Some (very few) of my Sims are based on characters from a couple of TV shows. I have one Sim based on a great friend of mine who lives about 100km away, and that particular sim is living his best life within the constraints of the game.
Often I will design a host of Sims around a theme - Viking brothers, dancers, what have you. As such they will have broad guidelines but they're not as restrictive as copying a specific TV character.
Oh, I am still trying to perfect the Marx Brothers, but that's an ongoing project. I'm just focusing on Groucho, Chico and Harpo. Zeppo and Gummo might appear sometime later.
There was a meme pic of male vs female sims portrayed as toys which sort of summed up the appearances for me:
Female sims looked like a kind of doll - bratz?
Male sims looked like lego men.