"Hal... I miss you... I miss you..."
- Emma's death. Hal cries and wails in misery, unable to focus on the mission at hand. Snake then fills his heart with courage once more in a brotherly embrace. As the two warriors leave the hacker, Emma's parrot mimics her, saying that she missed him, sending him once more into a tide of grief. The whole sequence is heartrending. If Otacon wasn't The Woobie already, he damn sure is now.
- Not to mention Otacon is forced to leave her dead body behind on the Big Shell, which is going to flood.
- Worse is the fact that Otacon, unlike most others in the series, was never a soldier or a fighter. He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
- Any time Otacon cries is made even worse by the acting. Unlike almost any other performance, it actually sounds like someone breaking down. It's not a single tear, it's not controlled sobbing, it's wailing and screaming and crying like a child. Christopher Randolph puts everything into the scenes where he has to cry, and it is heartbreaking.
- Even worse is the fact that her final request to be called by her birth name goes unfulfilled.
- This part:Emma: I remembered my brother giving me a piggyback ride. I was sleeping with my ear against his back. I could hear his heartbeat.Raiden: Sounds like you two were close.Emma: We were... back then.
- It also doesn't help that Emma and Otacon hadn't seen each other in years due to tragic and terrible circumstances, and then when he finally sees her again, she is stabbed by Vamp just before she reaches him and dies in his arms.
- Emma's parrot exclaiming "I miss you, Hal!"
- Raiden's temporary Heroic BSoD moment after being subjected to a Mind Screw from GW.Raiden: Does Rose exist...?Snake: Don't be weird. She's your —Raiden: What if I've never really met her...? If the Colonel is something that I partly dreamt up, then... everything I remember about her could be...
- Raiden's life in a nutshell. Forced to be Child Soldier and learn how to kill by Solidus, ended up taken in by The Patriots and later learn in-game that his life is just a fabrication, controlled by an unknown conspirator like a puppet.
- Olga's story is also pretty sad. The Patriots took her newborn baby away and forced her to secretly kill her comrades in order to help Raiden survive because they would've killed her child if she failed, even at the cost of her own life. Luckily, Raiden goes to save the baby after Solidus is defeated, and five years later, she's a happy and well-adjusted girl.
- Fortune may very well be the most tragic villain from the entire Metal Gear series. She's lost nearly everyone she's ever loved and can't join them in death. For Helena Dolph-Jackson, her tragedy began with the death of her father, followed by her husband being thrown in prison for crimes he didn't commit, where he later died. Then, her mother committed suicide soon after, and finally, she suffers a miscarriage. A Trauma Conga Line like that would drive anyone insane enough to try to take on the world.
- Nearly every scene with her can make even the most hardened of players look at her with pity. It's clear that she despises war, and at every turn, she's wishing for death, only to be endlessly disappointed.
- The scene where a bullet meant for her hits Vamp instead, the closest person she's ever had to a friend, and even a possible lover. The way she sobs and mourns shows just how much she's seen death and wishes for the torture to end.
- And then it's revealed that nearly everything she's fought for was a lie and that she's been nothing but an Unwitting Pawn played by the very people responsible for her current predicament. The way she screams in horror and despair as it all sinks in for her is gut-wrenching, made worse by how she's slowly dying from Ocelot's gunshot wound.
- Worst of all, she never gets any kind of payback. Olga at least died with the hopes that her child would be safely found. The same can't be said for Fortune.
- Fortune's final action involves her shielding Snake and Raiden from a missile assault before collapsing to the ground. She declares herself her father's daughter before choking on her own blood.
- Stillman's confession about his leg. Imagine having to hide behind a fake injury, all the while wracked with regret over a bombing that was entirely your fault.
- Solidus. Sure, you're a merciless former warlord who used child soldiers to wage war - just like dear old Dad - but your entire existence has been predetermined by people you've likely never met, don't know, and who handed you down orders from on high. They made you a monster. They determined that you - a Son of Big Boss, the supposed masterpiece of Les Enfants Terrible - would be that murderer, that warlord, that you would be President of the supposed free world. And when you realize all this, when you wanted to determine your own fate and break away from their designs for you... You eventually find out that they've planned even that, and used your own revolution to make an example of you.
- Not even just that, but his final moments too: defeated by his own former protege, and dying right next to the icon of liberty and freedom that he fought so hard to reclaim from the Patriots, knowing now that his dream has died with him.
- Like with its predecessor, you get some Game Over quotes if you die, fail your objective, or when Emma (before her scripted death) or Snake dies. Rosemary's in particular seem the most broken, and at the end of her quotes, she always gasps in horror and/or grief. That's pretty much the reaction you would expect from a woman losing her boyfriend.
- Somehow it's worse than that. Rosemary shares the same fate as Olga's child: if Raiden fails, she dies.
