Tear Jerker / Little House on the Prairie

TV Series

• In "The Lord is My Shepherd", after the death of her baby brother, Laura climbs up to the highest point she can find and prays to God to take her life to bring her brother back. She tells God that her Pa always wanted a boy, and that God had a boy and so God might like to have a little girl too.
• Granville Whipple, the title character from "Soldier's Return", comes home to stay with his mother, only to reveal he's addicted to morphine, a situation many Civil War veterans faced in real-life. To make things worse, he's haunted by a Dark Secret: He ran away from the battle and that's why he was the Sole Survivor from his batallion. When he meets the family of his friend, whom he abandoned in battle, it makes his addiction worse, and in the end, he tells his his mother he's going to confess and get rid of his guilt, only to steal more morphine from Dr. Baker's office and overdose, leaving Mrs. Whipple hearbroken with the loss of her only son.
• Jack's death in "Castoffs", due to it being so sudden and Laura having neglected him beforehand, which resulted in her fearing to bond with Bandit (another dog that followed Charles home). Also the end of the episode, where she finally does apologize to and accept Bandit.
• The moment in part 1 of "I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away" when Mary's vision goes completely is probably the nadir, though. Her father holding her as she wails inconsolably at the moment they'd been dreading all this time...
• As polarizing as the episode "The Godsister" is, the part where Carrie goes to Heaven and sees Jack is both heartwarming and very sad because she hugs and tells him how much everyone misses him and that she loves him. Given some other experiences that Laura and Charles had it's possible that it wasn't just a dream.
• "May We Make Them Proud":
  • Mary in a catatonic state the morning after the fire, as Charles hands her the charred corpse of her baby son.
  • In the same scene, a distraught – and we do mean distraught - Jonathan Garvey has collapsed into a deep sob, demanding to Dr. Baker, "No pine box" (for his wife, Alice).
• Everything in Season 7's "Sylvia": The title character is assaulted by a stranger in a disguise, and forbidden to tell anyone by her controlling father, who already mistreated because of her receiving unwanted attention from the boys, and being bordeline blamed by her situation. She finds comfort in her secret relationship with Albert, until she finds she's pregnant from her attack, which everyone believes is from her boyfriend, icnluding her own father. Then, when she tries to elope with Albert, her attacker reappears, and tries to rape her a second time, culminating in a fall from a ladder as she tries to escape him which leads to her death. An episode that lives up to the most tragic examples of Cartwright Curse in its predecessor series Bonanza.
• The opening moments of "The Reincarnation of Nellie". First, we learn that Percival's father has passed away and that he, Nellie, and their children will be staying in New York indefinitely. When Harriet gets the news, she sinks into a depression. Then, Adam and Mary Kendall announce that they are moving to New York as well, as Adam sees that there's no real need for an attorney in Walnut Grove, so he's taken a job at his late father's law firm.
  • While Mrs. Oleson's grief is the focus of the episode, Nels' subdued reaction to finding that Nellie won't come back from New York is quite heartbreaking. He understands the situation, but it's clear that having his daughter move far away from his reach and incapable of visiting anytime soon breaks his heart.
• Mr. Edwards' situation in "A Promise to Keep" after the death of John Jr. His grief-fueled alcoholism alienates his family, and he leaves for Walnut Grove, only to further alienate his friends after causing an accident while drunk in which Albert nearly loses one of his legs. He gets to his lowest point, abandoned by everyone and so desperate to get alcohol that he tries to buy alcohol at the Mercantile, when he sees the church open and walks in, realizing his faults and seeking help from a higher power.
• The aptly named "Times are Changing" two-parter which opens the "New Beginning" season is full of them...
  • First, we learn that due to a bad winter, Charles has moved the Ingalls family (Caroline, Carrie, Grace, Albert, James, and Cassandra) to Burr Oak, Iowa. Charles is seen holding back tears as he visits the house one last time.
  • Laura has stepped down as a schoolteacher to focus on raising her daughter, and it's a very difficult decision because, for all her stern and impatient approach, she genuinely loved teaching. She is able to hold back her tears as she says goodbye and starts crying when she's outside of school. And before that, Willie, his childhood rival and once problem student leads the goodbye and asks her to send him to the corner one last time, but only so he could hide the fact that he's in tears too.
  • Almanzo's older brother, Royal, shows up with his daughter Jenny. While in Walnut Grove, Royal reveals to his brother and sister-in-law that he's terminally ill and that he wants them to take care of Jenny for him after he passes. Then he dies when he's having a picnic with his daughter and his daughter blames herself and, in a misinterpretation of Reverend Alden's advice about the afterlife, tries to drown herself to join him and her mother.
• Albert's impending demise in "Look Back To Yesterday" after a Lethal Diagnosis is just one long, painfully drawn out journey to his final fate, but it ends on a hopeful note because Albert doesn't die at the end. However, the scene where Charles forces Laura to drop her denial of it by making her say "My brother is going to die" is heartwrenching, cruel (but necessary for them to cope), and finally ends with her bawling "Oh, God... he's gonna die...!" The implication is that Albert eventually died offscreen following this special, but was posthumously declared a doctor.
• "The Last Farewell" presented several tearjerker moments, most notably when the townspeople – Laura and Almonzo first, then Mr. Edwards, Dr. Baker and the Olesons (Nels and Willie) – blow up their buildings, one by one, after they lose a legal fight to greedy railroad tycoon Nathan Lassiter who owned the land and wanted to own the buildings too. The episode's definitive scene was bookended by two tearful moments: Rev. Alden's final sermon, where he bids farewell to his parishioners and the town of Walnut Grove, and then when Lassiter (who was licking his chops looking at being in control of not just the land but the entire town and its people as well) learned he did not own the buildings — so the people were victorious over the mean, cruel, vindictive Lassiter, but it was a very bittersweet victory as it came at the (literal) cost of their town, their lives and livelihoods.
  • Another aspect to this bittersweet moment is that, in sacrificing the town as they did, they ensured the survival of other towns in the area. One of the mayors dragged along by Lassiter informed him that his town would do just as the citizens of Walnut Grove had done if he tried the same tricks. He was quickly echoed by the other mayors, which brings a measure of joy to everyone despite their grief.
    Reverend Alden: "Thank God... Did you hear? Walnut Grove did not die in vain!"

Book Series

• The death of Laura's son, especially so close after her and Almanzo's diphtheria, which was followed by Almanzo having a stroke.^note One modern medical theory is that the baby was conceived too soon after the diphtheria and died as a result; another theory, based on the fact that all the girls in Ma and Pa's line survived while none of the boys did (besides Laura's son, Laura's brother also died in infancy, and Rose's only son was a stillbirth), the Ingalls family could have had some kind of sex-linked genetic disorder that Laura and Rose inherited as carriers. It's even worse because they never have any children after that, meaning that either they were unable to even bring a child to term after that or that they were so scarred by the loss that they chose not to try for any more children, either of which is heartbreaking.
• Comes up again in the The Rose Years, when the Wilders attend the funeral of their hired man's infant son. Both Almanzo and Laura are wracked with grief, Laura admitting that what struck the the hardest was hearing the preacher read the baby's name—the Wilders' son died before they gave him one. The chapter is titled "A Mother Never Forgets."

  "A mother never forgets, Rose. Just as surely as you have been here by my side, he has been in my heart."

• The end of Little House on the Prairie, when Charles Ingalls muses on "how much fun the rabbits will have eating the garden" which they planted but have been forced to leave behind, along with their house and at least a year's work on their homestead.
• The death of Jack the bulldog.
• Laura being extremely homesick after she leaves for the first time to teach.
• Laura and Almanzo moving to Missouri means the chance for a better life, but she had loved the first claim because it meant she was extremely close to her family. She was only able to to visit her family once after she moves, and it's not until Rose is a teenager.
• Pa's death in the sequel series.
• From "Plum Creek", the three dark days in which the family is increasingly certain Pa's been caught and died in a blizzard. Laura and Mary, despite having it drilled into them that it's shameful to cry, find themselves beginning to break down in tears while studying; on the third night, lying in bed with Mary and listening to the wind, cold tears run down Laura's face. Thankfully, Pa shows up the next morning.