Despite the Super Robot Wars franchise being loaded with Hot-Blooded Humongous Mecha pilots fighting for justice and trampling on evil with extreme prejudice in the greatest ways possible, there are moments here and there that will make you cry your heart out, normal or Manly Tears.
- Super Robot Wars V
- Super Robot Wars T
- Super Robot Wars X
- Super Robot Wars 30
- During the assault on the North American Langley base in Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2, both the Earth Federation Army and Neo Divine Crusaders are ambushed by the Inspectors and the Shadow-Mirror. Colonel Van Vat Tran and Captain Daitetsu Minase are mortally wounded, but both do the best with what time they have left until the end: the former urges his remaining troops, including Yuuki Jaggar and Ricarla Borgnine, to retreat with the Hagane and goes down guns ablazing by attempting to ram Mekibos with his battleship. It doesn't work, but his Dying Moment of Awesome solidifies why he's The Brigadier. On the other hand, the latter orders all friendlies to make a Tactical Withdrawal using the Tronium Buster Cannon on the Hagane as their getaway, all in the meantime refusing medical aid. Ultimately, he succumbs to his wounds, and the crews of the Hagane and Hiryu Custom are devastated. Worse, to the player, he's the first character in the party to be officially Killed Off for Real.
- Following the Wham Episode, a funeral is immediately held for him. He was just that important and awesome that the crews would put off everything else to pay their final respects to him. Elzam even sets his "Ratsel" disguise aside for the duration of the funeral, refusing to dishonor the Captain's memory with a false name.
- The death of Cattleya Fujiwara-Branstein, Elzam von Branstein's wife. After being captured by terrorists, she's placed in a hangar bay of their home colony of Elpis. Its Ax-Crazy leader Archibald Grims hands Elzam an ultimatum: save his wife as the hangar bay is flooded by poison gas, which is slowly making its way into the rest of the colony, or destroy the hangar bay with Cattleya it, but prevents the gas from seeping into Elpis. Elzam starts hesistating, but Cattleya urges him to take The Needs of the Many route and destroy the hangar bay. Not only must Elzam live with the fact he killed the love of his life, but is disowned by his younger brother, who never forgives him for pulling the trigger. The Branstein family was no longer the same after this event.
- Which makes the scene in the Inspectors anime where they, together, avenge her death and take Archibald down once and for all all the more powerful.
Elzam: You don't need to apologize to Cattleya, Archibald. That's my job. - With the Einst finally destroyed at the end of Super Robot Wars Compact 2 and Original Generation 2, Einst Alfimi is given a welcome into the party, having pulled her Heel–Face Turn, but since her fate is tied down to the Einst, she's moments away from death. In her last words, Alfimi is content she is among people who accept her and thankful she has made friends. Of course, all this is undone in Original Generation Gaiden, when the plot pulls a Back from the Dead/Not Quite Dead card.
- After being subjected to multiple memory erases and drug enhancements, Ouka Nagisa finally snaps out it thanks to her School sibilings during the Earth Cradle event and returns in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Mad Scientist Agilla Setme in Original Generation 2. Unfortunately, Ouka opts to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to stop the regenerating Machine Cells from multiplying any further, no thanks to Agilla. What makes this a Tear Jerker is all of her sibilings' efforts to get her back to them intact has been for naught. Too Cool to Live? Probably, but it does demonstrate why The School children all consider her their Cool Big Sis from the start.
- The Inspectors, the Animated Adaptation of Original Generation 2, implies that Ouka wouldn't be alive for long, due to overusing the GEIM System in the Rapiecage. Seems like a Heroic Sacrifice was the best option in a potentially lose-lose situation.
- In the same Earth Cradle event, Wodan Ymir and Sanger Zonvolt crash into the installation from the force of their duel on the surface. Wodan's Thrudgelmir is basically trashed, and he admits Sanger is the winner, but Egret Feff and his Machinery Children intervene. As Egret orders the supercomputer Magus Gebo to regenerate the Thrudgelmir, Wodan demands he does not need it. The Machinery Children attack and Sanger quickly dispatches Machinery Child Uruz, while Wodan, knowing his machine can't take anymore stress, singlehandedly destroys Egret and the rest of his abominations with one stroke. Just before the overdamaged Thrudgelmir explodes, Wodan tells Sanger that Sophia Nate is now his responsibility to protect. Sanger screams for Wodan's name, accepting his new duty given by his greatest rival, and rushes to save Sophia as the Earth Cradle begins to collapse.
- Original Generation Gaiden gives us a cruel Player Punch of attempting to invert the Spared by the Adaptation. Lamia Loveless, after all her efforts to assert her indomitable will, is unceremoniously shot down by an ODE System-possessed Wilheim von Juergen, claiming her useless and making every of her development null. Worse, this happens because Kyosuke Nanbu had dropped his guard. The Leitmotif Meikyuu no Prisoner ("Prisoner of the Labyrinth") by JAM Project becomes hard to enjoy when party members attack Juergen with Berserker Tears (especially Seolla Schweizer and Latooni Subbota, since they were part of a new team) to avenge her. Even though Juergen is defeated, he himself is obliterated by an interrupting Duminuss, who reveals that she's done with him as a pawn, so the Hagane-Hiryuu team has been railroaded in venting their rage on the wrong person/thing, and the heroes are forced to retreat. Kyosuke mournfully and solemnly declares Lamia a victim of war and killed in action.
- It turns out Lamia is Not Quite Dead: she was recovered by Duminuss and reprogrammed in such a way that even if Kyosuke were to try and fulfill his old promise at the Original Generation 2 epilogue (in the event Lamia loses control of herself, he promises to destroy her), he'll fail. Kyosuke was already hit with Heroic BSoD and is this close to crossing the Despair Event Horizon, until a Back from the Dead Axel Almer arrives to set things straight.
- The origins of the Cry Wolves from Super Robot Wars MX was easy to pass up, but Original Generation Gaiden sets a more tragic spin. Foglia Est has a more developed personality and a good relationship with his friend Hugo Medio and father Albero Est, except being sidelined and passed up most of the time by Albero. There almost seemed to be a good reason for his, until Foglia sacrificed himself to protect his father from a Jetzt Regisseur. The shock was too much for Albero, and coupled with the bad news that Hugo must receive cybernetics to even survive his wounds from the attack, it's not hard to see why Albero begins his Start of Darkness from this event, making his full Face–Heel Turn in the next game. And... well... it's just as bad. Look at the entry below.
- The homunculi of Duminuss had it quite rough, despite their antagonizing nature. Sure, Tis and Laliar may have been following their master's orders, but being forcibly absorbed out of their own will by Duminuss after receiving too much wounds from the heroes? Duminuss winds up playing the Evil Matriarch straight to a T, compared to its Super Robot Wars Reversal counterpart. Just as Duminuss bares down on the remaining homunculus Despinis, it summons its master Dark Brain, who proceeds to One-Hit KO the Beta Test Baddie, along with Tis and Laliar it, all in front of Despinis, the resident Shy Blue-Haired Girl of the villains. At that time, in regards to villainy, it totally sucks being Despinis, but thank goodness the Gureden sibilings are willing to spare, forgive and protect her.
- The Lord of Elemental Part 1 section of the Masou Kishin storyline had a major one with the death of Ricardo Silvera. Naturally, he's supposed to be Doomed by Canon for being the first Herald of the Elemental Lord "Zamzeed", since Mio Sasuga is the next one in line during the Super Robot Wars EX events, but it doesn't make his final moments easier to watch, as Tytti Noorbuck, who was ignoring his advances and playing up the Tsundere atttitude beforehand, breaks down and genuinely mourns his death and her efforts to save him declared too late.
- To add to the tragedy, when you realize Ricardo's assassin is the same person who killed Tytti's family on the surface world before she was summoned to La Gias, it's no wonder afterwards that Tytti ends up becoming Allergic to Love.
- The Second Original Generation doesn't pull the punches, either.
- Midway into the game, Hugo DIES...or, at least, that's what everyone's led to believe (the AI-1 keeps him barely alive). Like MX, Aqua Centolm discovers that Albero's co-conspirator is her own mentor Eldy Mitte and was being the Big Bad of the two, to the point where Aqua couldn't help Hugo out of utter shock. Naturally, Hugo gets resuscitated later by the AI-1, but at the time, it is a shocker (since Hugo didn't bite it in MX), and Aqua's crying is visibly understandable, as she blames herself for it, while Eldy maniacally taunts her for it.
- Continuing Albero's Start of Darkness from Original Generation Gaiden above, it played out like an utter gut punch as well. It played similarly to the events at MX, sure, but what caused Albero to really start his Face–Heel Turn? Being promised that if he does as the bad guys and Eldy Mitte said, they are going to revive Foglia, and even showed his dead body as a proof. But when Eldy betrayed everyone, Albero included, she reveals that the thing about Foglia was a total lie, they just prepared a random person's corpse, but modified with cutting edge technology to make it look like Foglia extremely convincingly. And so, Albero ended up going to the dark side due to his grief for absolutely nothing.
- Super Robot Wars Destiny was already Darker and Edgier, but its events in this game winds up making things harder for its protagonists, especially Cliana Rimskaya.
- Unlike Destiny, Cliana and Joshua Radcliffe convince both Glacies and Ventus to align with them. Unfortunately, their Heel–Face Turn results in Cliana's Split Personality "Chris" to vanish. Instead of playing it straight like other personality splits, where one "disappears" and other remaining dominant and existing, the game uses a Deconstruction: The Stoic Action Girl personality "Liana" and the sweet, cheerful Chris are on perfectly good terms and alright with their Sharing a Body situation, considering one another family and their own person. Losing Chris, alongside having to tell their allies about their uniqueness, makes Liana feel incomplete. Just to top it off, when executing the Dea Blanche Neige's final attack after this event, Chris' spirit won't be around to support Liana unlike before, just to remind the player she may have been Killed Off for Real.
- In a similar vein to Destiny, Big Bad Perfectio must be sealed in his own dimension. The heroes realize someone needs to do the job, but before Cliana can say anything, Ventus immediately volunteers. Despite her protests, he's adamant with his choice; worse yet, Chris reappears and tells Liana to take care of herself from now on, as she and Ventus vanish forever in front of Liana. Wow, and you thought being experimented back in Destiny by Felio Radcliffe was bad enough for Cliana.
- To twist the knife further, during Perfectio's appearance, he reveals Cliana's Split Personality is due to Liana being an incomplete "Melior Esse" (Ruina General); in other words, Chris was the original personality, and Liana the constructed one. Not only has Liana essentially hijacked a body like the other Melior Esse, she feels extremely guilty for having destroyed Chris until she reappears. Even then, Liana begs to take her place with Ventus to seal Perfectio, but Chris doesn't relent and allows her to stay in her body. All Liana can do at that point is break into tears. Sheesh, it definitely sucks to be Cliana.
- E-Selda Shuun's death in Super Robot Wars Judgment was nothing more than a passing mention. But in Super Robot Wars OG: The Moon Dwellers, we get to see on-screen how he delivered his final words to Touya in spite of the latter begging that he should go to the hospital instead, declaring that his best memories was when he was holding Touya as a baby. And when he passed away, Touya was screaming for his father in grief. Not only that, Katia and Melua were also equally crushed on his death, thinking that it's their fault for being helped by E-Selda that he ended up dying. Truly, he was too good for this sinful universe...
- Al's death at the hands of the Balmar especially if the players have played Dark Prison and knows about him. What makes it worse is that in this continuity, Viletta is one of the people who rescues Selena but the latter has no idea about that.
- Selena Recital's origin story is displayed in The Moon Dwellers. While she might have gotten more professional, the sight of the coy and playfully teasing protagonist of Alpha 3 reduced into Broken Tears, unable to fulfill her promise to her fallen friend to not give in to revenge, can be a tough image to swallow.
