Tear Jerker / Not for Broadcast

"And I don't know where he is right now..."

"Alex, it's Boseman. I'm not sure how to put this, but some of the content for today's broadcast might be upsetting. Not the outrage or uncomfortable upsetting, but the depressed kind of upsetting. Just try to keep the viewers happy and not make them cry."

All spoilers are unmarked per wiki policy. Read only at your own risk. You Have Been Warned.

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• In Day 371, if you play through the Disrupt hacks after you let Jeremy die in Day 296, one of them has Alan James deliver a stunning eulogy for him that raises the viewership bar to maximum capacity, showing that he truly respected the anchorman. It even moves players who follow the Disrupt path to tears as well.
  Alan: Ten weeks ago, Jeremy Donaldson took control of the National Nightly Newsroom. He tried to warn us all about the now abandoned top secret military lab at Gretham Downs. We may never know exactly what was being done there, but Jeremy Donaldson made us look. And this is just one of the reasons he is considered Disrupt's first martyr. And you know what? I think there's every chance he'd hate that. I only met him a few times in a professional context and usually he exposed me for the grand standing fool I was back then; but, for some reason, I always enjoyed it. I liked him. I liked his wit, his jagged edges, and most of all I liked his total dedication to the truth. He died for that truth. Died as an individual. For freedom. And by adorning his resting place with our colours and our emblem we will help to keep both him and his spirit of relentlessness... alive. Rest well, Jeremy, you'll not be forgotten.
• After Advance publicly admit they were the ones that dropped the four nukes, Megan opens up about her personal life. Specifically, her brother. He was a researcher and was out in one of the foreign cities, meaning he probably died by the nukes. Megan looks like she's fighting back tears during the live broadcast, and then breaks down after the broadcast as a crew-woman tries to comfort her.
• Your daughter and sibling-in-law can potentially die to the nukes. After Day 371, you come home to Sam breaking down due to their deaths. For players trying their best to keep the Winston family afloat, this can be utterly heartbreaking.
• From the Finale: While Boseman is usually looking down on you for disobeying orders or proud of you for doing a good job, he seems utterly depressed by the state of the network with the NNN being turned into a cheesy talk show, and even he doesn't care anymore.
  Boseman: Why do we bother, Alex? What's the point? It's not like this is even close to journalism anymore. How did I let it get this far...?
• Megan receives another devastating blow during the finale. If Jeremy returns during the final broadcast, he will confront Julia about the fact that Advance's food rations were poisoned after a failed experiment with the nation's crops and livestock to try to curtail an impending overpopulation crisis. This causes Megan to come to the grim realization that this is the reason she and her wife Kate couldn't get pregnant despite trying for so long. The people she trusted and advocated for had sterilized her against her will and if Jeremy never exposed them then she never would have known the true reason why. It wasn't just her either. Every couple in the nation under Advance's rule has likely had their potential parenthood stolen from them because of Advance's actions. In some of the worse endings it's even revealed that Advance's plans were too effective and caused the opposite problem of an under-population crisis where the nation's birth rate is too slow to replace the population as it aged forcing Advance to incentivize births and maintain large families.
• If Jeremy is dead but Alan survives by Day 2602, he storms the studio in the final segment planning to take everyone out. Jenny immediately freaks out the moment he enters, no doubt having traumatic flashbacks to when Jeremy took the studio hostage and ended up being killed in front of her. Megan also receives a traumatic blow if you choose not to play the footage Julia had on hand, witnessing her own friend get shot in the head by Alan for revealing the truth about him. Her look of anguish as she looks at Jenny's dead body is heartbreaking, and just to add insult to injury, she's blown up soon afterwards, along with everyone else on set, including you, by Alan's suicide bomb vest.
  • To add insult to injury, if you went for the Genocide Route and killed off your entire family and your headline characters, ruined the lives of side-characters, and bankrupted all companies except Eye of the Beholder, then the credits sequence can be a real Downer Ending that can move you to tears, bringing a new meaning to the credits song, "Bring It All Down".
• In the Bits of Your Life DLC, the Intervention path has Peter's friends, mother, and Julia confronting him about his alcoholism. It takes a funny aspect of his character and brings up how destructive it is to his behavior and health, with his mother pointing out how it's ruining him. It culminates in Peter breaking into tears on his mother's shoulders, as she sings him a lullaby from his childhood.