home lots, which greatly limits its potential fun.
    • Time Stands Still: Tempus Interruptus stops time for all but the magical kind.
    • Summon Magic: Appello Cattus Amicus summons a cat familiar. You can also summon other Sims, even when they're at work.
    • Everything's Worse with Bees: Melliflera Attackum sens swarms of bees to attack a Sim.
  • Fur Against Fang: "Bleh!" "Grr!"
  • 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.
  • Gold Digger: Dina Caliente. Also, It's a lifetime wish in the 3rd Installment.
  • 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.
  • "Happy Holidays" Dress: The Mrs. Claus outfit in the holiday packs.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Instant Book Deal: in The Sims 2
  • 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.
  • The Jimmy Hart Version: 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.
  • Kiss of the Vampire: Sims are hypnotized, and then visibly smile while being bitten by a vampire. The "Neck Bite" interaction also causes a major relationship boost.
  • Loads and Loads of Loading: At least they kept the old "reticulating splines" joke.
    • It gets much, much worse if you have a lot of custom content.
    • At least it can be played in windowed mode.
  • Love Dodecahedron: The default neighborhood starts with one in place and constructing your own is simple and a lot of fun.
  • 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.
  • Machinima: Fans of popular TV and anime series use the create-a-character tool to recreate their ships, no matter how cracky.
    • Machinomics: Fans of the game gladly give EA free advertising creating their "original" works using the same software.
  • Man-Eating Plant: Cowplants are totally awesome.
  • Meaningful Name: Angela means angel, Lilith is a biblical demoness. Many, many more, especially in Strangetown. (See below.)
  • Military Brat: The Grunt boys in Strangetown.
  • Missing Mom: Several cases in premade families, for example Lyla Grunt and Darleen Dreamer. Bella Goth might count, too.
  • Mister Seahorse: Adult male Sims who are abducted by aliens always return from the ordeal pregnant.
    • 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.
  • Multiethnic 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.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The inhabitants of Strangetown. Except maybe the Smiths.
    • The Curiouses might be weird, but they're nice people. The Beakers, on the other hand...
  • 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...
    • If only you could give them an eyepatch...
    • 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.
  • 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 behavior 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.
  • Pivotal Wakeup: Vampires.
  • Plant Person: PlantSims.
  • 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.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: By regularly drinking Cow Plant's milk, which temporarily prevents aging, a Sim can live forever. As long as you keep feeding the plant...
  • Power of Love: If two Sims love each other enough, it's trivial to plead with the Grim Reaper.
  • Pretty in Mink / It's Fake Fur, It's Fine: One of the expansions offers a fur coat for the ladies.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Robe and Wizard Hat: Witches and Warlocks. If you get turned into one, your everyday clothes automatically morph into a set.
  • Runs with Scissors: A large pair of scissors was available as a downloadable item. If you forced the Sim to run with them, they would be killed.
  • Sad Clown: If a Party is a disaster, a Sad Clown shows up, and just makes a bad party even worse.
  • Sanity Meter: The Aspiration Bar.
    • 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 maniacally and treating it like a real baby. The moment is always a Crowning Moment of Funny, which will encourage players further to be total dicks towards their Sim just to see them driven to madness
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: Players have come up with numerous challenges to make gameplay more interesting. There's the Legacy Challenge, the Asylum Challenge, the Prosperity Challenge, the Apocalypse Challenge, and the Ethiopian Challenge. And these aren't all.
  • Shout-Out: Many. One of the jobs in the adventurer career track is "Multi-Regional Sim of Some Question."
    • In final job in the Law career track your Sim becomes the law.
    • The Brick Roll floor tile from one of the later expansions.
    • The Prisoner of Azkalamp.
    • To literary classics. In The Sims 3, old (and often valuable) books such as The White Flag of Courage can be found while searching catacombs.
    • The The Prototype X94 "Angsternaut" Robosuit. The description also has shades of Humongous Mecha in general (and possibly Gurren Lagann in particular).
      • That's nothing. The Sims 2 has a trio of outfits that bear an uncanny resemblance to Evangelion plugsuits the main characters wear. That you can wear as well. Clearly Will Wright is a NGE fan.
        • The game files refer to those suits as motor racing suits - with oddly-placed plugs.
    • There's another outfit from the 2nd game that is basically Neo's outfit from The Matrix, complete with black trenchcoat.
    • Surprised this one didn't come up: for toddlers in The Sims 2, there's a Rip Co. Wobbly Wabbit Head toy
    • Socially deprived Sims in The Sims 2 interact with a large, imaginary, one-eyed rabbit...
      • In a similar vein, Knowledge Sims at the end of their rope will start holding conversations with a volleyball.
        • In the Sims Castaway Stories spinoff, the "Shipwrecked and Single" game features a island idol that the playable Sim names "Spaulding," also in reference to Cast Away
    • TV shows on the SBN (Sim Broadcasting Network) include: Not-Oprah, Pseudo-Survivor, Un-ER, and the Pleasant twins in some kind of generic teen drama.
    • The windmills that you can use to reduce your Sims' energy bill have a buy-mode description that suggests that you not try to use them to cool off, as "they do not work that way."
    • The Time Machine has a few. One that stand out is that, when traveling to the future, you can get a message about your Sim arriving amidst a big crowd, but that nobody noticed your Sim because everybody was cheering about a shepherd that saved the galaxy from an ancient god-machine.
      • Also from the Time Machine, if you travel to the past, it may tell you about not catching dysentheria on the Oregon Trail.
    • There is a wallpaper in The Sims 2: Pets for the Game Cube (and possibly other games) called "Jackson Stonewall"
    • One of the paintings that can be purchased features a red-haired woman in a red dress on a blue background. The description states that it "illustrates the eternal struggle between red and blue"
    • And of course, there is Thoggus.
    • One of the wall hangings is titled "The Fifth Element."
    • There's also the "Unlikely Whale Sculpture".
  • Singing Simlish: Also the Trope Namer- any songs played on a radio or CD player will be like this.
  • Smart People Play Chess: Playing chess increases your logic stat.
  • 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.
  • Spell Construction
  • Spiritual Successor: The Sims Social to The Sims Online
  • Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom
  • Superhero: The final stage of the Law Enforcement career path is this. The only Super power your Sim gets is flight and can only be used to go to work. What a rip-off.
  • 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 step-siblings 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.
  • 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...
  • Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: For the robotic maids and butlers. Females have eyelashes and piiiink bows.
  • 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'.
  • 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.
  • The Unfavorite: Lilith Pleasant.
    • Ripp Grunt appears to also fall under this trope.
  • 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 Segregation: Belladonna Cove. There is an inner city area with run down, small apartments, a trailer park, and tower blocks, leading into the suburbs 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.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: Or Video Game Cruelty Potential depending on your style.
  • Virtual Paper Doll: It's Barbie: The Next Generation!
  • 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.


The Sims 3 (and expansions)

  • Absent-Minded Professor: Any Sim with the "Absent-Minded" and "Genius" traits.
  • Adult Child: Any adult with the Childish trait. They play with toys, play tag, and things only kids would do. Premade examples include Zelda Mae, Madison Van Watson and Molly French.
  • Adventurer Archaeologist: You get to play as one with the World Adventures expansion.
  • Affably Evil: Any Sim with a combination of the "Evil" and "Friendly" traits. Premade examples include Vita Alto.
  • 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 Sim make in Creat-A-Sim is added to every neighborhood you have in your game, enabling you to play a single created Sim in a variety of different ways
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: The game ships with red, blue, and green skintones.
  • 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.
  • 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 what's up with Don Lothario's time machine?!
      • Well The Sims 2 did mention that the Caliente sisters moved into town after Bella disappeared.
    • Don't forget that the Tragic Clown is a ghost in TS3, yet can be encountered 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 archeological explorations of Egyptian ruins. For China, not so much.
  • Ascended Extra: Kaylynn Langerak was just an NPC in The Sims 2, but has a family and backstory in The Sims 3.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • Born Lucky/Born Unlucky: They're both traits, and naturally conflict with each other.
  • Brilliant but Lazy: Any Sim with the Couch Potato and Genius traits.
  • Bumbling Dad: To an extent, Dustin Langerak and Beau Andrews.
  • Butt Monkey: Unlucky Sims and/or Loser Sims. See also The Woobie.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: The Evil trait, complete with the ability to steal candy from babies.
  • The Casanova: Hank Goddard, Parker Langerak, and Xander Clavell all aspire to be this.
  • 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.
  • Cats Are Mean: Cats with the Aggressive trait.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Any Sim with the Genius and Insane traits.
  • 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-traveling 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.
    • 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 but Cacophonic: Any pet with the Noisy trait.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Sims with both the Grumpy and Inappropriate traits.
  • Did Not Do Research: In the World Adventures expansion, most of the monuments are given their appropriate names. However, the model that the game uses as the Great Pyramid is actually based off of the Pyramid of Khafre, which is smaller.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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."
  • Extreme Doormat: Bessie Clavell is strongly implied to be one.
  • Fan Service: So much more in this installation. Starting from bunk beds and strollers to breast sliders and body hair.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Not to the extent of the first two games (so far), but Death is still around, and you can get cursed by a mummy, build a Robot Buddy (or a time machine), meet (or become) a vampire, and own a living doll or unicorn.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Freudian Excuse: If adult Sims don't take good care of their kids, they'll wind up with the Evil trait.
  • 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.
  • Gotta Catch Them All: Among other things, gems and insects.
  • Grumpy Bear: It's a trait.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Hotter and Sexier: Breast-size sliders for female Sims and body hair on male Sims...
  • 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.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: One can have two different types of Sims to produce and offspring that's a hybrid. This is further expanded in Supernatural, where one can have a create a vampire, werewolf, ghost, or a fae and have them mate with a sim of either of a different since it's seems to be the only way to create a hybrid offspring.
  • 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.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Any Sim with a combination of evil and loser/unlucky traits.
  • Jerkass: Jared Frio and Xander Clavell of Sunset Valley are big ones.
  • Jerk Jock: Any Sim with the Athletic and Mean-Spirited trait.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Any Sim with both the Good and Mean-Spirited traits.
  • 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.)
    • 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.[1]
  • Legitimate Businessmen's Social Club: The Outstanding Citizen Warehouse Corporation.
  • 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.
  • Neat Freak: Neat or Snob Sims will gain stronger negative moodlets from messes than other Sims.
  • Nervous Wreck: Any Sim with the Neurotic trait.
  • Non-Nude Bathing: Never Nude trait, as you might expect.
  • No Sense of Humor: This is a trait you can give your Sims; it causes them to respond badly to being told jokes.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: The Mysterious Mr. Gnome secret item moves to different parts of your house lot when you're not looking. A possible Shout-Out to The Strangerhood, a The Sims 2 machinima series from the makers of Red vs. Blue.
  • Ominous Pipe Organ: The Grim Reaper Theme
    • Which sounds suspiciously like the Imperial March at some points. Shout-Out maybe?
  • 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.
  • 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) Pyromaniac, 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.
  • 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!!!
  • Pregnant Badass: There is nothing stopping a heavily pregnant International Super Spy from raiding the 'secret' criminal base.
  • 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 (neé Simovitch) and Bob Newbie as teens and Skip Broke as a child.
  • Put on a Bus / Character Outlives Actor: 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.)
  • Sadist Writer: Mean spirited Sims seems to be VERY good at writing stories that are focused on belittling or making fun of people and/or their political affilitration
  • 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.
  • Shout-Out: Claire Ursine. Remember Claire Bear from TS1 Unleashed?
    • Also, likely to the joy of many a Troper - There is a Never Nude trait, as well as a Funke family. I lol'd.
      • Gobias Koffi, as well, is practically a walking shout out to Tobias.
    • And the Bethany Miranda painting, which shows a little girl hugging Death, which will surely delight Discworld fans.
    • One of the Large Paintings you can make is undoubtedly an alien done in the style of Spore.
    • In the World Adventures expansion pack, you can find a peculiar stone in Egypt: Tiberium. Let that sink in for a bit. (EA Games owns both franchises.) Get it Spire Cut for a mere §6,500, leave it out for a bit, and it will grow into a large crystal worth §30,000+ . Leave it out long enough and it spawns more uncut gems, which, sadly, have to be picked up, sent away to be Spire Cut, and then set on the ground again before they'll repeat the process.
      • Also, leave any form of it in a Sim's inventory for a significant time and they get a moodlet (Visceroidal Nausea) with special flavor text that furthers the shout out.
      • One opportunity has you deliver a sample to the science lab, and when you do a message comes saying you met a representative called Mr. Kane.
    • On one of the standing mirrors (The Reflectinator), the description states that it has 1.21 gigajoules of power. Just a coincidence?
    • Similarly, in the Late Night expansion pack the description for the 'Kickin' Strobe Light' states that you can "torture your Sim with 1.21 gigawatts of pure pulsing power".
    • One of the vampires introduced with Late Night is called Belisama Hemlock, which sounds similar to the protagonist of a certain teen-novel series.
    • The icons for the Workaholic-only Likes Work/Missing Work moodlets are a red stapler.
    • One of the new books you can buy is Oh, the Destinations You'll Briefly Visit.
    • Toddlers can also read Bluish Eggs with a Side of Pastrami and Frank I'm Not.
    • From level five and up of the music skill, there's a chance that your musically gifted Sim will play the Tristram theme.
    • The whole Ghost Hunter career contains a mix of Ghostbusters and Luigi's Mansion shoutouts.
    • Look at the description of the Festus 44 stove in Buy Mode. It ends with: "You've got one question to ask yourself; 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?"
    • An NPC named Pilar Ternera may show up in your neighborhood.
    • This may be accidental, but a pop song on the radio has an extremely Tsundere female singer, with so much switching between a nice voice and a rip-your-head-off-with-my-bear-hands that you may have a severe case of Mood Whiplash. Being translated into gibberish, all of it is mainly inaudible, except for the main verse, which is a simple 'Asuka!'
    • One of the houses in Bridgeport from the Late Night expansion is named Back to the Fuscia.
    • One of the pizza delivery boys is named Torgo Pendragon.
    • Another book your Sims can purchase is A Game of Thorns.
    • There is a seven book children's series, Jimmy Sprocket, which includes Jimmy Sprocket and the Squishy Stone and Jimmy Sprocket and the Chalice of Lichens.
    • One of the books your Sims can read is called To Mock A Killing Bird.
    • Another Time Machine Shout-Out - your Sim spots a white rabbit, but wisely decides to leave it for "some other sucker" to chase.
    • When writing a novel, two of the default Sci-Fi titles are "Blender's Fame" and "1948".
    • One of the lights in the Future Shock furniture set is the Comrade Cube.
    • One of the moodlets for pets is "I Can Haz?"
    • Possibly coincidential, but Agnes Crumplebottom bears a strong resemblence to actress Barbara Stanwyck, particularly Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.
    • One of the NPCs is named Justine Keaton, which is possibly a portmanteau of Justine Bateman and her Family Ties character Mallory Keaton.
  • 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.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Oh ye gods, the creators let you have some fun with this in the Ambitions expansion. When you become an inventor, you eventually get the ability to detonate machinery for scrap. Do this on a massive pile and it can sometimes cause an immense chain reaction of - you guessed it - Stuff Blowing Up. Also, the meteors that can fall on you if you're outside cause an outstanding explosion when they make impact.
  • 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.
  • Teens Are Monsters: Any teenaged Sim with the Evil trait.
  • 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. A family created with a single parent will fill have that parent's memories populated by a "mystery sim".
  • Useless Useful Spell: Several skill challenges give rewards that are redundant with the skill level needed to acquire them. Repairing 10 electrical items makes a sim immune to being electrocuted, but repairing 10 electrical items alone will give a sim high enough handiness to not worry about it.
  • 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.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Sims in the Criminal Career could end up in jail, which happens at random. Same goes with Vampires if they get caught raiding a hospital and grocery for plasma.
    • Detention are present if a child or teen gets caught breaking a rule, like sleeping in class or forgetting homework.
    • In the Generation pack, a teen sim can pulls a serious prank at school, which runs the risk of the police taking action. Teen Sims can also do neighborhood pranks, but they could get caught.
  • 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.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not 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".
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: Similarly, Sims with the Evil trait can do things like "Take Evil Bath" or "Evil Slumber". Also the above mentioned evil lattes and evil chai.
  • Wild Mass Guessing: Just who the heck is Lolita Goth?
  • Workaholic: It's a trait.
  • Wrench Wench: Any female Sim with the Handy trait
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Possible, since CAS lets you give your Sims any color of hair you want.
  • Zettai Ryouiki: Grade B is currently possible.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: More like Vampire in the latest expansion and you can make it happen. Start off with a Young Sim and set the life span to epic. You then start making friends with everyone. Then you turn that Sim and host a party. You then start offering to turn everyone. Now you have half the town as Vampires. As vampires can't drink from each other, you may end up starving everyone.
    • They could live on plasma fruits, though.
    • In The Supernatural, a zombie outbreak can occur during a full moon. There are also potions to turn someone in a zombie, though it can be easily cured.
  1. ↑ 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.
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