Tear Jerker / Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

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• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
• Crisis Core
• Dirge of Cerberus
• Final Fantasy VII Remake

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General

• The Sephiroth Clones' fate. In the original, they just appeared every so often as Foreshadowing before dying miserably, but in this game you get to see them every step of the way along their progress towards Reunion, and how they randomly die off or get persecuted by everyone around them for simply being there. The party empathizes with their tragic state, especially Cloud on a subconscious level, and freak the hell out when the Turks summarily shoot one of them without even so much as an explanation.
• In Remake, Cloud occasionally had what seemed like headaches at random intervals, but it usually only took a member of the party trying to calm him down or snap him out of it for him to shake it off. Here, Cloud gets progressively more ill throughout the game, with the party members left unsure what's happening but continually trying to look out for him. By the end of the game, he is obviously desperately in need of help and potentially about to become even more isolated from the rest of the party as he can still see and hear Aerith while they can't, and seemingly hasn't even realised that she has died in his timeline, as far as the others can tell.

Chapter 1: Fall of a Hero

• Seeing the once beloved Sephiroth become a Fallen Hero and slaughter everyone in Nibelheim, with Cloud unable to stop him. It's driven home how respected and admired he was, but it's also clear from the player's arrival in Nibelheim that Sephiroth is already struggling mentally and suspects something is wrong. Even still, he acts supportive towards Cloud and the other troopers and tries to ensure Tifa's protection. The only time he needs prodding to be courteous is when a villager wants to take his photograph.
  • Sephiroth's backstory, or what he describes of it. In his own words he has 'no home', a mother named JENOVA who died shortly after he was born, then he cuts himself off laughing before he can explain who his father is. He has no home because he was raised inside Shinra, and Hojo told him a half-truth about his mother - he is genetically JENOVA's, but Hojo makes no mention that Lucrecia bore him (and may not actually be dead). Either way he had a loveless background being raised as a weapon for the company with knowledge of his true origins obscured.
  • When he fails to save the Shinra soldier accompanying him, he has a look of horror on his face at his inability to do so. He also goes out of his way to praise another Shinra soldier when he protected Tifa during a fiend ambush. Despite them ranking much lower than him, Sephiroth (before discovering his origins) cared about the people around him despite being raised in what's implied to be awful, inhumane circumstances as a child soldier.
  • Tifa mentions the town mayor being upset all evening that Sephiroth stood him up for dinner plans, and complained to her father for hours afterwards. It's a small moment but it adds to the number of indications at how excited the townspeople were to meet Sephiroth. When the player arrives crowds follow Sephiroth wherever he goes - from the town hall to the inn - and the mayor seems to have assumed that Sephiroth was just in a bad mood or being rude when he brushed him off. All of them were excited and welcoming of Shinra despite the problems the reactor was causing, even organizing a search party to check on Sephiroth at Shinra Manor, and what should have been a routine job ended in the destruction of the entire town.
• When Zack finally arrives in Midgar, following the events of the fight between Cloud's team and Sephiroth at the end of Remake, there's a lot of rubble and damage to the city, as well as many injured. On the news, you can see an unconscious (or possibly dead) Barret and Tifa (from this alternate timeline, not the ones we followed throughout the game) being taken away. Red XIII is also being taken away alongside that timeline's version of Aerith. While he manages to regain consciousness and cause the helicopter to crash, allowing Zack to save her, his fate, as well as the fates of the alternate Barret and Tifa, are unknown. With that Red, it's safe to assume he'll most likely be taken back to Hojo for further experimentation.

Chapter 2: A New Journey Begins

• In the original game, Shinra influenced most of the world through fear, power and their wealth, but it was mostly people griping and complaining about it besides what we saw with Nibelheim's cover-up or what they did to Corel. In Rebirth, you find out that Junon and Kalm were a republic before Shinra came knocking to establish a foothold for themselves with Midgar — and now half the region is nothing but ruins with the death toll on both sides implied to be so high that it's likely the reason the SOLDIER program was even sought in the first place. It's no wonder survivors of the war are depressed wrecks.

Chapter 7: Those Left Behind

• Elmyra calls Zack out for not taking good care of Aerith. When he protests, she yells that he did not even wipe her face, which makes him look down in shame. Then there is the anguished reaction of Oates when he sees the comatose Aerith.

Chapter 8: All That Glitters

• The Terrier timeline's Marlene crying as she says Biggs, Barret, and Tifa are not coming back. Made even worse because in this reality, she lost two fathers in a row at the hands of Shinra.
• Barret's Duel Boss battle against Dyne is a prolonged Tear Jerker. First, the news that his best friend is still alive should fill Barret with hope, But upon seeing that Dyne has gone insane with grief, Barret can hardly watch. Even showing Dyne a picture of Marlene and telling him that Marlene's still alive in Midgar doesn't do much to calm Dyne down. If anything, it manages to break through the madness, but only makes Dyne cross the Despair Event Horizon when he realizes that he got all this blood on his hands, most of them innocent people, for no reason at all. Unlike the original game, Dyne tells Barret to "carry that guilt" before dying from Shinra troop bullet wounds. All Barret can do after that is just cry. The entire sequence is a massive gut punch, helped along by the masterful voice work of John Eric Bentley and Dave B. Mitchell as Barret and Dyne respectively.
• While at the Gold Saucer, Cloud can come across a framed photo of Jessie during her time as an actress. After recalling his interactions with her, Cloud mournfully says he's still waiting on the pizza she promised him. If Tifa is with him when this happens, she speaks about how much her friendship with Jessie meant to her.

Chapter 9: The Planet Stirs

• Cloud and Aerith meet Zack's parents and they recognize Cloud as a SOLDIER. They ask if he knows where Zack is, and are heartbroken when he does not recognize that name. Aerith feels bad that she stirred up bad memories for them.
• After knocking Tifa into the Gongaga reactor's mako pool during one of his mental breaks, Cloud abruptly snaps out of it, realizes what he did, and screams Tifa's name out of horror.
• As Tifa is being dragged into the Lifestream by the Weapon she starts seeing visions of her past and wonders if she is about to die. While this is already depressing enough it gets worse when she relives some of her memories with Cloud and she desperately begs him not to go away as she needs him. It really shows how much of a Living Emotional Crutch Cloud has become for her since the fall of Nibelheim.
  • Later on, after Sephiroth tries to kill her, Tifa sees visions of her friends, Zangan, and Dr. Sheiran encouraging her to life but when it gets to Cloud he walks away following after Sephiroth showing how much of a hold he has over Cloud.
    Sephiroth: Your words can no longer reach him.
    Tifa: No! Don't take him too!
• After waking up from her coma, Tifa and Cloud have a heart-to-heart wherein Cloud lets his guard down and shows genuine fear over his lost memories and that it feels as if multiple people are living in his head. Cloud believes that he is suffering from cellular degradation caused by the mako treatments and that he is falling apart. Although this then transitions to a heartwarming moment when Tifa promises to help him and that she won't let him die.

Chapter 10: Watcher of the Vale

• A chance meeting with the Avalanche HQ members reveals that Wedge truly died during their attack on the Shinra building. Barret takes this news the hardest. You even see his final moments, falling out of the building and plummeting to his death.
  • The final Protorelic Intel mission of the Cosmo Canyon Region has Barret somberly telling Tifa that they should no longer live in guilt and regret over being the surviving members of the Avalance splinter cell.
• Aerith's initial speech during a lantern ceremony at Cosmo Canyon, where she mentions that her Cetra lineage has brought her nothing but pain and persecution. Cloud can encourage her when she falters, turning it into a heartwarming moment instead.

Chapter 11: The Long Shadow of Shinra

• Upon reaching Nibelheim, Aerith reflects on Cloud and Tifa's shared childhood and being able to return to one's home, something she will never have the chance to experience. This ends up upsetting her enough to request some time alone, before apologizing to Cloud and explaining that she doesn't want to take her feelings out on him, even if Cloud offers to lend an ear.
• In the original Shinra rebuilt Nibelheim but hired actors in an attempt to cover up what had happened. In Rebirth, Shinra still rebuilds Nibelheim but repurposes the town into a treatment centre for/observation of the black robed men. It's nice to see them get some care for once, but it's also disturbing and sad to see that there are enough of them to essentially repopulate an entire destroyed town and it serves as a symbol for what happened to Cloud and Tifa's childhood home: it's been rebuilt, but it's not their home anymore, it's a monument to the damage Shinra has done (and even before Sephiroth burned it down the town contained Shinra Manor, which hid numerous dark secrets of its own).
• While in Nibelheim, Cloud begins remembering Zack and is left horrified that he could have forgotten his best friend in SOLDIER which he believes is another sign that the degradation is getting worse. He later gets confused, believing Zack was the one who drowned in the river, and Tifa is too uneasy to correct him in the moment, likely planning to get together with Aerith so they can all figure out what really happened at the same time, and help Cloud through the realisation that he never made SOLDIER. It's also a sad moment for Aerith, as both Cloud and Tifa know they will have to tell her that Zack is very likely definitely never coming back. Cloud also describes Zack as 'head over heels for Aerith', which is sad on two counts: first for the thought that Zack and Aerith never got to reunite, and also for Cloud's mixed feelings that the first love Aerith mentioned was also his best friend and kind-of mentor.
• Roche's death. After being defeated by Cloud in their third fight in Junon (the first two in Remake), Roche agrees to let Hojo experiment on him and augment his abilities with mako. However, this means that he is slowly dying from cellular degradation due to the mako infusion. And sure enough, once his final fight with Cloud ends, he dies from mako poisoning soon after and becomes another Sephiroth clone. Cloud is left shaken after seeing Roche's fate, realizing that the same thing is likely going to happen to him too.
  • The mechanics of his boss fight drive this home, too. Roche now hits much harder than he did in Remake with more special attacks, but if the player uses Assess or observes his animations they can figure out the way to beat him: after each special attack Roche will momentarily pause and have to recover himself, and the player has the opportunity to pressure him in this window. In other words, even though Roche can do more damage faster if the player isn't careful, he is visibly struggling to keep it up because of the advanced degradation of his body. And he seemingly willingly volunteered to do this, all because he wanted to defeat Cloud, though he may not have known the full extent of the likely side effects when he did so...
• When returning to the Nibelheim reactor, Tifa has a panic attack when recalling finding her father's body and being stabbed by Sephiroth, with Cloud comforting her. In the tank room where JENOVA was originally stored, Cloud himself starts to have a panic attack due to repressed memories coming back.
• The meeting with Vincent gets across how broken the events with the JENOVA Project have left him. He awkwardly tries to pass himself off as security for the manor before struggling to use a card reader, then turns hostile when the party pries into one of the other rooms, transforms and attacks them. Barret also refers to him as a "freak", which is especially depressing given Barret despises Shinra more than any of the party and many of them have spoken about how much they hate Hojo (the party also empathizes with the Forgotten Specimen, which is fought right beforehand and is also in pain from the experiments inflicted upon it), but they haven't realized Vincent's ability to shapeshift was forced upon him by the exact same scientist. The encounter ends with Cait Sith failing to persuade him to join the party after trying to empathize with him and asking if this is how he wants his story to end, and Vincent staggers back into the coffin room, either hurt from the fight, the transformation, or both.
  • His animations get across how painful the transformations are for him. He grabs at his head beforehand and is left staggering after his defeat by the player, with the second phase of the fight implying some of his chaos abilities were making an appearance.
  • Throughout the basement in Shinra Manor there is graffiti on the walls, likely done by Vincent himself - in addition to a drawing of Lucrecia, there are also phrases like 'turn back', 'beware of monsters', and 'abandon all hope', possibly a sign of being down in the basement alone for too long. It's also possible that other people wrote on the walls over the years, serving as a record of yet more of Hojo's victims.
• It's also a noticeable theme throughout Shinra manor that the experiments encountered there are suffering. If Aerith is in the party, she comments that the Forgotten Specimen appears to be in pain in the second phase of the fight, a fiend encountered in a subplot is also implied to be calling out for help, and then of course there's Vincent himself.
• Broden was nothing but polite and helpful to Cloud and party in Kalm, and his ultimate fate is to end up as yet another Sephiroth clone.

Chapter 12: The Golden Key

• When looking for Dio in the theme park, Cloud can run into Tifa and Barret. Both are feeling disheartened, with Tifa feeling like her efforts aren't making a difference compared to the hope she started out with, and Barret is looking at Jessie's poster and remembering how her chance to be a star was cut short. Cloud can thankfully help cheer both of them up.
• The play and date night are generally one big heartwarming moment, but there's a few bittersweet notes. Getting to see a hologram of Jessie be the star leading lady she always wanted, and the (implied to be) spirits of she, Wedge and Biggs channelled during Aerith's performance of the theme song.
• 'No Promises to Keep' also qualifies, as there's a distinct undertone of being separated from a loved one and hoping for a reunion to the lyrics. By the end Aerith herself is in tears.
  • The camera also briefly cuts to Vincent during the number - given his status as a parallel to Cloud, he's likely thinking of his own lost love during the number.
• For veteran players, getting Aerith's date can be as sad as it is heartwarming. In the original game the date with her was a nice bit of narrative pay off to the 'one date for Cloud being her bodyguard' deal before the later twist. For returning players to Rebirth, it instead feels bittersweet knowing this might be the last fun night the player (and Cloud) gets with Aerith before the inevitable potentially happens for a second time.
  • On Aerith's date she also goes out of her way to reassure Cloud that she wants to spend time with him and not Zack, as he's keeping his distance at first in the gondola.
• Cait handing the Keystone over to the Turks, with the party clearly hurt and admonishing him for his betrayal. Even Aerith could barely stand him as the group walks away, disgusted with Cait. What's even sadder is that he knew things would end like this, but he still felt bad about doing it and the party's reaction still hurt.
  Cait Sith: Knew from the start it had to end this way... but it still stings. For a moment there... it felt like we were friends.
• If one returns to Gongaga during this chapter to do the "Woodland Vigil", reaching the end of it reveals that Cissnei blames herself for sending Zack to his death and that she goes out on the specific patrol to mourn him alone, likely over her guilt of initially not assisting Zack and a comatose Cloud during the latter chapters of Crisis Core.

Chapter 13: Where Angels Fear to Tread

• The downfall of the Cetra counts as this. Despite having defeated Jenova, the remaining survivors were scapegoated and hunted down by humans who feared or envied them for their powers.
• The personal trials each character goes through in the Temple of the Ancients forces them to confront the worst memories of their past. And while they've succeeded, there's no clear indication that any of them have gotten over what the Temple forced them to witness.
  • Red XIII's trial forces him to remember his abduction by Shinra, and then becoming Hojo's lab rat.
  • Tifa's trial has her relive the burning of Nibelheim and seeing her father's corpse. It becomes even more painful when she angrily repeats the same lines that led her to attack Sephiroth back then.
  • Barret's trial brings him back to a time when his arm was whole and his wife Myrna still lived. The scene then flashes forward to the day he ended up losing both.
  • Yuffie's trial leads her to fearfully face Nero once more with the dead Sonon as his marionette.
  • Aerith's trial reveals how she had faced rejection and scorn from bystanders for trying to find someone to help her dying mother. And when Shinra ended up coming across Ifalna's body, Aerith tries to run towards her only to be left alone much to her sadness. It's even more heartbreaking when we see Shinra soldiers finding her body, knowing full well Hojo will continue to experiment on her remains.
  • Cloud is the only one who initially doesn't go through a trial - until the group enters the main passageway into the Temple:
    • He ends up reliving the night the Sector 7 plate fell. He once again sees Biggs' dead body, Tifa crying over Jessie, and is now taunted by Sephiroth for his lack of emotion, culminating in him killing a Black Robe in his mania. He defiantly proclaims that he will never become like Sephiroth, with the audience, the party, and himself knowing full well that he's losing his mind, and it's clear from his tone that he's saying it out of desperation.
    • As for the party, they are completely unaware of what Cloud saw. Cloud's statement could be taken in two ways from their perspective. Either Cloud is claiming he will never be like Sephiroth or he will never be a Black Robe. Based on what they've seen of Cloud, he's been acting like both and nothing they are doing seems to be slowing it down. Only Tifa offers any comfort and even she sounds incredibly unsure of herself.
    • While not explicitly stated, anyone familiar with the events of the original game and Crisis Core know that the night Sector 7 fell is absolutely not his worst memory, because he's been suppressing the actual one completely - as shown by what he changed in the ending of Remake, his true worst memory is the day Zack (initially) died.
• Even though the Moogle unit was a robot running on a rudimentary A.I., it seemed to have enough awareness to still reach out to the crushed Cait as the Temple crumbled around them.
• At the end of the chapter, Cloud is under Sephiroth's control and he commands him to chase after Aerith, who has the Black Materia. Unlike in the original game, where you play as Cloud's mind, uselessly trying to get Cloud to stop from giving the Black Materia to Sephiroth, you directly control Cloud here, having him chase after Aerith. You can't even move away, as Cloud will clumsily stumble forward.

Chapter 14: End of the World

• An alternate Aerith summons Cloud and gives him her White Materia to replace his Aerith's depleted one after confessing she likes him. She shoves him through a portal back to his world, but as he falls, he sees Sephiroth approaching to strike her down and can only scream her name in anguish, unable to save her.
  • It gets even sadder when Cloud attempts to follow his timeline's Aerith in the Sleeping Forest only to be subdued by the White Whispers under her command. Given their behavior here and at the Forgotten Capital, it's likely that they were trying to stop Cloud from interfering in what Aerith herself set out to do, which involved putting herself at great risk and would result in at least one version of her dying at Sephiroth's hands. All Cloud can do is desperately call out to her, while her duty forces her to ignore his pleas and walk away from him without even looking back. Depending on how one interprets the ending, this is also potentially the last conversation they ever have before her death, and they don't even get a chance for a proper goodbye; even the original game had more of a goodbye, with Aerith telling Cloud to take care of himself and that she would be back soon. Here, the two don't even get that luxury.
• During the lead up to the following entry, Aerith admits that she knows she's praying the wrong way because her mother never had the chance to teach her how. This and previous events suggest that she’s really bothered by her lack of connection to Cetra culture.
• Cloud breaks free from Sephiroth's mind control and blocks his sword from striking Aerith, then disarms him ... only for a time distortion to happen and the next thing Cloud knows, Sephiroth has just impaled her. As Cloud holds her and weeps, Sephiroth gives an Evil Laugh and rubs it in. Even worse, Sephiroth was trying to gaslight Cloud earlier into thinking that he's just a "puppet" because he didn't weep when Jessie died in his arms in Remake. Now that it's proven that he is capable of feeling such raw emotions, the villain simply gaslights him some more just to twist the knife further.
  Sephiroth: Don't weep. Your tears are hollow, just like you.
  • Tifa's reaction to Aerith's supposed death is a mixture of horror and devastation, seeing a woman she grew close to as a friend over the course of two games being mortally wounded by the man responsible for her father's death and destruction of her hometown. Afterward, she's the most inconsolable of the party.
  • Barret as well. When the party left Marlene in Elmyra's care in "Remake", he put on his sunglasses, implied to be because he was trying to hide his emotions/being near tears. Here, after Aerith's apparent death he does the same thing. During the final boss battle, he even comments "this is for Aerith" at one point.
    • As soon as he sees Aerith in Cloud's arms, he screams "I'LL KILL YOU!" at Sephiroth.
  • The whole scene is extra emotional for veterans of the 1997 original as the sequence of events leading from Aerith's stabbing into the succeeding fight is almost the same, with the white materia falling from her hair and the initial bars of her theme synchronizing with every bounce the materia makes on the ground.
  • Zack's preparing to die upon defeating Sephiroth and almost being hit by Meteor. Thankfully, he ends up surviving, but it almost feels like a Yank the Dog's Chain moment after his initial survival back in Remake.
• In the ending, Cloud can see and interact with Aerith, but everybody else can't and are extremely depressed, especially Yuffie and Tifa. It is bittersweet when Aerith pats Red XIII and he briefly notices, proving she is not just Cloud's hallucination.
  • His goodbye to Aerith is both equal parts sad and heartwarming. While both of them agree to go their separate ways in order to stop Sephiroth and the Meteor, it's clear they're not very happy at the thought of leaving each other's company.