Metal Gear/Tear Jerker

There is probably not a single video game series more tear jerking than Metal Gear Solid.

---

METAL GEAR SOLID

• Those who entered the game with little idea that there was a bad scenario, when you fail to restrain yourself from the torture, you realize you just killed Meryl. I played the rest of the game in a depression that I just killed Snake's love interest. Perhaps the most immersive moment in any game I played.
  • I tried to play the game after that, but I... just... couldn't... do it...
    • To make things worse, try playing the game and attempting to resist the torture, but having to surrender because you haven't saved for half of the game, and death there brings instant game over. It's possible that it's because this troper is a male raised with the thought men should protect women, and I just killed her because I was to weak (slow) to keep going. It's one hell of a reason NOT to fail for me.
    • It gets sadder. You know how Campbell tells Meryl for most of the game that she's his niece? If you get the bad ending, he actually reveals that she's his daughter.
• There have been many sad moments in video games before and after. And sometimes there have been vilains that got a bit of sympathy. But how often do you stay with an enemy you just shot, as she bleeds to death in the snow, in a dark and cold winter night. That day, Snake was the only one who was not crying, and only because he had no tears left. But we all knew that he also did inside.
  • This troper confesses that Sniper Wolf's death scene (at least when he first saw it in the original) was the closest he'd ever come to crying while playing a video game.
  • This troper, as one that went around heartlessly blasting random mooks that were in the way without any second thoughts, has no shame in admitting that he did cry during that scene. And almost did so again in the 4th game, when in the snow field.
    • This troper dreaded finding her frozen corpse in the snow. But that would probably have been too cruel, even for Metal Gear Solid.
  • You know how well done Sniper Wolf's death is? In that scene, Otacon yells "What am I fighting for?" without creating any Narm.
• Gray Fox's death under the foot of Metal Gear.
  • Made even moreso by the fact that this is a combination Heroic Sacrifice and Redemption Equals Death.
• The final scene of Metal Gear Solid when Snake tells Naomi that her brother told her to move on and doesn't tell her that Frank killed her parents made this troper tear up.
• The bad ending has snake, in sheer badassery and manliness breaking down in tears and punching the floor over the fact that he can't protect anyone, and wherever he goes, people around him die.

METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY

• In Metal Gear Solid 2 where Otacon's younger sister Emma dies. He cries and wails in misery, unable to focus on the mission at hand. Snake then fills his heart with courage once more in a brotherly embrace. As the two warriors left the hacker, Emma's parrot mimics her, saying that she missed him, sending him once more into a tide of grief. The whole sequence is heartrending.
  • Not to mention Otacon has to decide to leave her corpse on the Big Shell, which is going to flood. When the camera shows the area when the flooding is happening, though, I don't think I saw her body...
  • If Otacon wasn't The Woobie already, he damn sure is now.
  • Worse in the fact that Otacon, unlike most others in the series, was never a soldier or a fighter. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    • Any time Otacon cries is made even worse by the acting. Unlike almost any other performance, it actually sounds like someone breaking down. It's not a single tear, it's not controlled sobbing, it's wailing and screaming and crying like a child. Christopher Randolph puts everything into the scenes where he has to cry, and it is heartbreaking.
• Hard to pin it to a single moment, but the fate of Olga Gurlukovich is a very sad one. It made this troper realize: Don't root for the blond Action Girls!
• Your Mileage May Vary, but this part brings a tear to this troper's eye every time she hears it:

Emma: I remembered my brother giving me a piggyback ride. I was sleeping with my ear against his back. I could hear his heartbeat.
Raiden: Sounds like you two were close.
Emma: We were...back then.

• • It also doesn't help the fact that Emma and Otacon hadn't seen each other in years, and then when he sees her again, she dies.

METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER

• The End's last words and death made this troper cry the first time he saw it.
  • The End's death was especially hard for this troper because The End reminded her of her own grandfather that had died a few months before she played the game. That parrot made it even worse for her, always squawking 'Grandpa'…
    • The version of The End's death by old age made this troper feel so bad he restarted his game just to give him that fight he wanted.
• The ending of Metal Gear Solid 3 and the death of The Boss was a very intentional example designed to show Naked Snake, aka Big Boss' Start of Darkness. When she is defeated and asks Snake to kill her, he aims a gun at her head and the game waits for you to press the fire button, which is probably the cruelest thing a video game developer has done. Ever.
  • Anyone who has a caring heart will think to themselves, "No, I can't do this..." during that part. I (MGC) am one of those many. When I first played through the game, I kept thinking, "I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this..." but the game wanted me to, so...I did. And then I cried so much.
  • Or how about the fact that the Boss, one of the heroes of WWII in the MGS universe, would forever go down in history as one of the biggest traitors in United States history akin to the likes of Benedict Arnold, even though she was a good guy the whole time she had supposedly "betrayed" the United States?
    • Just to drive the point home, the Boss knew this was going to happen to her. She knew her only pupil, a man who was like a son to her, would have to be the one to kill her. She knew she was going to have to do terrible things to turn him against her. She knew that her closest comrades, who she'd fought alongside for decades, would die too, because they were too dedicated to the Boss to let her do it alone. She knew that her own government, who was ordering her to do these things, would forever vilify her as a traitor and a monster for it, to prevent nuclear retaliation. And she did it anyway. THAT is how much she loved her country.
    • Couple that with the tragic irony of it all: the woman who fought to help end World War 2 willingly dies to prevent World War 3. The greatest warrior spent her life stopping wars, but who will ever know it?
    • The ending takes on an interesting (and somewhat darker) twist if you consider whether the Boss always intended for Snake to know the truth (she obviously knew EVA would eventually tell him), or if she did it impulsively toward the end, unable to die thinking he'd always see her as a traitor. If it's the latter, then it begs the question of what would have happened had she not said anything. Would Big Boss have still lashed out against the world and tried to create his warrior's heaven, or would he have simply become disillusioned but ultimately harmless? It was the outrage and sense of injustice that drove him all that time - would it have been such a powerful motivation if he didn't have to live alone with the truth? Could the Boss's one moment of weakness regarding her legacy - or at least her overestimation of her protege's ability to cope with it - have been the thing that started all of this?
  • This Troper remembers holding back tears throughout that entire sequence. Started to get over it with the 'congratulations, job well done' scene with the president, was perfectly fine through the bit with EVA, although pissed at the fact that she was really just screwing you over (literally) to get the Legacy. Then they showed the graveyard scene, and Big Boss saluted her grave... This Troper started bawling.
    • To clarify a little, Big Boss does the complete military salute, and doesn't deviate from the regulation at all except for a single tear rolling down from his only eye.
      • You think that's bad? Holding L1 during that sequence will make the scene first-person.
  • You don't see EVA's face for any of the last portion of the ending scene, but you hear her start to break down and sob. Listening to her voice cracking on the last part of her voiceover, coupled with the visual on-screen at that moment, makes it very hard to not get choked up along with her.
• The flower petals in The Boss' death scene were extremely poignant, especially considering the different cultural connotations of the color white. In Western culture, white symbolizes purity and innocence, and is worn by the bride at weddings. In Eastern culture, it symbolizes death, and is worn at funerals. Red is also subject to such duality. Western culture views red as bloody and impure, while Eastern culture views it as a color of celebration. So the petals turning from white to red actually has two meanings: the first is that it symbolizes Naked Snake's loss of innocence as he inherits the title of "Boss" and becomes Big Boss; the second being that while The Boss' death is sad, she's moved on to a better place.
  • IN MEMORY OF A PATRIOT WHO SAVED THE WORLD 192X-1964
    • You know it's a real tear jerker when just seeing those nine words is enough make your own vision blur too.
• I can't help but tear up when I hear the Boss' monologue prior to the fight, in which she explains everything she has lost in service to her country and its pointless Cold War (most poignantly, having her child taken away from her, and having to kill her Russian former comrade and lover), as well as her dream of uniting the world. Its bad enough when it just seems like a non-ranting version of a Motive Rant. It's even worse when you realise that her speech is to explain her continuing loyalty in spite of everything she's lost.
• The song "Way to Fall," which plays during the credits, is a very sad song, especially because the lyrics go so well with The Boss' death and how Big Boss feels.

Son, you've got a way to fall,
They'll tell you where to go,
But they won't know...
Son, you'd better take it all,
They'll tell you what they know,
But they won't show...
Ohhhhhh...
I've got something in my throat...
I need to be alone...
While I suffer...

METAL GEAR SOLID: PORTABLE OPS

• It's positively scandalous that no one's mentioned the death of Elisa. Especially considering that she's in her early teens, has an obvious crush on Naked Snake, and is seen by him as almost a daughter figure, considering how freely he talks to her about himself. Not to mention her vision of Big Boss' future , complete with foreshadowing of the Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid series. Double tear jerker for fans of the entire series.
  • How about the death of Jonathan. The cold, matter of fact message you get after is just heartbreaking.

Jonathan has died.

• The potential death of Python, Snake's old war buddy.
• The music that plays during the battle with Gene is quite sad. Probably because it takes place right after Elisa's death.

METAL GEAR SOLID 4: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS

• CQC hug. That is all I have to say.
• This troper has to mention Raiden's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Act 4. Sure, he wasn't dead, but the music, the presentation, the voiceover with him and Rose... it was just so sad.
• This Troper found that the return to Shadow Moses Island tugged at his heart strings like no tomorrow. The depressing and dark mood in which the flashbacks are presented is just gut-wrenching. Yes, even "A surveillance camera...?". Stop looking at me like that.
  • This Troper would like to agree with that "even" moment. The strangely emotional part is the flashing images of MGS1 graphics, and after it? The camera... falls off its support and shatters on the ground. Poignant.
  • This Troper is so glad she isn't the only one. Seeing Shadow Moses again was nostalgic on its own (even though she had finished MGS1 only months before, but that's besides the point), but then "The Best Is Yet To Come" started playing... Then the tears started to flow. She tried holding them back, but oh god, the flashbacks weren't helping. Yes, even the surveillance camera one. She might get shot and otherwise brutally maimed for this, but that was the tearjerkiest part of MGS4 for her.
    • That moment carries out an absolutely brutal assault on the heart of anyone who isn't a Complete Monster. To think that ten years ago (almost literally if you've been playing since the advent of the Solid series or before) you stood on this spot and there was so much to come, and now it's all rusted-out, decayed, cold, dead. You don't feel any closer to Snake than in that moment because it sums up his personal journey so well.
  • This Troper just discovered that when you equip the Mk23 (Snake's gun from MGS1) for the first time and aim it, Snake will haggardly say "Just like old times", which is strangely poignant.
    • Yes. This made This Troper stop and weep for longer than she should have. Then she soldiered on, because dammit, that's what Snake would do!
  • The beginning of Act 4 was so effective. The first few notes of "The Best is Yet to Come" caused This Troper, who had been holding it together through the nostalgic 'dream', to break down.
• During the Wedding scene where Hal and Sunny watch the sunset together, there's a brief moment that always gets this troper. Sunny, knowing nothing about Snake's plan to kill himself, asks when Snake is coming back. Otacon's reply is visibly painful.

Otacon: Snake... Is sick. So, he went on a trip to help him get better.
Sunny: We're not going with him?
Otacon: ...No. He needs to be alone.
Sunny: ..I wonder if I'll ever see him again.

• • What absolutely seals it, however, is Otacon's next line, which is probably one of the most simple and honest statements in a series built around lies and deception. "Snake... Had a hard life. He needs some time to rest." Cue the Manly Tears, from both Otacon and the player.
    • This Troper cried again, just READING about it.
  • Naomi. Oh, god, Naomi...
    • "You have... such beautiful eyes..."
    • To sum it up, Noami reveals how she and Vamp should be dead, as they suffer from cancer. While she is doing this, she lets herself die from said cancer, all the while Otacon is weeping, helpless to stop her from killing herself, begging Noami to not die. Noami ignores this and pushes the Mk. III away from her, telling Snake, Otacon, and Raiden to go. This troper actually cried like a baby the first time he saw the cutscene, as if Otacons emotions were controlling him. The entire scene was heartbreaking, and whoever doesn't feel anything from the scene either has to have nanomachines in them shutting off their emotions, or is a monster.
  • "This is good...isn't it?"
    • This troper held it together until the cigar fell from his lips.
• Not to mention when Snake apparently commits suicide in order to prevent his rapidly mutating FOXDIE from creating a worldwide epidemic right after saving the world... Thankfully he doesn't, but still...
  • Heavens, yes. This troper didn't cry when the shot rang out and the doves flew, indicating that he'd done it -- she screamed. Heart: broken. Thankfully, Big Boss showed up to make it okay again. Well, sort of.
  • This is pretty much Snake's MO throughout the entire game. From when he runs into a fire to pull Big Mama out, screaming in pain as his face gets burned in the process -- and it will stay that way for the rest of your playthrough, cutscenes and gameplay -- to the horrifyingly sad trudge through the room being bombarded by microwave radiation, the player having to jam Triangle to get him to push forward as his suit pops and fizzles and his strength depletes, forcing him to have to pull himself along the ground with one arm at the end, all the while a cutscene takes up the top half of the screen showing all his friends slowly being overtaken in their respective fights.
    • The game's whole collection of Tear Jerker moments were building up to that sequence. Up until there it's all pain and sacrifice, and then you finally turn the tide and make it right. Big. Damn. Heroes.
    • The scene in the microwave hallway may also very well be Snake's single most awesome moment in the series.
• This Troper started crying when the dying Big Boss painfully stands up to salute in front of The Boss's grave.
  • For this Troper, it's when Big Boss tells Old Snake first that the whole saga "began with a bunch of old fools" and implicitly including himself... then that "[i]f you'd been in my place back then... Maybe you wouldn't have made the same mistakes that I did." Yes, the one that we're all gay for admits that perhaps Old Snake is better than him... arguably canonizing Kojima's belief that Solid "Old" Snake is the only true hero of Metal Gear Solid.
  • And for This Troper, it was Big Boss echoing The Boss's line "There's only room for one Snake and one Boss"... and then reconsidering, deciding that the world would be better off with none, and telling Snake to live his life before his own death. Snake does die at the end... but Dave can finally live.
  • The whole deal with Big Boss and his cigar. All throughout the game, the player sees quotes of Snake of "having one last smoke before death". I was expecting it to be true for Solid Snake, but not for Big Boss. And the way it was shown. Big boss having any life left to light the cigar up, then Snake lights it up for him.
  • What makes the conversation even more poignant is that it's almost the complete opposite of the conversation Snake and Big Boss have in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, shortly before Snake defeats him.
• This troper may be alone in this, but when she realized that Big Mama and Ocelot both did EVERYTHING for Big Boss, just so he would wake up again and be able to live his life...she found that to be pretty powerful, despite all of the things Ocelot did. Combine that with the fact that neither of them were able to see Big Boss again before they died, and you've got a Tearjerker to the 10th power.
• The final fistfight between Liquid Snake and Solid Snake was absolutely heartwrenching for this troper. Something snapped inside when he realized he was watching two old men with nothing left to live for beating each other to death, to a heartbreakingly beautiful sunset that symbolized the twilight of their once-glorious lives. The troper spent several-minutes crying before remembering to press pause and saving the game. Harry Gregson Willams' warm and sad guitar motiff only made the tears pour harder.
  • That guitar went on this player's iPod as part of the game's OST, and was promptly forgotten about until one late July afternoon jogging through the park. Cue tears, and pulling off to the side to sob behind a tree.
• Snake and Raiden's relationship as mentor/student and later comrades takes a turn for the tragic when Raiden declares he has NOTHING left to live for except for following Snake and his vision for freedom for themselves. Snake, knowing he'll die soon tries to discourage Raiden from following him, but Raiden drags himself along the floor and desperately clutches Snake's leg, begging him not to leave him alone after having lost his parents, his innocence due to his child soldier days, his love and his child. After cursing his birth, Snake then tells Raiden, "You were the lightning in that rain." It hammered home that in many ways, Snake is the closest thing Raiden had to a real father. Manly tears were formed after that scene.
  • This troper held it together (if barely) 'til Snake's line. Damn it all.
  • This scene was made all the more poignant when this troper realized that it was, essentially, a conversation between two men with no futures - one with little time left to live, and one with little reason left to live.
• Pretty much all of this troper's friends are in the military, so scenes in any well-written drama where the military gets owned tend to be Nightmare Fuel for him. As such, the end of Act 3 after Liquid uses Guns of the Patriots for the first time and slaughters the joint Army/Marines task force, with two P90s, on top of it, really got to him. And then the scene ends, showing the dead, some of which are doing a dead-man's float as the river carries them downstream. And it shows you the handful of survivors, probably less than ten, reeling from the loss of SOP and the sudden ensuing battle fatigue and on top of everything, their brothers in arms are all dead around them...manly tears that would put a waterfall to shame.
  • At this troper's count, it was six P90s. Two by Liquid. Two midway down the ship. And two at the opposite end. Not that it matters in the long run.
• The end of MGS4, when Big Boss "sends Zero back to nothing." Yes the guy was the Big Bad, but in the end, he was just an oblivious old man in a wheelchair, completely unaware of all the things he had done, convulsing as his air supply was cut off, while flashbacks of the good man he used to be appear on the screen.
  • During Act 3, when Eva is talking about Big Boss's death at Zanzibar Land she talks about Zero's reaction to it. "For Zero, more than anyone else... your.... father.... was an irreplaceable icon." And then she comes right back and speaks the truth. "No... the truth is... for Zero.... he was an irreplaceable friend". And while this is happening, you can see a picture of Zero; it's hard to make it out, but he looks utterly distraught in sorrow.
• "Let it go, my son. I'm not here to fight. Or should I call you, brother? It's over, time for you to put aside the gun, and live."
• The microwave corridor. Raiden is being overpowered by FROGs, Meryl and Johnny are running out of ammunition and taking a few bullets, the Missouri is being overrun by Scarabs... and all the while Snake is slowly being cooked by radiation - he's literally dragging himself along as bits of his suit (along with the Solid Eye) explode, Rose and Campbell turn away from their screen, unable to watch, and Otacon is begging Snake not to give up. And if you die... Otacon's agonised scream of "SNAAAAKE!!" had this troper sobbing into his controller for a good fifteen minutes. Oh gods, just thinking about it is threatening to overload the old tear ducts again.
• Raiden's ending in MGS4=,] where he gets to meet his little boy. The music makes me cry every time. ** Even though at the time he played [=MGS4 this troper still had a general dislike for Jack (which wasn't aided by his portrayal in the game), he was almost driven to tears when, at the end of Act 4, Outer Haven supposedly made him into the second cyborg pancake on the island. As he is apparently crushed, Snake screams "No!", and Jack screams Rose's name... and then blackness. Then the flashbacks start... "Jack, do you remember the day we met?" Holy crap, I'm almost crying now just thinking about it. Of course, they had to ruin that by MAKING HIM ALIVE IN THE NEXT SCENE. I mean, WTF?
• Three words; You're pretty good.
  • *hand gesture*
• This AMV is a perfect summary of Metal Gear Solid 4. Melancholy and bittersweet, but somehow...optimistic. One of the finest fan-made music videos this troper has ever seen.
• What about Otacon, at the end of 4, stubbornly refusing to let Snake die alone? Snake points out that he'll be dead soon, and Otacon replies that this is exactly why he needs to be with him. Even if it's just a voiceover on a black screen, it broke this troper's heart. The Power of Friendship, indeed.
• After the A Is are destroyed in the end of MGS4, the soldiers from the Missouri pull the surviving FROGS out of the water, who are suffering mental breakdown without the nanomachines supressing their fears and stress. In one of the boats an exhausted mercenary is holding her comrade, patting her head. You shot these bitches by the dozen, but they probably just got pulled into this entire mess like everyone else.
• Remember the final battle in MGS3? The field of white flowers that turned red when you shot the Boss? Look around the graveyard in the epilogue. Manly Tears will ensue.
• For this troper, at the end, during Meryl's wedding, I thought it was so sad to have that scene spliced together with the apparent suicide of Solid Snake, and when they ask her where he is she just says: "You know that guy. He always keeps you waiting", echoing his catch-phrase. Literal tears came.
• It's fairly subtle, but when Snake makes it to the server room aboard Outer Heaven and it seems to be filled with copies of The Boss's headstone, complete with flowers, this troper had to take a moment.
• The backstories of the B&Bs...all of them. Under all that metal, sadness, anger, laughter and pain, they were innocent women, driven insane by the shear horror of what life had thrown at them. This troper was recently replaying the game, and just broke down crying at the sounds of gunfire and screaming during Octopus' Beauty phase. Oh God...

METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER

• Excuse this troper for putting this first, but he doesn't want to read any spoilers for this game yet. Just knowing Otacon's dad is hard for this troper due to knowing how he dies from MGS2.
• The game's theme song Heaven's Divide really tugs at the heart with just the instrumentals. Especially so if you pay attention to the lyrics.
  • There's also Koi No Yokushiryoku (Love Deterrence), Paz's theme which plays during the fight with her.
• Some of Paz's diary entries.
• At the end of Chapter 4, when the mammal pod AI acts out the will of the Boss and drowns itself rather than have the United States launch a nuclear strike, all while singing THIS. If you don't tear up then YOU HAVE NO SOUL.
  • There's also the fact that while it does this, Big Boss unties The Boss' bandana and lets it fly into the sea with it.
  • I think what makes it worse, what makes it sting is that Big Boss finally accepts his title only while denouncing the Boss. It's really painful to see him basically accept his title out of little more than spite, and not fully understanding her. And because we've already seen his death, we know that he'll never fully understand her for over forty years.
• It's surprising that EVA's letter didn't make on it here.
• Euthanizing The Boss's Horse the exact same way you killed her in Metal Gear Solid 3 deserves to be here.

---

This is good, isn't it?