What I have noticed about the Henford bug, and it's been mentioned here as well, is that the Henford NPCs show up in my unplayed households, when I believe at least the Mayor and the Crumplebottoms should be "hidden" households unaffected by Neighbourhood Stories? Now they show up as weird household names in my unplayed households, then via NS they get married and move into houses around the world, this definitely didn't use to happen. I am guessing because they are not assigned their special "hidden" role anymore, the system thinks they were played, and regenerates new ones to replace them?
The Chopras are not hidden, they have a house by default so they can't be in a hidden household. But yes, the Crumplebottoms are hidden, i presume to make it harder for them to be cloned, since moving into a lot, or becoming played, are triggers for spawning a new sim for the role, which in their case is a clone. The other roles will just spawn a rando if you play as them, but the Crumplebottoms get cloned. Some other hidden households include Grim, Greg, Edith, Alice, Waylon, Roberto Crinkletop, Bernard and Mimsy (though in my game they aren't... but they do still do their roles, so... maybe they already got cloned for me, and I never noticed until after i befriended them. But in any case, there is only one copy of them now. I have a mod that lets you summon the urn of any ghost in the game, and they only show up once, and it's been that way for a long time, aside from the recent dupe. They still do their roles, so if they did get cloned, the hidden version must have gotten culled because i had a relationship with the ones in manage households, and it works, so... ) and Erwin Pries. Who in my game was replaced by a rando tending his stall and i thought he got culled, but maybe it was actually this bug at work, and he just lost his role. In any case, I made a new Erwin who now is in my households to protect him from culling, and it was a real PITA to get to tend the stall.
