Portal (series)/Tear Jerker

• No love for the death of the faithful Companion Cube?
  • Indeed. Even in universe the destruction of the Companion Cube was supposed to show how out of touch GLaDOS is with the human psyche. It was clearly supposed to be a jab at how GLaDOS perceives human emotions, not an actual sad moment. Much in the same way the constant promise of "Cake" is meant to show how poorly GLaDOS understands the concept of rewards in that she really seems to consider "Cake" as some brass ring an average human will put themselves through Hell in order to obtain, the Companion Cube shows that GLaDOS is so naive of the human condition that she thinks she can create an emotional attachment to an object simply by telling you to have one.
  • The worst part? In Portal 2, GLaDOS says the companion cubes are sentient. This is right after she vaporizes two or three cubes in a single test chamber.
  • Then again, she could easily be have been lying simply to screw with Chell.
    • However, when you get close to a Companion Cube in Portal 2, it begins to play a little song.
    • And guess which song it is? The turret opera.
  • In Test Chamber 7 of the sequel, you run into another Companion Cube. At the end of the chamber, GLaDOS tells you that while the Emancipation Grill would normally eliminate anything you try to take with you, this one is broken, so don't take anything. So sue me, I went to get my cubie buddy back. I take it down to the elevator and...

GLaDOS: I think that one was about to say 'I love you.' They ARE sentient, of course. We just have a LOT of them.

• • • The Companion Cube poetry behind the walls of level 17. Poor Rattman...
  • Also, don't tell me that you didn't feel at least a pang of sadness the first time you knocked over a turret, only to have it say, in a melancholy voice, "I don't hate you..."
    • If you use a turret as a shield while a different one is firing at you, your makeshift shield screams, "W-wait! No! ...It's me!"
    • The turret voices have been updated in Portal 2, with a heartrending "Nooooooo!" if you fling them into space. Thankfully, the turrets forgive you in the end and sing you a song.
  • The Cube is just a box. It has no feelings, it has no personality, and it has no voice. The Curiosity Core, on the other hand, is a childish, naive little AI that asks questions about anything it sees and cheerfully greets you once it recognizes you, all in a cutesy voice that sounds like the turrets but absent the creepiness. It's also the first core you incinerate. It's scream is also pretty horrible to listen to.
    • Actually, in the upcoming comic from Valve (meant to bridge the gap between the two games), the Companion Cube DOES speak, acting almost as Doug Rattmann's Talking Appliance Sidekick. This, of course, suddenly makes incinerating the Companion Cube worse.
• '"Look, we're both stuck in this place. I'll use lasers to inscribe a line down the centre of the facility! And one half will be where you live, and I'll live in the other half. We won't have to try to kill each other, or even talk if we don't feel like it!"' (GLaDOS) She actually sounded a bit freaked out here...or as much as a computer/robot/AI thing could.
  • It Got Worse in the sequel. Its revealed early on that GLaDOS spent the time since the first game being forced to relive Chell killing her over and over. And that's not even counting the crap she goes through later. Combined with the fact that Valve went out of their way to make her more sympathetic as the game goes on... Fortunately, she gets a relatively happy ending.
  • Along this same vein, GLaDOS' screams of pain during the core switch can tug at some players' heartstrings.
• Finding out that Chell gets dragged back into the lab again was depressing enough, but hearing that in Portal 2 she wakes up centuries in the future, Jesus, there is literally nothing left for her outside. The world outside the lab is a completely different place by now, and she can't even have the Tragic Dream of going back to a normal life anymore. She doesn't have anything worth fighting for anymore besides her own life.
  • Not only that, but as revealed in the comic, Doug Rattmann attempted to save Chell from getting dragged back into the labs, ignoring his spirit Companion Cube telling him to run, insisting that he had to try to save her. Seeing that the Party Escort Bot had put her in an offline cryo-stasis chamber, Chell would have died if it hadn't been for Doug activating the chamber, even though he knew that he couldn't set an automatic wake-up time. Without the intervention of Wheatley, she would never have woken up. Tear Jerker for Doug and Chell indeed.
  • Rattmann's dialogue during this part is pretty sad as well.

Rattmann: So it's the long sleep...or the long sleep. And I don't know which is worse. Forgive me.

• Towards the end of Lab Rat, the Companion Cube is asking Doug how he knew that Chell would be able to do it, how he knew she could get the two of them out. He gives a perfect non-answer, saying that he just had a hunch. It's not until after he dies that we learn why he chose her.

Proctor's Note: Test subject is abnormally stubborn. She never gives up. Ever. Rejected, do not test.

• Even after hearing all the hilarious craziness of Cave Johnson in the sequel, you'll be sad by the end. Cave Johnson made some amazing things and had absolutely no morals whatsoever, but...everything he created, he did by accident. He wanted to make diet pudding; he made repulsion gel instead. He wanted to make a fuel injection system de-icer; he got a psychotic AI instead. This is all very funny...until then you find out he's dying from exposure to all the crazy things he's experimented on, and despite the amazing devices his company has created, by the end they can't even afford to pay the homeless and unemployed a few bucks to act as test subjects. Even his plan to save himself by uploading himself to a computer never works out...for him, anyway.
  • The real moment is just at the end of his rant. Even though it sounds mostly in GLaDOS' usual monotone, something about this moment...

GLaDOS: Goodbye, sir.

• • • What makes the above (including the farewell) even more sobering is when you stop and actually realize that these recordings are all that's left of Cave Johnson, and that they'll almost certainly never be heard again. They, along with his image and the parts of the facility he oversaw himself, will now sit underneath Aperture Laboratories forgotten, in silence, forever.
      • "Haec omnia transeunt" All things pass away
    • It's implied in the Co-op mode, however, that GLaDOS eventually got to link herself with the old facility's power grid, which means that she, along with her new batch of test subjects, hasn't seen and heard the last of Cave Johnson.
  • His undeniably awesome combustible lemon rant is quite sad when visualizing what he must have looked like when recorded it. A near penniless man overlooking his empire as it stands on its last legs while slowly dieing a painful death, hunched over a tape deck after he just downed another round of pain pills, screaming his frustration at life while tears stream down his face, most likely breaking down into sobbing after the tape stops recording. Even sadder is that his misery is almost entirely his fault to begin with, and his screaming rant is likely an attempt to deflect his own personal responsibility.
  • The recording you hear before the Conversion Gel chamber. "Welcome to the Enrichment Center...*cough*" At this point, with just that one line of dialogue, you already know everything about Cave's situation. He's broke. He's sick. He's completely demoralized. The enthusiasm of a once magnificent entrepreneur and one of the greatest minds of a generation, gone. All that remains is science, and so, almost as soulless as the robots installed to replace his management, Cave greets you with a simple line...and yet the way he says it, all the subtext of a defeated man...
• Wheatley floating through space in the ending of Portal 2. Especially because he's genuinely sorry for what he did, but in all likelihood, he'll never be able to make it up to Chell.
  • Even moreso when you remember that he honestly couldn't control himself when he was attached to the body. The fact that he remembers it means he knows he did it, and he probably didn't want to hurt Chell at all.
  • Another part is when Wheatley screamed "GRAB ME, GRAB ME!" Given just shortly before in the boss dialogue, he revealed how hurt he was that you never caught him, it just twisted the knife.
  • For a bit of HONF mixed in, remember that this IS the Half-Life universe, and there are very likely to be mind-breakingly horrible things in space.
• At the end of Portal 2, when GLaDOS says she's letting Chell go and deleting Caroline. She could've killed Chell and deleted Caroline easily while you were knocked out, but she didn't. It's implied by her actions and "Want You Gone" that she lied about deleting Caroline to intimidate Chell into never coming back, probably because GLaDOS is worried she'll go insane again.
  • In typical GLaDOS fashion, she contradicts herself repeatedly in the ending song, first admitting again that you were her "only friend", then denying that she was talking to you, then erasing the words "Maybe I'll stop feeling so bad" from the screen even though she still sings them. You're watching her struggle with complex and conflicting emotions towards someone who's become one of the most important people in her entire existence, even as she desperately pushes you away and denies that "She needs anyone".
  • What's more, in another tear-jerking occasion at the end and also possibly a contradiction, the turrets singing the "Cara Mia" opera at the end. Translated, the lyrics are a final farewell to Chell as she ascends to the surface, possibly organized by the Caroline part of GLaDOS. Personally, it was perhaps the most emotionally affecting part of the whole ending (and not because of the beautiful soprano).
  • Of course, as she herself states "Killing you hasn't worked out all that well in the past."
    • This is after she admits that you weren't her greatest enemy, but her best friend. The ensuing Mood Whiplash is what makes it so sad.
  • Note too that a few scenes before, GLaDOS mentions that she's hearing a conscience and it's her own voice. Where as before, she may have been conflicted between a handful of negative emotions, now GLaDOS has to deal with more positive ones that outright contradict everything else she's thinking. In short, she now has a Wheatley she can't ever get rid of and one that's much more powerful than the actual Wheatley.
• Right before the above example, when Chell wakes up after the complete and utter Lunacy:

GLaDOS: (genuinely) Oh, thank God! You're all right!

• When you wander into the Bring Your Daughter to Work Day Science Fair in Portal 2. There are names on all of the projects, and on the very last project, in small grade-schooler scrawl, is written 'Chell'. This has led to theries that she was a daughter of scientists working there, and they were most likely killed by GLaDOS.
  • And if you buy into the theory that Chell is actually Caroline's daughter,, it doesn't get any less tragic, because...well... You know...
• In regards to whether GLaDOS deleted Caroline or not, Word of God confirms she did.
  • Except for now Word of God says that she only might have deleted Caroline. Oh Valve and your ability to change your mind that leaves things up for speculation! So Caroline might not be deleted after all!
• And just to twist in the knife, here's the translation of lyrics to the opera the turrets sing to you as you leave:

Dear beautiful, my beautiful darling
My child, oh Chell [pun: "oh heavens"]
For I hold her in esteem
For I hold her in esteem
Farewell to my dear!


My dear girl,
why do you not walk away
Yes, far away from science
My dear, my dear girl
Ah, my beautiful
Ah, my dear
Ah, my dear
Ah, my child
Oh dear, my dear

• • "Cara Mia" is at the top of this list for some players, as the translation shows it's essentially an aria sung by a mother saying goodbye to her child. Take that with some of the Luke, I Am Your Father theories and it becomes downright heartbreaking: if you think of GLaDOS as Chell's mother (or something that used to be her,) then the song is basically GLaDOS announcing to Chell that she loves her and she's sending her away to protect her. "Stay away from science..."
    • Well, some of her words have an interesting twist when you think she loves Chell:

One day they woke me up, So I could live forever, It’s such a shame the same will never happen to you. (GLaDOS is genuinely sad she will outlive Chell?)
You’ve got your short, sad life left, that’s what I’m counting on, I’ll let you get right to it... (GLaDOS is saying that life is short, enjoy it now and forget about everything that's happened?)
Go make some new disaster, That’s what I’m counting on, You’re someone else’s problem... (GLaDOS wants Chell to ruin someone else's plans - the Combine?)

• Fan content, but beautiful.
  • This fan video, which uses the same song and looks a bit reminiscent of Wall-E's ending credits at times. If you didn't pity Chell before, this will do the trick.
• Playing Chapter 9 right after 5 is absolutely heartwrenching. Watching what was basically your best friend go mad as the rush of power reinforces every negative emotion, then having to take down said friend while he raises some concertingly good points (You DID drop him and you DID fail to mention GLaDOS would be rather pissed if she ever woke up) is an emotional sucker punch.
  • Wheatley's Villainous Breakdown during the final boss fight. His "The Reason You Suck" Speech is less like an villain's evil gloating and more like the ranting of a heartbroken child who doesn't understand why everyone has turned against him, or maybe that of a scorned Lover who hates you for choosing someone else. As he starts to lose it more and more, he accuses you of taking advantage of him all along as a means to escape, then abandoning him when he needed you most so that you could run off with your "best friend over there." He even brings up the fact that you didn't catch him when he dislodged from his management rail, which he honestly believed would have killed him, and hysterically accuses you of missing on purpose because you wanted to get rid of him. (This is made much, much worse by the fact that even if you honest-to-god tried to catch him, it's impossible to do so.)
    • What makes it even worse is that, if you listen closely to his voice during the rant, he sounds an awful lot like he's crying.
    • Although still sad, some of this is tempered a bit by the fact that the only reason you 'abandoned' him was that he went mad, trapped you in an elevator and punched you down an elevator shaft.
    • Not to mention that he could have told you that he's an Intelligence Dampening Sphere that the Aperture scientists once attached to GLaDOS- therefore, she would've been just as angry at seeing him again as she was with you.
• During the final boss fight, the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device is the first thing to get sucked out into space. Goodbye, old buddy...You served us well.
• Leaving the Oracle Turret behind. Twice. I know you had no choice way back at the beginning of the game, being unable to smash vents unaided, but Wheatley's reaction in that part was, personally, worse than him turning evil and trying to kill you. All throughout, I was hoping the oracle turret would get a happy ending.
  • I just realized a bit of Fridge Horror concerning the Oracle Turret that is also a Tear Jerker, especially if you believe the theory that Caroline is Chell's mother. Considering her constant references to Old Aperture. she either had been there or had strong premonitions about it. Either way, she might have been there when Caroline was uploaded into GLaDOS, and realized that Caroline was still there, but never got the chance to tell anyone. If she knew that Chell was Caroline's daughter, her words might have been her cryptic way of saying, "Your mother still sleeps within GLaDOS, she's still there. But when you and GLaDOS are cast down there, you'll find little Caroline. Just remember her, okay?" Oracle Turret might have been waiting all those years to tell someone who would listen that Caroline was still there, they just needed to wake her up again. And because of her premonition, she decides to tell it to Chell, the last possible human she could turn to to bring Caroline back to GLaDOS's awareness and reunite them. That's pretty much a mix of Fridge Horror, Tear Jerker, and a little heartwarming all in one.
  • I felt a pang when picking up the Oracle Turret for the first time, she just sounded so relieved and sad and exhausted in those two words: "Thank you..."
• When GLaDOS retorted "What exactly is wring with being adopted?", which speaks volumes about her ability to access some of Caroline's memories.
• Why, Wheatley, why?
• It may just be me, but Exile Vilify just brings a tear to my eye.
  • Especially after reading the Lab Rat comic, and learning about Rattman's past.
  • The song was apparently originally used for an easter egg ending, presumably one with a not so happy feel.
  • You think the song's sad enough on it's own, right? Well, guess what? Someone made a stop-motion music video of the song with Rattman and Chell. It makes the song go from tearjerking to outright depressing. You can watch it here.
• Is Caroline's consciousness really stuck inside GLaDOS, alone and unloved, for eternity? That's pretty heartbreaking.
• GLaDOS sounds so sad and alone when singing 'Want you Gone'.
  • The strongest part of the song is either how she tries to retract the lines "maybe I'll stop feeling so bad", but still stays them, or the part when GLaDOS says "I don't need anyone now." The way she sings it is really sad: a bit deeper, and her voice trembles as much as it's possible for a robot. It sounds as she's forcing herself to say it and/or is in the verge of crying.
• In Co-Op mode, one of the voice-overs GLaDOS is her saying you both have gotten very close, and she's known one other team like you. One was "an imbecile" she had to destroy, the other she doesn't elaborate on. Obviously, this is referencing Wheatley and Chell, and how they did have a friendship between each other as they tried to escape the facility, before Wheatley goes mad with power. Thanks for depressing me with the reminder that Wheatley is stuck in space, unable to apologize for what he did, game!
  • Most of GLaDOS' comments in Co-op make me sad when you realize she's saying things she told Chell in single player Because she might miss her after allLike the deer, the weight thing, ect. Plus her reference about how human subjects are better doesn't help... She says it in a cruel way, but that's just how GLaDOS is. Tsundere much?
• In the final Co-Op level, when you find the vault containing human subjects you see a reprogrammed turret which screamed "I need to protect the humans!" The turret is quickly killed off by GLaDOS just so she could deploy blue gel (and possibly silence the turret).
• The way GLaDOS just casually crushes Wheatley after waking up.
• The way GLaDOS screams while you replace her with Wheatley may result in this, with a dash of What the Hell, Hero? since it's entirely your fault.