History TearJerker / RENT

* ''How can you leave the past behind when it keeps finding ways to get to your heart? It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out until you're torn apart (RENT!) How can you connect in an age where strangers, landlords, lovers, your own bloodcells betray? What binds the fabric together when the raging, shifting winds of change keep ripping away?''

* ''How can you leave the past behind when it keeps finding ways to get to your heart//
It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out until you're torn apart (RENT!)//
How can you connect in an age where strangers, landlords, lovers, your own bloodcells betray//
What binds the fabric together when the raging, shifting winds of change keep ripping away?''

* On the exact day he met Angel, Collins decides to help himself and his friends by rewiring an ATM machine that will only work for those who have the code: [[spoiler: A-N-G-E-L.]]

** Especially since [[KickTheDog Roger completely ignores him]], even though he's the one who's refusing to live and is hiding behind his withdrawal.

* The final shot of Angel in the movie, her nails are painted blue. The same colour that Mimi was painting them in [[spoiler: the hospital when she was dying]]. The implication is heartbreaking- Mark shot that in some of [[spoiler: Angels final days]]

* The final shot of Angel in the movie, her nails are painted blue. The same colour that Mimi was painting them in [[spoiler: the hospital when she was dying]] the sneaky implication is heartbreaking, if you think Mark shot that in some of [[spoiler: Angels final days]]

** It gets better in the movie. First, there's the montage of the support group, with each member who dies slowly fading from view as the camera pans over them, and then there's the inclusion of [[spoiler:Angel]]'s death at the end, shown in its blunt, harsh, painful reality, as [[spoiler:Collins]] cries holding the body. This replaces the MindScrew[=/=]TrueArtIsComprehensible original version of the death from "Contact", and was included by WordOfGod because of the age of the musical: by the time the movie was made, AIDS research had progressed enough that the disease is no longer an automatic death sentence and a lot of modern people wouldn't get why such a big deal is made out of contracting it. By showing [[spoiler:Angel]]'s death, the pain and sorrow and loss and suffering is brought home to the viewer in a way "Contact" never could have, and pairing it up with "Without You" makes it even more poignant and heart-wrenching. It certainly works.

* the song ''Without You''.

* A meta example: Jonathan Larson [[AuthorExistenceFailure unexpectedly died]] just before the show's off-broadway premiere. Anthony Rapp said in his autobiography that the next night, the cast did a performance for Jonathan's close friends and family - even though he and several others were crying too hard to even sing some of the songs properly. And then they sang again at the memorial service. Where, in addition to group songs, Adam Pascal performed ''One Song One Glory.'' You know, the song about ''writing one last important, meaningful thing before you die?''

** This Troper hadn't cried over anything like this since she was seven and saw HomewardBound. She saw RENT with a friend, began to cry as soon as she worked out that [[spoiler:Angel was going to die]] (i.e. the beginning of 'Without You') and didn't completely stop until ''the next morning''.

** What gets to this Troper, and I'm not even sure why, is the fact that this is the only point in the whole show when Collins refers to Angel as 'he'.

* ''You all said you'd be cool today,/So please, for my sake.../I can't believe he's gone./I can't believe you're going./I can't believe this family must die./Angel helped us believe in love./I can't believe you disagree.

** This Troper hadn't cried over a movie since she was seven and saw HomewardBound. She saw RENT with a friend, began to cry as soon as she worked out that [[spoiler:Angel was going to die]] (i.e. the beginning of 'Without You') and didn't completely stop until ''the next morning''.

* Don't forget ''La Boheme''!
* La Boheme was this troper's first experience with Opera - he'd been told it was lighthearted and comedic, and hadn't read any kind of plot summary. So the abrupt MoodWhiplash in the final act, culminating in loss and despair was just...ouch.
* Its loose adaptation, ''Rent'', however, is an example of an ending that aims to be a TearJerker but ends up more as {{Glurge}}. (Though not for everybody.)
* The ending may not make anyone tear up, but this troper knows quite a few people who cried when [[spoiler:Angel died.]]
** That IS the tearjerker, without a doubt. The only reason this troper was crying during the ending was because she was ''still'' upset about Angel.
** When this troper watched the "I'll Cover You" reprise with his mother, he knew it'd be tear-jerking, so he asked his mother if they could compete who could hold his tears in the longest. She agreed, but when he saw Collins, he said "You won..." and begun to cry, and didn't stop until after "Goodbye Love".

* Just ''thinking'' about the song ''Without You'' is enough to bring this troper close to tears.
* The film's ending is glurge-y because it cranks the sentimentality UpToEleven and gives us boring visuals. But if you're [[ThisTroper thirteen years old listening to the Original Broadway Cast recording for the first time on your headphones late at night when you're supposed to be asleep]]....

* "Life Support" strikes a chord with this troper: "Look, I find some of what you teach suspect/Because I'm used to relying on intellect/But I try to open up to what I don't know/Because reason says I should have died three years ago." And then everyone joins in with the Life Support mantra.
* This troper watched Rent with her best friend. Her best friend expected her to cry, she asked if I was going to cry when I alerted her to the fact the tearjerker scene was starting. Instead, halfway through the song, the friend started sobbing on my shoulder. And she didn't stop until 10 minutes after the credits were done.
* This troper, while always sobbing at the I'll Cover You reprise, always gets quietly choked up at 'Halloween'. ''Why am I the witness!? And when I capture it on film... will it mean that it's the end, and I'm alone...?'' -sniff-
* This troper is brought to tears by Mark and Roger's fight.

* In addition to the aforementioned "Halloween," I always lose it at a different part of their fight: when Roger accuses Mark of hiding behind his camera and Mark retorts "Perhaps it's because I'm the one of us to survive!" To hear him finally confess to his best friend how terrified he is of watching him die, especially in the middle of an argument, is just heartbreaking.
* This troper just saw a college production, followed by the film. Both times, I spend most of it shuttling from laughing to trying not to cry.
* In the stage show, when the members of Life Support are giving their names, you may notice that the names given vary from the ones in the Original Broadway Cast recording or the film (Steve, Gordon, Ally, Pam, and Sue). The thing is that these names are changed from production to production, to honor the friends and family of the cast who are living with or have died from AIDS. This troper got a truly ''painful'' pang in his heart when he heard three of the names changed when he saw it.

* This troper got really depressed by Mimi saying that she would quit the drugs and go back to school, knowing that she probably couldn't.

* In the stage show, when the members of Life Support are giving their names, you may notice that the names given vary from the ones in the Original Broadway Cast recording or the film (Steve, Gordon, Ally, Pam, and Sue). The thing is that these names are changed from production to production, to honor the friends and family of the cast who are living with or have died from AIDS. This troper got a truly ''painful'' pang in his heart when he heard three of the names changed when he saw it.

* This troper just saw a college production, followed by the film. Both times, I spend most of it shuttling from laughing to trying not to cry.