Tear Jerker / V for Vendetta

As a moments page, all spoilers are unmarked!

• Gordon in the graphic novel. He genuinely loves Evey, and gets to confess it, but is wrapped up in the black market and dies when a deal goes wrong. Evey survives but ends up staring at his corpse for a long time before getting up and doing anything else.
• Valerie's story. By the end of her tale, you will realize the full breadth of V's conviction that the Norsefire regime must pay, must fall!
  • Mitigated somewhat when Evie finds out that it was part of a Mind Screw by V.
    • Back in full force when V tells her that he didn't write the letter, but received it exactly as he did.
  • There's also the flashback to her coming out to her parents. Her mother actually throws a picture of Valerie as a child into the bin and her father just shouts the whole time. We can't hear what they're saying but perhaps that's for the best.
  • In the film, the flashbacks are this, especially after Valerie's lover Ruth was arrested. First, Valerie is seen hysterically sobbing, clutching one of Ruth's shirts. Then, when the police come for her, Valerie just sits there, staring straight ahead. She doesn't run away, or fight, or even scream... she just lets them come. The flashbacks also show a gay couple being ambushed in bed and taken away. Valerie's voice breaks as she asks "why do they hate us so much?"
  • The letter ending with Valerie telling the reader, whoever they are, that she hopes they escape and live a happy life, and that she loves them, with all her heart. Even though Valerie never met V or Evey in person, you know that she really, truly means it. Evey herself is moved to tears by this, and kisses the letter after she reads that.
• Also, the fate of the young girl in the movie version; during the VO by Detective Finch describing how "someone will do something stupid", it's shown that one of the Fingermen shot her to death for spray-painting V over a propaganda sign while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask.
  • It's followed by the Fingerman getting cornered by angry citizens, with one of them using a big wrench to kill the Fingerman in revenge for the girl's death. And seems to be the Rage Breaking Point for all of London.
  • Imagine how the young girl's parents must have reacted upon discovering from their neighbours that their daughter was killed for committing vandalism, even if the Fingerman who shot her was murdered.
• In the movie, V kneeling down and weeping after Evey's departure serves to humanize him beyond the faceless anarchist, and the small crack in his suave mask is hard to watch. Tearstorm ensues.
• In the book, there's the part during Finch's LSD trip where he sees the smiling, laughing faces of all the people killed at Larkhill, and is filled with remorse for what the regime has done... and then they all run away and disappear...
  • In that same sequence, Finch pleads with Delia to help him as he's taken away to be executed, saying she's not like the others. Delia ignores him.
• Delia Surridge's dignified demise:
  Delia: Are you going to kill me now?
  V: (holds up syringe) I killed you ten minutes ago, while you slept.
  Delia: (fearfully) Is there any pain?
  V: No.
  Delia: Thank you. ... Is it meaningless to apologize?
  V: Never.
  Delia: I'm so sorry... (dies quietly)
• V's death for some.
  • His last words to Evey's wish that she doesn't want him to die. "That's the most beautiful thing you could've given me."
• If you look closely, the little girl, Gordon, and Valerie and Ruth can be seen amongst the crowd at the end of the movie. If you want to be free, You Are Not Alone.
• Everything about Gordon Dietrich in the film. He's a closeted gay man who takes in Evey at great personal risk, and is killed brutally, presumably after mocking the government on his show (Turns out they executed him on the spot for keeping a copy of the Qu'ran).
  • His capture is especially hard to watch. He instructs Evey to hide, so she gets under the bed, and is forced to watch as Gordon is beaten and dragged away, locking eyes with him as he falls to the floor... exactly like what happened to her parents. Gordon was the first person in a good long while Evey felt she could really trust, who really wanted to help her and even seemed to behave in a fatherly manner towards her, and Evey had to watch her protector be dragged away to certain death, again.
  • It's also immediately after this that Evey is captured herself. True it turns out to be set up by V but Evey didn't know that. And when she discovers the ruse, her first thought is about Gordon. You can tell she was hoping that he might have been spared.
• Eric Finch in Larkhill, overcome by the sheer pointless cruelty of it all, seeing the ghosts of all they exterminated to make a "better world":
  Finch: Oh come back. Please come back. I love you.
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