I know this has been talked about many times and it's been always interesting to me because it involves a lot of imagination. I saw a reddit thread where people discussed their own theories about the lore of many families. There isn't any official lore about many families but we know the most popular theories (e.g. Olive Specter being a serial killer). I'm interested about your personal theories about some families based on their bio, furnishings and memories. You can also share interesting theories you read somewhere that aren't popular.

I'll start first to give you some inspiration...

I read a theory that Brandi Broke is a prostitute and/or an alcoholic. That was new to me. It's that she likes 'grape juice' according her bio, which we all know it's wine, which can mean that she's an alcoholic. The other one is that her bedroom is not only lavishly decorated compared to other bedrooms but it's also kinda sexy. It's also that her toddler son's crib is in the hallway when there's space in the bedroom. Hmmm...

I often wonder more about the national/global lore it would take to make all the item descriptions work... SimCity and SimNation are obviously their own entities in the world of the Sims, but at the same time there are not-infrequent references to real-world history with things like the Roman and British empires, or smaller details like Route 66... how are they integrated into the same world here?

My way of seeing it is that any reference to the real world, exists in a "Sims" version. Also things that only exist in the game or are invented by us.

One theory/headcanon I've seen and like is that Jenny Smith is a trans woman, who could still get pregnant and give birth thanks to being with a pollination technician.

A mix of other people's thoughts I've seen and my own, I like to think of Contessa Capp and Patrizio Monty as the original/"real" Romeo and Juliet of Veronaville. Except that in this scenario, "Juliet" did end up with "Paris" (Consort) instead.

I absolutely love this one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sims2/comm...i0vg/?context=3

Omg I thought the theory was ridiculous until the alien part. It unlocked my memory when I saw that Dina and Nina share an alien ancestor and I thought it was weird and random.

Don being with both sisters and Cassandra is pretty suspicious because something like that would be quickly revealed in real life. You would think that Mortimer has talked about his future son in law or the sisters were talking about each other's dating life and realizing they're involved with the same man. Dina and Nina with Don give me major threesome vibes although I recently found out that Nina was a virgin when playing them.

Also, Darren Dreamer has some stalker vibes. In the game it's impossible for a Sim to fall in love with absolutely no involvement with the other Sim without any mods. It seems like they set up Darren to be an obsessed stalker, plus that picture of him painting her. He still seems more wholesome and I would definitely pair him with Cassandra once I start playing Pleasantville for the 100th time.

I believe that a big, if not the biggest, charm of the game lies in making your own lore, even when starting points are well defined. Take the Goth family: it has a lot of backstory but it is the outcome of the very first scene that defines how *your* story will develop. In such cases I always follow what the game decides: if Don runs away the next steps are pretty straightforward but if he stays you have quite a mess on your hands, and how it will be resolved - if it will be resolved at all - depends entirely on you. And that's where the fun begins.

I read posts on Reddit, etc., and some are quite interesting but only a few are believable. For example, it is quite obvious that Olive is a man hater and a mass murderer and that Nervous Subject is the result of her attitudes. On the other hand, I never thought of Brandy the way described above, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to do much about it in the game: I could make her a prostitute (with a mod) but not an alcoholic, and neither would feel right to me.

But all of this made me want to play Pleasantview once more. I haven't done this in years and I really want to see how Don will react this time.

Brandi is a family sim and if you look into Skip he is a romance sim. I always felt that bedroom was his, the deco his. I can't see a family sim being a prostitute or that room choice being hers. To me she likes pink not red. Her being an alcoholic maybe due to Skips indiscretions in that bedroom sound far more plausible.

This one is probably very basic and common but my ultimate favorite theory is Alexander Goth growing up very intrigued and saddened by his mother's disappearance, and after doing his research, he finds out that she was actually murdered. Alexander thinks that if he can travel to the past and somehow warn the neighborhood about the murder, it won't happen and his mom won't die, which will result in him having the childhood he always wanted, so he time-travels and writes the book. The plan only half-worked, as writing about his mom disappearing puts the killer(s) off and Bella gets to live; but this doesn't bring her back to her husband and his children, it actually deviates the timeline and creates another reality in which the Goth Family never suffered that tragedy (and that's why TS4 is so weird with its lore), but the real Alexander Goth never really gets to see his mom back, ever.

I'm pretty sure there's a message that shows up in TS3 about her becoming the "empress" of the aliens. It's been a while, but I think it involved the time machine from Ambitions, the dance sphere from Showtime, or possibly an object from Supernatural.

True, but some women have no choice but to do sex work to survive. They live in a trailer, she's unemployed and her son is a small criminal, their surname is Broke after all. Keep in mid that Brandi gets pregnant without a father of her child. I know it's basically a clone of herself but whatever makes the story juicier.

Beau Broke was unplanned. Once Beau was born, Brandi had to quit her job because they couldn't afford childcare for such long hours even with both Skip and Brandi working. There's a pretty big age gap between Dustin and Beau. The house isn't big enough for Beau to have his own bedroom. These things on their own don't mean much, but all at the same time? Yeah, Beau was not planned. Neither was Baby Broke, but that's part of the story Maxis set up.

Mine is that Pleasantview is about 423 yars old and that the first families to settle there starting in early America during the 17th century are all the early ancestors of the modern day Pleasantview families like Andy and Carol Pleasant are the first of the Pleasant family to settle there way back in the turn of the 17th century.Eli and Ami Jankowsky are early ancestors of the Goth family and there are also ones with the Goth last name who also settled there in the colonial era.Pleasantview was known as Pleasant Valley until in 1923 when it was renamed Pleasantview after a member of the Pleasant family died after having served in the first world war.

I always wondered why the Pleasant family wasn't old money. Yes, their house is big and has a Germanic design, probably centuries old and passed through generations, but the interior doesn't scream generational wealth like the Goth family has. I also wish they had their own graveyard like the Capps and Goths. I want to play Sims 2 so badly now and make that household old money and post here :D

My backstory for most of the Pleasantview families was that not all of them were wealthy on arrival in the colony and that some got ric early on while others became wealthy later on.The Pleasants started out as poor farm laborers when arriving in the colony back near the turn of the 17th century and slowly got rich and that the modern ones inherited an estate already running low on cash when they had an unplanned pregnancy and things went downhill from there.

moonlight_, isn't that realistic, though? Some families manage to accumulate wealth and pass it on over the centuries, other families fall on hard times and loose everything. Power, influence and wealth shifts in a communityover time. I'd love to see your take on the Pleasants as Old Money, though! Especially a remake of their house, with a private graveyard.

When I see their house in the game, it doesn't give me the impression of being an old house at all. To me it looks like a typical, fairly modern, middle class house with fake tudor accents, like you see a lot of in Britain. The wooden beams are not wooden beams at all, just plywood pasted on, and the plastered walls are not plastered walls, just concrete with a plaster texture.

It's definitely realistic. I know personally plenty of people whose grandparents were wealthy and never taught their children to manage finances so they become dirt poor by the time their grandchildren become adults.

I'll definitely post it once I finish my exams! I'll make sure to keep their personalities, just make them a little more Gossip Girl-ish. :D

I actually got the same impression at first because I didn't look into it too deep. Your and my theories are valid, there is no right answer. I wasn't aware about the fake 'old' facade cause I'm from the southern Europe where that's non-existent here. What is familiar to me are cheap mass-produced ornaments that crumble like chalk and the lions on gates. So I completely understand your vibe.


Speaking of speculating about houses, the Smith's house was my favorite when I was a child because it had such a wholesome family friendly vibe, including it's garden. Now when I'm older and aware of America's culture, it looks like it's built of cardboard considering its cheap furniture, and the yellow color and attic windows makes it look like a soulless generic suburban home from the 90s.

Touching on the Don and Cassandra thing, I used to think Cassandra was naive and innocent, and thought "poor girl doesn't know what's going to happen". When I actually played out the scenario I realized I might have been wrong . In that playthrough, Cassandra seemed to know just who and what Don was and didn't care. She wanted a marriage and baby, got both, then didn't seem at all interested in Don cheating. Granted, I run ACR. That does sometimes make things go wonky, but it was fun to see.

I'd heard the one about Olive being a serial killer, but it never seemed right to me. She felt like more of an extreme Weirdness Magnet, and once I decided to make her a Neutral Witch, everything fell into place. She was born to witchcraft but did not get training until very late in life, so she could "Make Things Happen" without realizing it. (Her younger sister Willow had no magical abilities to speak of, which further confused the issue.)

When Olive was ten, she wished that an annoying neighborhood boy would fall off his bike and break his neck. She was still a child, so he only broke his ankle. Nobody connected the accident with Olive (not even Olive), but she felt guilty about it all the same. Some say she also ill-wished Danielle Greaves, a teenager with a part-time pizza delivery job, who wasn’t very nice to Olive and was always picking on her. Surely it was nobody’s fault that Danielle developed a terminal case of anorexia...was it?

When she was about twenty, she fell in love with Earl E. DeMise. He left her at the altar, and she was so angry she wished him dead. He was a television repairman, and the next television he tried to repair electrocuted him. His brother Tim Lee DeMise, a telephone lineman, was suspicious and badgered Olive about it until she wished he would go away forever. He was up a pole when a sudden thunderstorm blew up and electrocuted him too.

Her first actual husband, Rigger Mortis, seemed convincingly devoted...until she caught him cheating on her with the maid (Jessica Ebadi). She ill-wished them both and ordered them out of her house. They drove away in a sudden thunderstorm, which brought a power line down on the car and electrocuted Rigger. Jessica survived, but in a vegetative coma until she starved to death.

At thirty-five, she fell in love with and married Hugh Thanasia, only to learn too late that he was a con man whose brother Lou had convinced him to marry her for her money. She wished they would both go die in a fire...and they did.

About this time rumors began to circulate that Olive was someone it was very unwise to cross, and people began to avoid her. It hurt her pride, but since she didn’t care much for other people, she did nothing to change her ways. Any sudden or unexpected deaths in the neighborhood were blamed on her, and people began to say openly that she was a witch. She took it into her head to challenge the Grim Reaper as to the truth of this accusation, and he admitted that yes, she had uncontrolled powers and was in need of training, which she would find in due time. In the meantime, he advised her to be very, very careful what she wished for. She told him she wished most of all for a child….

Olive was very surprised to find herself pregnant, although husbandless, and was even more surprised to discover that the boy had almost a bone-white complexion, although her own, like all her family’s, was bitter-chocolate brown. He was also very thin, and was taken away from her on the specious grounds that she was “neglecting” him. She searched for him for years, in vain, not knowing that he was being concealed and abused by the Beakers on the other side of town.

After all this, it was a wonder that anyone wanted anything to do with her, yet Ichabod Specter courted and married her, and they were very happy together until he (supposedly) died of old age (some say he simply dropped his mask and showed himself to be her old lover Grim in human guise). Be that as it may, there is a tombstone with a matching ghost in Olive’s graveyard.

I've been playing with some of the original Goth family's ancestors in colonial Pleasantview with Eli and Ami Jankowsky and have Andy Pleasant about to arrive next spring with her husband Carol to begin settling what will be the Pleasant family's home in the modern day Pleasantview shipped with the game.I've got ancestors of the other Pleasantview families from the 17th century colonial days lined up to be created in CAS and later to settle in on arriving with more colony ships.

Two families I have thought of stories for are the Beakers and Curious. Why are the Beakers living in a disjointed (all those stairs!) house? Why does Nervous not hate his "captors"? I actually have to stop him and Circe from flirting. And even though Nervous has almost no personality, I always see him as a sweet man. The Curious men --I hate their house even more. The one that likes to cook (forgot his name) I let stay home and take care of babies; I never make him clean. Usually none of them marry. And is Nervous and (what's his name?) set up to be lovers? I've tried that but prefer this: The Beakers both get alien pregnant, but have no interest in their babies. Nervous is a good daddy, wants to learn to cook and clean "for the children", and begins to "recover" from his ill-treatment (I change his personality). He finds true love, demolishes that horrible house - which gives them plenty of money to build a "normal" house, where they raise all the hood "orphan" kids, and dogs.
Yea, in my world everyone "lives happily ever after". Except for those that I let die of stupid.."Yes, the house is full of toddlers and the kitchen is on fire. Let's go upstairs and make a baby"

My own Pleasantview story is my take on that town because the original one always glitched out on me though I still wanted to be able to play out the story of that town so that's why I did my rendition of it using a terrain and making the sims for it as the ancestors of the Pleasantview residents.All of the families are to be included though none of them are familiar to the EA version because I'm starting with Pleasantview 423 years in the past and playing though it's entire history and watching it grow over the centruies as it moves into the modern age.

The mystery of Hero Monty's death and lack of gravestone is one of the more intriguing mysteries in the The Sims 2 lore for me, but also one of the most frustrating ones. Antonio's and even moreso Benedick's bio seems to indicate something, but there isn't really any sort of clue or lead in the game, especially in terms of why it says Benedick might be essential to solving the mystery. Leaving things up to the player's interpretation is one thing, but there really doesn't seem to be anything to go on at all in the game itself.
Plus this sim and the mystery surrounding her is fairly obscure with not a lot of players talking about it or sharing theories. I've only seen a tumblr user called CornyRegans (who's written a lot of interesting information and speculation about Veronaville and its residents) and a Youtube-video by Leto Mills touching on it in a video about The Sims 2 and Much Ado About Nothing.

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All this to say, I wanted to come to a conclusion in my game, so I worked it into the game itself allowing Antonio to get more leads as he rose in the intelligence career. Him and Benedick (from the assumption that Benedick saw something the day his mother disappeared) have talked to each other, to other sims, and played copious amounts of rock, paper, scissors while I've counted sims in SimPe, interpreted speech bubbles and let games of rock, paper, scissors decide between alternative scenarios I came up with. So, it's not what I would've come up with if I sat down and tried to think up a theory, but for all intents and purposes this is what happened to Hero Monty in my Veronaville:

Back in the day, Hero Monty, Titania and Oberon Summerdream, the townie Victor Lillard and the garden club NPC Allyn were best friends. On the last day Hero was seen, they had gotten together to hang out and eat food at the Summerdream's. Hero's son Benedick was present on the lot too, staying in the house while the adults were out in the back yard. Benedick had noticed Hero seemed stressed, and that it seemed to have to do with money. At one point he heard people arguing outside and looked out, but all he could tell was that some of them were worried about something being a fire hazard due to the weather.

Hero was at this point extremely tired of the Capp/Monty feud, and tensions seemed to be at an all-time high after the deaths of Caliban and Cordelia Capp as well as Olivia and Claudio Monty. So when Titania and Oberon told her they had an idea to fix things, she was all ears and even gave them a loan for them to get hold of a grim reaper-phone. She had taken the money from a bank account she and Antonio shared and that's why she was stressed - she worried he'd notice the money missing and ask her what it had been used for, which she wanted to keep a secret for the time being.

Anyway, with everything set up, all that was left to do was to make a call to the grim reaper and resurrect the two couples. But things didn't turn out quite right. First of all, something about the resurrected Caliban and Cordelia seemed decidedly off. And what's more, Olivia Monty had been pregnant, but the child had been lost along the way, likely since the deal had been to resurrect these four sims. Hero panicked, and begged the grim reaper to reverse the deal and take the four of them back. At some point during all of this, she let out a scream that Benedick heard, but when he glanced out, he couldn't see anything or anyone, and forgot about it until he learned that Hero had presumably died that same day.

Feeling extremely guilty due to the suffering she had caused, and fearing (for her life) repercussions from both the Monty and the Capp side (living or dead), and being too fed up with this feud thing in general, Hero decided she had to flee Veronaville, and that she was going to fake her own death doing so. Victor Lillard had already left by then, but the other three were with her as she came to this conclusion, and Titania and Oberon even helped her by going to the Veronaville river and planting false clues to suggest she had drowned in it. Hero did eventually want to return, but before she had the chance to do that she was in an accident which killed her off for real, after which her ashes were poured into the same river her remains were thought to have been in all along.

I like your theory but one thing stuck to me. Why do you think Nervous has almost no personality? I don't disagree, I think there's some truth to it since he has no friends nor a place in society if that makes sense but I'm wondering what made you think that.