Although the world is full of colorful Superheroes, that doesn't mean tears won't be shed.
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Main Story
- The entire Fall of Remnant. Over the course of two days, millions of people die to Brainiac's forces, despite the best attempts of her defenders to stop him, and ultimately capped off by Remnant's complete and utter destruction. RWBY and JNPR are left traumatized by the entire experience, and much of their first adventures on Earth simply revolves around recovering from their ordeal.
- J'onn J'onzz and Superman relaying their origin stories to RWBY and JNPR. Although the stories were told in an effort to convince the former students that they were not alone in their struggles, the loss of their homeworlds and people clearly affects them to this day.
- After the Doom Door on Themsycira is breached and dozens of Amazons die trying to close it, the entire island descends into mourning, complete with an Ancient Greek-style funeral procession.
- While at Titans Tower, Jaune tells Ruby about his nephew, Adrian, and how his family was in Argus during Brainiac's invasion. He eventually breaks down while saying how much he misses his family and is worried that they may be gone forever.
- Seeing that Weiss isn't really impressed by the circus they're infiltrating, Dick quietly muses she would have enjoyed the Flying Graysons' act - they were... something else.
- When Trigon briefly lets Raven free from his control in a bid to break him, Raven tearfully begs Nightwing to kill her so that Trigon could be stopped. It nearly shatters him, and for a moment he seriously considers it, before declaring they would save her. The poor girl could only sob before Trigon reasserted himself.
- During their fight, Solomon Grundy indicates to Pyrrha that he wants her to take him out, and though she succeeds, it's clear that despite Grundy's hopes, it probably won't be the last time that he rises from the grave.
- Mr. Freeze remains a Tragic Villain and Nora, Ren, Stephanie and Tim can't help but pity him. That he was on his way to recovery when Daniel Powers kidnapped his wife intending to unfreeze her to find a way to reverse engineer the process, making Victor storm the facilities, killing several guards before freezing Powers with the heroes being unable to stop him only makes the thing sadder.
- The entire situation is made even sadder by the fact that unlike his son and grandson, Daniel Powers isn’t a greedy corporate suit trying to enrich himself, but someone actually trying to make the world a better place. It just so happens that Powers’s The Needs of the Many approach means that for him, Nora Fries is an acceptable casualty in the interest of potentially saving many more lives in the future, while for Freeze, that could never be the case.
- Weiss having a nightmare about Brainiac capturing Winter. As she tells Alfred about her family history, she breaks down crying, overwrought with guilt from thinking she abandoned her sister to be Brainiac's guinea pig.
- Lois has figured out that Clark and Superman are one and the same, and though she's gotten over any anger at him keeping his identity a secret from her, she hasn't told him that she's figured it out because she wants him to tell her, and she admits to Bruce that she's a bit sad that he hasn't yet.
- Pyrrha and Nora have to fight Jaune and Ren to free them from Poison Ivy's Mind Control. Later on the reaction they have when Bruce admits to having made the Aura draining nanites against them with others of the bat-Family upset.
- Brainiac manages to finally track down Penny, and holds the lives of Winter and the other members of the group hostage to force her to surrender. He then introduces her to Fria...
- While RWBYJNPR is able to understand why Batman would create the Aura-draining nanites after learning about the Justice Lords, they can't trust him enough to keep staying at Wayne Manor with him anymore, at least not yet, since he went behind their backs to make them, so they take up his earlier offer of a high-rise in Metropolis.
- RWBYJNPR's goodbyes to Alfred.
- Ironwood spends several chapters building a nuclear bomb in an attempt to have Ozpin Suicide Attack Brainiac with it...only for it to be All for Nothing because Ozpin strongly suspects that Brainiac's connected the captive cities in his ship in such a way that, if he's killed, they'd ALL be destroyed, along with everyone inside them. You can feel Ironwood's rage and frustration.
- When trapped in a book of fairy tales by the Queen of Fables, Blake ends up in "Beauty and the Beast"... with Adam, or at least a facsimile of him.
- Mary's been accepted to Caltech, but's it bittersweet for her because she doesn't want to leave her family behind, and she's worried because of what happened with Sivanna.
- Yang and Billy commiserating on having mothers that both abandoned them for selfish reasons.
- Mr. Mind escapes with Sivanna by threatening a Psychic-Assisted Suicide of several police officers, and only quick intervention from Pyrrha saves them.
- Nora nearly gets killed Taking the Bullet for Jaune from one of Black Adam's electrical attacks, with only Jaune's Semblance saving her.
- After the events of Fawcett City, Ruby is feeling like a failure of a hero. Luckily, Superman comes along to give a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech.
- Sun is trying to put on a positive face around the survivors of Beacon in order to keep morale up; however, it is clear to his teammates that he is putting on a front and that recent events are weighing heavily upon him.
- Over half of Remnant's 250 million citizens are dead, either due to Brainiac's direct actions in bottling the city or the anarchy and suffering afterward (with a good chunk of the latter having hit the Despair Event Horizon and been Driven to Suicide). Ozpin is rightfully horrified and saddened by this, and the fact that Brainiac doesn't really care at all only furthers the former's view of him as a monster.
- Despite the festive mood around the Wayne Penthouse, Ren is the only one not truly participating. M'gann notices something wrong right away and Nora tells her that he's been completely absorbing himself in his training after the incident in Fawcett City. They realize that Ren blames himself for Nora almost dying and is overcompensating by training. However, this obsession with trying to get stronger is nothing more than a coping mechanism according to M'gann.
- During the assault on Brainiac's ship, Hal Jordan watches in anguish as one of his fellow Lanterns is killed in action. What's worse is that he knows that many more will undoubtedly die during this ambush, just another one of the many crimes that Brainiac must answer for in his mind.
- While Fria's Maiden powers manage to cut a vast swath through Braniac's forces and allow an opening for Qrow and Penny to escape, the strain proves too much for her and she suffers a fatal heart attack. Penny desperately tries to save her, only for Fria to stop her and tell her that this was her plan all along and it was her time. Penny and Qrow are devastated by this.
- Just when it seems that Penny has made it to the Green Lanterns and seems that she's safe, Brainiac activates a virus that hijacks her body and forces her to fight Kyle and Guy. During the whole ordeal, she's trying to resist his attempts to control her, and in the brief moment she's able to break free of his control, Kyle can see the fear and desperation in Penny's eyes. The struggle for control leads to Penny suffering her canon fate of being ripped to pieces. Thankfully, the Green Lanterns are able to save her consciousness.
- Whitley Schnee. God, Whitley Schnee. The poor kid was forced to endure several brutal combat simulations to force him to awaken his Aura, despite the fact that he had no combat training whatsoever. It takes him months to manage it, and by the time Qrow meets him after the GLC rescues Willow and them, there's no hint of the Smug Snake Spoiled Brat we met in canon — just a quiet, traumatized kid.
- A following chapter shows us the beginning of these "tests". Poor kid.
- The theory that disconnecting the bottled worlds from Brainiac will destroy them is proven the hard way when that happens by mistake. Sadly, this means the bottled cities from Remnant, and all the other captured civilizations, are going to be stuck in their bottles for a long time to come.
- In Chapter 51, we get to witness Brainiac's invasion, the fall of Atlas, and following series of events leading up to her abduction by Brainiac all from Willow's point of view. The poor woman wasn't exaggerating when she said that those months were the hardest of her life.
- She, Whitley, and Klein flee for their lives along with several of the family servants to the family bunker in absolute terror while explosions and debris are kicked up all around them.
- In the aftermath of the invasion, she among the rest of her family witness the utter devastation of Atlas and Mantle and their entrapment in one of Brainiac's bottles. To compound her horror, she sees her daughter, Weiss, right before she and her team go to fight Brainiac. That was the last time she saw her, and was left fearing that her daughter was killed by Brainiac.
- She spends the next two weeks wallowing in drunken despair and self-pity. She finds herself staring at a statue of her late father, wondering if he would see her as a disgrace to her family. She can't even bring herself to console her son, despite Klein's pleas.
- To her horror, she then witnesses the moment her husband, Jacques, sells her and Whitley out to Brainiac when he sends his drones to collect them. The whole time she futilely screams and rages as the guards take her and her son away, and she can only watch as Klein desperately tries in vain to stop them.
- As they are led to Brainiac's testing chamber, she tries to reassure her terrified son that everything is going to be alright, only to watch in anguish as Brainiac subjects him to his torturous experiments.
- Both Weiss and Yang learn how their own father and mother, respectively, sold out to Brainiac to save their own sorry skins. While Weiss keeps herself composed, Yang spends the chapter fuming with rage, but it is soul-crushing for them to learn of what sorry people they are descended from.
- This is Harsher in Hindsight when you remember that as children Yang and Ruby ventured into the woods specifically to find Raven, only to find themselves surrounded by Grimm. Of course, Qrow was most likely watching over them the whole time in his bird form but still... after learning what kind of person Raven is, she probably feels guilty for putting herself and her younger sister in danger.
- When Willow offers to train Whitley's semblance with her and Weiss, he bluntly turns them down, stating that his aura and family semblance has brought him nothing but pain and suffering, and he wants no part of it. He then exits the training area, leaving his mother and sister dejected, and Weiss is at a complete loss of what to do to help her brother.
- When Cyborg enters Penny's mind to help her, she initially thinks that he's Death, come to claim her soul.
- During their Battle in the Center of the Mind, Penny, due to their linked consciousnesses, is able to see Cyborg's memories. Some of the memories are of happier times, that is until she sees some of the darker memories such as the Darkseid War, the accident that took his mother's life and destroyed most of his body, the painful procedure that made him into what he is, and the heartbreaking confrontation and estrangement from his father. It's apparent during their struggle that these memories still haunt him even to this day.
- Salem discovers that destroying Remnant will not in fact break her curse of immortality. However horrific Salem's goals and actions are it is somewhat sad to discover that everything that she had done for the last few thousand years was for nothing and there is no Curse Escape Clause. Her hatred for Brainiac is probably the only thing keeping her going. Not to mention it's highlighted here that Salem just wants to die, which is probably the saddest thing someone can hope for.
- Whitley's trauma once again manifests when he unwittingly summons a copy of Brainiac's drones using his semblance. The poor boy immediately suffers a panic attack upon seeing the ghostly apparition.
- Although Willow has resolved to move past her alcoholism, that doesn't mean that she's still not feeling the cravings.
- Ruby has to leave her new Wild West gear in the past to avoid another temporal anomaly, much to her sadness. Luckily, Jinny Hex delivers them to her once the whole mess is resolved.
Elseworlds
- Kingdom Come:
- Really, just the entire thing. A future RWBYJNPR having gone their separate ways, with Blake going back to her terrorist ways after the injustice of Earth grow too much to bear. Ruby and a brought out of retirement Superman try to talk her back into rejoining the Justice League, but it's clear that, despite how much Blake wants to, she can't bring herself to do it, and the two former teammates end up leaving on bad terms after Adam is brought up. Specifically, how Blake is possibly turning into him.
- DCeased:
- Even though Team RWBY, Team JNPR, Batman, Mr. Terrific, Wonder Woman, and Lex Luthor manage to save the day in the end, it doesn't make the harrowing ordeal up to that point any less tearjerking. The survivors are forced to kill their zombified friends and allies, including Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Superman.
- What's worse is that, one by one, the survivors fall to the zombie horde, the members of RWBYJNPR being eaten alive and leaving only Batman and a defenseless Ruby left.
- Red Son:
- RWBYJNPR end up landing in Soviet Russia under the rule of Premier Superman, and while there's some friction over their differing ideologies, they manage to get along okay until Superman captures and reprograms Brainiac, and uses his technology to basically brainwash dissenters, so they take the cities and flee.
- After they leave, Superman spends some time wandering Moscow's streets, alone and incognito.
- The Last Knight:
- The reveal of Omega being an older Ruby Rose is depressing enough. But it becomes outright heartbreaking when she reveals that she became the current despotic ‘Batman’ because she was tortured by the mob that stormed the Hall of Justice. The entire experience made her believe that the universe is a cruel chaotic place and that humans will throw their lot with doom unless a real hero tries to bring order. Ruby, once the kind naive girl that was a counter to everything about Batman, has become a horrible villain that has murdered several of her friends and wants to use the Anti-Life Equation to ‘save the world’.
- The detail of the scars on her face make it clear that Ruby was put through the ringer by the very people she wanted to help, and the fact that she was only saved from her death by the original Bruce Wayne who died soon after adds an extra degree of tragedy to her fall.
- DC Bombshells:
- RWBYJNPR manages to escape Brainiac, only to end up separated and scattered throughout the world in 1939, prior to the outbreak of WWII. None of them are aware of the fates of the others. To make matters worse, Blake, Weiss, Nora, and Pyrrha suffer from amnesia as a result of their injuries. Even though they are able to adapt to their new homes, they are left with feelings of emptiness and loneliness.
- Lie Ren, having been taken in by Chinese resistance fighters, thinks that he is the Sole Survivor and mourns his teammates. However when his camp is attacked by Imperial Japanese forces, he is shocked to find out that Blake is among their ranks. Even worse is that she doesn't recognize him.Ren: "Blake!"
Blake: (In Japanese) "Who is Blake?"
