Tears of Remorse/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character, grieved by his own guilt, cries.

  • Straight: Jack realizes he did a lot of harm and cries.
  • Exaggerated: Jack realizes he caused Jill to stub her toe and weeps.
  • Justified: Jack cries because he is genuinely sorry.
  • Inverted: Tom laughs until he cries, remembering his evil deeds.
  • Subverted: Tom weeps and sobs over his deeds, because he didn't get away with it.
  • Double Subverted: But he admits that he deserves his punishment.
  • Parodied: Sally sobs over having stolen a jelly bean until her pool of tears drowns everyone else -- whereupon she eats the jelly bean.
  • Deconstructed: Jack's tears are stem from a mood he's in, caused by external circumstances that primed him to be sad, and his remorse will dry up as quickly as the tears.
  • Reconstructed: After he gets out of it, Jack realizes how Not So Different he is from his victims, and decides to become a better person anyway.
  • Zig Zagged: Two characters argue about whether Jack is sincere in his tears, or only faking, or...
  • Averted: No one realizes his guilt.
    • No one does anything bad.
  • Enforced: The writers want to show that evil actions provoke grief and regret, possibly in preparation for a Heel Face Turn.
  • Lampshaded: "Ah, his grief is sincere -- as long as those aren't Water Works."
  • Invoked: "You will not believe how much I wept over that, Jack."
  • Defied: Jack refuses to show any remorse or grief whatsoever.
  • Discussed: "He might really be sorry -- look at how he cries."
  • Conversed: ???

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