Animaniacs/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples from Wakko's Wish go here.


  • "A Gift of Gold". A piece of shiny gold wrapping paper is used to wrap Mndy's present. Needless to say, she tears it to shreds, but one piece blows out the window. It flits from place to place, trying to find somewhere to settle, before finally landing in a trash can. Just then, a poor man fishes it out of the can, using it to wrap a Cymbal-Banging Monkey, which he gives to his son. The son opens it, then folds the paper carefully and puts it in his pocket, giving it the love it sought the entire cartoon. That alone is heartmelting, but the cartoon is also voiced by Jim Cummings doing his impression of Sterling Holloway, i.e. "the most emotion-manipulating voice in the world"...
  • "Smitten with Kittens". Rita finds three stray kittens and has to give them up so they can have a better life.
    • "Humans Ain't What They Seem To Be", just "Humans Ain't What They Seem To Be".
      • Quite a few songs Rita sings fall under this. Particularly A Place Called Home and I'm Nobody's Mama. Ok, it's a cartoon cat singing...So why do I get all misty-eyed every time I hear these songs?
      • A Flat In Gay Paree from the Les Miserables parodying episode Les Miseranimals. It's really hard not to start tearing-up listening to Rita's longing for a loving home...especially given the horrid conditions she's in during that episode (She's imprisoned in a place where they kill cats and serve them for dinner to people).
    • "Puttin' on the Blitz", set in Poland during World War II, where Rita and Runt helps fend off the Nazis so that a little girl can catch a train to France with her resistance-leader father. Rita manages to get onto the train with the girl and her father, and she watches Runt getting smaller and smaller...before she shrugs and says to herself "Well, it was nice while it lasted," and goes back to beat the crap out of the Nazi wiener dog attacking Runt.
  • The Skippy & Slappy Squirrel episode "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock".

Skippy: I'll love you forever, Aunt Slappy.

    • Skippy yelling for Slappy, though fully aware that she can't come save him, as the social services agent relocates him to a new family.
  • The "Ballad of Magellan" - not only for its morbid tone and ending, but there is something indescribably melancholy-sounding about the chorus, as if you can hear in their voices the Warners were aware their show was doomed (this was in one of the later episodes).
  • Poor Chicken Boo, he should get at least one mention in this page, poor poor Chicken Boo.
  • The ending to ANY, if not ALL, of the Mindy & Buttons shorts.