Tear Jerker / Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

• The Jetstream DLC ending. The content itself doesn't hurt, but when you listen to "The Only Thing I Know For Real" again... everything starts to make sense about Sam's character. Fridge Brilliance and Fridge Horror kicks in a lot when you look over "Collective Consciousness" and Armstrong's cutscenes.
  • When Armstrong extends his hand toward Sam and welcomes him to the team, Sam looks down and starts laughing... but the way his shoulders shake and his facial expression makes it look like he's weeping because he just had the last bit of hope crushed from him.
• There's something about the way Blade Wolf pleads for you to stop attacking him just before you finish him off in his battle. He barely has his own life, but he doesn't want Raiden to take it away. Thankfully, Raiden has Doktor fix him up later on.
• Sam's death. For that matter, his song, "The Only Thing I Know For Real", while sounding awesome like the rest of the soundtrack, has some rather depressing lyrics lending insight to who he is. The song reflects on his life of bloodshed and lack of an identity beyond that, the hardships that have brought him towards this moment, how all he knows and understands anymore is fighting, how he and Raiden parallel one another, and how their Duel to the Death will either become his redemption or his crossing.
• Talk to Courtney enough times and Raiden will lament on how his civilian life didn't work out the way he had hoped.
  Raiden: There was a time when I wore artificial skin, tried to look as close to normal as possible. I've still got some now - on my face. The tech at the time wasn't great. You still looked pretty unnatural. Maybe you could fool someone from far away, but up close even a baby could tell I wasn't human. Going out shopping, or whatever... You could feel all those eyes on you. I tried to find something to do other than fight... But looking like I did got me two strikes pretty much as soon as I walked through the door.
  Raiden: ...I'm a cyborg, Courtney. What am I gonna do? Drive an ice cream truck? I can pass as normal from a distance, but up close anyone can tell it's artificial skin. Good jobs aren't easy to come by these days, even for non-cyborgs, and I've got a family to feed. Besides... I've been fighting my whole life. ...It's just who I am.
• Call Boris after getting Ripper Mode. Despite being in this form, Raiden, with much sadness and regret, will speak of his trying to put his bloody past behind him after the Liberian Civil War - and similar to the above not working so well.
  Raiden: But afterwards... Afterwards, it was tough. Especially once I got to the US. I got counseling, an education. But every time I talked with someone normal, I felt like all the killing I'd done was gonna crush me. And it didn't stop. Not in my dreams, anyway. I'd hear voices at night, calling out all my crimes, but I couldn't shut 'em out. The rest of my crew adapted to American life well enough, but I... never could...
• It Has to Be This Way is far more tragic of a song when you realize it could apply to every game in the series, which basically means that after all this time, nothing has changed. Compare the number of casualties you'll realize that the only thing that's really changed is the technology used to fight each war, but the alternative is usually far worse. It really does have to be this way.
  • The tragedy of It Has to Be This Way is compounded by the fact that, barring a minor miracle, the Metal Gear franchise is effectively dead. After everything Big Boss, Ocelot, Snake and countless others suffered through over the years, all that's changed is The Patriots are gone. People still kill each other over things they don't believe in, causes that aren't their own. This is where the Metal Gear timeline ends, square one with bigger guns on all sides. And now there's no Patriots to blame for the state of the world. Humanity is doing fine at it just by themselves.
• The ending of Metal Gear Solid 4 states that Snake only had six months left to live at most. Revengance is set four years after Metal Gear Solid 4, which makes it safe to assume that barring a miracle, Snake is already dead by this point.
  • The Japanese version of the game flat-out admits it by having a DLC wooden sword called the Hebidamashii, or ''Snake's Soul.''◊
• When George introduces himself, Raiden's expression goes from determined to melancholy by the mention of the name. It reminded him of George Sears (aka Solidus Snake), the very person who made Raiden the way he is in the first place.
• He may have been a Social-Darwinistic nihilist, but Monsoon's backstory of experiencing the Khmer Rouge as a child is incredibly tragic. Even Raiden and Kevin feel sorry for him, although they agree it doesn't excuse his actions.
• Codecs with Sunny reveal that while she'd like it if Otacon settled down, he's been keeping women at a distance – despite becoming more popular with the ladies. This seems innocuous until you realize that Otacon is the poster boy for the Cartwright Curse, and you realize that by this point, he probably knows it too.
• Armstrong's death ends up being this. Rather than cursing Raiden, begging to be spared, or resisting until the very end, Armstrong instead laments how "war will continue as an institution" and that people will be fighting for reasons and causes that they don't understand or believe in themselves, before naming Raiden as his successor in regards to their beliefs and methods, and reflecting on their similar natures in his last breaths. Raiden's expression reflects this, with him bearing a Thousand-Yard Stare as Armstrong dies.
  Armstrong: "Heh...deep inside we're...kindred spirits, you...and I."