Tear Jerker/Playing With

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Basic Trope: Something that makes an audience cry.

• Straight: Bob's fiance Alice is dying from a terminal disease while they wait patiently by the bedside. As the heart-rate monitor flatlines, Alice whispers "I love you" one final time before slipping into a peaceful and permanent sleep. Bob stares solemnly while tears run down his face.
• Exaggerated: Not only does Alice die after flat-lining, but Bob receives a phone call immediately after informing him that his entire family was just killed in a horrible plane crash. Then a mental health patient busts out of the room he's in and rapes Bob, realistically, and Bob gets an STD, and at the same time he is diagnosed with it he is also told he has terminal cancer, and there's one survivor of the plane crash left to mourn him (but then he promptly dies from injuries he got during the plane crash).
• Justified: The movie is supposed to be a tragedy.
• Inverted: The heroes have defeated the Big Bad. There is a parade, characters embracing, and people jumping up and down and cheering. A Crowning Moment of Happiness, actually.
• Subverted: As the monitor flat-lines, doctor's rush in and are able to revive Alice. She makes a miraculous recovery.
  • Alternatively, a Mood Whiplash occurs during a sad scene, preventing the audience from crying.
• Double Subverted: As Alice watches Bob walk across the street to pick her up from the hospital after her recovery, he is hit by a bus and dies a slow and agonizing death.
  • But the Mood Whiplash makes the scene more sad.
• Parodied: Alice is recovering in the hospital from a broken arm, but she and Bob act as if she were dying of a terminal illness.
• Averted: Nothing sad happens, or nothing happens at all.
• Enforced: The entire meaning or message behind the film would be lost if Alice lives.