The Walking Dead (TV series)/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Andrea sitting motionless beside her sister Amy the entire night after the latter died from Zombie inflicted injuries, and then giving her a loving goodbye speech before shooting her in the head.
  • Glenn tearfully telling Daryl that they only burn "geeks" but they bury their own dead.
  • Jim asking to be left behind and abandoned because the pain of his infection was too much for him to endure as they sought help or a cure, compounding his story about how he managed to get away while the zombies were killing his family.
  • Morgan trying to shoot his zombified wife.
  • Dale: "Too bad! 'C-cause you don't get to do that. T-to come into somebody's life, make them care, and just . . . check out!"
  • Merle may have been a violent, racist douchebag, but when he was shown at the beginning of episode 3 still handcuffed to the roof after everyone had to make a quick exit at the end of the previous episode, he broke down, figuring that he is being punished for being such a jerk. He seemed genuinely remorseful (at first, anyway) and it was hard not to feel bad for him.
  • That poor horse...
  • Poor, poor Sophia...
    • Bonus points go to Hershel and his family in the same episode; it's fine watching the majority of the main characters cleansing the barn of walkers, but when they all hesitate upon realizing Sophia is one of the barn walkers, it puts the fact that Hershel just watched this ten fold into perspective.
  • Carl getting shot.
  • Hershel's Heroic BSOD after the barn massacre, getting drunk for the first time in years and lamenting what a fool he was to deny that his family and friends had become zombies.
  • Dale's breakdown over the group's near unanimous vote to execute Randall, after spending the entire episode trying to convince them otherwise.

Dale: (to Daryl) You were right. This group IS broken.

  • Dale's death had this troper in Manly Tears.
  • YMMV, but this troper found the scene where Rick kills Shane to be pretty saddening. The soundtrack played over it doesn't help either.
    • He had it coming, but the tear jerker bit comes from the fact that Rick had to kill his oldest and best friend, and considers himself to be losing his humanity even more.
  • The look on Hershel's face as the group flees from the farm, and he watches the barn burn down.
  • It is entirely possible that this troper is alone on this, but I shed a tear at Dale's RV getting left behind. Like Serenity, I thought of the RV as a character in its own right. Not that I wasn't concerned about Jimmy getting eaten alive, but....
    • You are not alone in this. I was hoping for Rick and Carl to get in and drive it, and actually sank a little when I realized they weren't able. At least it saved their lives before it went. Dale's RV: 2010-2012
  • The brief shot of the note they'd left Sophia on the windshield of a car at the beginning of the season, the letters now runny and faded.