Come down a rabbithole with me? 🐰
N005_User00018 was written about a sim who was seemingly removed from The Sims 2 during development, but her "ghost" can still be found in the code of N003_Lot45.package. This file corresponds with the lot called 111 Stratford Street in the neighborhood Veronaville (N003).
Image from the Sims wiki
During development, Maxis created several neighborhoods that never shipped with the final game. Some of these include Riverside, Waterside, Sedona, and Lakeview. It appears that at some point in early development, Veronaville was the 5th neighborhood (N005).
The sim who was datamined appears to have been created at the same time as the rest of the Monty family. The file N003_User00016 corresponds with Claudio Monty, User00017 with Olivia Monty, 19 with Romeo Monty, and 20 with Mercutio Monty. Though this isn't definitive proof that Viola was meant to be part of the Monty family, it appears to be the case when paired with these 2 pre-release images that show Olivia and Mercutio posed on a lot with an unreleased teenager who happens to have similar genetics to Olivia Monty:
If you take all the Veronaville sims that shipped with the game and sort them by filename, you'll see something strange:
Image from the Sims wiki
Seth Bui, an elderly male mechanic, is randomly placed in the middle of the Monty family with the file N003_User00018. In The Sims 2, it isn't unheard of for newly-created sims to take the place of the lowest available file (in this case 00018) when that sim is deleted from the game.
Some other interesting things about Seth Bui taking the place of Viola Monty include his genetics matching the Monty family's. This includes skin color and hair color. Strangely, even his eye color is the same as Claudio Monty's.
Something else worth noting is that Olivia died while pregnant in the release version of Veronaville. It's possible that Viola was deleted after this decision was made, and unborn baby Monty is meant to be Viola.
I love how weird and creepy it is that even though this sim was removed from the game, she's still there, buried in the code somewhere.
Happy Halloween! 🎃👻🎃🦇🎃
