History TearJerker / BioShock

* Finding Jasmine Jolene's body on a second playthrough and working out that Jack is her child. Now that was a player punch.

* Poor, poor, Sammy Fletcher. [[HopeSpot He and his girlfriend managed to get a bathysphere and get out of Rapture...]]...then Lamb shot a torpedo and [[http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Escape_from_Rapture destroyed it.]] It's bad when you find their bodies in the water next to the Bathysphere...they wer so close...

** It's even worse in a Easter Egg in Bioshock 2, if you look through a crack in the Pink Pearl. You'll see Baby Jane dragged off by a depraved Breadwinner splicer-then there's the sound of a dress ripping and screams.

*** At this point, you can't help but to feel bad for Andrew Ryan. Watching his descent into paranoia as his paradise crumbled was one thing, but he can't even be there to watch his goons carry out his order to execute [=McDonagh=], as if he's aware that this was the last person left who had trusted him and had been trusted.
*** A very, very bittersweet tearjerker was that Ryan normally crucified and tortured people who tried to escape, but made his goons, who were also [=McDonagh's=] friends, shoot him in the head instead because he couldn't bear to see him die.
-->''"Nyet-he understands better than you think." Karlosky said. "A lot of others here, he watched them die. But...he can't be here for this. He told me, He --> couldn't stand to watch you die, Bill. Not good friend like you..."''
-->''Bill smiled. He never heard the gunshot that killed him.''

** Oh, God. It's enough of a tear jerker when I kill ''regular'' big daddies... imagine what it'll be like when I have to kill [[spoiler:Sinclair]] and Meltzer.
** You don't necessarily have to kill him. Just don't be like this troper and charge through the labs like a baboon with a machine gun, blindly shooting every Big Daddy without checking it.
*** I wonder which is more of a tear jerker - stumbling upon Mark Meltzer's [[spoiler:lifeless body]], which moments before was just another [[spoiler:Big Daddy]], or letting him roam around that crumbling nightmare for the rest of his life, alone (since you are probably just going to save "Cindy" in the next level - saving every little sister.)
** There's another tearjerker part in here that not a lot of gamers would have caught, but there's a Mills Brother's song in the game called "Daddy's Little Girl", a peaceful song about a man talking proudly how much his daughter means to him. That's right, read all the lyrics, remember Marks' struggle [[spoiler: and possible end]] and all are complete tearjerkers with a heavy dose of FridgeBrilliance and [[FridgeHorror Horror]].

* The good ending for ''VideoGame/{{BioShock|1}}''. If you kill the Little Sisters, [[spoiler:you kill the ones that save you and wage war on the surface world with an army of splicers.]] But if you save them, [[spoiler:you take them to the surface, where they live happy, normal lives, and are with you at your deathbed.]] It's such a marvelous and human ending, especially after all the violence and {{Body Horror}} of the preceding game.
* [[spoiler: Andrew Ryan: "A man chooses! A slave obeys!" and it's the fact that you really couldn't stop hitting him that made me cry.]]
* This troper was personally hit hard by [[spoiler: Atlas' family being blown up by Andrew Ryan. Of course, when [[strike:Atlas]] Fontaine double crossed you, and you were forced to kill Andrew Ryan...yeah...]]
** [[spoiler: "I really wound you up with that wife and child bit: 'Oh, me poor Moira. Ah, me wee baby Patrick.' Maybe one day I'll get me a real family. They play well with the suckers.]]
*** This troper had a lot of money on the fact that [[spoiler: Atlas]] was lying to you and going to betray you but that scene still got him. [[spoiler: [[ConsummateLiar An Irish accent isn't the only thing he can fake convincingly]] ]].
* Listening to Masha's parents sob over her on the audio diaries was bad enough. [[spoiler: Getting into their room and finding their two corpses curled up on the bed together next to a picture of their daughter and a bottle of pills that they had apparently overdosed on was heartbreaking.]]
** There's another apparent [[spoiler:suicide scene]] in the game, in Mercury Suites. There's just something about the fact that [[spoiler:after downing the jar of poison, they apparently sat down to watch one last TV show together as a family before they succumbed to it]]. As someone whose family has always had a "family movie night" once a week, this hit a little close to home for this troper. Oh, and by the way, [[spoiler:God only knows if the kids actually realized they were taking poison]].
* Near the beginning, you see a woman cooing to a baby in a crib. Once she sees you, she'll attack you, and you have to kill her. When that was done, I [[spoiler: looked into the crib]] and saw that [[spoiler: there was no baby in the crib. There never was]].
** It's been a while since I last played the game, but I think if you kill her before she sees you [[spoiler: you find out that the "baby" is actually her revolver]].
** This section is even more horrifying than that - listen to what she says carefully (subtitles are your friend). She's not cooing. She's [[spoiler:mourning. 'Baby and me, BABY AND ME']]
** Something even more horrifying: [[spoiler: 'baby and me' implies the baby has also become a Splicer]] Yikes.
* Sure, Tenenbaum might have had a dodgy past, but even before she mentions being involved in experiments [[ThoseWackyNazis in a prison camp]], you have to realize something: if she was a 'Kraut' of Jewish descent, she probably was separated from her own family before being sent there. It somehow makes everything happening with the Little Sisters worse, especially since she grows such a pure devotion to them. Even then, listening to her narrate her maternal revelations is so moving. And then, if you didn't save ENOUGH Little Sisters for the good ending, but didn't kill enough for the bad, the fact that she sounds so sad while explaining your [[spoiler: descent into spliced-up maddness]] makes this troper sort of feel like she thought she could've saved Jack, given that [[spoiler: she was Fontaine's agent for buying the embryo off of his birth mother]].
** More specifically, for this troper it was Tenenbaum's 'Hatred' audio log. At the end, right before she cuts the recording, you hear her voice break followed by the briefest of sobs.
** On the topic of female characters in [=BioShock=] with sad stories, Diane [=McClintock=]. Her fiancee, Ryan, slowly goes crazy and [[spoiler: probably spends more intimate moments with Jasmine Jolene, anyway]]. She's eventually left alone after the New Year's attack ruins her face (and from what the audio diaries and the 'ghost' outside his door imply, Steinman [[MadArtist didn't help]]). Then she goes on to work for Atlas (and it sort of sounded like she was starting to fall for him too, or was at least very loyal) but [[spoiler: she walks in on his longest con and he kills her before she can blab his true identity]]. It's sad because she seemed so normal; there was no hint of going insane. She was just a sad woman caught up in a nightmare. She might be the closest to TheWoobie aside from the Little Sisters.
* Finding Jasmine Jolene's body on a second playthrough and working out that Jack is her child. Now that was a player punch.
* Sullivan's diaries are definite tearjerkers, especially once you start finding the ones where he's given orders to assassinate Anna Cullpepper simply because Sander Cohen hates her music. Then there's the one you can find in Cullpepper's apartment, where a broken Sullivan talks about finding a blanket Cullpepper was knitting, and how he took it, because it just didn't seem right, leaving it unfinished....
* "Mr Bubbles... please, please wake up! Please!"

* One of the recording late-game involves Fontaine testing out the "Would you kindly" code on the PlayerCharacter as a child. How? [[spoiler: By forcing him to strangle his own puppy dog.]]As someone who has a few dogs, [[{{Etheru}} this troper]] has only this to say: [[spoiler: poor little puppy...]]

* Finding the Skinner boxes the Little Sisters were subjected to.
* Somehow, this troper forgot to go in Sinclair Spirits the first time around and thus failed to trigger "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window". Which means his first time ''ever'' hearing that song in its original form was in the Little Wonders facility. Turns out, in this context and with the full orchestral backing, it's less SoundtrackDissonance as LyricalDissonance.
** Oh, and if said lyrics happen to remind you of [[spoiler:Suchong's mind control test]] all over again...
* This troper just discovered the premise of VideoGame/BioShock2: [[spoiler: The 'Big Sisters' are ''little sisters'' too mentally broken to adjust from being in Rapture]]. This troper previously found the 'moral option' in VideoGame/{{BioShock|1}} ridiculous, thinking the 'good' and 'bad' options blatantly obvious and that practically everyone would choose 'save'. [[spoiler: Then to find out that was probably the BAD option...]]. ''OUCH''.
** VideoGame/BioShock2 has a Tear Jerker as one of the endings. If you played as a gray area character, you get to choose at the end to either [[spoiler: let Eleanor save you, turning her completely evil, or to sacrifice yourself and let her choose her own path.]] If you go with the latter, [[spoiler: The game ends with the sad violins fading out and the screen going to black as a tearful Eleanor's voice says "But Father, wherever you are... I miss you."]] Cue waterworks.
*** [[spoiler: The worst part, for this troper, was the look Eleanor got after Delta pushed the needle away. How it dawned on her that after all that happened, he would rather die than stay with her. And that everyone else she even knew is dead.]] If you need me, I'll be in the bathroom with an industrial box of tissues.
*** For this troper, the moment [[spoiler: When Delta turns to look at her before he dies and she begins to cry in earnest. For the last portion of the game she is a badass, nigh gamebreaker of a character, but at that moment... At that moment she's just a scared little girl who doesn't want her Daddy to die.]]
*** For the entire game, you can't quite get a clear answer to if Delta is simply fulfilling some protection programming in saving her or if he truly does care. That simple gesture, [[spoiler: using the last of your strength to get one final look at your daughter before you die]], gives you your answer.

*** [[spoiler:Yes, the little girl you've been playing as is harvested and ''it's still through her point-of-view!'']] As soon as the game let her, this troper paused and cried for a few minutes.
* VideoGame/BioShock2's opening cutscene. Aside from the hauntingly sad violin music, and when we realize this is from the view of [[spoiler: a Big Daddy]], which carries its own brand of sadness, the ending, when [[spoiler: Sofia Lamb shows up, and [[MoralEventHorizon uses mind control to make the player character shoot himself]], all while her own daughter whom she doesn't even love and who is bonded to the player character, is forced to watch...]] Eleanor's look of horror and the sheer helplessness of the situation, just... this troper felt equal parts TearJerker and UnstoppableRage.
** For this troper, the saddest part of the cutscene was at the very beginning. You walk towards a Vent as a lumbering Big Daddy and pull out your Little Sister. Only instead of the demonic children you remember from the first game, you see only a cheerful young girl. As she pulls you along the hallway, you glance at your reflection in the window... it's an incredibly moving moment considering Big Daddies are creatures the player views as emotionless fodder in the first game. For the first time, they are shown to be sentient beings who truly care for the girls they're bound to protect. [[spoiler:Even more heart-wrenching is watching the scene after having beaten the game. This is not just a Little Sister... this is Eleanor. Your /daughter/.]] Cue the tears.
* We can't forget about [[spoiler: Mark Meltzer]] now, can we? This troper was spoiled on it so it probably didn't hit him as hard as it would have, but he still felt pretty bad [[spoiler:when the name showed up over the corpse.]] He followed this up by [[spoiler: getting his Master Protector achievement with Cindy, in the very same room her father fell. Don't worry, bro. She's safe with me.]]
** [[spoiler: With Eleanor, you mean. Delta doesn't make it out alive either.]]
*** No, that troper doesn't. She's safe with ''that troper'', and the player character, no matter who they are ([[YouBastard evil players notwithstanding]])... She's safe with the player because said player will not permit a splicer to lay a hand upon her. The danger for the girl was in Rapture. Delta got her out... he did his part, as her father... adopted father or no.
**** [[spoiler: Whoever Cindy's safe with regardless, the actual experience of walking into that lab room, seeing what is probably your last Big Daddy getting attacked by splicers, and triumphantly grenading him or what-have-you, only to pan the camera down to his now dim face port to see the caption 'Mark Meltzer', and pan over to sobbing Cindy? If you followed Something in the Sea, and got emotionally involved in his story - following his desperate search for his daughter, reading his scrawls and notes, solving Lutwidge's insane riddles and puzzles, discovering the message hidden on the record, getting Cindy's pleas for help, waking up on a ship, the list goes on - it's all the more heartbreaking. This troper read every document of SitS, loved Mark Meltzer almost as much as Sinclair, obsessively listened closely to every audio diary, and shouted with joy at hearing his voice behind the main doors of Dionysus Park. I excitedly asked a friend who had already played the game - will I get to meet him? To which she slowly replied "...Yes." To listen to his conversation with Lamb, and realize what you've just done - I shut off the game and sobbed for a good half hour, to the same friend.]]

** "Minerva's Den" had a truly bittwersweet ending, but putting aside the story for a moment- when the DLC itself was released and the chance to go back to Rapture was presented, this troper couldn't speak. Being able to go back as a new experience itself, to be able to experience Rapture with fresh eyes, once again- it was a beautiful moment. Just to be plummeted back into Rapture, especially with your last memory of leaving it- being Subject Sigma and having that beautiful, terrible city once again in your grasp... more than a few tears were shed.

** This troper has been unable to summon up enough willpower to actually proceed due to putting down the controller, turning off the PS3, and sobbing for a good 10 minutes. Between [[spoiler:Sinclair]] and [[spoiler:Mark]]...

* In the novel ''Literature/BioShockRapture'', Bill [=McDonagh's=] goodbye to [[spoiler:his wife and daughter, Elaine and Sophie as they're being allowed to escape from Rapture, with him getting left behind]]. It wasn't helped by the fact that it reminded this troper strongly of her father, and is the sort of thing he'd say.

*** The above was the first time This Troper felt bad for Andrew Ryan. Watching his descent into paranoia as his paradise crumbled was one thing, but he can't even be there to watch his goons carry out his order to execute [=McDonagh=], as if he's aware that this was the last person left who had trusted him and had been trusted.
*** This troper literally choked up reading that chapter during one of his work breaks.

* Sander Cohen, believe it or not, actually made this troper feel so sorry for him. On the surface, he seems like a goofy sociopath with no redeeming traits, what with him turning people into statues and ordering you to kill other artists just because he doesn't like their artwork, but listen to his audio diary [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUeBKC-1oaY "The Wild Bunny"]]. It starts off as an innocent poem about being a little bunny... but then quickly escalates into loud, screaming sobs. Hearing Sander so desperate and vulnerable made this troper's gut wrench at the thought of how this madman is trapped in his own mind, and is possibly well aware of his own madness (the "Ears", as he calls it), but try as he might he can't escape it. It certainly makes those white masks everyone wears all the more symbolic...
* Gilbert Alexander's fate: [[spoiler: doomed to transform into a hideous monster living inside a giant fishtank in the basement of Fontaine Futuristics; even if you let him live, even if he escapes the building, even if he does manage to somehow recover his sanity, he'll be spending the rest of his life alone in the open ocean. And there's no way of telling how long that's going to be.]] It only gets worse when you listen to his audio logs and realize that he's lost virtually ''everything.'' He's trapped in a particularly hellish part of Rapture; he's going completely insane- and he ''knows it''; he's been abandoned as a failure by Sofia Lamb (the woman he's implied to be in love with); and worst of all, he knows that all his attempts to make amends for turning Eleanor into a Little Sister were all for nothing, because the process that was used on him is now going to used on ''her.'' And just listening to his voice during the logs, he doesn't even sound vaguely upset or angry over what's happened to him: if anything, he sounds resigned to his fate.

** It's even worse in a Easter Egg in Bioshock 2, if you look through a crack in the Pink Pearl. You'll see Baby Jane dragged off by a depraved Breadwinner splicer-then there's the sound of a dress ripping and screams. She's being raped. This troper tried everything he could to help her-throwing plasmids, firing his Rivet Gun-but he couldn't do anything to save her. Just hearing her screams is agonizing.

* Her idle, some of her attack lines and when she's ''dying'', goddammit. These will tug at your heartstrings-
-->My mother's pearls..! You bastard!
-->You can't take my furs! Never!
-->My heirlooms! Leave them at least!

** The disintegration of Rapture was a tearjerker by dint of being a ForegoneConclusion: Yet it starts out so optimistically, with people being proud and awestruck that they built a city under the sea. Then begin the leaks both literal and metaphorical, women forced into prostitution because they can't find any other niche in Rapture and can't get away, the growing prevalence of both Splicers and firearms and finally the [[spoiler:death of [=McDonagh=]]], who was part of Rapture from the start and probably its biggest believer, being shot in exchange for letting his family go free. It's as if that moment marks the exact end of Rapture's total conversion into the hellhole of the first game.

** Especially since his lines seem to imply that he was pressured into/convinced to take plasmids to 'enhance his game,' several of them trying desperately to convince "Mr Ryan" and possibly others that he's "good enough." Not to mention a few seem to be addressing a girlfriend and may veer back into NightmareFuel.

* The ending of BioShock 2, when Delta is dying, and it takes every last bit of energy for him to crawl to the top of the craft to be with Eleanor. Oh, god...

* Everything involving Mark Meltzer in BioShock 2, namely his tragic end.

* The good ending for ''{{Bioshock}}''. If you kill the Little Sisters, [[spoiler:you kill the ones that save you and wage war on the surface world with an army of splicers.]] But if you save them, [[spoiler:you take them to the surface, where they live happy, normal lives, and are with you at your deathbed.]] It's such a marvelous and human ending, especially after all the violence and {{Body Horror}} of the preceding game.

** On the topic of female characters in Bioshock with sad stories, Diane [=McClintock=]. Her fiancee, Ryan, slowly goes crazy and [[spoiler: probably spends more intimate moments with Jasmine Jolene, anyway]]. She's eventually left alone after the New Year's attack ruins her face (and from what the audio diaries and the 'ghost' outside his door imply, Steinman [[MadArtist didn't help]]). Then she goes on to work for Atlas (and it sort of sounded like she was starting to fall for him too, or was at least very loyal) but [[spoiler: she walks in on his longest con and he kills her before she can blab his true identity]]. It's sad because she seemed so normal; there was no hint of going insane. She was just a sad woman caught up in a nightmare. She might be the closest to TheWoobie aside from the Little Sisters.

* This troper just discovered the premise of [[TheSequel Bioshock2]]: [[spoiler: The 'Big Sisters' are ''little sisters'' too mentally broken to adjust from being in Rapture]]. This troper previously found the 'moral option' in Bioshock ridiculous, thinking the 'good' and 'bad' options blatantly obvious and that practically everyone would choose 'save'. [[spoiler: Then to find out that was probably the BAD option...]]. ''OUCH''.
** Bioshock 2 has a Tear Jerker as one of the endings. If you played as a gray area character, you get to choose at the end to either [[spoiler: let Eleanor save you, turning her completely evil, or to sacrifice yourself and let her choose her own path.]] If you go with the latter, [[spoiler: The game ends with the sad violins fading out and the screen going to black as a tearful Eleanor's voice says "But Father, wherever you are... I miss you."]] Cue waterworks.

** The "morals" of Bioshock 2 only affect the ending, right? Wrong. [[spoiler:Eleanor will be affected by your actions. Kill a few characters or harvest a few little sisters and she'll adopt a similar do-whatever-it-takes-to-survive attitude.]] That's not the tear jerker. After [[spoiler:looking through the eyes of a Little Sister, seeing how they view the world-- golden and beautiful, the splicers as pretty costumed people, blood as rose petals, debris as pillows-- is saddening on its own. (The music, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy", does not help.) But after giving Eleanor her Big Sister suit, she talks to you, explaining the previously mentioned attitude.]]

* No mention of Bioshock 2's opening cutscene? Aside from the hauntingly sad violin music, and when we realize this is from the view of [[spoiler: a Big Daddy]], which carries its own brand of sadness, the ending, when [[spoiler: Sofia Lamb shows up, and [[MoralEventHorizon uses mind control to make the player character shoot himself]], all while her own daughter whom she doesn't even love and who is bonded to the player character, is forced to watch...]] Eleanor's look of horror and the sheer helplessness of the situation, just... this troper felt equal parts TearJerker and UnstoppableRage.

* How, in the name of all that is holy, did harvesting Little Sisters in Bioshock 2 not come up? In the first one it's pretty sad. In the second one it is absolutely ''heartbreaking'', with the girl screaming "Daddy, no!" the entire time. I was planning to be evil the first playthrough. I couldn't do it.
* The Pigskin Splicer's dialogue in the first Bioshock is downright wrenching. While most of the Splicers are just drifting through their own little worlds in between bouts of psychopathic rage, the Pigskin spends most of his time weeping and begging to have ten seconds inside his own head, while occasionally hallucinating that his parents have come back to pick him up. When you evade him, he ''pleads'' for you to show yourself, because he doesn't want the others to kill him.

* In the novel ''{{BioShock}}: Rapture'', Bill [=McDonagh's=] goodbye to [[spoiler:his wife and daughter, Elaine and Sophie as they're being allowed to escape from Rapture, with him getting left behind]]. It wasn't helped by the fact that it reminded this troper strongly of her father, and is the sort of thing he'd say.

* Two of the audio diaries you find in the game 'Masha Come Home' and 'Saw Masha Today' are spoken by a woman whose daughter has gone missing. In the second one we find out that her daughter has been turned into a Little Sister. And to really rub it in, the second audio diary is found next to the corpses of the woman and her husband who have presumably committed suicide upon finding out the fate of their daughter.

* Speaking of suicide, how about the family in Mercury Suites, all lying dead on the couch with what's probably a bottle of cyanide pills on the coffee table? There are various ways to interpret that, but they're all depressing.

** Really, the Splicers in general are a sympathetic bunch when they're not trying to kill you. All of them probably had lofty dreams and people that they cared for. Now they're just trapped in a slowly-deteriorating underwater tomb with practically no chance of salvation. And the very nature of ADAM itself (being a substance that creates short-lived functioning cells, while simultaneous killing the body's natural cells) means that if a Splicer stops ADAM, they may very well die.

* No mention of Bioshock 2's opening cutscene? Aside from the hauntingly sad violin music, and when we realize this is from the view of [[spoiler: a Big Daddy]], which carries its own brand of sadness, the ending, when [[spoiler: Sofia Lamb shows up, and [[MoralEventHorizon uses mind control to make the player character shoot himself]], [[CompleteMonster all while her own daughter whom she doesn't even love and who is bonded to the player character, is forced to watch]]...]] Eleanor's look of horror and the sheer helplessness of the situation, just... this troper felt equal parts TearJerker and UnstoppableRage.

* As someone who has a few dogs, [[{{Etheru}} this troper]] has only this to say: [[spoiler: poor little puppy...]]

** Especially since his lines seem to imply that he was pressured into/convinced to take plasmids to 'enhance his game,' several of them trying desperately to convince "Mr Ryan" and possibly others that he's "good enough." Not to mention a few seem to be addressing a girlfriend and may veer back into HighOctaneNightmareFuel.

* Finding Jasmine Jolene's body on a second playthrough and working out that Jack is her child. Now that was a player punch. [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming I shot a cross into the poster behind her bed and gave her a proper pyre, then left]].
** [[VideogameCaringPotential ....if that isn't a CMOH]], [[YourMileageMayVary I don't know what is]].

** "Minerva's Den" had a truly bittwersweet ending, but putting aside the story for a moment- when the DLC itself was released and the chance to go back to Rapture was presented, this troper couldn't speak. Being able to go back as a new experience itself, to be able to experience Rapture with fresh eyes, once again, it was a beautiful moment. When you wake up in the ocean at the very beginning of the game, and you can pan up and see that great, beautiful city, once again... more than a few tears were shed.

** "Minerva's Den had a truly bittwersweet ending, but putting aside the story for a moment- when the DLC itself was released and the chance to go back to Rapture was presented, this troper couldn't speak. Being able to go back as a new experience itself, to be able to experience Rapture with fresh eyes, once again, it was a beautiful moment. When you wake up in the ocean at the very beginning of the game, and you can pan up and see that great, beautiful city, once again... more than a few tears were shed.

**** [[spoiler: Whoever Cindy's safe with regardless, the actual experience of walking into that lab room, seeing what is probably your last Big Daddy getting attacked by splicers, and triumphantly grenading him or what-have-you, only to pan the camera down to his now dim face port to see the caption 'Mark Meltzer', and pan over to sobbing Cindy? If you followed Something in the Sea, and got emotionally involved in his story, and followed his desperate search for his daughter, read his scrawls and notes- it's all the more heartbreaking. This troper read every document of SitS, loved Mark Meltzer almost as much as Sinclair, and shouted with joy at hearing his voice behind the main doors of Dionysus Park. I excitedly asked a friend who had already played the game - will I get to meet him? To which she slowly replied "...Yes." To listen to his conversation with Lamb, and realize what you've just done - I shut off the game and sobbed for a good half hour, to the same friend.]]