I'm starting this thread because I was unable to find any recent one like it, and honestly I like talking about this here than I do say, Reddit, for example, and figured this would be a fun topic anyway since Sims lore has become a more hot topic as of late, no doubt thanks in part to Izzzyzzz' videos on the series. But personally, I'm most fond of what's presented in TS2 in particular, as far as lore goes, because 2 is where they started to really add lore, it feels like, after all, we all know the mystery of Bella Goth, this aspect of her character originates from TS2, but even then, there's things like the family feud in Veronaville, or uhh, basically everything in Strangetown, and how that stretches across multiple games, since Strangetown was consistently the neighborhood they used for the console spin-offs.

So, to repeat the question in the title, what's your speculation around the lore present in The Sims 2? What are your theories? And most importantly, something I didn't include in the title, as it's a bit of a mouthful, is the question of... what did you do with this lore in your game? I would love to hear this, and share my own theories, speculation, and what I did in my game.

To make it a bit easier, here are the most popular mysteries / lore tidbits in TS2 that people discuss:

• What happened to Bella Goth?
• Is Olive Specter a serial killer?
• What caused the Monty vs. Capp feud, and did anyone actually kill members of the opposing families?
• Who was Viola? Was she Viola Monty, a daughter of Claudio and Olivia, sister to Romeo and Mercutio?
• How involved were Don Lothario and the Calientes in Bella's disappearance?
• Did Brandi kill her husband?
• What relation does Mrs. Crumplebottom have to the larger Crumblebottom family?
• Were the Tricous a clan of vampires?
• Who was Rainelle Neengia, anyway?
• What's the significance of the name "Belladonna Cove" to Bella Goth?

But of course, I have a question of my own, one that's the very reason for me starting this thread, but I didn't think this question on its own warranted its own thread, hence why I'm making this a general lore thread. Why is Olivia Riley buried at the art museum instead of the actual cemetery? Seeing as she was a Romance Sim who died young and is buried at a suspicious location, do you think foul play was involved? I haven't seen a single person question the oddity of where she's buried, not on Reddit, not on The Sims Lore's YT channel, nowhere, trying to Google "why is Olivia Riley buried at the museum" only gave me a single Tumblr post for a makeover of the lot itself, and several obituaries for real life people, so, not much help at all.

I'm greatly looking forward to discussing lore with you!

There's some interesting oddities with the Strangetown Bella worth mentioning here: she has family relationships with the Smith and Curious family (though it's usually one-way), and in some languages her name actually translates to "Kitty Curious."

Because I recreated my own sims from Pleasantview after some generations of gameplay and put them in Strangetown, the start of Strangetown in my game is set more than 100 years after the start of Pleasantview. Which means the spaceship containing Bella Goth didn't just crash in another town, but through time as well. As for Don, Dina and Nina I'm more inclined to see them as unwitting pawns, if anything.

I don't think Brandi killed her husband.

The Monty/Capp feud I see as a thing that's been going on for so long that no one really remembers how it started, it's just "how it's always been" and the Contessa/Patrizio romance was where the feud could have ended if Contessa hadn't decided to marry Consort instead (possibly just going along with a marriage her parents had arranged), and instead it turned extremely hostile (which then did aid in the feud starting to die down in my game now, because people tend to stay away from each other rather than instigating anything out of fear more people will end up dead, while the younger generation was disgusted with the whole thing and even actively made connections with members from the other family because of similar experiences).
I do think there was foul play involved in all those deaths, but I haven't thought too hard about it because I've no idea who would've done it in the first place and there's not one of the sims I've played I can think of as a killer.

One mystery I wish was talked about more is that of Hero Monty, but on the other hand there's so little to go on in the game itself. In my game I had Antonio solve the mystery by mostly playing rock, paper, scissors with Benedick and some others and use that to choose between alternative scenarios I came up with and iterated on as I went. What I ended up with was that Hero went to Titania and Oberon Summerdream to have them use their fairy connections to get a resurrect-o-nomitron to try and resolve the feud by resurrecting Caliban, Cordelia, Olivia and Claudio, but things went very wrong and Hero faked her death and took off out of shame and fear for her own life, wanted to return at some point but died for real before she could.

With Olive Specter, I like the ambiguity of her situation, but I'm thinking maybe people kept dying in her presence without her actively killing them, while on the other hand she did willingly use those situations and even to some extent setting them up (calling to get things delivered to her house for instance) to her advantage to get to meet the grim reaper.

There was a recent thread on this subject here: https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=674114

I dont see any connection really. I see it more of a play on words; in 2 possible ways.

The most likely is the sense of danger, with belladonna being a poisonous plant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropa_belladonna

The other is a homage to Stevie Nicks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_Donna_(album)

Uh, the giant-ass statue of Bella Goth smack-dab in the middle of town?

Well yeah...but thats a nhood deco for ANY nhood right?

Im going with the dangerous plant or the dangerous woman...more edgy & risky than a statue.

My bad, since it's been two months since the last reply I'm afraid I'd be necroposting if I replied. ^^'

While I and others on this forum appreciate your courtesy, there are people on here who shamelessly revive threads where the last reply was 10+ year old In comparison, two months isn't that bad.

This is usually me; I forget a thread I posted in, and then ten years later am searching for something and find it. So then I remember to reply.

I'm currently playing the Pleasantview origins with my Pleasant Valley set at the turn of the 17th century and it's onlt got some of the earliest of the Goth family's ancestors living on their homestead farm and the Pleasant family with Andy and Carol about to arrive next spring on a sailing ship that would also bring new supplies for the sims in the spring.

I'll try to answer the popular ones to the best of my ability:

What happened to Bella Goth?
She was abducted by aliens. They did something with her brain that destroyed many of her memories. The aliens seem to have left her in Strangetown. She may have been a passenger on a spacecraft that crashed there. Eventually she made her own way back to Pleasantview, a town with which she was sure she had a connection, but she couldn't remember what. But blood is thicker than water. At a Pleasantview shop he saw her son Alexander trying to choose an outfit to wear to his big sister's wedding. Though she hadn't seen him for about eight years, she immediately knew her child. She bent down and kissed him. Alexander recognised his mum too, and I think that kiss was one of the most heart-warming things I've ever seen. Alexander didn't say anything at home, but on the morning of the wedding he 'phoned up his mum and invited her. Mortimer could hardly take it in that Bella was back, though he had to go out and meet Dina in the street to put her off. He had been getting into a relationship with Dina, but with the True Love of his Life back home, he knows where his heart lies. He's now wondering how he can let Dina down gently. In the event Cassandra's wedding didn't go ahead. Cassandra had seen Don with Nina, and far from marrying him, she attacked him. Mortimer asked Don to leave, as his continued presence in the house was becoming problematic. Mortimer and Bella shared their old marital bed, and the wedding arch in the garden has been left in place in readiness for their remarriage. (It's about eight years since I played Pleasantview. It's probably time I went back to see what happened next!)

Is Olive Specter a serial killer?
Yes! I'd like to believe she's innocent, but I find the evidence against her overwhelming!

What caused the Monty vs. Capp feud, and did anyone actually kill members of the opposing families?
The immediate cause was the quarrel over Contessa, but there had been ill-feeling between the families for decades, possibly centuries. I believe that Claudio, Olivia, Hero, Contessa, Caliban and Codelia were all killed in the feud. The effect on the younger generation was so traumatic, that they have all vowed that the two families will never fight each other again.

Who was Viola? Was she Viola Monty, a daughter of Claudio and Olivia, sister to Romeo and Mercutio?
Viola Monty is the child of Claudio and Olivia, and the sister of Romeo and Mercutio. When her parents died in the feud, two Scandinavian friends took her abroad for her own safety. With the feud now almost ended, they have brought her back, and she has moved into her old childhood home at 111 Stratford Street.

How involved were Don Lothario and the Calientes in Bella's disappearance?
I honestly don't know. Ask Bella.

Did Brandi kill her husband?
No. It was just a stupid accident. But, because the death was suspicious, the police won't let Brandi fill the pool in, until their investigations are complete. I believe she has put steps in now, so there are no more accidents.

What relation does Mrs. Crumplebottom have to the larger Crumblebottom family?
Again I honestly don't know. If you're really brave though, you could try asking Mrs. C herself.

Were the Tricous a clan of vampires?
I don't think so. My friend Ravi Bertino, a wrong-side-of-the-blanket child of the late Jon Smith Tricou, says they weren't. He lives at 31 Mendoza Lane,the nearest occupied house to the old House of Fallen Trees, which he says is his ancestral family home. However he says that even wild horses couldn't persuade him to spend even one night in that house. "There be ghaisties there," he says.

Who was Rainelle Neengia, anyway?
Just a unfortunate woman who bought the House of Fallen Trees and got more than she bargained for. cf What Ravi said above.

What's the significance of the name "Belladonna Cove" to Bella Goth?
Don't ask me, I've never been there!

In most cases, of course, the answers are whatever you want them to be. And no two people will have exactly the same answers. (There's a lot of fanon on the Sims Wiki: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Fanon )

Oh, my... I see! Since people have already responded to this thread, I don't necessarily want to delete it, but I'll still be checking out the other thread, thank you!

First off, I did read the rest of what you said, and I think that's all very nice speculation and all very cool things you did with the story in-game! I especially agree that the Capps and Montys probably have been feuding for even longer than when Contessa left Patrizio for Consort, my own personal theory being that it has to do with class; just look at how the Capps work in Business and have large extravagant houses, as opposed to the Montys living on a countryside farm and working in Culinary, not to mention the Capps having ancestors like Cleopatra and Julius Caesar!

But I'm quoting this one because Olive Specter's case has always fascinated me, and I, for the most part, agree! I also love Olive so much for just being that complicated! As a kid, I just thought she was a gravekeeper and that's why she had so many dead bodies buried in her backyard, I was like, "Oh okay, this is the Strangetown cemetery, makes sense!" But I admit, it kinda took me a while playing as a kid to discover the memory system, and when I did, I chalked it up to bad luck, after all, one of her first "victims," Earl E., had left her at the altar! As a kid I just took this as, again, bad luck, first her fiance leaves her at the altar, and then he DIES too? Her luck must be terrible! And hey, this is backed up by TS3 giving her the "unlucky" trait.

But now, as an adult, I'm thinking this is a case where two things can be true at once; Olive is unlucky, and her husbands die mysteriously as a result, AND, Olive is a serial killer, not all of the deaths were random. It's worth noting, bringing up TS3 again for a second here, Rigger Mortis has a bio in Midnight Hollow, which reads, "It's not Olive's fault. I think I was doomed when my parents named me Rigger Mortis." With this in mind, that seems to basically confirm his death WAS accidental. BUT, I don't think every death was, of her husbands, I think she did at least kill Earl E. as revenge for leaving her at the altar. And I think she did start killing more people to see the Grim Reaper more often, resulting in Nervous. Her bio mentioning her "stopping at nothing to get what she wants" and having hobbies of "excavating her garden" and "sharpening sticks" cements this.

Or who knows? Maybe it is sheer bad luck, her bio, Earl E. leaving her at the altar, and her fling with Grim all being red herrings, to give her the image of a "serial killer," when in reality she's just 1) unlucky, and 2) goth. It makes sense, as, especially during the time TS2 was released, there were superstitions around those involved in alt cultures, be it emo, punk, goth, etc., that those people were all Satan worshippers who were on the path to becoming serial killers, and so Olive played into that. Plus, it's just a popular trope in general for "creepy" and "scary" old people to not be that at all. Bringing up TS3 just one last time, Olive herself chalks up the "serial killer" thing to being a horrible rumor. Granted, she also tries to say Nervous' father being the Grim Reaper is just a rumor, and we know that's not true, but for what it's worth this could also very well be because of her trying to protect her son.

So, there's a technical reason for that! The original versions of Pascal and Lazlo were deleted early in the game's development, and so Bella Goth and Mary Melons ended up taking their old NIDs, hence why they each recognize Vidcund as their brother, Jenny as their sister, and Johnny and Jill as their nephew and niece. But even with that technical reason, I can't explain at all why Bella Goth's name translates to "Kitty Curious" in some languages... that's really weird!

Anyway, this has been fun so far!

Don Lothario and the Caliente sisters are two of the most popular suspects in Bella Goth's disappearance.

Don Lothario is a known womanizer and he was seen with Bella on the night of her disappearance. He has also been known to lie and cheat, which makes him a suspicious character. However, Don has always denied any involvement in Bella's disappearance.

The Caliente sisters are also suspicious characters. They are known for their flirtatious nature and their rivalry with the Goth family. Some players believe that the Caliente sisters were jealous of Bella and that they may have had something to do with her disappearance. However, the Caliente sisters have also denied any involvement in Bella's disappearance.

Here are some possible scenarios for how Don Lothario and the Caliente sisters could have been involved in Bella's disappearance:

• Don Lothario could have been having an affair with Bella and she could have run away with him.

• The Caliente sisters could have been jealous of Bella and harmed her in some way.

• Don Lothario and the Caliente sisters could have worked together to abduct Bella.

• Bella could have simply disappeared on her own and Don Lothario and the Caliente sisters could be innocent.

This might be quiet interesting.

Thanks, I became more interested in these things fairly recently, especially everything surrounding Veronaville which I hadn't really played or looked into before


Haha, wow. Poor Rigger Mortis.


True, and the hints like her bio are just vague enough that either direction could work depending on the player. (Sure, one could argue wohooing with Death is creepy in and of itself, but on the other hand The Sims 2's Grim Reaper seems like a pretty cool guy)

I do not think either Don or the Calientes were directly involved in Bella's disappearance. For one thing, Don is just not bright enough to be that conniving, and although it's possible he could have been manipulated, I don't see the Calientes as being that malicious. Dina is more of an opportunist, and I think she did really love Michael and actually feels sympathy for Mortimer. Also, Don does not have a powerful enough telescope. I think he was in love with Bella, probably more than he loved anyone else, and she simply did the obvious, which was reject his advances and break his heart. I think Bella truly was abducted by aliens, but using scientific equipment of Mortimer's, and Mortimer has long felt guilty about that and pushed it away to a place where he wouldn't have to think about it. Mortimer usually wants a more powerful telescope when you start to play him, I think to look for Bella. But I think Bella was dumped by the aliens in Strangetown, and that her abduction kicked off the alien visits and experimentation that resulted in Pascal's pregnancy. I also think Don is rather obsessed with Bella, which maybe explains why he got engaged to her daughter even though he doesn't actually want to be married.

Brandi did not kill her husband. Gordon King was involved in his death and is trying to groom Dustin to replace his father in his criminal enterprise. Brandi suspects but has no hard evidence.

Olive is not actually a serial killer. She is a "scientist" of sorts. She is fascinated by the Grim Reaper, even in love with him, and the deaths she engineers in her little room are to continue her study/relationship with him. She doesn't consider it murder, but then she doesn't have much in the way of empathy.

So, first off, your theories are also fascinating! This one included, but I'm highlighting it to let you know that I just pictured Gordon robbing the place and stealing only the pool ladder while Skip was swimming, thus "murdering" him by complete accident. Oops! I think that's a funny theory in itself, I'm keeping a pin in it.

Thanks. One interesting thing about Gordon is that he also robs the Calientes their first night, but afterward he will sometimes call Nina on the phone a lot. I haven't quite worked up a story around this, but I think there's something there, especially since Dina and Nina already know Brandi. (Yes, I know this is a quirk of the game to have burglars call their victims, but I like to run with the game's quirks.) Maybe one or both of them has a criminal past, which might help explain Dina's desperation to marry rich. Maybe Michael Bachelor was involved? There are some story ideas to mine there, I think.

Here's just my lil' opinions I have on the lore-

-Bella Goth was abducted by aliens, and on the spaceship, the aliens were experimenting with cloning her, but the spaceship ended up crashing in Strangetown, killing her. This is why she never comes back in Pleasantview, and has the I am dead token. Strangetown Bella, meanwhile, is the flawed clone of her that survived the crash, which is why she has a different face and voice to the real Bella, isn't related to the Goths, and doesn't remember anything about her "past life."

-Olive is definitely a serial killer, and all the sims in her garden are her victims, with the exceptions of Ichabod, Creon, Willow, and Danielle Greaves. Danielle Greaves' accidental death (I say it's accidental because Olive was a teenager at the time- she couldn't just kill someone at her family home without her parents and sister noticing) kickstarted her interest in the Grim Reaper, but it wasn't until after Earl left her at the altar did she actively start killing people, and fully fall in love with Grim. Ichabod was spared because he ended serving as Grim's mortal vessel, a headcanon I got from the story Fortune and Romance. Meanwhile, Creon and Willow's deaths were genuine accidents- if Olive was behind their deaths, Ophelia wouldn't still be alive, and she took in Ophelia as a form of penance for her past actions- I got this from a beginning of Strangetown playthrough posted somewhere here on MTS.

-The Capp and Monty feud started because Patrizio was angry that Contessa chose Consort over him... or as the Montys would like to phrase it, when Consort stole Contessa from him. And the Capps and Montys definitely were involved in each other's deaths- the Montys burned down Cordelia and Caliban's house, killing them. In retaliation, the Capps kidnapped Claudio and Olivia and let them starve to death.

-Viola was definitely Claudio and Olivia's eldest daughter, and I have two competing headcanons for what happened to her- one is that she was mentally shattered after her parents' deaths, and ran away from Veronaville, never to be seen again. The second idea is that she was a young inventing genius, whose final invention ended up shredding herself from existence.

-Don Lothario and the Caliente sisters are not responsible for her disappearance- Bella came over to Don's house to get to know the guy her daughter was seeing, did a bit of stargazing together, and when he started trying to make out with her, Bella began to leave in disgust to tell Cassandra, when in a stroke of luck for Don, Bella was whisked away by aliens, never to return. The Caliente sisters moving in just before Bella's abduction is just a coincidence, and find the idea that they're behind anything with Bella just because they're quarter-alien to be rather racist. Dina just saw an opportunity with Mortimer at first, took it, and eventually genuinely came to love him, just as she loved Michael.

-Skip was murdered- just not by Brandi, who had no idea about the shady things her husband was up to until after his death. Skip was, in fact, killed by Gordon King as part of a petty criminal dispute, and Gordon keeps an eye on Dustin to make sure he doesn't figure out he was behind his dad's death.

-As for Olivia Riley, the technical explanation for her grave being at the art gallery is that it probably isn't supposed to- apparently, Belladonna Cove's neighborhood number got changed towards the end of development, and this caused all the graves to shift around to different lots- including lots that don't actually exist. I think I saw a reddit post of someone having all the graves that are supposed to be at Gamesend Grounds on one of the vacation lots. Her grave's placement next to the sidewalk also indicates it was freshly moved. The point is, I think she was probably supposed to be somewhere else- my guess is that her urn was supposed to be kept at her family's apartment. For an in-universe explanation... the art gallery was simply a special place for her and Timothy, and after her untimely death, Timothy opted to have the gallery as her final resting place.

Now I must say THAT is a pretty darned good explanation! I mean it makes sense, really.