Tear Jerker / Tales from the Darkside

• The ending of "Miss May Dusa". May catches sight of herself in the mirror and turns into a statue again, her blind boyfriend goes in to find her, only to get shot by the burglar from the opening. He dies, not three feet away from the May-statue, weakly calling out for her.
• The entirety of "Mary, Mary". A Shrinking Violet begins to doubt her abilities of finding love and spends so much time interacting with Creepy Dolls. She ends up transforming into a mannequin at the end because she felt like a waste as a human being.
• The ending of "The Spirit Photographer". When Algernon realizes that he has died, he doesn't feel broken or depressed as most characters would. Instead he accepts his time has come. After saying his goodbyes to his closest friend, Algernon tells him not to cry over this because it is a natural part of life.
• The ending of "Going Native". An alien trying to study human beings gets caught up in their emotions and becomes increasingly distant from her kind. She breaks down and realizes that she cannot return home. The worst human emotion: solitude.
• The ending of "The Shrine". After Christine's mother finally accepts her daughter for who she is, she rejects the evil spirit trying to lure her away from her real daughter. For a moment, it looks like she died, prompting an upset Christine to beg for her not to leave her. Her mom wakes up, however, prompting Christine to cry and cradle her body.
  • The arc of Christine trying move past her previous mental breakdown. She used to be her mother's golden child, perfect and happy. But as she got older, Christine found herself weighted with the pressure of remaining "perfect" in her mother's eyes. When her boyfriend broke up with her, she had a meltdown at being unable to achieve a working relationship. Ever since, Christine is convinced her mother is disappointed in the flawed failure she thinks she is.
• The ending of "Sorry Right Number". A mysterious phone call from a sobbing stranger alerts the main character that somebody in her family is going to die. She and her husband spend the evening visiting all her children, even her friendly sister-in-law, only to find they're okay. It seems like it was all just a wild goose chase and things will go back to normal. But the next morning, she finds her husband dead from a heart attack caused by staying up too late. And then ten years later, on the day of her eldest daughter's wedding, the main character realizes the phone call was herself from the future, trying to warn about her husband's heart attack. She tries to do so for her past self, but she fails before the number is disconnected.
  • What's more, it's established that with so many kids, the only way she's able to keep it together is because she has her husband to emotionally support her. If her future self's incoherent call is any indication, without her beloved husband, the poor widow is a barely functioning mess. Thanks, Stephen King.
• The ending of "Social Climber". The protagonist dies when he tries on the shoes of someone who, unknown to him, is dead. It's one thing that he pays the price for his ambition. But the audience is left to wonder what will become of his fiancé. She wasn't even aware he wasn't content with his life. Now his greed has not only killed him, but unintentionally hurt his beloved by leaving her with so many questions and a broken heart.
• "Parlour Front Floor" has Mars' tragic death. To think, he would still be alive had it not been for Linda's selfish lie.
• Betsy's entire ordeal in "Love Hungry". She discovers that her high school boyfriend is back in town, and vows to lose weight in the hopes that he finds her beautiful again. She ends up receiving a pair of glasses and a hearing aid that makes her believe that all food is sentient, and feels agonizing pain when it's eaten. She very nearly tries to eat the talking fruit she's been bonding with for most of the second half of the story, but is tormented by their desperate pleas for her not to. The end of the episode reveals that she sewed her mouth shut in a crazed attempt to save her food, but all this results in is her starving to death and the food rotting.
  • What's even worse is that Betsy's crush, Elmo Shroud, was a short, stocky, bald guy who doesn't care about how he looks nowadays, or even if Betsy is a tad overweight, and was willing to love her for who she is instead of her appearance. Betsy unfortunately never got that message. Her self-confidence was just that low.

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