Atop the Fourth Wall/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


For History of Power Rangers examples, see here.


  • You know how Attempted Suicide is Played for Laughs at Atop the Fourth Wall? Well, there are two exceptions.
    • At the end of the Silent Hill Dead/Alive review, we learn the origins of the Magic Gun. It is made of the soul of a tortured little girl. A girl tortured by her parents to revive an ancient god. Upon learning of this, and how he has been using the Gun for so long, an already weakened Linkara is mind-raped to the point of believing that he was the girl's father and tries to shoot himself with the Gun. He only survives because the girl's spirit in the Gun sees he's worth saving, and doesn't shoot.
      • "They didn't love me." After Linkara goes through an ominous book full of scrawled angry text that sets up some ominous foreshadowing, of all things it's that one little line, written plaintively in the corner of the page that packs the biggest emotional gut punch.
      • What really sold this scene was Mr. Lovhaug's delivery. The man chews the scenery every chance he gets, and now suddenly he sounds like he's about to CRY. And who says he can't act?
    • Action Girl Iron Liz seems unbreakable, doesn't she? Not according to her livestream discussion with JewWario. She grew up horribly depressed, and tried to kill herself on her eighteenth birthday. Even worse, Justin admitted that he'd tried this, too.
      • The discussion prompted a number of people in the chat to come forward with their own stories of depression and suicide attempts. (It's a lot more common than you'd think for one community.)
      • ...And at the end, Justin called for a group hug on camera.
  • Seeing Linkara depressed in the beginning of his Care Bears review is off-putting to say the least. The guy seemed to have only two emotions until this point: anger and joy. This was neither. This was pure and true sadness.
    • Hell that was just kicking us after we were already down! You could tell that Cry for Justice actually broke him down, and not in the planned way the Dead/Alive breakdown was.
  • In Linkara's Cry For Justice Review, the moment where he unleashes his fury at Lian Harper's death wasn't funny in the slightest. Whereas normally, Linkara adds a bit of a dorky whine to his angry voice in order to convey a bit of comedy, even when he reviewed Countdown, there was NONE of that in Linkara's voice during that scene. Instead, there was nothing but pure, unmitigated fury toward James Robinson for killing off one of his favorite characters for nothing more than an unforeshadowed Shock Death that ALSO ruined the comic series that got him into comics, the Titans, because Lian Harper's presence in the book helped humanize Arsenal, her father.
  • In Linkara's NBComics #1 review, when the magic kid tries to use a glove to wish for super powers, Linkara says "Don't waste your time with magic gloves kid, you'll only end up with a dead Planeteer."
  • In "The Grinning Man" Linkara really seems depressed that he doesn't even know the name of the girl who was killed to make the Magic Gun.
  • In "Planet of the Symbiotes", the look on Linkara's face when he realizes Liz was taken by the Entity is absolutely heartbreaking.
    • Oh, hell, even right before that, when he cries out "LIZ!" and rushes forward to save her, only to be blocked by the Entity... Lips will tremble and eyes will water.
  • After reviewing Electric Tale of Pikachu, he gives up as he sees no way to defeat the Entity, stands up, and a sadder rendition of his theme song plays as he slowly takes off the Ash-esque outfit he wore all episode and replaces it with his own outfit- even replicating camera angles of putting on his coat and hat seen in his opening credits. He just looks so...defeated. The worst part, however, is what he says to Nimue:

Linkara: Well, Nimue, it was nice knowing you... although brief.
Nimue: The emotion... is shared.

    • The magic gun is absorbed by the Entity.
      • However, if you stay for the credits, it says that the Magic Gun also came back after the Entity's death.
      • Linkara's desperate, hopeless reaction to losing her. That isn't the look of a man who lost his best weapon, he treats her taking with the same gravity as Liz being taken.
  • Lewis and Liz have broken up as a couple. It has been hinted that the split was amiable, and that they will remain friends, but it's still pretty sad.
  • The duplication of Spock's death with Pollo. Particularly Iron Liz calling Linkara "Lewis" to snap him out of suicidally running in.
    • Note that no one has ever referred to Linkara by his real name before this.
    • Allow me to make this worse: let's say you watched "The Wrath of Khan". Now, let's say you remember seeing it while watching Linkara's reviews of the comic adaptation. The second Pollo said "I have been, and always shall be, your friend.", just like Spock before him, you could tell right away how this would end. The worst thing? It changes nothing; whether you saw it or not, Pollo's death is still a sad moment.
      • Even worse; suppose you watched Wrath of Khan right before the third part of Linkara's review to get the full impact, as some people probably did.
    • This troper will admit that he rolled his eyes when that started. But the moment Liz called him by his real name I lost it.
    • This exchange between Pollo and Linkara as the former slowly dies from radiation after saving Comicron-1 from Mechakara.

Pollo: I knew what I had to do. I stopped the other me.
Linkara: He's not you.
Pollo: You said you were afraid that I might become like him. I hope this proves otherwise.
Linkara: You didn't have to prove anything. You're nothing like him, Pollo. You're my friend.

    • Pollo never backed himself up, because he said he it wouldn't be "him"; it would be like a clone, a different person. You ever wonder why Linkara never tried to resurrect anyone via cloning after attempting it with Spoony (and why he didn't offer it as an option when Ma-ti died)? That was Pollo's influence.
  • The spirit of the girl inside the Magic Gun is unable to do anything due to some anti-magic field affecting most of his equipment. Of course, the Girl In The Gun is probably stuck in a probable And I Must Scream scenario.
  • Linkara telling Harvey and Pollo that whenever he uses the Magic Gun, he can hear her whispering in his ear... and now he can't.