- Adventure Comics #192 has Aquaman create a preserve for rare fish to teach humans about them. He's utterly horrified when crooks start murdering the fish for their own gain and demands the murders stop, to no avail. It has a happy ending as the fifth fish only pretended to be killed and the crooks are defeated, but four fish were killed for real, and we see Aquaman's increasing sorrow and anger at the situation.
- Adventure Comics #448 opens with Arthur distraught over Mera and Arthur Jr. being kidnapped yet again, having a crisis of faith as he pleads with Neptune, god of the seas, and begging him to answer why his life's gone so wrong.
- The death of Aquaman's son in Adventure Comics #452. No parent should have to go through that, and it affected him, Mera, and Garth for decades.
- When Mera attacked him and then left in the Aquaman (1989) miniseries, still blaming Aquaman for the death of their son, Arthur breaks down sobbing and wonders why, of all the people he saved, he couldn't save his baby boy. Meanwhile, Mera herself was cooped up in her room making vent art with hard water sculptures, each of them misshapen and with holes.
- The first half of Aquaman (1991) shows how Black Manta singlehandedly ruined Arthur's life. When not fighting past the point of exhaustion, Aquaman is lonely, depressed, and wonders how he can possibly move on from his past and find happiness again after all that's happened to him. When the Martian Manhunter talks to him and they commiserate over shared loss, J'onn notes that while Arthur has accepted what happened with Arthur Jr. and Mera, he hasn't faced it and is repressing his feelings. Then Black Manta shows up, asks how the wife and kid are, and blows up Arthur Jr.'s grave. By this point, Aquaman is entirely willing to kill his enemy, who he feels taught him hatred. Then after that battle, Thanatos shows up to torment him further with hallucinations of his loved ones scorning him. Thankfully, after all that trauma Arthur is finally able to heal when he overcomes Thanatos, lets go of his self-hatred, and realizes Mera and Arthur Jr. would forgive him if he forgave himself.
- Aquaman (1994) Annual #4 is a tie-in to the Ghosts crossover event where the dead came back for a night to haunt the living. Orin the First talks sense into Shalako and fights off past conquerors, Garth and Tula have a conversation about life and death as she's glad he's finally moved on from her memory, and there's a Black Comedy comic relief section about a wife who killed her annoying husband and finds he's returned. And then there's Arthur, who sees Arthur Jr., who keeps asking him "Why?" throughout the entire night, and finds out just as the ghosts begin to fade that what his son wanted was a hug. He embraces Arthur Jr. and tells him he loves him just before he disappears.
- Aquaman (1991) shows how, unlike later runs where the Atlanteans distrust Aquaman, the people of Poseidonis have almost too much love for their hero and former king, as they're overjoyed to see him and inadvertently worsen his self-esteem with their hero worship. When he returns too late to save them from surface missiles and a teenager named Marin is killed saving him from more, the people praise her for saving Aquaman—and when the cracked dome brings sharks and many citizens are killed or injured, they're just happy Aquaman is there to help them. Meanwhile, Arthur himself feels unworthy of their praise and privately hides how lonely he is.
- Aquaman (1994) #10 opens with Aquaman having a dream where he's loved by the people and happy, thinking that the most bizarre thing of all is the sound of his own laughter. The following issue then has him yell at a memory of his younger self being crowned king, saying it's a trick and to not buy into happily ever afters, before finally lashing out at everything being taken from him and how he doesn't want to be alone anymore.
- In Aquaman (1994) #26, the Sun-Eater eating the sun in an adjacent comic meant water began to freeze over even in tropical areas, making it hard for fish and mammals to breathe. Aquaman does his best to help everyone he can, with fish flocking to him in fear, but by the time he reaches the dolphins, he finds Porm—his adoptive mother, who raised him from infancy—was brutally murdered by Demon Gate. While later issues show she's able to communicate with him from the spirit world, his anguish on finding her body is gutwrenching.Aquaman: "Vengeance?" My god...She was the most gentle soul in the seas. She taught me the way of things. She...
- Aquaman (1994) Annual #3 has a story where Aquaman finds one of his childhood dolphin friends, Nera, has been captured and put in a tank to illegally test a sonic turbine propulsion system that's lethal to sea life and damaged her sonar. While Aquaman is able to rescue her, her sonar was so damaged that she's unable to return to open waters and is forced to live at a sea rescue center.
- As shown in Blackest Night, Arthur didn't want to be buried in a massive, royal tomb in Atlantis when he died; he wants to be buried next to his father at the lighthouse he grew up in an otherwise unremarkable grave.
- Post-Flashpoint: After going through great pains not just to find his long lost mother Atlanna, but also prove he's not an impostor as she tearfully assaults him, he finally convinces her, but has to part ways and promise to keep her existence and location a secret.
- Aquaman (Rebirth) Annual #1 had Aquaman and Mera fall victim to the Black Mercy, which gave them an ideal city-state where they had a son named Tom and coexisted peacefully with the surface. When Murk broke them out of the illusion, they spent a day mourning the son they never had.
- During the "Death of the Justice League" arc, instead of actually dying at Pariah's hands, the League was transported into a Lotus-Eater Machine that gave each of them their personal fantasy. Arthur's was a huge party with all his friends, his parents, and reconciled enemies in attendance, as even Black Manta had buried the hatchet with both him and Jackson Hyde. It turns deeply tragic as even in this perfect world, Arthur knows it's too impossible to be real and swears vengeance on Pariah.
- In the Green Arrow crossover Deep Target, Arthur and Oliver accidentally swapped powers and memories due to time travel shenanigans. After a lengthy journey to set things right, they instead found a Close-Enough Timeline where things were better for Arthur than the standard timeline—his mother was still alive, and he and Orm ruled together as dual kings and true brothers. Unfortunately, Oliver pointed out that other people had it worse than in the regular timeline, and Arthur eventually had to put things back as he knew them. Then he went home to Atlantis to mourn at his mother's tomb.
