Line #32 TearJerker/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots


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8	As the {{Grand Finale}} for [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid Solid Snake's story]], you can tell that the fourth sequel will call for {{Manly Tears}} or [[TearJerker just tears in general.]]
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11	* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv3Ey_pPlXk Snake's "War has changed" monologue in the opening.]] Soldiers fight and die like flies. Cities get blown to bits. All these are (ultimately) not because of food, resources, belief, ideology or religion. The war economy has encompassed society for the sake of... keeping this systematic killing going and ''nothing more'' by taking away the reason for war and leaving behind a world ''where conflict is a status quo''. [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Something that The Patriot members]] [[GoneHorriblyRight realized too late]]. For all the inventions humankind has made, this is a truly horrifying and sad sight to see.
12	* The FOXDIE virus in Solid Snake's body has mutated out of control due to Snake's weakening body, slowly turning him into a walking biological weapon that will kill '''indiscriminately''' in the future. You think his life sucks? How about having to erase his own existence so that the world he's trying to protect '''all his life''' is truly safe?
13	** Naomi's breakdown after seeing the damage to Snake's body firsthand.
14	** Relating to this, the fact that Snake is far too young to actually look like that, and his obvious discomfort at it. Her breakdown is perfectly understandable...and throughout the scene, he's quietly standing by looking incredibly upset himself at how his looks alone are enough to bring a woman to tears. In general, the deterioration of his appearance and health becomes incredibly sad when put into the context that, at 42, he's far too young to be experiencing this.
15	** As if to hammer it in, when Naomi solemnly tells Snake that he has half a year to live, his Psyche Meter automatically drops by a whole block. And then when Naomi explains that the FOXDIE will mutate in three months ''his Psyche Meter drops down to half.'' The tone of his voice as he says "Three months!" is particularly full of shock. He has to face the mission of his life, his final mission, kill Liquid and commit suicide, all in three months before FOXDIE's mutation takes effect, just to keep everyone safe, being forced to sacrifice his own life for the entire world before a world-scale epidemic occurs.
16	* Big Mama aka EVA's final moments in Act 3. While on the run from Raging Raven, EVA fell from her motorcycle and receives a similar injury that she had suffered 50 years ago during [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater Operation Snake Eater]]. As she struggles to get up, she briefly sees Old Snake as Naked Snake, the man she never stops loving all these years. After reaching the docks and watching as Vamp throws the comatose Big Boss into a burning wrecked hull of a ship, EVA, in a futile attempt to rescue him, jumps into the fire and is then shot by Liquid. Big Mama eventually dies, in the arms of her son. To make it even worse, Snake can't even hold his mother's hand before she died, and while he doesn't say anything, still, the look on his face sounds like he's sad about it. Also, the mission had ended in a disaster and Snake still had the knife in his shoulder as a result of the brief duel against Liquid Ocelot. His posture a few second later shows him resigned to his fate until Drebin catches up to him and gets the knife off of him.
17	** It becomes harsher when it is revealed that EVA didn't die from her injuries but from a new strain of FOXDIE that Snake had contracted with, therefore, Snake essentially killed his mother. Even moreso, EVA knew about this but chooses to die with the knowledge that the Patriots' time is about to end.
18	* CQC hug. The only way Big Boss can hope to get close to his last son, and a somber nod to a life of conflict, that he can still pull this move in his old age and cobbled-together body.
19	* Raiden's HeroicSacrifice at the end of Act 4 and then screaming Rose's name, despite pretending to not care for her. Thankfully, he survives.
20	* The return to Shadow Moses Island: As soon as Snake enters the heliport, a familiar Irish low whistle starts playing, triggering a massive wave of nostalgia. The depressing and dark mood in which the flashbacks are presented is just gut-wrenching. Yes, even "A surveillance camera...?". 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.
21	** That moment carries out an absolutely brutal assault on the heart of anyone with feelings. To think that nine 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.
22	* The microwave room scene. The screen is split into two sections, one showing Snake and the other showing his allies fighting waves after waves of enemies. Already a dying old man, Snake slowly walks through the room, enduring the pain from the microwaves to the point the he is forced to crawl. Meanwhile, Johnny and Meryl continue fighting until they ran out of bullets and endless swarms of Frog soldiers are closing in on their location, Raiden is also overwhelmed on his end, and the crew of the Missouri are being attacked by numerous Dwarf Geckos and Metal Gear Rays as well. Combined the the sad theme playing, one might expect that some of them to die but fortunately Snake succeeds.
23	* During the wedding scene where Hal and Sunny watch the sunset together, there's a brief moment: Sunny, knowing nothing about Snake's plan to kill himself, asks when Snake is coming back. Otacon's reply is visibly painful.
24	-->'''Otacon:''' Snake...is sick. So, he went on a trip to help him get better.
25	-->'''Sunny:''' We're not going with him?
26	-->'''Otacon:''' ...No. He needs to be alone.
27	-->'''Sunny:''' ...I wonder if I'll ever see him again.
28	** 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 ManlyTears, from both Otacon and the player.
29	** Naomi.
30	*** "You have... such beautiful eyes..."
31	*** To sum it up, Naomi reveals how she and Vamp should be dead, as she suffers from terminal cancer, and Vamp is basically a walking corpse kept going through his nanomachines. 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 Naomi to not die. Naomi ignores this and pushes the Mk. III away from her, telling Snake, Otacon, and Raiden to go.
32	* 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...
33	** 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 cut scene takes up the top half of the screen showing all his friends slowly being overtaken in their respective fights.
34	*** The game's whole collection of TearJerker 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''.
35	** The fact that while Campbell is [[AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther reconciled with his daughter]], [[WeddingFinale Meryl gets married]] with Mei Ling, Otacon, and Drebin in attendance, Raiden [[ThrowTheDogABone is reunited with his family]], and Sunny [[FirstTimeInTheSun goes outside for the first time]] and makes her first friend, Snake [[DyingAlone is off by himself and preparing to commit suicide for the greater good]]. It's such a stark contrast that it easily makes the other scenes feel that much more bittersweet, as the one man who was able to free the world from the Patriots [[NoPlaceForMeThere is more or less barred]] from being able to enjoy the fruits of his labor. And on top of it all, Snake chooses to end his life at the grave of The Boss, fifty years after Big Boss similarly walked away from the ceremony honoring him in order to pay his respects to his mentor and ParentalSubstitute.
36	* The dying Big Boss painfully stands up to salute in front of The Boss's grave. By this point he's already struggling to move on his own due to FOXDIE, yet he musters up enough strength to stand up still and salute his old mentor the same way he did half a century prior.
37	** Big Boss tells Old Snake first that the whole saga "began with a bunch of old fools" and implicitly including himself... then that "''if 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...canonizing [[WordOfGod Kojima's belief]] that Solid "Old" Snake is the only true hero of ''Metal Gear Solid''.
38	** 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.
39	** 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". You expect it to be true for Solid Snake, but not for Big Boss. And the way it was shown. Big Boss not having any life left to light the cigar up, then Snake lights it up for him.
40	** "This is good... isn't it?"
41	** What makes the conversation even more poignant is that it's almost the complete opposite of the conversation Snake and Big Boss have in VideoGame/MetalGear2SolidSnake, shortly before Snake defeats him.
42	** The sad meeting between Big Boss and Old Snake from beginning to end is just pure TearJerker. Basically, when you take it into account from EVERY Metal Gear game up to this point. Everything that was done, every action taken behind the scenes. Every step and word uttered lead up to the eventual meeting between two legends. Big Boss slightly and coldly never considers Old Snake his "son". Instead, he refers to him as a fellow brother. A man. Tall, heroic, proud and destined to overcame great odds because of their fighting spirits. To hear Big Boss explain himself with every ounce of strength he has left on the Earth is truly heartwrenching to say the least.
43	* 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 falls to Snake's knees, 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.
44	** From the same scene, Snake removing his bandage to expose his freshly burnt face, the skin on his left cheek completely burnt, and declaring: "Raiden, look at me. [[ScarsAreForever Do you see this...?]] I have no future." The delivery of the line and the worn expression on Snake's face are truly saddening.
45	** And right after Snake says to Raiden that unlike him, he has a future and a family, Raiden suddenly has a breakdown, snapping that he has no family and he has nothing (keep this in mind, he too was tricked, with Rose's miscarriage and then marriage to Campbell only being deceptions so that she and her unborn son could be safe from the Patriots' grasp), forcefully grabbing his shoulders, and then, he falls to his knees, [[SecurityCling desperately clutching Snake's leg]] and begging him to not leave him alone.
46	-->'''Raiden:''' '''I have no family...!'''
47	** Especially in Japanese. Unlike in English, [[Creator/KenyuHoriuchi the voice actor]] is actually sobbing in that scene.
48	* When Big Boss "sends Zero back to nothing" by cutting off the latter's oxygen supply. Yes, Zero was responsible for many of the bad things that happened here, but in the end, he was a good and well-meaning man and genuinely didn't mean for things to [[GoneHorriblyWrong go as badly as they did]]. In the present, he's a catatonic 105-year-old man reduced to a vegetable state, confined to a wheelchair and hooked up to life support, unable to take responsibility for all the things he had done. It's all capped off by Zero convulsing as his air supply gets cut off while flashbacks of the good man he used to be appear on the screen.
49	** Perhaps just as sad is Big Boss holding his old friend as he dies; it's been forty years since they were last together, and they will never truly be able to reconcile. The scene becomes an even bigger punch when we later find that the Patriots and their war economy were never designed this way, and that Zero's last fully-functioning years were spent desperately attempting to reverse the pieces he had set in motion, including XOF, Cipher, and the [=AIs=] he had commissioned; sadder still is the fact that Zero's condition ''isn't'' natural, not the onset of dementia or old age, but the result of an attack on him by an embittered former ally.
50	** 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.
51	** The secret tapes received after completing ''V'' shed more light on Big Boss and Zero's relationship. After the attack on MSF, Zero used his remaining days of clarity to keep the comatose Snake as safe as humanely possible. The final time Zero sees Snake is when he visits him in Cyprus, telling him his regrets while he thinks Snake can't hear. He sounds incredibly sad, and hopes Snake will recover and that he can forgive him. After he leaves, the remaining seconds of silence on the tape are broken by the sound of Snake moving in bed, implying this was after he woke up (but before Venom) and heard everything. Consider how this parallels Big Boss discussing Zero with Old Snake while he's vegetative in a wheelchair.
52	* The realization of what happened to the entire cast of [=MGS3=].
53	** Zero, as discussed above, grew power-hungry and corrupt, then nearly destroyed the world.
54	** Sigint sided with Zero against Big Boss despite their friendship. And it turns out he was the DARPA chief, the guy tortured to death way back in [=MGS1=].
55	** Sweet and {{adorkable}} Para-Medic, who loved movies, also sided with Zero, and performed unethical and inhumane experiments on Frank Jaeger, and was likewise killed by him.
56	** EVA and Ocelot die as well.
57	** Big Boss never really got over the Boss's death or his role in it. He created two Metal Gears and attempted to start a military nation, not realizing that he was going too far, endangering the world to create a nation where soldiers got the honor they deserved. In any case, he failed, and his life was wasted fighting.
58	* "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."
59	* Raiden's ending in ''[=MGS4=]'', where he gets to meet his little boy.
60	* Three words: You're pretty good.
61	** ''Hand gesture''
62	* 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's heartbreaking. ThePowerOfFriendship, indeed.
63	* After the [=AIs=] are destroyed, the soldiers from the ''Missouri'' pull the surviving FROGS out of the water, who are suffering mental breakdown without the nanomachines suppressing 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.
64	* It's fairly subtle, but Snake makes it to the server room aboard Outer Haven and it seems to be filled with copies of The Boss's headstone, complete with flowers.
65	* 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 sheer ''horror'' of what life had thrown at them. Crying Wolf, in particular, really deserves the codename. After losing the rest of her family in a genocide, she accidentally smothered her baby brother while hiding from soldiers. Upon reaching a refugee camp, she was driven insane by the crying of children and murdered them, as well.
66	* All the cutscenes with the Beauties. Seeing them struggling to get up and walk, powerless, insane and reduced to shadows of their formerly-powerful selves... Especially Crying Beauty, given that she's nearly-naked and spends a while trying to get up and walk, on a frozen island, while it's snowing.
67	* In the novelization, Snake says this before his abortive suicide attempt:
68	-->“I don’t believe in God, Otacon, so you’re the only one to whom I can pray. Give me the strength to do this now. Give me the resolve to protect the paths you and Sunny will take through life, and the world Meryl and the rest will build.”
69	** It would be [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments heartwarming]] if not for the context...
70	* Snake shouting out Otacon's name as he's overwhelmed by Scarabs. Given the series' reputation with SayMyName, you'd expect it to be {{Narm}} but it's a genuinely tense and heartstopping moment. The same voice clip is used after he gets his face burned when he tried to save his mother from the fire.
71	* Ultimately Philanthropy fails miserably at its role of destroying the Metal Gear derivatives throughout the world. Why is this a Tear Jerker? Because this was the task that gave Solid Snake back his reason to live, the reason why he stopped being the PTSD-driven, alcoholic mess that he became in the wake of Zanzibar Land, the reason why he still fights and goes as far in ''2'' as to claim that it is his legacy to future generations due to the fact that he cannot have children of his own. And yet as we see in ''Revengeance'' he failed. Maybe he did succeed in finding another reason to live like he claimed at the end of ''4''; but it is still sad that the life's dream of one of history's greatest men went so unfulfilled.
72	* "Love Theme" deserves proud mention here. Try listening to the OST or even during the opening first mission in the Middle East. Its hard not to try to contain your ManlyTears after hearing this piece. Heck, the extended version is even more Tear inducing. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGf2b1H91JA Have a listen]].
73	** "Father and Son." That is all.
74	** The subdued "Old Snake" leitmotif too.
75	* The final battle between Snake and Liquid is this for many fans as well. This is THE cumulative battle between the series' main characters, and a fitting ending for one of them, Liquid injects Snake full of healing drug, in potentially fatal doses, in order to have one last fight with his brother. Even then, about a quarter of the way through, Liquid reveals his new arm. From that point, the music becomes much more morose and sad. Liquid's fighting style matches the combat techniques utilized by Liquid Snake and/or Ocelot in [=MGS1=]-3, with accompanying music, and in the end? Their final battle becomes a drawn out, worn down, brawl between two tired, old men, yearning to be free from their inhuman lives.
76	** Emphasized by a point about three-fourths through, when Snake and Ocelot, near DEATH, collapse against each other on top of Outer Haven. Two syringes fall out of Liquid's pockets, and each Snake grabs one. Right when it seems like they're going to use them on themselves, they swing their arms forward and use them on each other in PERFECT SYNC. This really shows how much they want this battle to go on, so that they can fulfill their purposes one last time.
77	*** And then when you realize it's a near perfect replica of Liquid's fight atop REX in [=MGS1=]...
78	* Drebin's endgame musing to Otacon at Meryl's wedding that with the Patriots gone, the society will no longer be kept in check and warfare will continue to erupt as the result. As later spin-off ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'' reveals, as long as there is injustice and unfairness, conflict will never cease to exist.

Context TearJerker / MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots