Painful Confession

Having the truth come out hurt a lot worse than the slap she got a moment ago.

"I never wanted you to find out about it, this wicked love that cannot be requited."

— Shizuru Fujino to Natsuki Kuga, My-HiME

There's something you need to get off your chest. Something that's bothering you, something that's nagging you in the back of your mind, something you just want to say. If you pick a particularly stressful time to say it, chances are that it will be a Painful Confession.

This trope pops up most often in moments of guilt, but can appear during a therapy session or talk show when someone expresses their deepest feelings. Painful Confessions can also appear during an intimate one-on-one with someone and, yes, even a literal confessional! If the characters are in immediate danger, expect one of them to a. confess their feelings to/for someone else, or b. reveal their shame over something they did. One important thing to note about this trope is that the party listening to the confessor doesn't usually know about the secret being confessed. Tears are a common occurrence when a Painful Confession comes into play.

Can overlap with Cathartic Crying and Tears of Remorse. A Stepford Smiler might do this while admitting how sad they really are. The character may then learn that It's Okay to Cry. Sometimes, the confession is part of a Wham Line. This trope will often be part of an Honesty Aesop. It may or may not involve a Dark Secret or an Awful Truth, and it might happen during an Anguished Outburst, or be dragged out of the character while Staging an Intervention. The character might blame themselves for something that has happened (and they may be right). This may involve a "The Reason I Suck" Speech. May often overlap with The Reveal, Internal Reveal, Forced Out of the Closet, or an Anguished Declaration of Love.

As there may be climactic, plot-relevant reasons for confessions, beware of unmarked spoilers.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Asteroid in Love: The fact that she is moving again about half a year after reuniting with Mira is so heartbreaking to Ao that she doesn't even know how to confess that to Mira for two-and-a-half months, only forced to confess by Mai when they visit the shrine during New Year's, when Ao is traumatized by Mira's (otherwise mundane) new year's wish involving both.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stone Ocean: Weather Report's adoptive mother Mrs. Bluemarine cries in shame when she confesses to Pucci that 16 years ago, when her baby son was stillborn, she switched him with one of the Pucci family's newborn twin boys and made them think one of their sons had been born dead.
  • JoJolion: After the Higashikata family catch Jobin in the midst of nearly killing Yasuho, along with seeing he's been hiding the Locacaca branch all along, he fully admits that he's been acting in secret activities to finally end the Hereditary Curse with the right intentions. But after Norisuke realizes that Jobin's committed murder, the latter develops Broken Tears and knocks Norisuke unconscious, and insists to the shocked relatives that he cannot turn back and they're still on the right path.
• Martian Successor Nadesico: Played with. Prospector quietly lays out the truth about the murder of Akito's parents, and how the United Earth Government and Nergal had carefully orchestrated affairs for their own benefit. Prospector was not the mastermind, or even the perpetrator, but he knew of the underhanded dealings and bore them silent witness. Erina Wong, who is implied to have a crush on Akito Tenkawa, and previously on his late father, can only stare quietly at Akito as he hears Prospector lay out what happened, and tearfully pleads with him to stay.
• My-HiME: Overlapping with Anguished Declaration of Love, Shizuru was caught kissing Natsuki while she slept by her not-so-friendly rival on the Absurdly Powerful Student Council Haruka Suzushiro and her friend, Yukino Kikukawa. Natsuki wakes to them arguing, and overhears Yukino accuse Shizuru of doing something to Natsuki the night before as she slept. When Shizuru summons her Element, a Whip Sword naginata, Natsuki comes out to try and stop her friend from doing anything rash. Shizuru, wide-eyed, suspects Natsuki may have overheard Yukino's accusation, and reaches out to comfort Natsuki, only for Natsuki to recoil with a Big "NO!". This causes Shizuru to essentially admit that she loved Natsuki, was ashamed of her own feelings, and never wanted anyone, least of all Natsuki, to know.
• Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure: In episode 43, Elena has tears streaming down her face as she admits to her mother that she finds it hard to make everyone smile. Her mother then tells her that smiling for someone is good, but crying for someone is just as admirable.

Comic Books

• X-Factor: Dr. Valerie Cooper, having been manipulated by the Acolytes into attempting to have X-Factor eliminated, is on her knees, tearfully admitting her involvement in Project Wideawake, a government program to develop Sentinels. She says it's an emergency failsafe, in case X-Factor failed, and that she never intended for it to be used against the team, saying that they were her friends. Quicksilver is having none of it.
  Val: You're my friends!
  Quicksilver: "Some of my best friends are mutants." Oh, Valerie, how typical — of a Flat Scan.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: In "Abandon Ship, Part 1", Mercury stops delaying the relaying of unfortunate information, that she needs to leave her new location. As Cathy says:
  “Mercury, you have to tell me about things like that the moment you learn about them, so I can adjust our strategies!”
  “I wanted to be sure that I couldn’t come up with a solution first,” Ami admitted, sounding uncharacteristically sulky.
• No Guts, No Glory: Buttercup has been hiding stomach pain from her family, as well as the fact that she feels inadequate. When her stomach pain turns out to be a Ruptured Appendix, the Professor tells her off for hiding her condition from him. She then breaks down sobbing, admitting that she feels like she has nothing unique about herself, unlike her sisters.

Films — Animated

• The Bad Guys (2022): The film begins with a discussion between Mr. Wolf and Mr. Snake regarding Snake's dislike of birthdays. Snake refuses to talk about it and wants Wolf to drop the topic. When Wolf and the gang break up later in the film, Snake — already hurting from the betrayal of Wolf sabotaging their heist so he could go good — confesses the reason he hates his birthday: no one ever came to his party. He goes on to say that his birthdays remind him that the world sees him as a "scary, good-for-nothing monster". He then says that that pain doesn't compare to Wolf — the only one he thought he could trust — stabbing him in the back. All throughout his confession, the pain, anger, and anguish are evident on Snake's face.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show: At the beginning of the film, one of the lanes in the cul-de-sac is completely damaged from the Eds' latest scam. The cul-de-sac kids — who are the injured victims of said scam — are after them, so the Eds decide to run away. At his house, Double D tries to write a letter to his parents explaining why he has run away. As he tries to explain what he did to the cul-de-sac kids, he constantly tears up and can only write a string of adjectives before he stops and wails.
  Edd: I regretfully confess to my involvement in the inexcusable, unconscionable, reprehensible, abhorrent, detrimental, detestable...immoral, thoughtless, HURTFUL— (grunts) OH, WHAT HAVE WE DONE?! (bawls)
• Elemental (2023): Near the end, after Ember barely manages to save her family's shop during a flood, which led to Wade seemingly evaporating when he tried help, Ember tearfully confesses to her father that she doesn't really want to run the shop, but was afraid to say it because it was the dream he sacrificed everything for. Bernie warmly tells her that the shop was never his dream; she was.
• The Incredibles: Mr. Incredible thought that his entire family was killed when Syndrome destroyed their plane. He was overjoyed to find that they had escaped. But now there's a giant robot attacking the city and he wants his family to get out of danger. Mrs. Incredible insists that they can help, but he wants to do it alone. His wife wants to know why it's so important, and he can't get the right words out, babbling about not being strong enough. She thinks he's just being macho, a culmination of the midlife crisis that he's been struggling with. Finally he snaps...
  Mr. Incredible: I can't lose you again! (he hangs his head in weary anguish, looking at the ground as he continues) Not again. I'm not... (voice breaks) ...strong enough.
• Inside Out: At the beginning of the film, Riley and her parents move from their home in Minnesota to the crowded streets of San Francisco. When Riley finds their living conditions less than ideal, her mother tells her to keep her chin up to brighten the mood. However, after Joy and Sadness accidentally wind up outside of Headquarters, Riley is unable to express sorrow or optimism. The trio left at Headquarters (Anger, Fear, and Disgust) then gives her the idea to run away, which she almost does until Sadness removes the idea from the console. When Riley returns home, Sadness's control of the console and the blue-tinged core memories allow her to confess through her tears to her parents about how much she misses Minnesota. Her parents then empathize with her and give her a hug.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Goldilocks and the Three Bears crime family are seeking the wishing star to improve their lives. Little do the bears realize that Goldilocks simply wants the last wish to have a human family. When they come up to a facsimile of the Bears' house, Goldi starts to realize how much the bears care about her. When Baby Bear later calls her out on her goal never being about riches or something that would benefit the whole family, Goldi shouts that she wanted the wish to have a "proper family". The pain on her face makes it clear that she didn't want to hurt the family who had been kind to her since childhood. Quite surprisingly, Mama Bear supports her decision and still wants to help her get her wish.
• Raya and the Last Dragon: As a child, Raya foolishly trusted Namaari with the location of the Dragon Gem, thereby making it open to an attack from the Fang group, who wanted to claim the Gem for themselves. However, once the Gem broke, the Druun returned and turned the fleeing people into stone. Her father then threw Raya into the water (the Druun's weakness) to save her and, in the process, sacrificed himself. In the years that followed, Raya is implied to have wandered alone and never gotten close to anyone outside of her home of Heart. When she is about 19 years old, she finds the place where Sisu (the dragon said to have banished the Druun the first time) supposedly is. As she prepares to summon the dragon, she explains her plight in case Sisu is listening. Tears stream down her face once she expresses her guilt over her misguided trust breaking the world as well as her desire to see her father again.
• Regular Show: The Movie: Main antagonist Mr. Ross forces Rigby to admit that not only did he not get accepted into College University, he forged the letter Mordecai received that said he wasn't accepted into the University either, even though he actually was. To twist the knife, Ross has Rigby do so by reading his own rejection letter, in which the admissions board was just not polite to him about. Rigby's tone of voice shows that not only is re-reading the rejection hard for him, some guilt of having screwed Mordecai over is leaking out.
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: In one scene, a Spider-Man is sitting on a psychiatrist's couch and tearfully recalling to another Spider-Man about when his uncle died.
  Client Spider-Man: (sobbing) And then, I looked at my uncle and—
  Doctor Spider-Man: Uh-huh. Let me guess: he died?
• Turning Red:
  • Meilin's first transformation into her panda form is met with horror and disgust. Likewise, Mei's mother Ming treats it as a problem. When Mei's friends discover her panda form, Mei tries to calmly explain the situation before bursting into tears and confessing her own feelings about her transformation.
  • Despite the close relationship between Mei and Ming, Ming's high expectations on her child to be a perfect student and complacent daughter as well as Mei's growing interests in subjects considered to be "questionable" threaten to buckle that bond. Mei's panda transformations further throw a wrench in their relationship when Mei begins to accept her panda form as a part of her (which Ming refuses to do with her own due to trauma). After their big fight as pandas over their conflicting ideas, Mei confesses to her mother that she's changing and no longer the daughter she is expected to be. She then bursts into tears as she reveals her fears about drifting apart from her, to which Ming reassures her daughter of her love and support.

Films — Live-Action

• All Is True: One night, William Shakespeare is sitting by the fire with his wife Anne Hathaway and his daughter Edith, when Edith, feeling guilty, reveals to her father that his young son Hamnet, who he'd thought to have died of the plague, Did Not Die That Way: when they were both children, before Will returned home to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Edith, feeling bitter about their father seemingly preferring Hamnet to her and Susanna, threatened to tell Will that she was the one who composed beautiful poetry to him, instead of Hamnet, who merely wrote the poems down for his sister. Overly distraught at the idea of his older sister depriving him of his father's approval, Hamnet went missing that night, and the next morning, they found him in a pond, with copies of his poems floating beside him. Since Hamnet normally avoided that pond, Anne and Judith think he must have drowned himself. Because of society's condemning attitude towards suicide, the Shakespeare women made a cover story about Hamnet having died in a fictitious plague outbreak to make sure Will's son would be given a Christian burial. In contrast to her stoic mother, Judith is openly crying by the time she finishes the tale, clearly feeling as though she drove her brother to kill himself, and that admitting this would ruin the idealized image of Hamnet Will had created. Despite being shocked by the revelation, Will does not hold Hamnet's death against his sister, and ultimately finally comes to terms with his son's death, and accepts a more honest memory of him.

Literature

• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: Amina's darkest secret is that she knowingly brought a disguised demon onto her ship, leading to the death (and worse) of one of her True Companions. Ten years later, she admits this to the survivors, half-expecting them to turn on her, and each of them thought they were the only one who knew about the demon.
• The Angel of Khan el-Khalili: The Angel trades miracles for the supplicant's most closely guarded truths, causing a hefty side of spiritual agony as it digs into their soul to examine them. Aliaa is forced to confess that she started the fire that mortally injured her sister but rejects the Angel's claim that the confession helped her at all.
  Angel: Is your soul not unburdened by speaking this truth? Atonement is painful, but are you not rendered the better for it?
  Aliaa: Atonement is gained through asking for forgiveness. And I pray for it every day. You can't give me that. Pain isn't absolution.
• The Bad Guys: In the events leading up to Book 5 Intergalactic Gas, Doctor Marmalade turns every cute animal in the world into monstrous zombies. During all of this, the Bad Guys meet Agent Fox, with whom Mr. Wolf falls madly in love. In the book itself, the gang takes a rocket to Marmalade's moon base to stop the Cute-zilla Ray. Along the way, Mr. Snake can't bring himself to admit that he's jealous of Wolf's admiration of Agent Fox. When the rocket gets damaged, Snake seals off the command capsule and subsequently shuts out Wolf, who was in the loading bay. While he and the rest of the gang are captured by Marmalade, Snake feels immense guilt for potentially killing his best friend. However, Wolf breaks into the moon base alive and stops the ray. When Wolf proclaims that he and his friends are good guys for saving the world, Snake confesses through his tears that he was jealous of Fox and that he could never be a good guy because of what he did to Wolf out of anger. Wolf disagrees and justifies Snake's action as saving the others.
• Dilly The Dinosaur: In "Dilly and the Missing Swamp Chocs", Dilly steals some "swamp-chocs", but the parents have no proof that he stole them, so his sister Dorla tries getting him to spill by Guilt-Tripping him. She tells them that people can be arrested for stealing, so when the parents' friend, who happens to be a cop, comes over to visit, Dilly is terrified and blurts out that he did it, and begs not to be arrested.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic book Discord and the Ponyville Players Dramarama, Discord is told by Princess Celestia that if he wants a prized token back, he'd have to partake in a theatre production in Ponyville. On top of that, he has to keep the reason why he's there a secret. After a series of mishaps (with some perpetrated by him and others framing him for them), Discord gets kicked out of the theatre, which hurts his feelings. When the Mane 6 checks up on him later that day, he bursts into a fit of Cathartic Crying as he confesses his true mission.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: In volume 10, Oliver is forced to call a halt to his and Nanao's first attempt to consummate their relationship because it hit a Trauma Button for him: he confesses to the amorous Nanao that he's been the victim of sexual violence in the past and can't keep going. With them just having made up after a jealousy-induced Forceful Kiss from her in the previous volume, she's understanding enough not to try to force the issue, and they agree to try to gradually work past his PTSD.

Live-Action TV

• Around the World in 80 Days (2021): In Episode 6, Fogg goes into a Heroic BSoD when the trio are marooned on a desert island thinking it's all his fault. To break him out of it, Passpartout confesses to drugging Fogg in India after being bribed to do so. This does work, in that Fogg snaps out of his funk, but he's also understandably furious with Passpartout and declares he will have nothing further to do with him.
• The Good Wife: In "K.S.R.", Eli's last-ditch attempt to get back in Peter's good graces backfires when he finds out that Peter himself was responsible for the election fraud scandal that cost Alicia the State's Attorney race. Dejected by this, he goes to Alicia and confesses that he had deleted Will's voicemail Love Confession to her back in "Taking Control" to keep an affair from jeopardizing Peter's run for State's Attorney, and apologizes for ruining things for her. Alicia's response is to take the wine glass out of his hand and quietly tell him to Get Out!.
• Perry Mason: Happens quite frequently whenever someone is discovered to be the culprit and said person tearfully confesses what happened the night of the crime.
• Sons of Anarchy: When Tig confesses to Opie that he was the one who killed Donna, he's so emotionally drained from the guilt that he barely reacts when Opie beats him half to death, maintaining a Thousand-Yard Stare the whole time.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Hero Worship", a boy named Jeremy cries as he admits that (he thinks) he accidentally destroyed his old spaceship, killing his parents and all the other crew.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "The Die is Cast" Garak has been tasked with interrogating Odo. Under normal circumstances Odo would never break, but in this case the Tal Shiar have created devices that emit energy that lock Changelings into one form. The problem is that Changelings have to return to their natural liquid state every sixteen hours, removing that option exhausts them. Imagine not being allowed to sleep, the toll that it takes on the mind and body. Eventually Odo does break, but not in the way Garak was expecting. Odo reveals that even though the Founders are evil conquerors, he still wants to return to them because they're his people. Garak has enough conscience and respect for Odo not to reveal this to his superiors.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street: In one animated skit, a girl named Cookie, while trying to play baseball with Lucy, her cat, accidentally throws the ball through a window, smashing it. She's afraid of how her mother will react if she finds out that she (Cookie) broke a window, but knows that if she blames it on Lucy, then her cat will unfairly be punished. She then ugly-cries during her confession.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: After the visit to Freeway 42, Ann returns home for a moment of rest after her Entanglelitis started acting up. While with Ayane, Ann decides to tell her about the incident where she previously lost control of herself and attacked Ryan before striking his eye, but also reveals that it was actually caused by a Superpowered Evil Side that she was aware of for awhile, and thus decided to leave on her own out of fear that she might hurt her family. In spite of Ayane suggesting she should talk to her family about it, Ann asks that Ayane keeps it a secret, ensuring she will find a way to deal with her ability until she can find Ryan.
• The Beginner's Guide: At the end of The Tower, you come across Coda's letter to Davy built into the map itself and displayed on the walls of an art gallery. The letter starts out in a tone of professional distance, but when it reaches a transition to a dimly lit hallway with letters floating in the air, it becomes much more personal. In text that's barely lit enough to read, Coda admits that Davy makes them feel physically ill to be around and elaborates in a very direct manner their opinion of him. Combined with how the player (intended to solely be Davy) has to cheat to bypass deliberately tedious or straight-up unwinnable puzzles, It gives a genuine impression that Coda does feel pained to hurt Davy's feelings like this but that he's run out of any other options to get through to him.
• Genshin Impact: In the past, after Crepus Ragnvindr's death, his adopted son Kaeya felt torn about his true allegiance: to Mondstadt and his adopted father, or to Khaenri'ah and his biological father who sent him off for a "mission". He ultimately decided to come clean and reveal his Double Agent status to Diluc, his brother and Crepus' biological son, who's still grieving. The two went into a violent fight afterward, which caused Diluc to scar Kaeya's right eye; the two have an estranged relationship ever since, and Kaeya admits in a letter that he really picked up the wrong time to make that confession.
• Persona 5: Invoked. The Phantom Thieves typically operate by stealing the Hearts of corrupt people in the Metaverse, thereby removing their distorted perceptions of the world and forcing them to realize the horridness of their actions. Most of their targets become so wracked with guilt afterwards that they publicly confess to their crimes and turn themselves in to the police, with one even breaking down crying during their confession.
  "We have decided to make you confess all your crimes with your own mouth. We will take your distorted desires without fail. From, the Phantom Thieves".

Webcomics

• Widdershins: Ben and Sidney weaken a dangerous spirit of Pride by talking up their own shortcomings. It starts out humorous but escalates to Sidney confessing that he was expelled from university and Ben admitting that he sees himself as a talentless Friend Nobody Likes.
  Ben: [as Pride screams] I have no friends! Only people who are obligated to be around me!
  [The boys close the doors behind them]
  Sidney: A-are you okay?!
  Ben: No! Let's go find the others!

Web Videos

• Multiverse Tales: In the Battle for the Beast World, Astra the Overseer, who ended up being pitted against her former friends, Sterling Engeal and Alexis Jones, was forced to reveal by the Big Bad Ulitus that she was the one responsible for their dimension getting invaded by The Legions of Hell six years ago, by giving Lucifer a piece of the Multiversal Orb with which he was able to create and release his demons. This in turn led to the Heroic Sacrifice of their friend/Sterling's girlfriend Diamos, Lucifer's daughter, in order to kill her father and destroy his army- a sacrifice Alexis now feels she should never have had to make if not for Astra. By the end of the battle, though, Astra reveals that they only know one side of the story: she was Diamos, or rather, Diamos was an alternate identity of hers that she created many years ago. Astra was raised to be an Overseer by her abusive, narcissistic mother Tarsa, who had grown apathetic to humanity over thousands of years, and wanted Astra to succeed her and clean up their messes so that she could become a human again and spend the rest of her life on Earth as a Retired Monster. But Astra hated the idea of her mother getting a peaceful retirement after all the cruel things she'd done to her, so instead, she visited the pocket dimension that Tarsa kept her former friend Lucifer locked in, and gave him a piece of the Multiversal Orb, so that, while he couldn't escape, he could create demons and release them onto the world, all to ruin Tarsa's planned retirement home so that Astra could spite her cruel mother. Astra had not been brought up to care about human beings, like most Overseers, but when she saw Sterling and Alexis forming the Agency of Supernatural Protection, she grew interested in them, and knew she wanted to be a part of their story. So, she disguised herself as a demon, gave Lucifer Fake Memories of her being his daughter, and joined up with the Agency to help fight against the demons. Eventually, though, she grew sick of Playing Both Sides in the human-demon war that she'd started, realizing that she was no better than her mother now, and so she decided to end her sick game by making it appear as though she died killing Lucifer, leaving her home dimension behind, and locking it off to prevent any other Overseers from coming there and ruining it like she'd done. She desperately wanted to stay with her friends, having genuinely come to love them, but she felt sure that they'd hate and reject her once they found out the truth about her. By the time she finishes her confession, Astra is broken-voiced and ashamed. Alexis is clearly angry and incredulous, but then Sterling steps forwards and reassures Astra that the fact she genuinely came to love them proves that not all of their relationship was a lie, and whilst he doesn't trust her to be a Redeeming Replacement for Ulitus, he can forgive her, and be grateful to have his old love back. From this moment on, Astra now strives to be The Atoner for all the bad things she's done in her past, and to repair her relationship with her old friends.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: There are a number of these:
  • When Hop Pop is given the music box to send to his "contacts", he secretly buries it instead to protect his grandchildren. "After the Rain" sees his ruse uncovered when he discovers that the Calamity Box is gone...and Anne is standing right behind him. She takes it very hard and wants to leave the Plantars as soon as she gets the box back. Hop Pop stops her by telling her the reason why he did it, which includes recalling the day Sprig and Polly's parents died while he was away. The account is very heartbreaking for Hop Pop to bring up and he's in tears as he collapses onto the ground, profusely apologizing to Anne for hurting her.
  • "The First Temple" takes place after the emotional revelations of the episode above. Anne and Hop Pop try to act like everything is hunky-dory, but Anne still feels like she forgave Hop Pop way too fast. When Hop Pop asks what it will take for her to put this hurt in the past, Anne shouts, "I DON'T KNOW!". She continues to say that she wants things to go back to normal, but Hop Pop interjects with the wisdom that she still needs time to process her emotions.
  • In "True Colors", King Andrias betrays Marcy's secret and suggests that Marcy got her and her friends stuck in Amphibia on purpose. Marcy then reveals to Anne and Sasha the whole story: on Anne's birthday, Marcy was told that her father's new job would require her family to move out of California. Terrified at the thought of leaving her friends behind, she ran away and discovered the teleporting music box that she had read about earlier. While she initially didn't know if it would work, she expresses her gratitude that it did and tearfully justifies her actions as an opportunity to bond with the girls through "amazing adventures". She further tries to justify her actions by telling Anne that her time in Amphibia gave the latter many wonderful memories and friends. However, Anne and Sasha are too shocked and betrayed to be okay with this.
• Arthur: In the episode "Nerves of Steal", Buster shoplifts the newest action figure from a small store. He soon feels guilty about it and confides in Arthur about it. He also believes that the security camera caught him in the act, so when he tries to return the toy unnoticed, his guilt upon seeing the camera and the clerk's attention on him leads him to tearfully confess his crime to the clerk. Though the clerk explains that the camera was offline the entire time, he calls Buster's mom about her son's crime.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: In "Bato of the Water Tribe", Aang receives a message from Katara and Sokka's Disappeared Dad but hides it out of fear that his friends will leave him. A bout of Oblivious Guilt Slinging makes him hand it over and admit that he betrayed their trust; they angrily leave, but come back when they decide Aang has become part of their family too and needs them more.
• Cyberchase: The Hacker is a Bad Boss through-and-through to his henchbots, with one of his multiple offenses being that he calls them "dunce-buckets". It eventually gets to a point where, in the episode "Penguin Tears", Buzz and Delete decide to go on a talk show to discuss their problems with their boss. Delete even bursts into tears when he says that the Hacker has never told them that he cares.
• Daria: "Dye Dye My Darling!": The day after she and Tom kiss, the normally stoic Daria can barely look at Jane before finally blurting out "I kissed your boyfriend". Daria then flees the school while her classmates stare in shock.
• The Dragon Prince: Early in Book 2, Rayla is agonizing over telling Callum that his beloved step-dad is dead. Unfortunately by the time she's gathered the courage to tell him, Claudia had already done so out of guilt.
• FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman: The Season 5 premiere "Ruff Fetches The Fetchers" sees Ruff Ruffman try to gather contestants while searching for clues pertaining to the whereabouts of his parents, who he learned at the end of Season 4 were still alive. When Blossom asks him about the congratulatory balloon at the beginning of the series that was sent from his mother, Ruff tearfully reveals that the balloon was actually his doing and that he only made it because he missed her. As he sobs, he accidentally uses Chet as a hankie.
• Gravity Falls: In "Not What He Seems", Grunkle Stan is arrested for stealing radioactive waste from a nearby plant. As the Pines twins try to prove his innocence, they find incriminating evidence of his theft as well as fake IDs in his desk. When the kids and Soos discover the portal in the secret lab, the immediate danger of the portal disrupting gravity and possibly destroying the universe convince them to shut it down. However, Stan - who has escaped custody - stops them just as the last wave of anti-gravity hits. Because Mabel is the only one closest to the override button, Dipper tells her to push the button while Stan tries to refrain her. Mabel - torn between her faith in her grunkle and the evidence - tearfully exclaims that she doesn't know if Stan is even her grunkle and that she's conflicted about believing him. To this, Stan admits that she will hear bad things about him, but also explains that everything he's done was for his family. He then asks Mabel if she really thinks he's a bad guy.
  Mabel: Grunkle Stan...I trust you.
• Hey Arnold!: In "Full Moon", Harold, Sid, and Sticky moon Principal Wartz and Arnold gets punished since he was in the vicinity and therefore knows who did it. Wartz gives Arnold a month of detention while trying to convince him to give up the identities of the culprits and at the same time, Harold, in his infinite paranoia, keeps expecting the possibility that he tattled to the point where he comes out and admits to Arnold that he himself would have done so immediately if he were in his position. Once he realizes that Arnold simply won't do it on principle, his guilt eventually catches up to him and he, along with Sid and Stinky, burst into Wartz's office and confess that they were the ones that mooned him before he can mark Arnold as a failure to cooperate on his permanent record.
• The Loud House: In "Candy Crushed", Rita tries to teach her daughter Lola about moderation by banning her from candy for a week. Since Lola has a Sweet Tooth, she finds this hard, but is able to do it... that is, until she eats a bonbon during the class trip to a candy factory. When she's confessing this to Rita, she cries and states that she doesn't deserve the dress Rita was planning on rewarding her with.
• Metalocalypse: At the end of season 4, Nathan Explosion apologizes to his bandmates, Charles, and others for being an insufferable and unfeeling Jerkass who became so engrossed with making the next album that he ignored others advice while trying to approach it. Since he has the mindset that apologizing is un-manly, it eats away at him for most of the season until he can't bear it anymore. His act of just saying "I'm sorry" to everyone causes convulsions and even makes him bleed. His bandmates even say that they just witnessed the most brutal thing he has ever done.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • At the end of "Gang of Secrets", Marinette tearfully confesses to Alya that she's Ladybug, because after spending the last few episodes watching her friends get akumatized because of her keeping secrets from them, she can no longer bear having to keep a secret identity on her own.
  • In "Protection", Kagami gets akumatized because of her belief that Marinette has been pretending to be a klutz for years so that Adrien would date her out of pity. After Ladybug and Cat Noir revert her back to normal, and Marinette and Adrien arrive to take her home, she breaks down crying, confessing that she loves both of them and that it hurts her seeing them date because it means that things will change between the three of them.
• My Adventures with Superman: In Episode 5, Clark reveals he does want to be seen as normal so much as he didn't want being an alien to define him or change how his friends view him.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The episode "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" concerns Princess Luna and the Mane Six's efforts to contain a nightmare-inducing entity known as the Tantabus in the dream world so it won't make the waking one a literal nightmare. At the climax, when the Tantabus grows too strong for them, Luna expresses her guilt that it will soon succeed because of her. She then tearfully confesses that she created the Tantabus to give herself nightmares as punishment for her misdeeds as Nightmare Moon. The Mane Six deduce that said guilt is what gives the Tantabus its power, and urge Luna to forgive herself. After they remind her that she's changed and they trust her, Luna finally releases her guilt and strips the Tantabus of its power, thus allowing it to retreat back inside her.
• The Owl House:
  • "Echoes of the Past" sees King come to terms with his Delusions of Grandeur and realize that he was never the king of demons after Eda reveals how she found him and raised him. As Luz tries to comfort him on the beach, he tearfully confesses that he feels lost and "can't tell what's real and what's fake".
  • In "Yesterday's Lie", Luz tries to create a portal door and accidentally finds herself in the In-Between Realm, using only reflective surfaces to spy and communicate with others in both the Demon and Human Realms. It's through a phone screen that Luz tells her mother Camila that she is trapped in the Demon Realm and that the version of Luz living in the Human Realm for some time is actually a basilisk. Due to the danger at hand, Camila decides to thwart a museum curator's plans to dissect Vee (the basilisk) and rescues her. Once they get home and the headlight-lit raindrops allow Luz to communicate with her mother on a full-body level, Camila bursts into cathartic tears as she confesses that she's really scared for her daughter.
    Camila: I'm trying to hold it together. I really am. But I have never been this scared before. The Demon Realm? Magic? H-how are you going to get back here? Is this the only way I can touch you?
  • Throughout "For the Future", Willow tries to be strong for her friends as they try to find a way to the Archive House, only to have her plant magic grow out of control as a result. At Hexside, the situation worsens when Willow is confronted by Boscha, who then throws her down the detention pit. Due to her self-consciousness and repression affecting her magic, vines begin growing and encasing Gus and Hunter. She tries to fix the problem before she starts to succumb to her own self-doubt (and the vines sprouting from that doubt). As she derides herself, Hunter saves her and he and Gus tell her that It's Okay to Cry. Willow then bursts into tears as she confesses that she misses her dads.
• Regular Show: Zig-zagged in the episode "Diary". Mordecai and Rigby (while watering Margaret's plants while she's away) accidentally destroy her diary. Skips shows them a spell to transfer Margaret's diary secrets into a different diary, making an exact copy. The spell backfires when Rigby skips a step and releases the guardian of Margaret's secrets. The only way to defeat the guardian is for Skips, Mordecai, and Rigby to each reveal a dark secret. Skips' secret plays this trope straight, as he reveals that he always skips to remember a woman he loved once. The other two are Played for Laughs: Mordecai reveals that he's been sleeping on two mattresses for years, with the second one being one that was meant for Rigby (he never told him because sleeping like that is way too comfortable). Rigby's confession?
  Rigby: I THINK EILEEN LOOKS HOT WITHOUT HER GLASSES ON!
• Rugrats:
  • In "Momma Trauma", Stu and Didi take Tommy to a child psychologist after the baby draws on the walls. As Tommy wanders off, Stu inadvertently begins to confess his psychological baggage before breaking down in tears sometime later. By the time Tommy returns to his parents, Stu has resolved a number of his own issues (while the psychologist was sleeping).
  • In "Bow Wow Wedding Vows", Tommy pretends to be happy for Spike when the latter has been spending more time with Fifi. Chuckie is unnerved by Tommy's forced grin and asks if he's truly content with this. Tommy then breaks down in tears, admitting that he feels like Spike doesn't love him anymore. In that same episode, Chas finds Ralph, the party planner, crying under a table. When Chas asks him what's going on, Ralph tearfully admits that he feels left out because he's never been an actual guest at any of the parties he's officiated.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: When SpongeBob gets teased for having one of his grandma's kisses on his cheek in "Grandma's Kisses", he tries to act like a grown man (or sea sponge). However, his grandmother's babying of his friend Patrick gets him to realize how much he misses being babied as well. Near the end of the episode, he finally caves and tearfully reveals that he wants Grandma to shower him with affection again before flooding the living room with his tears.
• Star Wars Rebels:
  • Early in the series, it's established that Zeb's species suffered a massacre of which he is one of the few survivors. In "Legends of the Lasat", Zeb and the Ghost crew discover more Lasat survivors (a former guard and a shaman) and rescue them. Zeb feels uneasy when they give him respect as Captain of the Honor Guard, and doubts their goal to find the mythical Lira San, a planet that would give them sanctuary. When he gets frustrated, Zeb retreats to his bedroom. Ezra finds him and asks him what's wrong. Zeb then confesses his shame and guilt about how he was unable to protect his people and the royal family of Lasan the day the massacre happened. Ezra then convinces him to help the survivors like he would've helped his people.
  • In "Trials of the Darksaber", Kanan has to train Sabine in wielding the darksaber so she could rally her people in their fight to retake Mandalore. Sabine's insecurity and fears prevent her from becoming confident enough to wield the blade efficiently. During one of their training duels, Kanan provokes her by calling her a coward for leaving her people. When she exclaims that this is a lie, she reveals the truth about her past while battling Kanan ferociously: she used to build weapons for the Empire. Once she discovered that they were used against Mandalore, she spoke out against it and wanted her family to do the same. However, their fear of the Empire caused them to turn against her. The raw pain of her family's betrayal causes her to defeat Kanan and subsequently collapse in tears.

Real Life

• Several days before his death, the former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini asked to take confession from a priest. The priest who was asked to officiate spent several hours with his country's ex-Leader. He said afterwards that what was discussed remained absolutely confidential and the specifics would remain an absolute secret. But he, the priest, conceded that in general, Mussolini was a man who was very painfully aware of the destruction he had caused to Italy and its people, his bombast and arrogance had gone, and that he was genuinely repentant and horrified by his actions.

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