Yes, even a slapstick cartoon about a cat and mouse chasing each other can be sad at times.
- Blue Cat Blues, a surprisingly and strangely sad episode. It starts with a depressed and heartbroken Tom on the railroad tracks waiting to commit suicide by train, for starters. By the end, Jerry joins him on the tracks! The worst part? You can hear the train coming just as the cartoon ends.
- The kicker is Tom immediately knows why Jerry is there and shifts to the side to make room for Jerry next to him.
- Down and Outing: Tom spends the entire cartoon getting clobbered by his easily-provoked Jerkass master, and the cartoon ends with him getting brutally beaten (offscreen), tied up, and placed in the fish bucket getting caught fish tossed at him while he's sobbing.
- The Night Before Christmas, Tom feeling guilty for locking Jerry out to freeze to death while "Silent Night" is heard.
- Repeated in the semi remake Snow-body Loves Me.
- A similar instance occurs in "Puppy Tales" where Tom kicks out Jerry and a puppy the latter is caring for. In this case Tom's remorse is accompanied by an Imagine Spot of him callously ordering the two out as they plead to him, before they are shown drowning in the heavy rain outside. The real Tom is so wraught with guilt that he tries in vain to grab them from the thought bubble.
- That's My Mommy: The moment when the baby duck who thought Tom was his mother finally realizes that he plans on cooking and eating him, which would be even more heartbreaking for animal lovers. With his faith shattered, the duck prepares to jump into the stewing pot to please his "mommy" and says he still loves him. Feeling sorry for the poor duckling, Tom then lets out a Big "NO!" and saves him as tears run down his face like a waterfall, after which he takes on the role of being the duck's mommy.
- Quacker being self-conscious about his looks in Downhearted Duckling. To make matters worse, he attempts to kill himself. When he gets his Happy Ending, you can't help but to smile.
- Heavenly Puss:
- When Tom loses his last life and is sent to Cat Heaven, most of the cats ahead of him in line show how they died in a comedic way, e.g. the flat cat that was squashed hit by a steamroller, but the last has an oddly dark twist. A wet burlap sack bounces up to the gate and opens; out come three kittens, gaily mewing as they bound towards Heaven. That's right: their owner put them in a bag and drowned them. What's worse is the gatekeeper's resigned reaction, implying that he's seen it many times meaning this isn't the first time something like this happened."What some people won't do."
- Tom desperately begging for Jerry to sign the paper that will allow him into Heaven. He does get it signed, but he's just seconds too late and is cast down into hell to be tortured by Devil!Spike. It was All Just a Dream, but still.
- If this was all a conjunction of being All Just a Dream, it paints a depressing view of how Tom saw his daily life on constantly chasing Jerry, as this review from an entry on Deviantart
may have pointed out: The gatekeeper of Heaven represented his own conscience that believed that his constant chasing of Jerry was not that necessary and could be outright cruel, and Devil!Spike represented his own fear that continuing to do so will land him into something troubling based on his status as a housecat: It was his job to chase a mouse, but since Jerry is smart and constantly outwitting him, one day his owner could get fed up with his failures, kick him out of the house, leaving Tom in a miserable state of living in the streets in poor condition and dying unwanted there; the equivalent of Hell itself. And even more so, Jerry's constant refusal to forgiveness until the very end where it turned out to be too late means that Tom thought that he was facing a sociopathic mouse who's totally smarter than him and enjoyed his suffering. If this is taken to be a review of Tom's own psyche... well, he was always in a depressing life from the get-go.
- When Tom loses his last life and is sent to Cat Heaven, most of the cats ahead of him in line show how they died in a comedic way, e.g. the flat cat that was squashed hit by a steamroller, but the last has an oddly dark twist. A wet burlap sack bounces up to the gate and opens; out come three kittens, gaily mewing as they bound towards Heaven. That's right: their owner put them in a bag and drowned them. What's worse is the gatekeeper's resigned reaction, implying that he's seen it many times meaning this isn't the first time something like this happened.
- Jerry, Jerry, Quite Contrary: Jerry constantly abusing sleeping Tom while sleepwalking, to the point of reducing the latter to a complete sobbing mess. Tom would keep on weeping during packing up his things, hoping to move away from such a psychopathic troublemaker. As he's slogging through the desert heat, Jerry's still following him.
- What makes it even sadder is that, in the middle of the episode, Jerry knew about his endless torturing of Tom while sleepwalking and was doing anything he could to keep himself from sleeping. He was not drinking several cups of coffee for the heck of it after all.
- Jerry helps a runaway circus lion stowaway on a ship back to Africa. Despite getting what he longed for, the lion tearfully bids his newly made friend farewell, who is both happy for him yet crying to see him go.
- At the end of "The Two Mouseketeers", Tom gets decapitated after failing his job to guard the king's meal. Not only is Tom's fate disproportionate, but it's also undeserved considering Jerry and Nibbles were the ones who were making Tom's job difficult, despite being on the same side as him.
- "Buddies Thicker Than Water", an episode where Tom and Jerry start out as friends with the latter even saving the former from a blizzard, becomes sad when their friendship abruptly ends because Tom throws Jerry out in the cold so his owner wouldn't kick him out of the house. While Tom's comeuppance at the end (falling off the balcony in the cold without anyone to save him this time) is deserved, it's still sad that his decision resulted in him losing both Jerry's trust and a place in the house.
- All three of the shorts where Tom has to deal with a obese owner who clobbers him every chance he can are already sobering enough but what makes it worse is that none of them have a happy ending.
- “Down And Outing” has Tom thrown into a bucket of fish while being pelted with fish on the unfair basis that he was causing while Jerry who was the real troublemaker gets away with no reprecussions.
- “High Steaks” has Tom tied to a chair before being taken away by a car thanks to Jerry while not even getting a bite to eat.
- While “Sorry Safari” finally gives the owner what he deserves by getting charged by a rhino, it’s still not a good ending since the final scene shows us Tom being carted away along with his owner and the rhino. And Jerry? He once again escapes punishment.
