Live-Action TV/Tear Jerker/Lists that need to be split by individual works: Difference between revisions

* Santana finally working up the nerve to tell Brittany that she loved her, only to be turned down in favor of Artie. A case of [[Alas, Poor Villain|alas poor]] [[Alpha Bitch]].

* Quinn telling Rachel that she is the one that Finn is going to chose. It is the sadest "I am going to win"-speech ever.

'''Rachel:''' [[Comically Missing the Point|I am not giving up on Finn. It is not ov...]]<br />

'''Quinn:''' Yes it is! You are so frustrating! And that is why you can't write a good song; because you live in this little school girl fantasy of life. Rachel, if you keep looking for that happy ending, then you are ''never'' going to get it right! }}

* "Damage Case", where an intern from a rival hospital causes a car crash and {{spoiler|severely injures a pregnant woman, who dies from her injuries.}} The scene where the intern {{spoiler|begs the woman's father to forgive him}}.

* "Into You Like a Train"...

"...I want to." }}

* End of season 5 where they find out that it was {{spoiler|George}} who was {{spoiler|hit by a bus after pushing a girl out of its path}} and {{spoiler|he dies}}. Or when Meredith and Derek give their hospital wedding to {{spoiler|Izzie and Karev}}.

* In the first episode when {{spoiler|Steve's dad}} is killed ''while'' {{spoiler|Steve}} is talking on the phone with him has to qualify for some.

* Danny in "Malama Ka Aina" (episode 3) and Rachel threatening to take away Grace from him. The way he pleads at the end for her not to take Grace away (again) is just murder. Especially if you have father issues, and you hear this grown man ''begging'' his ex-wife to let him see his daughter because he loves her ''that much''.

** {{spoiler|Rachel drops the petition.}} You may commence with the tears.

** Later in that same episode, Steve just tells Danno "Maybe you're not as alone around here as you think Danno."

* Right from the start in "The Wrong Path." Hercules' wife and children are murdered by Hera... in front of him... before the opening credits. Before setting out to settle the score with Hera, Hercules buries his family and grieves.

* "The Other Side": While on a mission to the Underworld, Hercules is briefly reunited with his family. Though overjoyed to see his loved ones again, Hercules knows full well this is only temporary, which clearly gnaws at him. Additionally, his family is unware they're dead, so the big guy has to carry this load by himself. And what viewer couldn't be moved by:

'''Hercules''': ...No, the wind just blew something in my eye. }}

* "Judgment Day": Hercules is framed for the murder of his second wife, Serena, by Ares. Though Hercules clears his name, Serena is still lost. The big guy blames himself for what happened to Serena, and viewers can't help but feel for him.

* Iolaus died several times. While fans may mock the repetitiveness of it, in-show it was always treated seriously. Hercules always grieved over losing his best friend and never took for granted the possibility that Iolaus could come back. It's a testament to the actors that Iolaus' death was moving, whether it be the second or third time viewers had seen it.

* Strife's death in "Armageddon Now, Part 1." You know it's bad when even ''Ares'' expresses regret over it and anger at Callisto for doing it.

* The end of the flashback in "Twilight," in which a young Hercules returns home from his first war.

'''Hercules:''' Then why do I feel like I failed? }}

 

** In "Cold Snap": {{spoiler|Daphne Millbrook's death.}}

*** This one.

{{spoiler|'''Daphne''': Fly me to the moon.}} }}

** "Five Years Gone," especially the exchange between Future!Peter and Ando.

Peter: Went away the day you died. Between you and me, I think that's why he's so obsessed about changing the past. He wants to save you. }}

* The season 3 finale, despite the [[Fridge Logic]] involved in the death (where's Claire's blood?). Not the death itself, but the sequence of events that framed it.

* The two-parter "Euphoria", especially the second half. For so many reasons.

* ''Three Stories''... just ''Three Stories''. Especially this piece of heartbreaking conversation in one of the flashbacks:

'''House''': I can't, I can't, I'm sorry. }}

* The treadmill scene in ''Cane and Able''. He suffers from chronic pain himself and to see House like that - close to crying because of all the pain he's in but still running anyway - is just too painful to see.

** House starting to crack when he's speaking at the funeral.

* The scene in the Wilson episode where {{spoiler|Wilson asks House if he'll be there for his liver surgery}}:

'''House''': Because if you die, I'm alone. }}

* The season 1 episode "Babies and Bathwater" features two successive impossible choices for a pregant mother and her husband. {{spoiler|The team struggled to save the mother and child...and failed. The baby's cries at the end are}} the epitome of the tear jerker.

* Near the end of season 3 there was a subplot: Ted decides to "dump" Barney and Neil Patrick Harris decides to break our hearts for the next 3 episodes. Finally resolved with a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]], but terrible while it lasts.

* The ending of ''Benefits''. That is all. Damn you NPH!

'''Robin''': (misunderstands him and thinks he's talking about Ted) ... exactly! He's not like you, you know? }}

** ''Definitely'' seconded. Just the look on his face while Robin remains oblivious...

* Ted and Lily's extremely tense screaming match in "The Front Porch" after Ted realizes that Lily broke him and Robin up. Even though everything's forgiven in the end, it was like watching your parents fighting and threatening divorce.

* Ted's speech to Stella in ''As Fast As She Can'', about how he wants what Stella and Tony and Lily and Marshall have, but is tired of looking and waiting.

'''Stella''': (near whisper) Goodbye, Ted. }}

* The ending of "Bad News" where {{spoiler|Marshall learns that his dad had a fatal heart attack.}} The look on Lilly's face ''alone'' was enough to make you cry. Then you notice that Marshell is trying to be strong and failing.

** Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan both REALLY sold this scene. It's [[Mood Whiplash|very]] [[Truth in Television|sudden]], and it hits hard.

* Marshall's breakdown {{spoiler|outside of his father's funeral}} in "Last Words." Brings out all the emotions that run through a person in that circumstance.

* Barney's emotional meltdown at the basketball hoop in the end of 'Legendaddy'. He has very recently had his father (who abandoned him when he was six) come back into his life and try to reconnect with him. Barney was hoping his father, Jerry, would be a hard-partying roadie who wasn't capable of being a father, since this would justify him abandoning Barney. However, Jerry has turned out to be a loving dad with two children, including a boy named 'Jerome Junior'. Barney can't handle this, and it culminates into him trying to yank JJ's basketball hoop off the garage so he could have at least some souvenir of a childhood he never got to have. Particularly heartbreaking is this exchange:

'''Barney''': (finally losing it) ''Because if you were gonna be some lame suburban dad, why couldn't you have been that for me?!?'' }}

* At the end of 'Change of Heart', when Lily has finally convinced that Barney has actual feelings for Nora, he shows up where she is having brunch with her parents, and the scene goes on to show him going inside, apologizing for telling her he wasn't interested, and being introduced to her parents. Alas, it's just an imagination spot, and the look on his face when it pans back to him standing out there and giving up is just heartcrushing. To top it off, just after he walks away, Nora looks up and has missed him, also with a look as if she wished he were in there.

* In "The Exploding Meatball Sub", when Lily is about to head off to Spain because supporting Marshall through his oblivious insistence on quitting his job and taking up ridiculous projects while volunteering for the NRDC is driving her crazy. Ted is rightly appalled, furious, and clearly terrified (for although he doesn't mention it, the memory of Lily breaking for San Fransisco is clearly in the forefront of both his and the audience's minds), until in the middle of Lily's rant, she breaks down into tears and confesses that she's afraid that Marshall doesn't want to have a baby with her anymore. Ted's demeanor immediately dissolves into tenderness with a soft "Oh ''Lil''..."

* At the end of 'Tick, Tick, Tick...'

** {{spoiler|After realising that Robin has chosen Kevin}} the look on Barney's face is absolutely '''heartbreaking'''. Then the icing on the cake? {{spoiler|Watching him clean up the bedroom he had decorated with rose petals and candles.}}

* In 'Symphony of Illumination' {{spoiler|Robin is narrating the episode to her and Barney's future kids. Until she finds out she can't ever have children. "So I can't have kids. Big deal. This way, there's no one to hold me back in life. No one to keep me from travelling where I wanna travel, no one getting in the way of my career. If you wanna know the truth of it, I'm glad you guys aren't real." And the kids fade away.}}

* Given its [[Anyone Can Die]] policy, [[Kamen Rider Ryuki]], unsuprisingly, has a fair number of these moments.

** {{spoiler|Kamen Rider Imperer}}'s final moments are particularly painful. Betrayed and left for dead in the Mirror World without his armor for protection, he spends his last seconds alive in the rain, gazing at the lone figure of a woman who may have represented everything he wanted in a life, as his body slowly dissolves into nothingness.

** {{spoiler|Shinji}}'s death in the penultimate episode. Lethally wounded by a Raydragoon, he drives off an army of Monsters before succumbing to his wounds. It's only made worse in one of the first scenes of the final episode, as {{spoiler|Ren}} regretfully [[Unflinching Walk|walks away]], leaving {{spoiler|Shinji}}'s corpse as one more casaulty in the day's massacre.

** Asakura Takeshi/Kamen Rider Ouja and Kitaoka Shuichi/Kamen Rider Zolda have had bones to pick with each other since the former's debut. When the time comes to finally settle things between them, Asakura is victorious. {{spoiler|However, as Zolda's armor breaks away, Asakura realizes that it is Kitaoka's manservant, Yura Goro, not Kitaoka himself that he had just killed. As for Kitaoka himself, the audience is taken to his mansion, his body resting peacefully on a couch, having finally succumbed to the illness that threatened his life.}}

** As the victor of the Rider War, {{spoiler|Akiyama Ren finally succeeds in saving Ogawa Eri, but at the price of his life.}} Crawling all the way to her hospital room, {{spoiler|he leaves the memento he'd kept of her, a pair of rings, in her hands before taking his final rest.}}

** Realizing that his sister, Yui, would always reject his offer to save her, [[Big Bad|Kanzaki Shiro]], in a moment of despair destroys {{spoiler|Kamen Rider Odin, and thus forfeits the final prize of the Rider War. However, unwilling to accept his sister's death, Shiro threatens to restart the Rider War in spite of her pleas. Then the camera pulls back, and we see Shiro for what he really is beyond the stoic malevolence; a young man tortured by the fear of a world without his sister. As the younger version of his sister pleads with him one last time, the camera pulls to a sentimental gaze of the older Shiro as he rewinds time, revealing that now, both versions of the Kanzaki siblings live in their own version of the Mirror World, populated not with the Monsters they created but with the drawings of happy times between them}}. As the ending credits roll, we return to the Atori, and pull in on a picture of the Kanzaki siblings, {{spoiler|a younger version of them as opposed to the older versions, implying that the two died in the new timeline Shiro created}}.

* Kamen Rider Kiva was always a serious show that could tug at the heartstrings, but when {{spoiler|Mio}} died, my eyes definitely watered for her. The ending of the episode was horribly sad when she {{spoiler|shattered}} in Wataru's arms. Even more heart wrenching is how she died. {{spoiler|Originally, it appeared that she had done a [[Diving Save]] to save her husband, Taiga. Later on, Bishop revealed he killed her, seeing Mio as a hindrance.}}

== [[Law and Order]] ==

* ''[[Law and Order]]'' had one with Lennie Briscoe in Season 8. His daughter gets arrested for drug possession and is forced to testify against her dealer, and after his acquittal she ends up murdered. He goes to the crime scene and has to be restrained from cradling her body by his partner. To see this gruff, world-weary homicide detective on the verge of sobbing just makes you ache.

'''Rey''': "You're going home with me, partner." }}

* As Rey Curtis prepares to leave the squad to care for his dying wife, Lennie gives him a goodbye hug:

* In the season 3 episode ''Mother Love'', a former honor student turned crack addict has been shot dead. The trail leads first to her dealer/boyfriend, but there is no evidence to link him to it. Stone and Robinette discover that the girl had stolen from her family, including bearer bonds from her grandmother, to support her habit and suspicion falls on her father. Ultimately, they discover that it was her mother who had killed her. Performed by the incomparable Mary Alice (the Oracle in [[The Matrix|The Matrix Revolutions]]).

* In the Season 10 "Endurance", a mother has been put on trial for murdering her son, who suffered from severe physical and mental health problems which had obviously taken their toll on her. Upon his cross-examination, McCoy inadvertently prompts the mother to break down on the stand and admit that she had watched him have what she thought was a fatal seizure, unable to bear saving him only to force him to endure the pain and suffering he was forced to live through, and actually attempted to kill herself with her son's pills so that they would both die together before coming to her senses. The woman's tearful breakdown as she insists that she couldn't bear to see her son suffer any more is so affecting that even the hard-assed, seen-it-all-before McCoy looks shaken by it. {{spoiler|And notably, it marks one of the few times he deliberately enables a technically guilty party to receive a lighter sentence}}.

** There's a similar episode where he's cross examining a pediatric oncologist who killed a man who had conned her out of money by claiming he could speak to the dead. The woman breaks down and begins babbling uncontrollably and McCoy is shocked to realize that for once, the accused wasn't presenting a bullshit defense. Years and years of watching children die despite her best efforts had taken it's toll on her, and this man scamming her was the final blow.

* ''[[Law and Order: Criminal Intent]]'', episode ''Magnificat''. Det. Goren's interrogation of Paul Whitlock, whose wife {{spoiler|(based on Andrea Yates) is being charged for the murder of three of their sons in an attempted murder-suicide.}} You can view the clip [http://thereelvincentdonofrio.com/clips/loci_clips/s4/magnificat.wmv here.]

** Also, the ending of ''Semi-Detached''. You really must watch the episode to appreciate ''why'' it's so sad.

'''Goren''': I didn't mean for you to see it. }}

* The season 5 episode "In the Wee Small Hours," Detective Eames's testimony. The phrase "acquired taste" still makes some hardcore fans cry.

** Goren's mother is scizophrenic, and has lymphoma. ON her last day alive, Bobby must find out from her whether or not her old lover, who turned into a serial rapist and murderer, was his biological father. She admits to never knowing for sure. His look of devastation will break your heart. In the same scene, he tries to calm her and she starts flailing on him weakly. It's really the saddest moment of the whole show, this poor woman beating up on her big, strong son in helpless anger, and he the one who loves her the most in the world. . .

* Goren and Eames's final scene in the season nine opener. They have the most heartbreaking conversation, {{spoiler|ending in an [[Anywhere But The Lips]] kiss. Eames accepts the captaincy, on the condition she has to fire Goren. She does so, but then lays her badge and gun on Ross's old desk and quits herself because she can't imagine working without her beloved partner.}}

I'm crying just thinking about it.

 

** "Alex? ...Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. ''Someone call an ambulance! Call 911! Now!!'' Alex, it's okay, Alex, look at me, it's okay sweetie, stay with me, stay with me, you're going to be okay, Alex, you're going to be okay, do you hear me? You're going to be fine, you're going to be just fine, stay with me... Alex, it's okay... Alex? Alex...?"

*** And then immediately following that first stomping of viewer hearts, the DEA agents summon Stabler and Benson to close out the case. {{spoiler|They reveal in the process that Alex isn't really dead, but has been put into witness protection.}} Olivia's heartbroken expression and hitching, choked voice in that scene has to be seen to be believed:

** The emotional whiplash-inducing final scenes of "Ghost." Just as the squad is celebrating, the case has been won... "She wanted me to tell you goodbye."

* ''Fault''

* "Rage" - Elliot has all of his confidence and self-worth ripped to shreds by a criminal who bests him intellectually. All he can do is break down and beat his locker, because he has nothing left.

* "Guilt"

Elizabeth. "I got news for you -- it ''won't'' happen. [[Wham! Line|Ever]]. }}

* The ending of the episode "Legacy". The story revovles around an abused little girl who has fallen into a coma. {{spoiler|Munch eventually found out that her mother did it.}} The case hits particularly close to home for Munch because {{spoiler|when he was a kid, he was aware that a little girl on his street was being abused by her mother, but said nothing. The little girl ended up dying.}} At the end of the episode, Munch visits the victim's hospital room with a copy of the Dr. Suess book "Oh, the Places You'll Go" that he found in her bedroom. He reads a passage from it and the screen fades to black. It's just...heart-wrenching.

* The episode ''Ripped'', where Stabler talks about the abuse he suffered from his father. Elliot just gets this thousand yard stares and talks about how his father ruined the diorama he made for school when he was eight, and when he started crying-

* The Episode Hell..just..it made em cry so much in the end..Manly tears

* "Painless" so, so much, especially Munch begging Marlee Matlin's character to live and revealing that {{spoiler|his father had committed suicide and that he blamed himself for it}}. Combined with the [[Reality Subtext]], it's completely heartbreaking.

** Matt clearly struggling to hold back his anger and tears when talking to Alesha after her rape and his similar demeanor when reviewing the tape of her attack (he very noticeably stands far away from the TV and turns his back so as not to see it, but still cringes at what he hears) and during the trial. It's especially poignant when you recall that he spent the first half of the episode [[Berserk Button|flipping out]] about her initial complaint that her doctor had touched her inappropriately, but now knows that he needs to put his feelings aside in order to be there for her.

** Alesha begging James to prosecute her rapist:

* "Confession"

** Ronnie keeping hold of Matt at the crime scene

* The flashbacks to the death of Nate's son, slowly parceled out throughout the first season.

* Parker's fear for the orphans in "The Stork Job":

* "The Future Job": A fraudulent psychic uncovers a secret Parker has never told anyone: that she witnessed (and blames herself for) the death of her brother when they were children. Made worse by the fact that Parker has [[No Social Skills]] -- she can't interpret ''normal'' nonverbal cues, and thus has a hard time understanding cold reading.

* "The Maltese Falcon Job." The season two finale, Nate after spiraling further and further out of control after the loss of Sophie. Finds himself at the mercy of his rival Sterling who wants to exchange a Gun Smuggler his after and Nate's team in exchange for Nate's freedom . Because Nate is not like them. In the end Nate has captured the Gun Smuggler and in a gambit leveraged his way to exchange his capture for his teammates freedom. While the team escapes a FBI mooks asks "Who is this guy?" Nate, bleeding and exhausted. Who for the last two years prided himself for being above his team laughs and says, "I'm a thief."

== [[Life After People]] ==

* At the end of the original documentary, it's speculated that while apes may one day achieve a human-like mastery over the environment, the ability to [[Navel Gazing|look outside one's self and contemplate your place in the cosmos]] was an evolutionary accident that will likely never be repeated. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether anything from the time of humans survives...because even if it does, there will be no one to talk about it.

* Then there's the closing perspective on humankind's "reign" over planet Earth: if the Earth's 4.5 billion year existence were condensed into a 24 hour period, man's time on the planet would be ''half a minute long''. And the 10,000 years it would take the earth to wipe out nearly all traces of our existence? ''A fraction of a second''. [[We Are as Mayflies]], indeed.

* The [[Inferred Holocaust]] of millions of domestic animals that won't be able to make it outside.