Tear Jerker / Disney Dreamlight Valley

• You meet Mickey Mouse in his home, and at first he seems like his cheerful self. Then you find the journal entry about what happened to Minnie—she disappeared from the Valley and into the Here-or-There. It gets worse from there as Minnie is brought back from limbo, but she has no idea who Mickey is; she just held onto his name in the world in-between, but the name has lost all meaning to her. He tries to hide his heartbreak but Minnie can still feel he's in a great deal of pain, which makes it more difficult for Minnie because she really wishes she could remember him.
  • A later mission with Minnie has her confide with the player that she is still scared that she or someone else will end up stuck in the Here-or-There, and has even been looking through Merlin's magic books for ways to ensure that doesn't happen again. Luckily, things end off on a happy note with Elsa, Anna, and Moana all talking about the things they like about Minnie, and the player reassuring Minnie that nobody will ever end up there again so long as they look out for and care for each other.
• You reunite with Ariel on a deserted island beyond the Valley and she's seemingly been immune to The Forgetting. She remembers The Player and even comments on how much you've grown up since the last time she's seen you. That alone is something of a tearjerker itself, but upon guiding her back to the Valley, she's distraught over both Eric's disappearance and the fact that no one but her even remembers him.
  • We later find out why: Eric made a deal with Ursula. In exchange for becoming part of her collection of lost souls, Ariel would be protected from The Forgetting. This is why she was found stuck on an island away from the Valley. Eric later tells The Player that he was conscious that entire time, and that Ursula would regularly taunt him about never seeing Ariel again.
• Ursula needs a sacrifice for a spell to save the valley. What is that sacrifice? We have to make Kristoff give up his memories of Anna! And unless you max out his and Anna’s missions, it’s permanent.
• This was Pat Carroll’s final performance as Ursula before she passed away.
• The darker journal entries have the player's past self bemoaning the absolute agony of being alone and read as someone going through depression.
  "Loneliness is safe. If I am alone, then no one can ever leave me again."
  "I feel like there's a hole inside me. No, I feel like I am mostly a hole, with just a small bit of the person I once was. I'm only enough of a person to feel alone..."
  "Loneliness is sharp. It cuts me like glass in my fingers. But it's much more awful than broken glass because I cannot see it or avoid it..."
  "I fell asleep under a tree. When I woke up, I couldn’t move. Purple vines had grown around and over me. Their thorns cut me, but they could not cut me as painfully as loneliness, so I pulled myself free.”
• The Player finds Olaf locked in the Secret Room in Frosted Heights much like they found Gothel and Scar. In Olaf's case, it turns out that he followed what he thought was The Player into the room only to run into The Forgotten who was in the middle of disposing of the Orb of Love. Innocently, Olaf thought their struggle over the orb was a game of tag and even after losing his arms and being sealed inside for who knows how long, he was waiting all that time just so he could continue their game of tag.
  • The Secret Room itself is something of a tearjerker. According to Olaf, this was a private place The Player had in the past when they wanted to be by themselves. Whatever it used to be back then, it's now become a Room Full of Crazy. It's a twisted, mangled mess with floating objects, furniture clipping through the walls, and incomprehensible diagrams scribbled along the walls of what seems to be calculations of a spell The Player was trying to cast.
  • We also see more of the darker journal entries of our past self; these ones talk about how for some unknown reason, they felt as though they couldn't truly befriend anyone and that there was something wrong with themselves. The implications of the journal seem to indicate this was the cause of the Forgetting, as whatever spell they were trying to cast to solve this seemed to require the absence of the Orbs of Virtue to work.
  "It's only when the lights are on that I realize my life is dark. In here, I'm safe."
  "I try to make friends with the Villagers, but it's like there's a wall between us. Like something is broken inside of me..."
• The quest line to bring Simba and Nala to the Valley involves needing to fetch something to amplify the roars of the two lions in order to trick a pack of Hyenas into thinking they're out-numbered. You find this in the form of a sound system (Specifically a microphone and an amp) from Scrooge. He claims to have gotten it from his basement and recalls that it might have belonged to someone Goofy used to know. If you're at all familiar with Goof Troop or A Goofy Movie then there is no question as to who those belonged to: Goofy's son Max. The implication that The Forgetting robbed the memory of Goofy's own son, made Max disappear, or both is truly heartbreaking.
• One conversation you can have with Woody is about WALL-E, specifically Woody wondering what sort of toy WALL-E is. One of the dialogue branches results in a sobering moment where Woody reminisces about RC, who we know left Andy's house sometime between the events of Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3. It does cross over with Heartwarming Moments a bit as well, as Woody clearly hopes RC is doing alright wherever he is now.
• Upon entering the Dreamscape, The Player must retrieve the Orb of Remembrance by reliving the memories of their other half: The Forgotten. You quite literally step into their shoes as you relive moments of the past in the valley and see just how miserable they were. You talk to memories of Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy, and every dialogue option is screaming out about how much sheer misery The Player is in but no matter what option you pick The Player refuses to open up about how they feel and insists they're fine, even when all three of them can clearly tell they're not happy. Even the mission prompts in this section show just how unhappy The Player of the past was.
  "Pick some Ugly Flowers to make some kinda bouquet? Ugh, whatever..."
  "Craft a Hideous Bouquet at the crafting station near Goofy's house. What's the point in making a nice bouquet anyway?"
  "Find Minnie by the pillar and give her the Hideous Bouquet. Because you have to do EVERYTHING around here..."
  • In another memory, we learn the truth of what happened between The Player and Gothel: She tricked an emotionally vulnerable Player into removing the orb from the Pillar of Trust to make her spell. The kicker is that despite being previously told that Gothel was going to use the spell to trap Rapunzel in her tower, it turns out she was going to use the spell on The Player to trap them inside her tree with her, and it was us lashing out that trapped her inside instead. This event would ultimately make The Player paranoid, and would lead to them trapping Scar in his home after they destroy the Orb of Nurturing for him.
  • In fact, the whole mission chain was so depressing, they actually added a trigger warning for it in the next update.
• A lot of Rapunzel's lyrics in the Rift in Time Expansion are pretty heart wrenching, as she tries to process Gothel's abuse and her newfound freedom through song.
  With both feet on the ground
  The tower looks so tall
  How did being so up high
  Make me feel so small?

---