Tear Jerker / TRON: Legacy

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• The opening: Sam and Kevin having one last chat...and then the Smash to Black that shows us a montage of Kevin disappearing and how much it affected young Sam, accumulating with him running out of his grandparents' house and riding his bike in the rain before it transitions to the present day. Even more heartbreaking when you can hear Sam's Grandmother calling for Sam to come back just as the cut to the present day occurs, indicating that it was too late for him to do so.
• This part after Sam hacks ENCOM and leaks their newest software online.
  Guard:...You're Mr. Flynn?? Why? This is your father's company..!
  Sam: Not anymore.
• Seeing the once lively arcade a shuttered, dusty ruin. It hits even harder when Sam goes up to the apartment his dad used to have above the arcade floor. Those who remember the first film see the spot where the Power Trio was formed, now dark and full of nothing but dust and cobwebs, with Kevin's handheld game broken on the floor. It's like seeing the Millennium Falcon rusting in a junkyard.
  • To say nothing of the feelings of those fans old enough to remember actual arcades.
• Sam and Kevin's awkward reunion can hit home for parents who are out of touch with their kids, or vice versa.
  Sam: Dad?
  Kevin: Sam.
  Sam: Long time.
  Kevin: You have no idea.
• It's brief, but Kevin's understandable reaction upon realizing who it really is that's chasing them:
  Kevin: Tron, what have you become?
• "I fight for the Users!"
  • It becomes worse as what we now know is Tron sinks into the digital sea, his Tron Lines flickering back from brainwashed orange to his original blue. That is... if he's actually dead.
• The flashback where Kevin Flynn sees the genocide of the ISO programs and realizes that there's nothing he can do to stop it.
  • Then we get another flashback that explains what happened to Tron.
• During the fight in the End of Line Club, a program can be seen sobbing as the voxels that remained of someone she cared about spill from her hands. Even Harsher in Hindsight with all the real-life attacks on gathering places.
• In Fridge terms, the scene where Kevin reveals to his son that Quorra is the last ISO and all of Kevin's efforts to disguise her as a regular program. The scene when she tells Sam how she escaped the genocide only makes it worse.
• "Goodbye, kiddo." The music after they escape from the grid will gut you.
• This music video will surely jerk tears, albeit from the sheer amount of heartwarming this film has.
• This conversation from one of the trailers.
  Sam: Alan, you're acting like I'm going to find him sittin' at work, just "Hey, kiddo, lost track of time."
  Alan: (wistfully) Wouldn't that be something.
• It's so sad to hear the formerly energetic and cool Kevin Flynn wearily say "Sometimes life has a way of moving you past things like wants and hopes".
• Despite everything he does, Clu is a tragic character. Everything he does, it's because he was programmed to do it that way (with an astonishing lack of foresight) by a young Kevin. In the end, when Kevin confronts him, he completely breaks down because he cannot accept something he wasn't created to understand in the first place.
  • Add to that, the expression he gives Kevin during their final confrontation.
  Clu:....Why?!
  Kevin: He's my son!
  (Clu gives an expression that just screams "Aren't I your son?")
• Alan Bradley's situation is a heartbreaker; no matter the timeline, the man can't catch much of a break. After the first film, he marries Lora, but she takes a job in DC and they're apart for most of their marriage. He's spending most of his life chasing after Flynn with a metaphorical mop and bucket, trying to run interference between his big dreamer friend and the board. Then Flynn vanishes, and he's thrust into a CEO job he never wanted, then just as unceremoniously Kicked Upstairs into a mascot position, trying to raise his friend's kid (and kid turning out to be just like his old man) while struggling to keep the ideals of his friend (Flynn) and his mentor (Walter Gibbs) alive after the men themselves are gone. And in the end, he gets a vague non-answer from Sam about what happened to his friend. One of the few dubious mercies about it all is that he apparently has no idea that Tron was a sentient being, nor anything about the horrible things that happened to his virtual son.
• The transition between the past to present time with Sam. We first see Sam sitting at the window, waiting for his father to come back. When his grandmother tries to comfort him, he takes off on his bike. When the Time Skip occurs, you can hear the faint scream of Sam's grandmother calling for him to come back as adult Sam continues running on his bike (this time a Ducati) and just going full out. The whole scene is a tearjerker of a moment, knowing that moment Sam's childhood was over and that he can never go back to who he was due to his dad being gone.

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