A variant of the Falling-in-Love Montage where the love in question is in the past. Sappy music is playing while all of the wonderful scenes are shown from the now severed relationship, as the person in question realizes how good they had it.
Contrast with Falling-in-Love Montage and Sad-Times Montage. If the person has a particular item or keepsake of their lost love's that they kept, this may become a Cradle of Loneliness.
When the character watches home videos of their past life, see Happier Home Movie, which is closely related. See also Troubled Backstory Flashback.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Princess Ogen Iga and Danjou Koga in Basilisk: Kouga Ninpu Chuu. Even moreso in the anime, where the a good chunk of the first episode shows how they fell in love as youngsters but were tragically separated until their last battle and deaths.
- Heaven's Lost Property: Most of the first movie is a montage of Tomoki and Hiyori being close in the main series. before everyone's memories of her were erased. He ends up remembering her because he kept her bells hair decoration .
Film
- Emma: The 1996 ITV telefilm has one of these when Emma finally realizes her love for Mr. Knightley, even including a very appropriate rainstorm.
- Casablanca features one showing the Paris relationship between Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund Laszlo.
- Used in Once. The music is particularly wistful.
- Used in the film of the musical RENT during Roger's song "One Song Glory" to tell the story of his first girlfriend, April, without Mark's aside to the audience explaining their relationship. The montage shows April and Roger weeping together over the results of her positive HIV test, while in the original musical, Mark informs the audience that April merely left Roger a note saying "We have AIDS" before committing suicide.
- A variant in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: After he discovers she's had her memories of him erased following a bad break-up, Joel initially wants to erase his memories of Clementine as well. As he relives his memories of her in backwards order as they're erased one by one, however, he realizes that they had a lot of happy times together and tries to stop the erasing process going on in his mind.
- Used at the end of the BBC "Scene" programme's Two Of Us from 1987. Teenaged Matthew watches the train on which his boyfriend Phil is leaving with his, Phil's, girlfriend, and has a series of flashbacks of his and Phil's happy times together. In the version which was cut so as not to seem too gay-positive, this is it; in the original version, it turns out that Phil wasn't on that train after all, because he shows up immediately afterwards.
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit features something similar: Eddie Valiant looks over photographs of a happier past with his late brother Teddy and Dolores.
- Scrooge (1970) gives this to Scrooge and his ex-fiancée Isabel during the song "Happiness": we see them sharing an Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date, a picnic, an archery contest, and the carriage ride during which he proposed.
- In Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, Rose experiences one after Gus dies in her arms after being shot by Mei Ling.
- In Plan B, there's a montage of all the now-empty places Bruno and Pablo hung out together at earlier points in the film set to quiet, melancholy music just before they finally reunite.
- Someone Great: Jenny has two.
- The opening montage (set to Lorde's "Supercut") has Jenny go over the highlights of their relationship. As early as this, however, there are already signs that their relationship wasn't working anymore.
- The second one (set to Ryn Weaver's "Reasons Not to Die") has Jenny remember their happy strolls around the streets of New York, which ends in memories of bitter fighting.
- Saltburn opens and (nearly) ends with the same one, but the film has given us context as to exactly what Oliver means when he say he loved Felix.
Live Action TV
- Inverted in Family Ties. Alex has one of these, when Ellen leaves to get engaged. The only thing is Alex and Ellen hadn't yet dated at this point. He was dating her roommate, but was falling in love with Ellen.
- Subverted in That '70s Show. Kelso starts crying over breaking up with Jackie, but all his memories are of Jackie insulting him. Still, as this was what most of their relationship was based on, he was pretty visibly sad.
Music
- Céline Dion's "All Coming Back to Me Now" is basically this trope in song form, with the singer trying to hold onto how devastated she felt when her lover left her, but being reminded of all of the passion and fire of their relationship when they're reunited.
There were moments of gold
And there were flashes of light
There were things I'd never do again
But then they'd always seemed right
There were nights of endless pleasure
It was more than any laws allow
Baby, baby
If I kiss you like this
And if you whisper like that
It was lost long ago, but it's all coming back to me
If you want me like this
And if you need me like that
It was dead long ago, but it's all coming back to me
It's so hard to resist, and it's all coming back to me
I can barely recall, but it's all coming back to me now - The Orange Range song "Sayonara" uses a Lost Love Montage during the refrains as a way for the widow to reflect on her husband.
Theatre
- In the musical Brigadoon, after Tommy and the town of Brigadoon have seemingly vanished forever from each other, he is seen talking with his fiancée in a New York bar, and her words accidentally become song cues in his mind, bringing up visions of the townspeople of Brigadoon and his lost love Fiona.
Video Games
- Mother 3 shows this between Flint and Hinawa almost immediately after news of the latter's death.
- Short one appears in one Dragon Age II trailer.
- This can happen in Tomodachi Life when two mii break up with fitting sad music.
Western Animation
- Parodied on Phineas and Ferb. The song "When We Didn't Get Along
" accompanies flashbacks of fighting after Perry the Platypus gets dumped by his nemesis Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
- Spliced: Mr Smarty-Smarts experiences one after Octo-Cat leaves him "Of Masters and Minions". Of course, all of the scenes involve him and Octo-Cat attempting to conquer Keepaway Island.
