Heartwarming / Thunderbirds Are Go

An elite team who form an international rescue agency are bound to have moments that warm the heart.

The 2015 animated series

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• The fact that Aloysius Parker's original voice-actor, David Graham, returned to the remake show after 50 years to voice the same character, and continues to do so with every new episode that's made, acting as a living, breathing link between the beloved 1965 series and the modern 2015 series
  • Combo-heartwarming when Sylvia Anderson (wife of original series creator Gerry Anderson) did something similar in one episode (1.22, 'Designated Driver'), playing Lady Penelope's Great Aunt Sylvia. And just to ice the cake and make you cry, her character was even wearing an exact copy of an outfit Lady Penelope wore in the classic show, and for most of the episode, held the famous communicator tea-pot.
• In general whenever one of the Tracys turn up to a rescue in a Thunderbird. Often the most heartwarming ones are when the people in danger didn't actually call for help themselves, because to them no one was coming to save them. Little did they know...
• The whole concept of International Rescue. A search-and-rescue organisation started and funded by a man purely out of his own money for no other reason than that he wanted to help people.
• Frequently something bad will happen and one of the characters will remark with something similar to "It's 2060, that's not the world we live in." The whole idea that despite what might have happened in the series' past, our present, that humanity was able to move past it and grow. The Future Will Be Better indeed.
• The very first episode sees Virgil saving a father and his son from an out of control hot air balloon.
  Boy (tearfully): Please! You have to save him!
  Virgil: No one is losing their dad today.
• When the landing gear to a plane leaking fuel fails Gordon and Alan form pods to form makeshift landing gear. However, the plan proves too heavy and Kayo, piloting the plane, refuses to sacrifice Gorgon and Alan for the plane fill of passengers. Kayo then resigns herself to the fact that she'll have to crash the plane in the desert to reduce the risk to life the plane will cause, killing herself in the process. Also serves as a tearjerker.
  Kayo: Look. If I don't make it-
  All the Tracy Brothers: (shouting at Kayo to stop)
  Kayo: Quite down! Anyway. If I don't make it I just want you to know I appreciate you all coming to my rescue. (tearing up) I may not have started life with five brothers but-
  • Virgil then proceeds to save Kayo and the plane and its passengers by tethering Fireflash to Thunderbird 2 and landing it safely.
• "Life Signs" has some sweet bonding between Virgil and Alan.
  • When Virgil tries to reminisce about Jeff Alan admits that he's starting to forget the details about their father. Virgil then tells him about how Jeff would make pancakes on Sundays, always wore an ugly pink flamingo shirt and his aftershave could be smelt down the hall.
  • Right after Alan asks Virgil if he worries about what happened to Jeff happening to him. Virgil admits he gets scared but its the life they all chose
  Virgil: When you send out an SOS you deserve to know somebody's out there, listening.
• Needs mean Grandma must pilot Thunderbird 2 and the girl she rescues asks if saving people was her dream. She replies that it wasn't, it was Jeff's, but she was happy to support him and the boys.
• Virgil misses his own surprise party in Breakdown due to a rescue mission. Heartwarming due to the fact Max saved him a slice of cake, and the mission he missed it for was him helping a scientist find an extinct bacterium frozen in glacial ice that could cure his daughter and others with a rare disease.
  Virgil: Best Birthday ever.
  • Honestly, Virgil in general seems to get most of these. Biggest Brother, Biggest Heart.
• Gordon making up a story about a father whose undersea family vacation was ruined by the villain, about how he was just saying Thunderbird 2 could get anywhere in the world in a very short time (its top speed is Mach 6.5, by the way), in order to give the family a chance to have an even better one.
• The Hood of all characters gets one in Touch And Go. Where he shows that Even Evil Has Loved Ones by abandoning the fuel he stole to save Kayo's life.
• Alan and John's brotherly relationship in Ghost Ship. It isn't very often the two hang out on screen, but they share a close enough bond.
  • Near the end of the episode, to escape the collapsing EDEN, Alan rides on John's shoulders as his 'co-pilot' while John pilots half a functioning exo-suit.
• Pretty much any moment in "Icarus" involving Tom, the little boy who won the "Meet the Thunderbirds" contest, especially the interactions between him and Lady Penelope and Gordon. Given he also helped save the pilot of the titular aircraft, it's entirely likely the Tracy family and Kayo will stay on contact with him, and consider him an honorary member of IR.
• When Brains finally frees the Mechanic from the control of the Hood. He's so grateful for saving him, he immediately gets to work repaying Brains by working on the T-Drive.
• The first few minutes of the second part of "Long Reach" where the Tracy brothers are finally reunited with their father Jeff, especially on the part of Alan who flings himself across the room (no gravity) to latch onto his father and burying his face in his torso. The rest of the brothers follow suit. It can't be stated enough how heartwarming this moment was as the entire series has been leading up to this mission. When they finally get clues to Jeff's survival and where he's been, they waste no time trying to come up with a plan to rescue him and as soon as everything is ready, they launch to save him. At the end of it all, the most important mission of their lives was a success.
• The ending of the finale is one of utter relief and heartwarming. To specify, Jeff returns home and is greeted by Grandma Tracy after so long. Then, old Jeff lets little Alan graduate as his officiator and father...only for the celebration to be interrupted by an emergency call. As the Thunderbirds crew scramble and race to the rescue, Jeff returns to oversee and carry out this new rescue operation. To see this old veteran back on his chair, heading International Rescue once again, is nothing short of amazing and fuzzy. While the rescue organisation he founded was still able to prove themselves capable when he wasn't around, they can now function at their absolute best and beyond now that Jeff is finally home, all because his five filial sons and their friends dared to go through extreme danger and face insurmountable adversity just to find him.

  Jeff Tracy: This is Jeff Tracy of International Rescue. How may we be of assistance?