* Rincewind being utterly horrified by the transformation of wizardry into something horrible, explicitly and repeatedly calling it out as fundamentally 'wrong'.
* Rincewind's attempts to build a wizard's tower in his sleep are rather pitiable - he's barely managing to stack one rock on another. What's sad is that he's generally different from other wizards, and when sleepwalking he becomes like the brainwashed ones.
* Rincewind's HeroicBSOD and the description of him scrabbling through the rubble of [[spoiler:the ruined library]].
** Not just that but the [[spoiler:ruined library]] at all. There was also the matter of [[spoiler:whether the Librarian got out or not]].
* Rincewind's [[HeroicSacrifice one good deed]].
** When he's fighting the Thing, he notices that Coin isn't running. Then he starts to - ''toward'' Rincewind. Rincewind has to resort to screaming ''the same abusive line Coin's father told him when he tortured the boy'' in order to get Coin to obey and escape back into the world. And then the portal closes, meaning that's the last thing he said to Coin.
* Spelter and Carding- both starting out as your standard vicious wizards, both coming to realize something is horribly, horribly ''wrong''... and both discovering that RedemptionEqualsDeath. Extra-horrible bonus points for Carding, since the ''readers'' get a GoryDiscretionShot but ''Coin'' [[ForcedToWatch doesn't]].
* The beginning with Ipslore and his wife's death: "All my magic could not save her."
** [[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: These things happen. They have to. Sorry. ]]

** What makes this worse is that Ipslore gradually goes increasingly off the deep end with his desire for revenge for her death, to the point that he ultimately [[TheDarkSideWillMakeYouForget forgets the reason for his revenge]].
* Coin's spent the first ten years of his life under the thumb of his evil, abusive father. But in the end, instead of being free to have a happy remainder of his childhood, [[spoiler:he realizes he can't live in the world without destroying it. So he voluntarily exiles himself to Maligree's Wonderful Garden, meaning that he'll spend the vast majority of his life ''completely alone'']].