Tear Jerker / Final Fantasy XVI

Warning: Spoilers Off applies to this page. Proceed at your own risk.

It's a Final Fantasy game, so of course it has these. But XVI holding its status as a Darker and Edgier entry in the mainline series gives it plenty of opportunity to tug at the heartstrings.

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Main Story

A Flame Summoned

• Joshua's relationship with Anabella is pretty sad from his perspective. He is well aware that the only reason she likes him is because he is the Phoenix, and she constantly disparages his beloved older brother. The worst part is that he doesn't want to be Phoenix's Dominant. The role puts him under immense pressure, not the least of which is from his own mother. In his conversation with Clive, he almost makes it sound like he'd rather be the one ignored/scorned by Anabelle. And when you see traits like his refusal to eat carrots, you're reminded that Joshua's just a kid forced to try to grow up too fast by the circumstances of his birth. Which makes what happens to him in the end all that much more heartrending.
• The prologue/playable demo is a full-fledged Downer Beginning. Not that a story about revenge was ever going to go smoothly, but the tone that XVI sets early on makes it clear that the game isn't pulling its punches, culminating in one of the most tragic deaths in the series that gives Aerith a run for her money.
  • Even the beginning before the flashback starts is a bit sad. What triggers Clive to remember his past is seeing a fellow conscript of Sanbraque die. Think about it - Clive is definitely not willingly following Sanbraque's orders, but despite how stoic and aloof he is towards the other soldiers, either out of empathy over their shared hopelessness or genuine camaraderie, his last words before falling unconscious and dreaming about what happened years ago are that of "Brother...". Alternatively, it could be that he is traumatized enough that just seeing a fellow soldier die helplessly would make him remember how he too was once powerless to stop the fall of Rosaria and his brother's death.
  • Clive's status as The Unfavorite is set very clearly when Anabella shows up. Joshua gets some Parental Favoritism from Anabella, while Clive gets little more than a Death Glare and seething contempt from his mother. The other soldiers even comment on how unfair it is to Clive.
  • Joshua gets to witness his father's head being sliced off right in front of him during the battle at the Phoenix Gate. As if that wasn't bad enough, he even gets covered in Elwin's blood. Small wonder that Joshua ends up traumatized enough to awaken the power of the Phoenix.
    • If you are a fan of Chocobos, watching them get killed to prevent any of the family from escaping is rather hard to watch.
  • The ensuing boss fight against Ifrit sees Joshua splattered into a red mist by the new Eikon of Fire. All the while, Clive can only watch in horror and fruitlessly beg the Eikon to stop as his younger brother is torn apart.
    Clive: No! Stop it! Take your hands off my brother! Joshua... Stop it... Stop it! I swore I would protect him... Please... Please, stop it! Joshua! NOOOOOOOO!!!
  • Clive's words after Joshua's death really sell it. The sheer rage and sorrow in his voice is enough to send chills down your spine, while also breaking your heart.
    Clive: Murderer... I'll kill you! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!!
  • And just when you think Clive's day couldn't get any worse, it does. Clive finds out his own mother Anabella is a traitor, and orders Clive killed when he's found after the battle at the Phoenix Gate is over. But, then she decides to spare him... just to spite her now-dead husband one last time by forcibly conscripting Clive into the Empire of Sanbreque as a Branded. And it's implied that Anabella is doing all of this just because she wants a better social status than she had as duchess, which comes off as chillingly petty.
  • While the trope of killing off parents and siblings in the franchise is as old as the hills, Joshua is one of the few brothers Square had the guts to give the player time to get to know before their death, in contrast to Reks from Final Fantasy XII or Nora Estheim from Final Fantasy XIII due to their small amount of screentime.
  • It's subtle, but Clive and Joshua never hug each other at any point prior to the former's death. He never even holds him one last time, not even his corpse if it was still there. It's possibly one of the saddest scenes in the history of Final Fantasy.

To Kill a Dominant

• Jill's treatment during the timeskip was... not kind. When Clive finds her again, she's in the hands of people who view Dominants like her as abominations and living weapons. When they make her fight for them, it’s implied she just wants to die.
  Shiva's Dominant: Let this be the end…
  • Her captors had small children with them, trying to force her to transform by threatening to kill the child hostages. We even see one soldier go as far as to hold a blade to the poor kid's neck to the point that it starts bleeding. And yet Jill can't. Not because she doesn't want to save the child, and not because she doesn't know how to control her transformation, but summoning the Eikon takes stamina, and after fighting Titan, the literal Tank of Eikons, she doesn't have anything left.
  • A subtle detail that makes the above worse: It's not just any sword that the Ironblood presses against the child's neck. It's Jill's sword.

Awakening

• When Clive (seemingly) steals Garuda from Benedikta, she is so completely broken by having lost the only part of herself that she considers valuable that she can't even walk. Her men have to carry her out of the castle.
  Benedikta: Give her back… Give her back! Give her back! Where is she?! Where is Garuda?!
  • What does break her out of her BSOD, just briefly? During the ambush by bandits, her beloved second-in-command dies in front of her. A man who clearly cared for her despite her seemingly having lost her power.
  • And without Garuda, she's just an exhausted woman alone in a forest unable to defend herself due to her physical and mental condition, beset by bandits with all that situation implies.
• After the berserk Garuda is slain by a berserk Ifrit, Cid mourns Benedikta's death and the choices she made leading to it. He mourns over her body, placing her charm back with her (hinted to be a gift from him she kept on her person), asking why she chose to listen to Barnabas instead and how this couldn't possibly have been what she wanted.
  • And even then, Benedikta's "usefulness" as a tool of Barbabas' schemes is not done. Scarcely a chapter later, Hugo is sent a box containing her severed head, apparently under Cid's orders, leaving him visibly distraught and broken by the sight of it, all so the Dominant of Titan will turn his full might upon Cid and his Underground Railroad and cause further chaos and destabilisation in the realms even without Benedikta whispering in his ear. Barnabas never even mentions her afterwards despite using her corpse as a piece in his game plan for Clive and the others, underscoring just how little she really meant to him, despite all that she tried to do for Barnabas and his kingdom to prove her worth.

The Wages of Guilt

• Clive is still coping with the revelation that he is the Dominant of Ifrit in present day when returning to Phoenix Gate, and he was the one who killed his own brother. The result is the player character falling into a Heroic BSoD.
  • Clive is so deeply broken that as soon as he wakes up and Cid visits him, Clive begs Cid to kill him for having killed Joshua and everything he had loved with his own hands, straight-up calling himself a monster and sobbing on the ground, uncaring about his nakedness, once Cid punches him down and tells him to cool off.
  • On the mission directly following this Clive is left alone with Torgal to pass through on the way to their next destination. Notably, in this area when a battle triggers, the BGM doesn't change at all - perhaps reflecting Clive himself just purposelessly going through the motions as he no longer sees the point (which he says almost verbatim when faced with his first enemies.)
    • There is a moment on this path where Clive reaches a bridge with a rushing river underneath, and just pauses and stares. Torgal whimpers to get his attention. No words are spoken, but given Clive's mental state at the time it's not difficult to see what was being implied.
  • This also raises a more troubling implication of what happened that night. The clash between Phoenix and Ifrit is not between enemies but loving brothers whom neither of which wanted this to happen. Ifrit showing up wasn't part of Anabella's plans. While it could simply be Clive losing control, it could also be taken as him being in full denial over what happened that night, blaming Ifrit as a separate entity and creating a Self-Serving Memory.

Into the Darkness

• Clive watching as Hugo destroyed the Throne of Rosaria where Elwin once sat in order to spite Clive for apparently wanting to protect the empty throne. You can clearly hear the pain in Clive's voice as he cries out no, and then you'll realize that this is the second time Clive has failed to be the First Shield of Rosaria, and on a more personal level, to Clive, the mark of him having failed his father. While he had discovered that Joshua was alive at that time, it still clearly didn't take away the fact that Clive had failed his father's high hopes for him: He had almost killed Joshua and left Rosaria vulnerable to the Empire and the Iron Kingdom as Ifrit, and now he was powerless to do anything as the throne of Rosaria is destroyed in front of his own eyes.

Through the Maelstrom

• CLIVE BESTED. A sobering victory screen that is meant to illustrate just how much of a threat Odin/Barnabas is. You are no match for him at this time.

Back to Their Origin

• Clive and Jill's farewell before they set off for Origin is accompanied by the track "Final Farewells," a somber, understated piano rendition of the main Final Fantasy theme. Jill knows all too well that Clive very well might not be coming back, which makes them finally proclaiming their love for each other out loud bittersweet to say the least.

Of Gods and Men

• Joshua's death. Joshua's body finally reaches its limit after the Ultima he sealed away breaks free. He has just enough time to transfer the powers of Phoenix to Clive, and tells him that he has always been proud to have Clive as both his Shield and brother before he slips away. Clive, now seeing what is effictively his little brother dying for the second and final time, screams at him to wake up before breaking down into ugly, agonized wailing in what is Ben Starr's most harrowing performance in the game.
• Upon seeing the red star fade away, Jill breaks down sobbing and runs from the room. Gav starts to weep as well, realizing what has happened.

Unsorted

• Clive finally revisits the Night of Flames at Phoenix Gate. Just as the memory of the Infernal Eikon is about to plunge his hand through the Phoenix, Clive screams at the Eikon to stop, freezing the moment. His hand outstretched, his breathing heavy, tears falling, Clive starts to fully understand his role in the tragedy of Phoenix Gate:
  Clive: I…I did this. I killed him.
  • Then a memory of Joshua calls for Clive. Guilt-ridden, Clive stumbles over to this Joshua and hugs him.
    Clive: I'm sorry…! I failed you…!
• Dion having a full mental breakdown as he tries to convince his father the Emperor that his stepmother Annabella and his half-brother Olivier are egging him on to steer Sanbreque to its doom. And then Olivier smugly talks down to Dion and makes it clear that yes, he is every bit as horrible as Dion thought him to be. At his wits' end, Dion throws his spear at the child...only for the Emperor to throw himself in front of Olivier, taking the fatal blow instead. If the horror of seeing his father's limp body wasn't bad enough, he quickly witnesses the terrifying revelation that Olivier isn't even human and has been nothing more than an undead proxy of Ultima's the entire time. All this, topped with a Breaking Speech from "Olivier", is what finally triggers Dion's maddened transformation into Bahamut, and he subsequently lays waste to the home that he has been trying to protect.
  • Despite all that he had done, it's hard not to feel bad for Sylvestre: As Dion noted it, Sylvestre was once a genuinely good emperor who cared dearly for his people, and despite the fact that Dion was a mistress's child, Sylvestre still clearly had a good relationship with him. He didn't chose to become evil at choice, but instead was manipulated by Anabella into becoming the monster that he was now. Even then, however, it's clear that the vestiges of The Good King he used to be is still there, as the look of dismay and genuine consideration on Sylvestre's face when Dion confronted him made clear. He could have been redeemed by the love he had for his son and his people, and the fact that he never got the chance to and instead sacrificed his life for the boy he truly believed as his son only to have his death be used as a one last act of callousness from Ultima that lead to Sanbreque being mostly destroyed is truly a tragedy. Fittingly, despite everything the Empire put him through, Clive has nothing but pity when he describes how Dion's relationship with Sylvestre ended.
    • Small example, but when Sylvestre took the blow for Olivier, he doesn't react with shock and anger, but He just stared at his firstborn son with sadness, as though he was reflecting on just how much he had failed as a father if Dion was willing to kill Olivier, and his last words before his death was simply speaking out Dion's name as though pleading him to not go ahead with killing Olivier. To make things worse, "Olivier" cruelly tells Dion that Sylvestre died that way because despite everything, he still loved both his children.
    • After Olivier's death, Dion sees Sylvestre's spirit, and he just... looks at the sight solemnly, as though realizing how it is too late for him to atone for all that he had done. All he could do was show the one son he truly had approval for his actions.
• She deserved it, but Anabella's state when she kills herself is so pathetic that it illicits pity. On top of having her new home collapsing around her ears, she's forced to deal with the two-fold blow of seeing Dion kill her son Olivier (who disintegrates into aether, confirming he was never alive) and Joshua alive after believing he was dead all these years. It breaks her completely, and she spends her last moments convinced that everything that's happened is a bad dream and screaming at Joshua to stay away from her. Even Clive can't help but feel pity at her suicide.
  • Subtle, but when Clive finally gets to meet Anabella, he is definitely furious and disgusted with Anabella and doesn't hesitate to call her out over her disdain of Elwin and her betrayal of Rosaria, but while he was rejecting her beliefs, he never once defends his own self, even when she rants about him not becoming the Dominant of Phoenix and being strong in ways that only made things harder for her. He doesn't even bother to show any signs of being infuriated that she sold him out as a slave. Either he is just resigned to Anabella never having any affection for him at all, or he actually agrees with her to an extent that had he been born as the Dominant of the Phoenix, things would have been better for his entire family, both of those possibilities can still be saddening.
    Clive: Joshua's every waking moment was spent trying to shoulder the burden that you, and the Phoenix, and the Duchy foisted on him! That's why I became his Shield! To help bear the weight! But what did you do!? You betrayed your own blood, and surrendered your son to his fate!!
    • Another sad note is that Clive leaves Anabella's body in the collapsing room. Clive has gone out of his way to bury people including strangers who died around him. Anabella was so evil that the kindest man in the world who just so happens to be her son has no kindness to give her.
  • Joshua's perspective can also be a bit sad. Despite how his mother orchestrated the events that lead to him and Clive being separated, his brother enslaved, and their home falling, Joshua clearly did retain more genuine sentiment towards his mother than Clive, and then you realize no matter how strict Anabella was on Joshua, she still did love him and Joshua can't just forget about that, no matter how evil Anabella truly was. He probably did recognize her as just a pawn of Ultima and wanted to give her a chance to redeem herself. The despondent tone on his voice as he laments his mother's death can still tug a bit of heartstrings.
  • Your mileage might vary but ironically had Anabella been a better mother to Clive, Joshua and Jill she would have gotten all that she ever wanted.
• When Clive and Jill are speaking to Martha in her inn, a Mother and her son enter and are overheard talking about how she gave away in disgust her newborn child all because he was a Bearer. Martha notes that Bearer's are treated as though they are less than human and no one cares what happens to them.
• With the Echoes of the Fallen DLC, the player can see a character's thoughts on another character at a specific point in time. Torgal's thoughts regarding Cid initially start out positive. But when he dies, Torgal thinks he's sleeping. After the timeskip, he's wondering where Cid is. And later, he says that Cid is watching over them.

Side Quests

After first Time Skip

• A sidequest in Martha's Rest sees Clive asked to find a Bearer before the Imperials do. Before he can set off, a man named Ronald loudly complains about how he was "deceived" by Norris who claimed to be one of them. When you find Norris, he lacks the same mark all Branded do, which is how he managed to avoid detection up until now. When Clive returns to the quest-giver, he lies and tells Ronald that Norris is dead and hands him a lantern as "proof". Ronald is notably shaken by this as he previously gave it to Norris as a gift. Any remorse he might have is quickly forgotten as he rants about how Norris may as well have ruined his reputation and people will see him as a "Bearer lover".
• When Clive leaves for Northwood, a sidequest in Lostwing has him asked to help accommodate a pair of escaped Bearers who won't talk to the townsfolk out of fear of being punished. The Branded are equal parts confused and shocked when Clive speaks to the NPC as if they were equals and gives them food and drink, with the man proclaiming he's never had so much food before. It's obvious from the get-go that whoever their previous "master" was, they were a real piece of work even by normal standards.
• Near Moore, you can find a little girl asking you to find her pet, one with white hair. Assuming this to be a dog, Clive asks around for if anyone has seen one, and gets pointed at the windmill. But, once you reach the windmill, you find a brown dog, instead... and a white-haired Bearer that has been killed by the curse. The little girl has apparently considered the Bearer her pet, but Clive immediately lays it on thick, and that's when you realize: this is a young girl that had never even once considered that they were actually human beings like her. Her entire life, she'd been told they were something else, and that they didn't even have parents. To top it all off, she learns the horrific truth of all: that them turning to stone isn't just something temporary like she thought, but that they are dead, gone forever, as a result of how poorly they had been treated. And after realizing this, she begins to sob profusely, barely even able to speak as she sputters out tearful apologies to a corpse that she only just realized was even a corpse, leaving you with a little girl now burdened with the crushing reality of the cruel world around her, and of the horrible consequences of her own actions. And you can't do anything else but simply leave her to grieve.
  Lisette: I'm... I'm so sorry, Chloe...

After second Time Skip

• Returning to Eloise and Theo starts a storyline where they settle an abandoned town for Bearers that they buy and free. Late in the storyline, the duo learn that the village is under attack by Akashics, and Theo leads the charge to protect the village. Unfortunately, by the time Clive finds him, Theodore himself is corrupted, as the beasts trapped him in an aetherflood and he couldn't get away. Eloise makes it to the scene just as he has enough will left to say goodbye as he kills himself. El later confesses that everything she did was so she and her brother could be together in peace, and breaks down sobbing over the death of her beloved brother.
  • What really makes this sting more is that among all of Cid's/Clive's alliants, Theodore is the only named alliant who dies in his associated questline.
• In L'ubor's questline, the people of Dalimil decide to elect him as the town mayor. Things are going well for him up until the local bandit problem rears its ugly head as they've taken a page out of the townsfolk's book and begun organizing and joining ranks. When Clive deals with one of their camps, Viktor informs him that L'ubor had to protect a couple of children from another group of bandits and outed himself as a Bearer in the process. With the exception of the children he saved, everyone now hates his guts and pissed that he lied to them for so long. Some townsfolk even complain about him taking as if he were equal to "his betters" when L'ubor comforts the kids who think him getting exposed was their fault. This culminates in the townsfolk (for whom L'ubor had done a lot) refusing to heed his warnings about incoming Akashic and throw stones at him, only halting when the kids engage in Shaming the Mob.
  • The kids deserve some mention here. Unlike the adults, they don't care L'ubor is a Bearer and are more concerned by the fact that everyone knows his secret because they couldn't get away from the bandits in time. They don't get why everyone is so mad at L'ubor either, and one of them declares he'll go with L'ubor.
• "Silver Linings:" After Gav gives a good luck charm to Edda to welcome her unborn baby, he and Clive go off to grab a drink. Gav eventually reveals that when he was 10 years old, his mother was pregnant again, which he was initially excited about on wanting to prove he could be a big brother. Unfortunately, Imperials razed his village just as his mother went into labor and he lost his family, alongside his new baby sister, leaving him the only survivor by hiding in the cellar.
• The "Inconvenient Truth" sidequest sees Clive asked to retrieve a book called From a Distance at Vivienne's behest. When you find the book in Ash, one of the chapters details how Bearers were actually accepted and worshipped by the people of Valisthea. Said worship, however, came to an unceremonious end when the Bearers decided to form their own religious organization and faced severe backlash to the point every country tried to strip the Bearers of political power. Tensions continued to escalate until it they exploded into a full-blown war. The Bearers ultimately lost, leading to their horrendous treatment found in the modern day.

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