Four installments and 23 years into The Sims franchise, a lot has changed—graphical upgrades, new mechanics, and the ability to have children that actually grow up (and aren't just conceived when mommy and daddy smooch back and forth a few times). But there's one thing that's been perfect from the get-go: the game's item descriptions, which are full of personality and really, really stupid jokes.

I recently went through the entire The Sims 4 catalog to collect some favorite funnies from the item descriptions, and what I found will not disappoint. Get ready to hold in your sides, lest you chortle and chuckle so hard that they split.
 

Scale differences

If you're on the internet to a worrying degree (like myself), you may have heard of the two most colloquially-used comparisons of size: bread bins and bananas. There are too many differences between those who use metric and those who use imperial, so most folks have done away with confusing, war-inducing things like "inches" and "furlongs" and "nautical miles" in favor of universal units like bananas. Everyone knows how big a banana is, so you just put a banana next to the thing you're showing everyone to demonstrate scale. Genius.

The Bread Box of Holding understands, but doesn't quite get the message. "For scale," it says, "this bread box is roughly the size of 1.25 bread boxes. For those across the lake, it's the size of 17 semi-ripe bananas. Although we don't normally recommend storing bananas in your bread box. Bread is actually the preferred carbohydrate storable unit."

Surprisingly, that doesn't really help.
 

Throwing shade on books

The Coregy Ottoman is a slick piece of furniture that offers both seating and storage, like some kind of holy grail for fans of IKEA-level efficiency. But it doesn't come without its downsides, and those downsides are that it thinks you're a bit of a dork.

"This ottoman sports both comfort and book storage," it boasts. "If you are running out of room to store your book collection, primarily because you insist on remaining in the 20th century with your physical book collection, this ottoman has you covered. But seriously, consider going digital."

Wow, Coregy Ottoman. Are you being paid off by Big E-Reader, or what?
 

The lies that desks tell

Dating apps, almost every “As  Seen on TV” commercial, buying “genuine” products for half the price off a suspect website—we've all been in situations where we thought things are really good when they are, in fact, not. And now, that also includes furniture in The Sims.

This desk is called the Illustrious Secretaire, but its own description-writer appears to have beef with the name. "What's that you say? Illustrious means ‘well-known’ and secretaire means ‘a small writing desk with drawers’ and this desk doesn't have drawers and you've never heard of it? Try and tell that to our marketing department!"

All I can say is that the gulf between marketing and the people who have to defend the decisions of marketing is a very real thing. Sob.
 

There's an app for that

Raise your hand if you've had this happen to you: You buy a useful doodad (like a mug or a plant stand) only to find out that for some reason it needs to connect to the internet, and you need to download an app to get firmware updates, and if you don't install the mug's drivers then it will somehow cease to function as a mug. The future is a weird place.

Crates A Million gets you. It's been there. "When seeking to disrupt the highly static crate market, we sought to defy one's notions of a crate. Alas, crates are...pretty good at being crates, and not even adding an App to the process could fix it. We settled for a pun and it doesn't even work. Crates for nothing!"

Someone tell Silicon Valley that not everything is broken and therefore doesn't need fixing, please?
 

Ottomanly thoughts

Coastal Carrie's Ottomanly Ottoman has some issues to air out.

"Unsatisfied with the ottoman in your life? Maybe you've just been let down one too many times by an unsavory ottoman, or maybe you've just never met the right one." I think I see where this is going. "Say hello to the ottoman of your dreams: An ottoman that'll always notice your new hairstyle, and never argue against your pick for movie night. An ottoman that is rarely late and always texts you right back. An ottoman that looks just as great in red as it does in blue, and is comfortable enough with its ottomasculinity to do so."

I don't know you, Sims writer, but I think I might be in love with you.
 

Skewering sci-fi

We all went to see Avatar, right? It's one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, so don't lie—I know you saw it in cinemas, even if you don't quite remember what it was about. Something about blue Pocahontas. Anyway, the mysterious material that they're destroying the planet to mine in that movie is Unobtanium, a fictional substance with a very convenient name.

The Sims 4 writers wink-and-nod at this with the game's Obtainium, a pale white mineral that's "one of the most abundant metals, so it is relatively easy to obtain." If only they'd had access to this on Pandora.
 

Dunk on baseball

In The Sims 4, you can collect bird feathers of all kinds—but this entry focuses on Cardinal and Blue Jay Feathers. You'll see why.

"The colorful Cardinal loves its seeds and showing off its impressive coat," reads the description. "While they make excellent neighbors, they are not well known for their baseball skills."

Likewise, here's the Blue Jay description: "The Blue Jay is most known for its magnificent cerulean plumage. Less known is its intelligence and propensity to be a family bird. Yet, their baseball skill remains questionable, worse than cardinals even."

Apologies to St. Louis and Toronto for the baseball sass. I’m just reporting what The Sims 4 said.
 

Parody paradise

There are a lot of book parodies hidden away in The Sims 4. So many, in fact, that they forget that they've already done some and end up parodying the same book multiple times.

A Game of Thrones has “A Game of Groans” by Greg Q.Q. Vartin, labeled as "an epic fantasy series" with characters that "groan as one by one they perish, and with the plethora of viewpoints, interwoven storylines, and plot twists, you too will groan as you try to keep it all straight."

Twilight has the whole series, rebranded as "Dusk Glow," in which "Darla must decide between a bad-boy vampire and a nice werewolf boy who is friends with her dad." Later on, when her vampire boyfriend dumps her, "she completely shuts down as a person", then "literally sits in a chair and does nothing while months slip by." Sounds like someone didn't like New Moon.

The Hunger Games gets three parodies. There’s “The Bladder Games,” in which 30 Sims are locked inside a mansion with no toilets. Next, “The Glutton Spiel” in which nine teens fight to the death, because "Why? THE FUTURE!” And finally, “The Plunder Games,” which wraps up by saying "It's another death arena in another near-future apocalypse as a young woman must battle to...wait a second, how many parodies of this did we make?"

Finally, my personal favorite, “Twelve or so Swatches of WooHoo,” a parody of 50 Shades of Grey. "Love! Passion! Unconventional uses for household objects! Are you prepared for the lewd, saucy, tawdry, bawdy, and licentious things a first-time author and her trusty thesaurus can make up?" Listen, I've read 50 Shades and I can safely say that this description is correct, right, accurate, and true.

There are tons of weird and wonderful descriptions in The Sims 4 that I haven't included—like the tempestuous story of the unlucky Princess Cordelia that is scattered throughout ottomans, busts, paintings, and plates—but hopefully these hand-picked selections have convinced you to jump back into the game and check it out for yourself. In fact, it convinced me to get back on my Sims kick, and I’m currently in the middle of building an accurate depiction of the London Underground system. Houses are so last year.

You can find The Sims 4 on the Epic Games Store.