The Sims/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adorkable: The male teens/young adults in The Sims 2. The teens are supposed to be violent and rebellious while the young adults are supposed to be rowdy, partying jocks, yet their voices sound incredibly sweet and innocent.
    • The nerdy Curious brothers from Strangetown. They might have unusual interests but they're still likable.
  • Broken Base: Which is the best EP? Is TS3 awesome, or does it suck forever?
  • Crazy Awesome: The Sims 3's Insane trait! These Sims can fish in the pool and catch things! (... which says more about the pool than the Sim, really. Ew.)
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: The cutscene for a Mister Seahorse birth. Doubly funny if you compare it with the regular ones.
    • One of the jobs for the firefighters in The Sims 3: Ambitions, should you have Late Night installed too, is to save the movie set from a herd of angry llamas.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Has its own page.
  • Ear Worm: Given enough time, you will have the loading/neighborhood and buy/build music burned into your memory. Not helping matters is that every other expansion or so introduces a new version of some of these tracks to fit with the pack's theme (college marching band for University, electronic/techno for Free Time/Open for Business, tropical for Bon Voyage, etc).
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Many players enjoy improving Lilith Pleasant's life, often at the expense of Angela's.
    • And it seems like some players like the Townie Goopy, maybe because of his name and his big nose.
  • Evil Is Cool: Oh, hell yes! A Sim with the evil trait can amongst other things donate money to counter-charities, look for evil deeds and stars in the telescope, do an Evil Laugh every time another Sim dies, steal candy from babies and children, and Troll forums. Good Is Boring in comparison.
    • Additionally, Evil Sims can take an Evil Bath or Evil Shower.
    • They also get a positive moodlet ("Fiendish Delight") if another Sim in the room is unhappy.
  • Fan Dumb: Mentioning that you like (or dislike) a given EP can result in a full-fledge Flame War. Some people love TS3, other despise it with a burning passion. Finally, never even mention "paysite" or "Garden of Shadows" to a Sims fanbase member without knowing their opinions about the aforementioned. Let's not even get started on how the Official Sims BBS/Exchange and its casual gamer casual population is viewed by more devoted fansites.
    • Never, ever ask the forums of a certain Sims Game Mod forum for help in navigating the labyrinthine process of installing said Game Mod. Because everyone who has a problem with it is an idiot, naturally, and not at all because it's trivially easy for said Game Mod to generate GameBreakingBugs if you even look at it funny.
  • Fanon: A little bit. For example, Frances Worthington is played as gay in many stories, and the townie Meadow Thayer is said to be "the neighborhood bicycle". Also, in fanfics usually there is some sort of connection between Strangetown and Pleasantview (because Bella Goth can be found as a townie in Strangetown), and usually Lilith Pleasant is seen as the better twin, while Angela is seen as a Mary Sue.
  • Fetish Fuel: TS3 contains a lot of potential fetish fuel, including moe, fat Sims, leather (you can make any piece of clothing you like into leather), and probably more.
    • ... which is nothing you can't say about the previous two games thanks to the wonders of custom content, but making fat Sims and leather everything is easier with the expanded CAS and Create-A-Style.
    • The Late Night expansion pack includes a slider to adjust the breast size of female Sims.
      • That's not all, Late Night includes Fetishist Clothing (as seen here), walking around in a towel (after your clothes get stolen when you skinny dip), the sensual-like dances you can do on a table, and a rather... suggestive way Sims approach others when you WooHoo in an elevator.
    • The Sims 3 recently added shower sex, more hot tubs to WooHoo in, and male body hair. And there's no shortage of corsets.
    • Someone has made a top and bottom in The Sims 3 that renders female Sims naked. Now combined with the more realistic skins . . .
  • Fridge Horror: When a Sim has been afflicted by the mummy's curse for about a week, the screen becomes surrounded by a strange sort of glow whenever said Sim is selected. Let another week pass, and the edges of your screen will dim to black every few seconds. Your Sim's vision blurring and clouding over as they slowly die, perhaps?
    • If a Sim dies before they turn their imaginary friend real, the imaginary friend doesn't die with them. They remain wandering around the lot, and then fade out once you select another Sim to control. Just like they did before their Sim died. Does that mean that imaginary friends can't ever die? Do they wander around endlessly among the grieving family members, unable to communicate without their Sim to talk to? Forever?
  • Fridge Logic: Many examples. Probably the most Egregious is that you can have an entire town of mayors. A more common example is that while Sims need a phone to receive phone calls (which is perfectly good logic), they don't need a computer to receive and send back e-mails. There aren't even enough public computers to make it plausible that the computer-less Sim is just checking their email on public computers.
    • Unless you build more places with public computers, of course.
  • Game Breaker: Once you got the robotic butler/maid in The Sims 3, it would efficiently remove all worries about cleanliness, repair and so on, freeing Sims time much more for other goals.
    • This seems to happen with every new expansion pack. Generations gave us the motive mobile, a car that fills every motive of the sims riding in it. You don't even have to ride for long in it. Another expansion also gave us the "Age Freeze" and "Young Again" potions, which do exactly what their names imply (the former can only be used on teen and up while the latter is only for young adult and up).
  • Hollywood Pudgy: Female "fat" Sims, with only a slightly wider waist than the rail-thin "normal" Sim ladies, somewhat larger boobs, and Hartman Hips (or at least they're Hartman Hips compared to regular female Sims). Male fat Sims are kind of similar; they have potbellies, less muscle definition, and slightly larger thighs, but that's all. And both sexes are lumpier of build than the regular Sims. The second game is the worst offender, although the third averts it.
  • It's Short, So It Sucks: Some fans consider The Sims 3 expansion packs to be rather lacking in content. This is most apparent with Late Night and Showtime, two expansions which make up two halves of the content of one Sims 2 expansion (Nightlife).
  • Mary Sue: Literally! Mary-Sue Pleasant. I can't be the only one who enjoys messing her life up beyond recognition.
    • Mary-Sue Pleasant could be considered a Deconstruction of the trope. She's so obsessed with her job that she doesn't notice her husband's affair with the maid, or the fact that her twin daughters hate each other.
    • Also, the majority of female Sims put on the Exchange have a description like "omg this is Jennifer she is so kewl and awesome and pretty please download!!!!!!11"
    • "Jamie Jolina is an intelligent as she is beautiful. Can she prove to the world that two traits can coexist?"
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • An in-game example. When Toddlers and Children play with an evil clown-in-a-box, they get scared to the point that it's recorded as a bad memory.
    • This piece of music, especially when you hear it for the first time.
      • Especially annoying if it's a raccoon - it does nothing but make a mess, but the Burglar steals your stuff.
    • The alert music.
    • This Troper once made the mistake of zooming in on a Sim a bit too much. She really wishes she hadn't.
  • Scapegoat Creator: The disproportionate scorn heaped upon Rod Humble, at one point executive producer of the Sims division, because of his past experience working with SOE and some offhand comment that he "didn't get The Sims at first". Fan Dumb feared he was going to "turn The Sims into EverQuest." It didn't help that he appeared as a Sim in one expansion as essentially a door-to-door hype salesman.
  • Scenery Porn: The destination spots in World Adventures. The maps make Sunset Valley look amateur by comparison.
    • The designers love to put lots of detail into things that aren't necessarily important.
    • Lunar Lakes may count as well. Many players agree that this is the best Neighborhood EA had ever made.
  • The Scrappy: The social worker, Mrs. Crumplebottom, and Angela Pleasant.
    • Mrs. Crumplebottom was hated for a very long while...however this changed in The Sims 3...(see Tear Jerker)
    • Marsha Bruenig: a townie in Pleasantview. Once you meet her, she will NEVER stop calling, even at night and during school! Simmers actually regard her with fear.
    • The Nanny, who will bring your toddler bottle after bottle, even when the toddler's not hungry. And set the house on fire while cooking. To make matters worse, she won't leave your house even after you've dismissed her!
    • A lot of simmers are annoyed by babysitters in the Sims 3 because they will either neglect the baby or constantly bother him/her when all needs are full. Also, if there is a baby swing and the baby is it, the sitter will often set the swing on fast, making the baby cranky and sick.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The newly implemented Memory System in The Sims 3. It was a return of the Memory System of The Sims 2 in which Sims would get memories added to their book whenever something significant happens in their life. Instead, Sims would get memories for almost everything they do. Went to buy something? Memory! Just unclogged a toilet? Memory! Passed by the library on your way to work? Memory! It doesn't help that you get an incredibly annoying pop-up saying that your Sim obtained a memory every time this happens. (Fortunately the developers had a heart and allowed you to disable the pop-ups, but not the memories)
    • But wait! It gets better! Inactive Sims would also gain memories. Did I mention memories take up space in your save file? If you've noticed that your game is loading/saving slower than usual after installing Generations, it's probably the game trying to process all of your memories. It's not surprising that within a week or so of this new system, mods immediately popped up to stop the memories.
    • Also the Romantic Reputation system in The Sims 3, which causes spouses to declare Sims a cheater simply for interacting with another Sim.
      • It gets quite juvenile in some situations. For example, did a Flirty Sim decide to bat an eye to your Sim? Your Sim's spouse will then call you a cheater and proceed to reject all social interactions with you and even break up with you afterwards.
    • Then there are celebrities and vampires in the Sims 3, which quickly becomes an uncontrollable plague.
    • The "room" meter. Almost always keeps the sims away from obtaining a perfect mood, and even in a very well-designed house, they still have it half-red.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop: Truth be told; this was one of the more merciful examples. It was easier to make friends, but they would pretty much degrade rapidly if you didn't talk to them every single day. The later ones make it easier to keep friends, but it's harder to make friends. It's worth noting that unless you spent a bunch of hours into the game in the first one, you pretty much had to cheat.
  • Tear Jerker: In The Sims 3, Agnes Crumplebottom, the woman who grows old and into the Mrs. Crumplebottom in The Sims: Hot Date that we hate so much. Her husband died on their honeymoon, leaving her alone and mourning in their mansion built for three, too grief stricken by his memory to try looking for a new suitor. In the upstairs of her house she still has a nursery room that was half finished.
    • Heck, any time a Sim dies, especially if you're one to get attached to them. In The Sims 3, for example,a troper had a Sim die at work. All the other Sims that lived with him mourned, and were depressed for a while. And he never left a Tombstone, whether because of a glitch or otherwise. And they never said goodbye to him.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Despite having accumulated many, many characters over the years with The Sims and The Sims 2, EA insists on creating boring, unmemorable Sims for The Sims 3's neighborhoods instead of reusing the older ones.
  • Uncanny Valley: many of the custom mods (specially the ones to simulate celebrities) give more detailed skins, eyes, hair, etc... it can be a little disturbing.
    • To some, the Sims in The Sims 3 are like this. While in The Sims 2 they were realistically animated and proportioned while still having cartoonish facial expressions, The Sims 3 attempts a realistic look which just makes Sims look like vacant, dead-eyed zombies. They also tend to react in ways that seem like they're not sane.
    • The Sims in The Sims 2 can be considered this as well. It's the extremely detailed teeth that do it, not to mention that some sims lack eyebrows...
  • Unfortunate Implications: Presumably to avoid this, female Sims do not return pregnant after being abducted by aliens; only male Sims do. However, this, coupled with the fact that it's Played for Laughs, brings about a whole other set of unfortunate implications.
    • In TS3, if a female sim with the "Dislikes Children" trait becomes pregnant, she will still receive the positive "Pregnant" moodlet, despite that the description for the trait says, "Sims that dislike children do not want to have anything to do with children. No talking, no playing and certainly no reproduction." Think about that for a second...
  • The Woobie: Basically every Sim that has the loser and/or unlucky trait. Even Death takes pity on the poor sap; both provide immunity to death by anything other than old age. The drawbacks for both are pretty light, so it's really a case of Cursed with Awesome...
    • unless you've devoted yourself to causing the Sim in question as much suffering as possible.
    • Death doesn't actually take pity on Unlucky Sims when he revives them. Instead, he laughs at their constant mishaps and doesn't want to take away such hilarious entertainment too early.
    • Also Bella Goth, to an extent.
    • Lilith Pleasant and Ripp Grunt, the famous unfavorites.
    • Agnes too. She wanted to have a perfect family life with her new husband, and he died. They even had a nursery. Now she lives a depressed life and becomes the grump we know in The Sims: Hot Date.
    • The Newsons from Apartment Life. They're a family of adopted children whose parents have died, and the two teens have to juggle school, caring for the younger ones and providing a steady income. Unless you move them in with an adult Sim of course.
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