Follow TV Tropes

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

Following

Tear Jerker / Atomic Robo

Go To

  • Robo and Tesla's falling out in "The Deadly Art Of Science".
  • In the very first volume, chapter 2, Robo gets a letter from the granddaughter of an old friend from the war telling him that her grandfather has died of cancer. This is intercut with a interview where Robo is asked what the hardest part of his life was. He tells the interviewer that the hardest part is that he is 83 and can do a great Jack Benny, but no one knows to appreciate it anymore. It's pretty obvious what he's actually thinking about.
  • The Reveal that Edison became evil because he wanted to be with his wife forever.
  • Robo ultimately Did Not Get the Girl as Helen ends up with Chen. He knows it's probably for the best as he is functionally immortal, but it still doesn't lessen the blow.
  • There's an undercurrent of melancholy all throughout Knights of the Golden Circle. It starts with Robo having spent fourteen years alone in a shack in the desert in a time that isn't his, and then he reveals to Doc Holliday and Marshal Reeves that he's dying - he barely knows them, but he's got nobody else to tell. He goes down fighting, but it's hard to see his battered head put in a box to unconsciously take The Slow Path back home.
  • Robo revealing to ALAN 2.0 that he and Tesla fought before he went on his mission in The Will To Power - and that it was the last time he saw his creator alive.
    Robo: I used to resent Mr. Tesla for keeping me cooped up.
    ALAN 2.0: Was it also for your protection?
    Robo: Yeah. We just had different opinions about how much protecting an invincible super robot needed. It was hard for him, and I never made it any easier. Hell, we argued about it the last time we spoke. The army said they'd make my citizenship "happen" if I just did one little secret mission for them. It was an offer I couldn't refuse. But Mr. Tesla was a pacifist. I'd never seen him so angry. And then I never saw him again. (This especially hurts when you remember that Robo went on that mission in 1939 and Tesla died in January of 1943.)
  • Jenkins demanding that Alan Mercy Kill him before he turns in The Vengeful Dead.
    Jenkins: I know how this goes. There's no turning back. You have to do it.
    Alan: I don't want to.
    Jenkins: They can't. They won't. Before it's too late. It's got to be done. I can't help Robo anymore. You're Final Wolf now.
  • The entire last issue of Agents of CHANGE is a series of punches to the gut, as Robo mourns Emma Armstrong, who he had to kill himself before her Biomega infection destroyed the world.

Top