Tear Jerker / The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries

• "Sole Survivor" is an especially sad one, since it involves all three Hardys believing each other to be dead:
  • Joe spends the first half of the episode tricked into believing he's been comatose for almost a year after an accident that killed his father and brother. When the female agent who's been bonding with him first tells him this, Joe instantly breaks down crying, and is later shown remembering a scene of him and Frank goofing off together after coming to China, shedding a Single Tear as he does so.
  • It's also pretty bad when Joe discovers the deception and that Frank and Fenton are still alive, but are now in danger of being murdered for real because he unwittingly spilled the beans to the agents about the defection attempt. When he catches up to the traitors who've ambushed them, he frantically demands the woman agent tell him where his family is.
  • Once the episode reveals halfway through that Frank and Fenton are fine, we learn they've been told that Joe is missing and likely dead in a car wreck after the car was discovered in a river, with his body believed to have been washed out to sea.
    • In all of Fenton's subsequent scenes alone with Frank, he looks completely defeated and can hardly even speak, and every time he does, his voice just sounds so heavy, tired, and on the verge of breaking. Though he doesn't directly say it, there's clearly a lot of guilt mixed into his sadness.
    • Frank, meanwhile, has quite a bit of Parting-Words Regret about the fact that he apparently teased Joe about the Real After All ending to "Meet Dracula" for 3 months, prompting Fenton to urge him not to blame himself despite clearly doing the same. Frank is later shown unable to sleep, remembering scenes of him and Joe together from a few previous episodes, looking completely crushed.
    • The scene where Joe turns up alive to rescue them says it all: while Fenton instantly starts happily rejoicing, Frank can only stare at Joe in shock for several seconds before joining in, as if he doesn't dare believe it's real.
• In the Season 3 premiere, "Last Kiss of Summer", Joe has finally found true love and is about to be married to Jamie, only for her to be killed in a car accident by a drunk driver while he can only sob over her corpse. He's then shown in a Heroic BSoD at the police station while Frank gently tries to comfort him.
• In this continuity, the Hardy Boys' mother is dead, meaning Fenton is the only parent they have, and they're all he has. It makes episodes where the boys are worried about their father, or him about them, all the heavier. This is also true for Carson (who, as in the books, is a widower) and Nancy.
  • "The Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew Meet Dracula" has Frank & Joe investigating their dad's disappearance in Europe, which opens with them identifying corpses in a morgue. They eventually discover Fenton was attacked and has been unconscious for days in a monastery/hospital, with his recovery uncertain. Both boys are extremely somber and nearly in tears after they find him, and the scene ends with Joe breaking down at his father's bedside, begging him to Please Wake Up.
  • "The Strange Fate of Flight 608": Frank and Joe, as well as their friend Beverly, are on a sabotaged airplane that ends up crashing into the ocean—though, luckily, thanks to them, they're able to land it well enough to get everyone off the plane and onto a nearby island safely. Fenton and Beverly's father are nonetheless very stressed out about the crash in the meantime before they learn that their kids are okay.
  • "Acapulco Spies": Fenton gets a very rough go of it. His captor is an old friend who betrayed him and went bad. Said Big Bad Friend then targets his sons when they come searching for him and gloats about it (such as having his henchman sabotage Joe's hang glider, which Joe only narrowly survives, and then telling Fenton later that one of his sons almost died) while Fenton can't do anything to stop him. The Big Bad later kidnaps a Girl of the Week who'd befriended the brothers to use her as leverage against Fenton. Finally, after the boys rescue their father and the girl, Joe uses himself as bait for The Dragon so the other three can escape, and Fenton is clearly scared for him but is too weakened to do anything more than feebly protest.
    • The episode is also pretty terrifying for poor Jackie Ryan, who, along with her friend Sue, becomes friends with the boys after they help them, only to be roughly kidnapped by a big thug just as further leverage against all the Hardys.
  • "Arson and Old Lace" , in which Nancy was kidnapped six months before the start of the episode and has been missing ever since:
    • Her good friends Frank and Joe are worried about her well-being, and her poor father Carson is completely distraught and fears that she's dead. (Keep in mind that, since Carson is a widower and Nancy is his only child, losing her would mean he's lost the only close family he has left.)
    • Carson sends out a TV broadcast begging the people who took his daughter to release her. Nancy sees the broadcast in captivity and is driven to tears knowing how much her loved ones miss her and desperately wanting to be reunited with them.
    • Later, the building belonging to the Big Bad, where Nancy is being held and the Hardy Boys have gone to look for her, is set on fire by a serial arsonist. Fenton and Carson see the story on the news about the burning building, remember that this is where Frank and Joe were headed, and immediately rush to the scene, with Fenton frantic with worry that his sons are inside the building and he's helpless to do anything to save them.
  • "Last Kiss of Summer": after finding out that Joe is attempting a reckless sting on a pair of ruthless thieves who have already killed two people, Fenton tries to order his son to stop, to the point of trumping up charges so the feds will pick Joe up, as Fenton is scared that Joe will be killed, too.
  • "Assault on the Tower": Fenton breaks down after Frank is caught by the villain and imprisoned with him, with Fenton believing that it's his fault that his son is now in danger of losing his life.