Before Electronic Arts (EA) inherited The Sims franchise, Maxis made it possible for gamers of all ages to carry out their most sadistic fantasies by subjecting pixel people to tortures we would never (or should never) wish upon another human being. From forcing sims to drown, to subjecting them to starve in a puddle of their own urine, micro management minded individuals have been playing since the first game came out in early 2000.
Since then, The Sims has gone through 4 versions and come out with a number of expansion packs. You can play with your pets, go to school, have a night out on the town, go ghost hunting, take a trip to the spa, travel the world, see the future and reach your wildest career aspirations. More recent versions make online play possible, so you can share your disturbing actions with fellow players.
In 2004, Mod The Sims was created to allow you to make even more changes than the original character design allowed for. Since average joes were allowed to mess with the code, this produced some interesting results. Most of the time, this would just cause the game to crash. However sometimes, it created interesting glitches and terrifying situations that haunted the dreams of players for years.
These glitches didn't stop with subsequent versions. They just changed in nature. Add to that the wacky things Sims get up to when they're allowed to have free will, and player choices, and you get a lot of fails. There are dozens of blogs dedicated to these fails, but we've brought you some of the best.
15 Alien Child From Another Planet
Many games have glitches that involve textures or items loading properly, and The Sims franchise is not exempt from this. Here we have a bundle of issues that manifested all at once. The longer you look at this photo, the worse it gets. It's hard to tell if this is because it read the wrong data, loaded the wrong texture, or spawned straight from the bowels of hell.
What makes this photo great is that the other Sim in the room doesn't seem to think this is a problem, almost like this sort of thing happens all of the time. When you realize it's supposed to be a child and not some amorphous alien from one of the far corners of the galaxy, then you'll see this for the nightmare fuel it really is.
14 A Face Only A Mother Could Love
We've got another demon baby on the list. This one is being exorcised as his/her (or its?) father holds him. The stabbing eyelids, foot long claws, and morphing spine are all classic signs of demonic possession. Add to it the clueless father, who doesn't seem to realize what's going on. He seems so normal that it's easy to miss the fork he decides to rub all over this baby's belly. Maybe he's one of those people who finds the macabre cute and cuddly. Or tasty, depending on what he plans to use that fork for.
One thing is for sure, this child has only a face (and arms and legs) a mother could love. Speaking of which, maybe the mother is partially to blame for this abomination. What could a human mate with that would produce this kind of offspring?
13 One True Love
If you've played The Sims long enough, you'll realize this isn't even the nicest bed there is. But it's good enough for her. Maybe a little too good. Sleep lovers and those who have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning have definitely had this thought go through their head. Why leave your bed when you can marry it? This Sim went the extra mile and made the occasion special. She loved her bed so much that she got out of bed, made the bed so that the corners were crisp, got dressed, and even bought a ring for the bed. Kudos if she got the ring big enough to fit around one of the feet of the bed.
12 A Little Too Lifelike
Sometimes The Sims can get a little too lifelike. And when that happens, it's hard not to take a long hard look at your life and ask yourself what you're doing wrong. It's easy to spend hours on the internet. Anyone who has a Tumblr account knows how much time you can spend looking into the navy blue void held within. Endless scrolling makes it easy to keep looking through posts until you realize you've spent your whole day on Tumblr and forgot to go to work. When your Sim starts to emulate that behavior, you can't decide whether to laugh or to cry. Your fantasy life doesn't have a life either, and if that isn't the most depressing thing on the internet, we don't know what is.
11 Scooby Dooby Doo, Who Are You?
The Sims 3 and 4 have one of the most comprehensive character creators in the world of gaming. You can take anything in your imagination and make a sim out of it. This makes it possible to answer the following question: What happens when a dog and a human mate? Instead of violating all sorts of ethics just for the sake of sating curiosity, The Sims makes it possible to find out. Specifically, what would it look like if Scooby Doo and a hot Velma were to have a child? Whoever decided this was a good idea watched a little too much Scooby Doo growing up, and has way too much time on their hands. This is one riddle the Mystery Machine isn't equipped to handle, and is definitely not safe for children. Shaggy, is that you?
10 When Death Rains On Your Parade
The reaper has been showing up since Livin' Large and is a regular in most players' experiences. Those who have tried their hand at the swimming pool without ladders trick know the Reaper like they know an old friend. He's so familiar with deaths at pools that he's taken to showing up at pool parties and hanging out, because he knows at least one person is going to die. Many players have taken it upon themselves to try to seduce death or at least befriend him to make their playthrough interesting. However, he isn't generally known to show up and just grab a plate of food. At least he didn't take your life. Trading a plate of grilled salmon for your life seems like a good deal.
9 Happy In Her Birthday Suit
Starting with the first Sims game, several expansion packs came out which helped you explore all aspects of simulated life. Depending on which version you play, you can go to college, take a night out on the town, venture into the world of pets, explore the supernatural, and watch the lives of generations of families go by. One of the expansions lets you live out your wildest dreams of going to Hogwarts by dabbling in the world of magic. You can learn about spells, make things in your cauldron, exact revenge on your terrible neighbors, and even take a ride on your speedy broomstick. Unlike Hogwarts, wizards robes aren't required, and this sim has chosen to go without. Do you suppose she gets wind burn if she goes over 10 miles an hour?
8 Don't Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth
Horses aren't known for talking or being humanlike, let alone sending wedding gifts. There are enough movies about talking animals that we can guess how they would behave, but no one would have guessed a horse to act like this. This horse seems to have taken a shining to this Sims life, like the old ladies in the neighborhood you grew up in who have nothing better to do than keep track of everything you do in your life. No one sent her an invitation, but somehow she found out about it anyways and is sending you a unique wedding gift that you're sure not to get multiples of. Apparently, they have as much taste as your estranged uncle who you've only met a handful of times in your life. Who decided it was a good idea to give a horse a gift card to Bed, Bath, and Beyond anyways?
7 Vogue, Vogue, Fashion, Baby
Sims are known for not doing things the way they should be done. From taking 3 hours to use the bathroom, to dancing in front of the mirror in order to boost their charisma. This Sim has discovered a new way to hold a child that definitely should not be attempted at home. Is this a satire on high fashion? If so, where are the designer gowns and paparazzi? She's found her way to a runway, but no one seems to have gotten the invitation to this fashion show. What this Sim lacks in fashion taste, she makes up for in sheer wrist strength. She has to work out if she can hold that 10+ pound bundle in such a strange position and walk the runway for more than a few seconds.
6 Cooking Mama From Hell
Sometimes your Sims do things that end up haunting you in the night. This is a big reason why many players don't give their Sims free will, and also what draws so many players to keeping it on in the first place. Putting a child into a grill for any reason is enough to get you arrested. But then again, many things happen in The Sims that would lead to multiple life sentences in real life.
At least one of them realizes that what is happening is wrong. But she isn't doing anything to stop the other Sim from cooking her child when there's a door not ten feet away. What would possess a sim to cook their child in the first place?
5 Have You Signed The Guest Register?
It's hard to tell what's scarier: the fact that a Sim is going through a table, or that the killer from Friday the 13th forgot to take his mask off before putting on his formal wear. Whether he was invited by the bride or the groom, no one is going to be asking him any awkward questions any time soon. The first person to ask him to take off his mask might find an unexpected wedding gift shoved through their chest. Along with his sheer brute strength, Jason Voorhees has also figured out how to bend the laws of physics so he can walk through solid objects. Is that how he shows up uninvited in so many places? Probably a wise choice that he decided to leave his machete at home, although it could come in handy when cutting the cake!
4 They've Worked Up Quite An Appetite
The older games had a limit to the reality of the textures they could load. Even if they had loaded properly, there was no guarantee it would look lifelike. This is one of those those times. The texture of this jam sure makes things interesting. Bet you thought it was blood, didn't you? To be far, some jams in real life can have a blood like color to them. As far as we know, EA games hasn't made an expansion where you can make your Sim into a cannibal, and then have romantic relationships with other cannibals. That would be going a little too far. Hopefully, EA won't try it out to see what their players would do. There's bound to be at least a handful of people who would venture down that path.
The full photo is available here.
3 Hit The Hay
At first glance, this picture looks like a horse sleeping in a bed. We know that horses in The Sims get up to things that horse in real life would never do. But if you look closer, you'll see that it's not a horse. It's a person in a horse costume.
In The Sims University, you can choose to become a mascot to help pay your way through college. But anyone who knows anything about wearing a mascot outfit knows that it's hotter than Hades in there, even on a cool day. If she were on the floor, it might just look like she'd passed out in the heat of the moment. But no, she took the time to get into bed without taking it off. How would she have gotten into the bed in the first place, wouldn't the bed posts make it impossible to get the hind feet in?
2 Birthday Suit
This one is more of a case of a texture failing to load, or not being coded properly. The interesting shapes make it seem like there is some sort of pattern involved, but the game failed to pull up the correct code that displays it. The result is... a morphed version of a birthday suit. The mother of this child must have let her dress herself. Either she lets her child buy whatever she wants, or mom doesn't know anything about little Suzy's clothing choices. That, or Mom is letting Suzy do whatever she wants for her big day. Who even owns a skirt like that anyways? At least she has good taste when it comes to shoes. Her hair looks like she at least took the effort to brush it. What happened to the rest?
1 Life Simulation Gone Wrong
The last entry on our list isn't a glitch in the game, but instead an experience one of the players had. For whatever reason, many players have come up with inventive ways and reasons to kill their Sims. From trapping them in a 1x1 room, to setting them on fire, there's a lot to be gained by the death of a sim. This player had an experience not many have shared.
"I built a haunted house and killed like three families for the cemetery. The game literally gave me a pop up saying the Sims is a *life* simulation, and that I'm killing too many Sims."
The game noticed how much this player was killing their Sims, and had the code installed to call them out. It's almost like EA knows what people do with their games!