As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
For tear jerkers from the SNES game titled Final Fantasy III in North America, see this page.
- The scene accompanied by "Aria: Maiden of Water". Better tears, happy tears (or, well, sad since the journey is over) likely accompany the post-game sequence (in the DS version, at least).
- After getting the Earth Crystal jobs, the party decides to pay a visit to their good old friends and mentors, Dorga/Doga and Unne/Unei. When they arrive, Doga and Unei immediately challenge them to fight to the death. Luneth, Arc, Refia, and Ingus are all horrified at the notion and refuse to do such a terrible thing. The old mages simply tell the kids that if they refuse, they'll be killed. The boss battle with them is one of the toughest in the game as you're forced to first kill Doga and then Unei without so much as a breather. They really are sincere about killing the Warriors of Light if they hold back because if they can't, they have no hope against the enemies to come. After that nobody comes out and says My God, What Have I Done?, but you can see it on the kids' faces as Doga and Unei go on to declare which light of virtue each holds before dying.
- If you return to Doga's house after his death, you will find all of his servant moogles mourning his death. It's made even worse by the fact that you killed him.
- As though the above with Doga and Unei wasn't bad enough, they make another Heroic Sacrifice for the party by expending the energy of their souls, resigning themselves to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence in the process.
- The scene right beforehand of the Warriors of Light's allies begging them not to die after their Total Party Kill also deserves mention. The remake makes it even worse; Not only does the recontextualization of some of the relationships, such as Ingus and Sara's love for each other or how Alus looks up to Arc make their reactions more upsetting, but Cid is silent where he called out the name of the lead character in the other versions. Given that in this version he acted as a Doting Grandparent to the party at several points, one can only imagine how he must have felt at that moment.
- Zande/Xande's Start of Darkness. You've spent your immortal life apprenticed to a master wizard - no doubt making close friends with the other two apprentices, by the way - and what is your reward for this dedication? One gets phenomenal cosmic powers and an entire continent, the other becomes the ruler of the world of dreams, and you get... mortality. And they call you evil when you want to keep things the way they were? Xande got painted into the villain corner, plain and simple.
- Basically, Doga and Unei outright killed him, though not before they essentially arranged for their deaths. What's Xande going to think when/if he finds that, essentially, Doga and Unei envied his mortality?
- On the flipside, think about it from Doga and Unei's perspective. There are hints throughout the game that Doga and Unei thought of, and still think of, Xande as their friend. The remake in particular emphasizes it with Unei telling the party to save Xande. And while the games don't have Xande acknowledge Doga and Unei's assistance, the Memory of Heroes novelization shows us a bit of that resentment that led Xande to that point:
Xande: "Doga... Unei... How long must they continue to interfere? Were their gifts not enough? Must they continue to deny me what is rightfully mine?!" - King Gorn's death. For weeks, he's been mind-controlled by his Evil Chancellor to set his soldiers against each other and to banish his ten-year-old son Alus from the castle. And the final act in Gigameth's plan? Have Gorn murder Alus in his bed—but the order is too much, and Gorn turns the knife on himself to save his son.
- Doubles as a Moment of Awesome. It takes sheer force of will and Power of Love to overcome a powerful spell like that.
- The whole "Boundless Ocean" sequence. First, you see a world that is shrouded in a strange, swirling ocean of darkness, with only two small pieces of land uncovered, accompanied by lovely but haunting overworld music. The kids save a young water priestess named Elia/Aria, who is sweetness incarnate and becomes particularly close to Luneth as they go to restore the Water Crystal. Just before they can, the Kraken fires an arrow at Luneth and Aria intercepts it. The arrow turns out to have been poisoned, and after the party is done killing Kraken it's too late to save her—she dies in Luneth's arms. Worse, they have no time to mourn, because the removal of the dark ocean starts a quake inside the cavern, forcing everyone to flee and leave her body there.
