Sims seem to know about things in the real world? If, for example, Dustin Broke said he'd learned about something while watching CSI?

I tend to think of the Sims world as self-contained, with no overlap into OUR world, but was wondering what others thought.

I'm working on a particular storyline and thought it would be funny if Don Lothario got some of his "smooth" moves from various movies, but then it just seemed wrong somehow, that he might have seen Star Wars.

yep i wouldn't recommend using real life movies/brands since sims are not humans

It doesn't bother me. Some stories use Sims as illustrations for stories that are set in the real world. Some stories use Sims as Sims and don't bring reality into it, and some stories do something in between. These are all valid options.

Doesn't bother me. I think of the Sims universe as an alternative fictional reality to our world. Most of my sims live in a fictional English-speaking suburb (possibly in either in England, Canada or the US), so if they happen to wear a Star Trek inspired tee, a DW-inspired nightie, or casually mention a reference from a (real) movie, that's perfectly fine to me. I also prefer English text on clutter.

I notice, especally eastern eggs, reference overlap our into real world. Perhaps coicidentally, in the universe it has the same abbreviation be in real life, but the acronym could be slightly (CSI = Crime Sims Scenes) or completely different.

Execution is everything. Tell your story the way you want to tell it.

That said, what's intrusive, for the most part, is not real world stuff, but exposition. Use a real movie; use a parody of a real movie; use a completely made-up movie in a way that makes it clear what kind of real-world movie it parallels. Whatever you use should be self-explanatory and expressed in a natural, seamless way that moves the story/characterization forward instead of stopping it. That's the key issue to focus on. Trust your audience to work with you and be able to draw inferences.

Thank you all for the advice--it's got me thinking what I can do--so Don will probably quote Han Simmo, his favorite character from that epic space opera, Sim Wars. lol

I'm interested in which family this is and which IRL town?

Ethnic; the reason I had to have lots of CC skins. Maxis "Asian" are not correct for ANY race - so I have skins with no eye-fold, and had fun learning how different "Asian" races looked and dressed (Korean, Chinese,etc). And I have 4 skins that are darker than Maxis, and made many "black" faces. Love them all!

stories from this game; all knowledge in them pretty much comes from the person/people that do the captioning.
sims technically know nothing since they are programmed beings.

by the way, I seem to recall similar stuff being brought up in past threads.