Codename: Kids Next Door/Tear Jerker

Kids Next Door may be a kids show, but it can still be sad!

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• Surely this troper can't be the only one who shed a single manly tear in Operation: Z.E.R.O. when, after getting to know the real Sector Z, they reverted back into their Delightful form.

"Tell the Kids Next Door we miss them!"

• • Or later on in "Op: ZERO" when we see Numbuh Zero once again as Numbuh One's bumbling dad, with no memories of being a KND operative. "Just playing with an old friend, Dad."
• In earlier episodes, the whole process of decommissioning is glossed over. Then in the opening of "Op: MAURICE," we're introduced to an operative, Numbuh Nine, who's a good friend of Sector V. It's his thirteenth birthday and he's willingly going to be decommissioned. The combination of his speech, his screams while getting his memories wiped and walking out as a sullen teenager with no memories is pretty damn depressing even if it was all an act. And the Crowning Music of Sadness makes things even more emotional.
  • Decommisioning itself is a gloomy process. Imagine loosing most of your memories from your childhood. Imagine forgetting your crushes and your best friends, and acting like they never existed.
• Vin Moosk's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Operation KNOT.
• How can we miss the ending of "Op: INTERVIEWS?
  • Adding extra weight to it? It's the audience's goodbye as well. It's been a great six season run, and seeing it come to an end is just heartbreaking.

Numbuh One: Just promise me one thing, that you'll never grow up, not even if you live to be a hundred and don't have any memories of our adventures together, you'll still be a kid at heart.

• • This troper will always watch that scene and feel like shedding some Manly Tears. Expecially with the variation on the usual battle cry.
    • Numbah 5: 5!
    • Numbah 4: 4!
    • Numbah 3: 3!
    • Numbah 2: 2!
    • Numbah 1: 1! KIDS NEXT DOOR! Goodbye...
• This troper's heart twists when she thinks about the fact that the Delightful Children are not only missing operatives, but missing children as well.
  • You totally broke my heart right there.
• Op. FOUNTAIN. It's pretty sad when they begin to contemplate what will happen to Leona when 300 years of supressed aging will catch up to her. Even after they save her, and she double crosses them, and they save her again, as 1-4 year olds. Waving goodbye to her fountain, watching it crumble to the ground. Her finding a different one and laughing made up for it, a little.
• Numbuh Zero's final message to Numbuh One via the broken recommissioning module at the end of Operation Z.E.R.O. is both heartfelt and heartbreaking...
• Op. SLUMBER, where Numbuh 86 has to invent a super-secret, girls-only mission to get people to come to her slumber party.

Numbuh 86: I know it's unusual, but my mom is forcing me to throw a slumber party and .. I had to invite someone.
Numbuh 3: Why didn't you invite some of your own friends?
Numbuh 86 hangs her head
Numbuh 3: Oh.

• • It makes the moment at the end, where Numbuh 3 insists that she's 86's friend, all the more heartwarming.
• Lizzie's breakup with Nigel is unexpectedly serious. She recognizes that Nigel's duty to the Kids Next Door will never give her the boyfriend she wants and decides that breaking it off would be for the best. Might not drive someone to tears but it is a well-handled moment of drama that can inspire some empathy from the viewer.
• The last image from the series is enough to make anyone bawl.