History VideoGame / TheSims

** Zigzagged for vampire sims, who drink blood, but don't need it in order to survive. They do become quite angry without it, however.
** In the [[VideoGame/TheSims3 third]] and [[VideoGame/TheSims4 fourth]] games, mermaids avert this because they have the need for hydration instead of hygiene. They get hydrated when near water or from rain if the Seasons pack is installed.

* DustbinSchool: Children performing poorly at school end in a MilitarySchool.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: You can make your Sims go barefoot all the time. Originally, this was tied to legs overall, and work uniforms overrode this temporarily, forcing your Sims into footwear; however, ''The Sims 3'' has footwear as its own category and [[http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sims_3/Patch_31 patch 31]] added the option to fully customize your work uniform(s), so you can now invoke this [[BunnyEarsLawyer even at work]].
* DomesticApplianceDisaster: If a sim is not skilled at using certain appliances, then they can end up breaking them, such as the oven catching on fire if the sim doesn't know how to cook.

The four mainline games have had, as of 2019, at least seven {{Expansion Pack}}s each, all of which add new features, permutations and game play 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 game play functions. Starting with The Sims 4, there are also Game Packs, which are a middle of the road between Expansion and Stuff packs, offering one major new feature (Such as Vampires, Spas or Camping), and a smaller world and small collection of tightly focused items to support it. According to EA, the franchise passed the one-hundred-million-units mark during the ''Sims 2'' era, but they're probably [[RankInflation counting the expansion packs]], which they maybe shouldn't.

* GRatedSex: While it's clear that the Sims are having sex on occasion, it's never explicitly mentioned, and has a stand-in name for it: "Woo-hooing" [[note]]"Woohoo" wasn't introduced until the second game. The original base ''Sims'' game did not have any option at all for sex, and expansion packs called it "Play in Bed" or "Vibrate on Bed"[[/note]]. If two Sims do have the possibility to have sex [[MakingLoveInAllTheWrongPlaces somewhere]], you can either make them "Woo-hoo" or "Try for baby". ''Sims 4'' allows the player to view these actions in first-person mode, and reveals that [[spoiler:the Sims simply lie next to each other, completely still except for flapping their mouths.]]

** Averted with The Sims Freeplay- it only runs in real world time, and no pause.

* AbsurdlyYouthfulParents: Starting with ''2'' and the later sequels, you can invoke this in the Create-A-Sim mode by making your parent Sims every bit as young as their children even when their children has aged up to their adult years. Certain items such as the Elixir of Life or Potion of Youth serve to rewind the clock of your sim's age but will not turn them back to an earlier life stage such as going from Young Adult to Teen.

** ''The Sims 3'': That opportunity the Science Lab gives you to resurrect the dead? Take a wild guess what happens. If you choose this, the sim will become a playable character and be able to do everything normally, but will be a ghost. They can be brough BackFromTheDead or choose to return to "The Netherworld".

''The Sims'' series 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 DownloadableContent for other people; and, as mentioned, there is a huge variety of unofficial {{Game Mod}}s which change the way the game functions. It has been used to create several works of fiction: Creator/RoosterTeeth Productions, creators of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'', were employed by EA to make ''Machinima/TheStrangerhood'' using ''The Sims 2'' as a marketing effort; and a British college student created a homeless-father-daughter drama blog called ''Webcomic/AliceAndKev'' using the third game.

* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Sims with the Grilled Cheese aspiration take this UpToEleven, with their entire lives revolving around acquiring more of the orange stuff they crave. Their addiction is so powerful that they may eventually gain the ability to conjure a grilled cheese sandwich out of thin air!

* AmbiguousDisorder:
** Some games have traits that are pretty much unnamed, generalized mishmashes of certain disorders. For example, ''Sims 3'' offers "Insane", "Unstable" and "Inappropriate", all of which cause Sims to act generally weird.
** Some players combine different traits to create a sim who displays symptoms of certain disorders. Using ''Sims 3'' for another example, players have come up with trait combinations that resemble AD(H)D[[labelnote:Example]]"Over-emotional", "Hot-headed", "Absent-minded" and/or "Daredevil" for ADD and ADHD respectively[[/labelnote]] and Asperger's Syndrome[[labelnote:Example]]"Perfectionist", "Genious", "Inappropriate" and "Loner"[[/labelnote]], among others.

** Sometimes the Sims do things that no sane human would ever do, ranging from the [[CloudCuckoolander mildly eccentric]] to the [[UncannyValley vaguely creepy]] to the [[SurrealHumor batshit]] [[AxCrazy insane]]. These include:

* If you want altered forms of play, there's ''Videogame/MySims''[[/index]] for the UsefulNotes/NintendoWii and UsefulNotes/NintendoDS, which has the dressings of ''VideoGame/TheSims'' but lacks a lot of the essentials of the game. Instead, it's more like ''Videogame/AnimalCrossing'', but for people who prefer to work with cute chibi humans instead of a bossy tanuki. And there was a Website/{{Facebook}} version, ''The Sims Social'', merging the game with a ''Videogame/{{Farmville}}'' experience, but it was eventually closed due to lackluster player reception.

* FamiliarSoundtrackForeignLyrics: From [[VideoGame/TheSims2 the second game]] onward, ''VideoGame/TheSims'' regularly featured [[SpeakingSimlish Simlish]] versions of real songs, from artists ranging from Music/LilyAllen to Music/GaelicStorm to Music/BarenakedLadies. The full list of songs redone like this is [[https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Songs_in_Simlish very long.]]

* WritersCannotDoMath: There are a ''lot'' of age discrepancies with characters who appear in both ''The Sims 2'' and ''The Sims 3''.

** Some games have traits that are pretty much unnamed, generalized mismashes of certain disorders. For example, ''Sims 3'' offers "Insane", "Unstable" and "Inappropriate", all of which cause Sims to act generally weird.

** In The Sims 4, instead of having an object repossed, you get [[BlackoutEpisode your eletricity cut]] and, if you continue without paying them, your water as well.

[[quoteright:286:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_sims_3rd_gen_logo.png]]
[[caption-width-right:286:[-[[Film/{{Chinatown}} Forget it, Jake, it's]] [[Creator/WillWright Wright-Town.]]-]]]

* ''Videogame/TheSimsMedieval''[[/index]] (2011) is a standalone [[GameMod Total Conversion]] that put the Sims in a MedievalEuropeanFantasy. 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 alcoholism and murder, themes not present in the older series without mods.[[index]]

* ''Videogame/TheSimsMedieval''[[/index]] (2011) is a standalone [[GameMod Total Conversion]] that put the Sims in a MedievalEuropeanFantasy. 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.[[index]]

* ''VideoGame/TheSimsOnline''[[/index]] (2001) was a MMO based on the first ''Sims'' title. It went off-line in 2009. Later revived as [=FreeSO=].

* ''VideoGame/TheSimsOnline''[[/index]] (2001) was a MMO based on the first ''Sims'' title. It went off-line in 2009.

* AndYourRewardIsParenthood: All mainline games in the franchise allow your Sims to get married and start families, if you're so inclined. In the first game, children would grow up from baby to child, being forever stuck in childhood (as their parents would never get old either). Later games give Sims a proper life cycle, meaning that couples can have biological children, and those children will eventually grow up.

* AmbiguouslyBrown: ''VideoGame/TheSims1'' and ''VideoGame/TheSims2'' had less customisation options for the face and body, meaning that a person was differentiated mostly by the colour of their skin, with examples like Bella Goth. ''VideoGame/TheSims3'' and ''VideoGame/TheSims4'' makes it possible to edit the face and body more, and a Sim can have more accurate racial features than just a bland North American appearance.

* AndYourRewardIsParenthood: All mainline games in the franchise allow your Sims to get married and start families, if you're so inclined. In the first game, Sims could only adopt children, and those children never grew up. Later games give Sims a proper life cycle, meaning that couples can have biological children, and those children will eventually grow up.

* RelationshipValues