As a Tear Jerker page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!
The Strain does have its fair share of horrific, hilarious, and awesome moments at its helm.
But do not let those elements lower your guard into thinking that there will not be moments when the waterworks are turned on.
This page is a WIP, and going through a clean-up.
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General
Season 1
01x01: Night Zero
- Gary Arnot, the father of Emma, is clearly distraught after learning that he won't have access to her, dead or alive. While slapping Eph was uncalled for, he genuinely wanted to know what happened to her. No wonder he returns home in despair.
- Actually, she does return home. But while Gary's love for her is strong and is relieved she's safe, he doesn't know that she is no longer human.
01x02: The Box
- Whenever Setrakian mentions his lost wife, you can see the lingering pain and sorrow in his eyes or tone. A specific moment is when Eichhorst taunts Setrakian with her death, and you can see the rage and regret mixed in Setrakian's eyes for not being able to save her.
01x03: Gone Smooth
01x04: It's Not for Everyone
01x05: Runaways
01x06: Occulation
01x07: For Services Rendered
01x08: Creautres of the Night
01x09: The Disappeared
01x10: Loved Ones
01x11: The Third Rail
01x12: Last Rites
01x13: The Master
Season 2
02x01: BK, NY
02x02: By Any Means
02x03: Fort Defiance
02x04: The Silver Angel
02x05: Quick and Painless
02x06: Identity
02x07: The Born
02x08: Intruders
02x09: Battle for Red Hook
02x10: The Assassin
02x11: Dead End
02x12: Fallen Light
02x13: The Night Train
Season 3
03x01: New York Strong
03x02: Bad White
03x03: First Born
03x04: Gone But Not Forgotten
03x05: Madness
03x06: The Battle of Central Park
03x07: Collaborators
03x08: White Light
03x09: Do or Die
03x10: The Fall
- While what he does after mitigates this, you can't help but feel bad for Zack when Kelly dies. In Season 1, he saw her on the other side of the patio door as a strigoi, and Eph's response was to shoot her, putting him down a bad path for the rest of the series. Then later, with her consciousness returned, he can finally be with her. But without the Master communicating with her, Kelly's first instinct upon seeing Eph is to attack him. And Eph does the deed when he stabs her in the neck with a silver-lined sword. Zack finally got her back, only to be ripped away from her, permanently.Zack: "MOM!"
- After the shockwave blast reduces the main office at Stoneheart to rubble, Eph wakes up to see Zack gone. His first instinct is to call out for Zack, but his son has already left Stoneheart with Eichorst at his side, venturing into parts unknown. When Eph exits the building, Zack is too far out of reach, and Corey Stoll's acting just sounds really heartbreaking, and desperate. The pain in his voice as he calls out for Zack twice shows a man who not only is ripped away from his son again, but he got to see that very son condemn humanity to a strigoi victory.
Season 4
04x01: The Worm Turns
04x02: The Blood Tax
04x03: One Shot
04x04: New Horizons
04x05: Belly of the Beast
04x06: Tainted Love
04x07: Ouroboros
04x08: Extraction
04x09: The Traitor
04x10: The Last Stand
Unsorted
- Vasily Fet having to kill his infected coworkers after finding them hidden in a sealed room. To make it all the more disturbing, we see that the cute secretary who had been flirting with him throughout the series had a young baby. What makes this worse? The Master likely infected them specifically because they are part of the city's pest control. Fet would have likely been targeted had he gone into work much earlier.
- Neeva's reaction to her daughter Sebastiane being killed - some of the most simultaneously heartbreaking and bloodcurdling screams you'll ever hear.
- What makes the above scene worse is that Neeva originally didn't want to go back to the Luss home. She wanted to keep the children with her at her home because she knew there was something very, very wrong with Joan. She only went back to the home at all because Sebastiane convinced her that it would be okay. Had Neeva followed her initially gut reaction, Sebastiane wouldn't have become infected and Vaun and his team would have taken care of Joan and the other vampires without involving Neeva, Sebastiane, or the Luss children, who themselves deserve special mention because not only did they find their father's dying body, they were also attacked and almost infected by their mother, and were only saved and not infected because of poor dumb luck.
- Jim's death, partly because of its suddenness. After discovering he is infected, Jim pleads with Eph and Nora to kill him. They try to insist that he will be fine if they can take him to a hospital, but Jim says he knows he's doomed. Setrakian pulls out a gun to shoot him, but Eph angrily pushes his hand away, leading Fet to suddenly grabs Abe's gun and shoots Jim three times in the head as Nora screams in horror. Even Dutch looks shaken and this is arguably the start of her High-Heel–Face Turn.
- It's a massive testament to Richard Sammel's talent and charisma as an actor that he manages to make the monstrous Eichhorst sympathetic in 'The Disappeared'. To see him alone, stripped of his power, insecure and sobbing is quite affecting.
- In a minor example, Jonathan Hyde's performance as Palmer gets a whisker more sympathetic when it looks like he's going to cry after Fitzwilliam leaves him. Of course, he then promptly calls up Eichhorst as his new best buddy and proceeds to throw a woman off a roof when she tries to expose him, so that ruins it.
- Gus having a minor breakdown after killing his infected brother.
- We finally see the crucial moment Setrakian confronts his Strigoi-turned wife and remove her heart. It's just as heartbreaking as one would expect, but the show manages to twist the knife even further by adding the detail of the two Strigoi children in a Ironic Echo to when they commented they should adopt a boy and a girl. Eichhorst was cruel enough to turn not only his wife, but his dreams against him.
- Nora being forced to kill her infected mother. Her scream of anguish as she swings the sword is just heart-wrenching. Her brief Heroic BSoD in the next episode is just as bad, with her smoking and standing on the rooftop singing a Spanish lament.
- Eph and Zach discovering that Kelly is now fully turned.
- Josef Sardu. He was a Polish nobleman born with gigantism. Despite or because the freakishness and the constant pain associated with his condition, he was kind to others, especially children. However, his brother was ashamed of Josef's condition and one day he took Josef on a hunting trip to look for a cure. However, the hunting party was eventually picked off by a mysterious creature until Josef was left. He followed the blood trail back to a cave and discovered The Master. Josef was easily overtaken and The Master transferred itself into his body in a incredibly horrific way. Josef Sardu was dead and The Master had a new body.
- The McKeevers (an older and Happily Married couple) slowly transforming. The wife progresses faster, and all her still-human husband can do is ask to be near her, so Nora obliges and wheels his bed beside hers, where he holds her hand as she dies. Nora barely makes out of the room before breaking into tears.
- Gus going back to his old apartment and running into his vampirized mother, who the Master then possesses and uses to taunt Gus about what a horrible son he was, causing Gus to nearly lose control.
- Justine having to kill her nephew by overdose before he turns. She breaks down in tears, sobbing that she used to read him bedtime stories and sing to him. She eventually cannot bring herself to do it and Nora does it for her while she watches and cries. It's not as dramatic as some of the other deaths, but that almost makes it more horrible.
- Nora's death. Electrocuting herself after telling Eph she wants to die as herself and deny the Master the pleasure of the pain it would cause them.
- Of all things, Eichhorst's backstory can be viewed as tragic. In pre-Hitler's Germany, he was a pitiful radio salesman who barely got by and was the butt of jokes by his coworkers, yet too meek himself to do anything about it. Then later he finally got to go out on a first date with his crush, though even she only agreed to it seemingly out of pity. While in a pub, she encouraged him to be more than what he was - that we was born to be someone better. And in that same night, he got completely wrapped up in Hitler's hateful rhetoric - only to come to learn that his newfound girlfriend was a Jew. In the end, he chose the S.S. over her and over the years climbed the ranks. Not long after, she was discovered and arrested, claiming she was Eichhorst's lover. In the end however, he denied ever having known her and simply walked out. Later that day, he saw her lifeless body strung up on the street and broke down in a My God, What Have I Done? moment and walked off in horror. It still didn't stop him from ultimately becoming what he was, but who knows - just maybe there's some humanity left in him.
- The Season 3 premier is full of these.
- Gus is bleeding himself to feed his infected mother. What makes this worse is that Gus is himself a relatively experienced vampire hunter and knows that vampires normally don't retain any of their former selves.
- Eph is back to drinking, and returns to his old home to wait for Kelly or Zack to return. Whether he would be able to kill either of them if the time came for it is up for debate.
- Setrakian's death in Season 4.
