I think it's safe to say that if you ever played The Sims, you tortured your little creations in one way or another.
And sometimes, this torture can get pretty creative, as proven by reddit user Sliced_alt who asked redditors the share the cruelest things they've ever done to their sims.
Here are the responses that make taking away the pool ladder look like kids' stuff.
1. This dungeon.
"I had an actual torture dungeon in my house. Stone walls, no chairs or beds, no toilet, no door. One wall was entirely a window, and the nice posh room it faced had comfy chairs for the rest of the family to watch as the prisoner repeatedly soiled themselves and lived in squalor."
2. This cleaning fiasco.
"I made a guy who was a compulsive neat-freak and put him in a really surreal little house with a wedding buffet and a hamster, and deleted the door. Eventually he went insane from lack of cleanliness and depression over his little rodent friend dying, and starved to death once the banquet rotted. I put the resulting urn in the room, then repeated an identical scenario several times, always keeping urns in the room. Eventually the tenth iteration of this guy was up all night, every night, terrified of a parade of ghosts of himself."
3. This failed utopia.
"I tried to make a utopia where everyone would be happy and playful in the forest. The only thing I provided was a toilet on one segment of plain wall, a fridge, and lots of trees. It was a disaster. People peed everywhere and were hungry."
4. This secret child.
"I had a normal suburban family, nice house, two kids, the works, except they also had a secret child they kept locked in a room in the basement with nothing but a sink. They only ever visited him to bring him a plate of old terrible food once in a while and taunt him.
Eventually, the kid's sink broke and kept flooding the room. Since he was a kid, he couldn't repair the sink, so it just kept flooding. The kid spent all his time mopping up a never-ending spill and crying."
5. This cooking competition.
"I decided to run a Masterchef-style challenge with a household of seven sims and Gordon Ramsay. The sims would partake in various cooking challenges with Gordon presiding as the judge. However, whenever someone got 'eliminated,' I’d have Gordon lure the poor sim to the back of the lot and stab them to death (sims mods are great). It continued until only one chef was left alive, and then as victory I’d have them kill Gordon and then themselves. It was glorious."
6. This cemetery creation.
"I built a haunted house and killed three families for the cemetery. The game literally gave me a pop up saying The Sims is a life simulation, and that I was killing too many Sims."
7. This white wedding.
"I made a female sim and had her have like, five or six different relationships going at one time. I had her propose to one sim and then invite all the other sims over for a party. I made sure she didn't talk to anyone and just made the two engaged sims get married in front of all the others. It was CHAOS. All the other sims freaking waited their turn to slap her in the face. There was so much screaming and crying. The next day, her trash can was knocked over every couple of hours. It was so much fun."
8. This frat party.
"I once made a huge frat house (all had the bro trait) with max sims you can put in a family, then sent one into town to befriend a bunch of people, and had a huge party with all those guests. Then I deleted the doors once everyone arrived and let it fast forward, for days. I lost count on the days, but I know four sims died in a fire after one of my Sims tried to grill. It was a rager for sure. The guests were congregating where the front door used to be, repeatedly peeing themselves and falling asleep in their own puddle of urine. My sims would try to sleep in their bed, but guests would wake them up after a short amount of time."
9. This deadly recipe.
"I discovered a recipe that would cause a sim to die instantly after eating it. I got into the habit of making a big batch of it, locking my sims away in a room and having one of them use the phone to throw a party. Guests would arrive, not see any of the hosts there, and simply grab a plate of food and die. The backyard was turned into a graveyard with all the headstones of unsuspecting party guests."
10. This poor priest.
"I wanted to make a church with a full, complete graveyard. So I built a small, simple structure and moved in a family of eight, got them all inside, removed the door, and filled it with fire. Yay, eight new tombstones! I repeated this about nine times and then build the church and moved in a priest to live there and tend to the grounds. Unfortunately for the priest several dozen ghosts would materialize every night. Tormented by the crowds of specters, he himself died three days later due to never being able to sleep."
11. This family affair.
"I had two sims that were married with three kids. The female sim cheated and got pregnant with another guy, and she divorced her husband to marry the guy she cheated with. I had the OG husband come back and kill the new husband and the child, then sleep in the same bed as the wife." —Babcgorillaz
12. This hydrophobic hijinks.
"I picked the hydrophobic trait for my sim and then instead of doors, rooms were connected by small pools. He had to face his fears every single time he wanted to change rooms."
13. This utilitarian relationship.
"I locked the husband in a very small room with a bed and a lamp and kept him only for breeding purposes. He was madly in love with my female sim and gladly impregnated her as many times as she wanted. He was always so happy to see her. When he exhausted his potential I took away the door and left him there die in a puddle of his own pee." —carmelacorleone
14. This force-feeding.
"In the Sims 3 I discovered if you made a multi-serving meal and clicked “Call to Meal,” it forced all of the sims on the lot to stop what they were doing and go eat. I would invite other sims and NPCS in the neighborhood over, cook a ton of food, call them to the meal, then cancel the action on my own sims. The other sims would keep eating until they got really fat, then I’d let them leave."
15. This Little Shop of Horrors situation.
"I got a man-eating plant, then placed it next to my front door and constantly threw parties and called services to watch everyone who came by get eaten."
16. This artist's work.
"My sim was an artist. His house was a gallery of his paintings, but the upper floor was his masterpiece: two rooms with glass walls containing a man and a woman. He'd have big house parties, unlock the door between the rooms, and everyone would watch the prisoners as they interacted and eventually fell in love." —benedickquiversnatch
17. And finally, this harsh, cruel reality.
"I didn't use the rosebud/motherlode cheats and made those fuckers go to work. EVERY DAY. Then I wasted their money on dumb shit; like a fancy espresso machine and made them sleep on the floor." —sarcasm_hurts
Note: Some posts have been edited for length and clarity.