Tear Jerker / The Bridge (MLP)

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Story

• Mothra has Genetic Memory, so she can see and experience all of her ancestors' deaths. In particular, she often gets flashbacks to her father's death at the hands of Godzilla Sr. The cause of said flashback is simply seeing her own best friend, Godzilla Jr.
  • Similarly, there's Junior's vivid memories of his father's death.
• The Reveal that the two decades of hero work has taken a physical toll on Godzilla Junior when we see him without his Healing Factor and he's Covered in Scars; with barely any place on his body not riddled with marks from burns, bites, or slashes. Seeing him like this drives Blade Dancer to tears and helps completely change Princess Luna's view of him.
• Gamera is heartbroken when he learned the very humans he swore to protect where the ones who fired the Dimension Tide that took his friends away. Mothra is also heartbroken when they contact Gamera and he tells her.
• Whether she's a villain or not, Hyper Gyaos is now the Last of Her Kind.
• The narrator (Monster X) of "Time and Isolation" desperately trying to hold onto their memory while imprisoned for years without seeing another soul. He tries to hang on by constantly repeating basic information about himself, his parents, and his spouse. But decades of relentless nightmares and isolation take their toll and he loses his memories bit by bit. The last clear memory is him desperately trying to hold onto his own and his wife's name. He fails.
• Irys' and Sunset Shimmer's goodbye at the end of the Holiday Special. It starts out as this before being heartwarming.
• Minor one, but the scene with the orphaned pegasus infant Princess Cadance being given to her adoptive parents by her protector King Caesar has bits of sadness woven into the heartwarming. It's made clear the babe's protector adores her and loved her late mother, but has to let her go. But not before he makes sure she will be well cared for, trudging through and shielding her from a downpour to the point of exhaustion, all to find a kindly married couple to care for her.
• The nightmare Xenilla experiences when King Sombra forces him to see his greatest fear. Xenilla sees his brother Godzilla Junior mortally wounded and is unable to revive him.
• Gigan failing to snap Monster X out of his rage when he's taken over by Kaizer Ghidorah, leading Bagan to banish X to another dimension.
• The Sirens have recurring dreams of being back in their old bodies and back in their undersea kingdom. The longing is so great that they gather as many images of under the sea as they can and turn it into a collage across their cabin walls that reminds them of home. Sonata Dusk is the only one among them who bothered to learn how to swim to cope. To the others, being in the water is too painful because they lost the ability to breathe underwater in their human forms. It is like dangling their hopes of going home in front of them and then snatching it away.
  • Aria Blaze especially suffers from this. Even if she is a manipulative witch, seeing her so hurt by homesickness can give her some sympathy.
• After Junior grew up, he constantly gives off radiation, so he can no longer come near his mother Azusa Gojo.
• Father's Day Special:
  • Godzilla had nightmares of reliving the death of his father. Luna saw it and it triggers her trauma about her own father figure, Star Swirl the Bearded.
  • One of the reasons why Luna became Nightmare Moon was because she was jealous that Star Swirl preferred Celestia.
  • When Celestia used the Elements of Harmony against Nightmare Moon, she was expecting them to simply change her back to Luna. Instead they banished her to the moon, and Celestia was left crying and pleading to the now inert Elements to bring her sister back. Even worse, her anguish, use of the Elements alone and against another bearer (Nightmare Moon/Luna), and disillusionment with the Elements in this scene was what caused her to become unworthy and unable to activate them anymore.
  • Because of her imprisonment, Luna wasn't there when Star Swirl died of old age.
  • Godzilla is well aware he's going to outlive his human mother, his only remaining family, by decades or even centuries, offhandedly lamenting the only way this wouldn't be so is if someone someday actually managed to kill him.
• Seeing the Xilians, Praetorian 094 and Controller 011's memories when King Ghidorah hits them with a mental attack in the flashback. Though there is some happiness and a subtle, but very touching moment between the couple we all know is Doomed by Canon. It all ends with 094 reluctantly knocking his wife out when she volunteered for the desperate experiment with King Ghidorah's blood, taking her place and becoming Monster X.
  • Monster X's entire origin episode is one. A series of horrible events happening to a good person with the best intentions in mind backfiring in the worst ways possible.
  • We find out why Kaizer Ghidorah is so berserk to the point of insanity. He saw his wife die in front of him and it caused his powers to fly out of control.
• Xenilla is so broken by seeing his greatest fear, that he's holed himself up in his room playing a war game with chess-like pieces ad infinitum. Despite his genius, he can't think of a scenario where Godzilla doesn't die, even if he sacrifices his own life.
• The fact Godzilla has some familiar mantras about what it means to be The Good King reminds Princess Celestia of her ex-lover, the good King Sombra from the Mirror Universe, who is seemingly lost to her forever.
• Monster X finally spills some of the mental baggage he's carrying around and telling Aria about his experience in "Time and Isolation", declaring he's willing to do anything to get his memories back because he just wants to know why it happened to him so he can finally move on with his life.
  • The way he talks about him being a Punch-Clock Villain when Aria points out its fallacy of him following a master he hardly knows seems to heavily imply he is aware he shouldn't just live by following someone else's orders. It's just at this point he's so mentally damaged Just Following Orders is all poor guy's got left.
• Irys is reunited with Sunset Shimmer, but she is forced to run away in tears because Bagan only allowed her an hour in the human world and time was almost up. Sunset futilely chases her begging her friend to tell her what is wrong.
• Gigan never had the heart to tell X that X's Kaizer Ghidorah form was what mauled him so badly that he was turned into a cyborg.
• Adagio Dazzle feeling guilt over driving Aria away from her, lamenting they were the only three sirens in existence and it had always been her job, as the oldest member of the family, to look after and protect the other two.
• Bagan rejecting Harmony's offer to reform and stop the conflict all together hits both sides. After an Establishing Character Moment for our Big Good that shows just how loving of life she is to offer forgiveness to anyone who seeks it, Harmony loses on her plea to stop any further death all together. For Bagan however, he actually seems to honestly contemplate the choice for a bit before rejecting. The fact he didn't seize an open opportunity to attack Harmony while she had her guard down makes it almost seem like he's sad or unenthusiastic about being an Omnicidal Maniac, it's just what he has to do.
• Aria Blaze after being snared by Enjin, despite herself and Monster X's efforts to free her, thinks she's about to die. What does she do? Takes her necklace off and puts it on X and putting a hand on his face to transfer her power to him, with the parting words; "Don't lose." Doesn't help that a lot of readers thought she died.
• The fact Enjin, Doragon, and Mizu were the guardians of Terra's life and nourished it over the centuries, ultimately fusing into Reijuu for that reason...only for Reijuu to ultimately become a Fallen Hero and Omnicidal Maniac. The creator has even said that if Reijuu could see Bagan, he would view his future self and his actions with horror, misery, and despair that can harm even a God.
• Kaizer Ghidorah ranting about how much he hates Monster X for being a weaker version of him and for forgetting about Controller 011. X's amnesia forced him to be trapped within their mind for over 200 years, unable to avenge his love.
• Did any readers think Aria Blaze would be Kaizer Ghidorah's Morality Pet? Wrong. Kaizer makes it clear the only being he cares for is the deceased Controller 011. When they first met, he stopped attacking Aria because he thought she was 011. Now that he knows better, he absolutely hates her, thinking she impersonated 011 to trick him. It just goes to show that while Kaizer may be Grand King Ghidorah's enemy, he is not a good guy because he's so trapped in the past he cannot accept anyone else into his heart.
• Monster X gives up any chance of reclaiming his memories to trap Kaizer Ghidorah within his mind seemingly forever. Right before Kaizer disappears, he shows him a memory of Praetorian Guard 094 and Controller 011 together. At this moment, X understands why Kaizer hates him and can only say he is sorry before sealing him away.
• The revival scene following the finale fight with Enjin. Monster X is battered and bruised, but pulled Aria out of Enjin's core. He holds her form in his hand and immediately starts panicking when he sees she's not breathing. Upon demorphing it only gets worse when he finds her body is limp and doesn't have a pulse. He repeatedly tries and fails to revive her with increasing desperation. Several reviewers noted this scene was one of the most profound in showing X's Character Development, the typically controlled stoic going Not So Stoic and crying over Aria's body through the attempts to jump start her heart as he tries to save the siren he'd fallen in love with, begging her to wake up. Thank god she did.
• In Part 2 of the April Fool's special, Pinkie Pie and Sonata Dusk being driven to tears and despair when they see the death and destruction from works like Gojira, The Return of Godzilla, and Godzilla Resurgence. Then when they and Megalon are separated and their memories erased once the reset happens.
• Moonbeam Glimmer verbally assaulting Junior and denouncing him as nothing but a bastard child and a murderer. Junior can barely stay in control of himself and his eyes even glow red, just like they used to do when he was frightened as a baby. Her arguments can easily remind one of the superhero critics from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War, critics who accuse the heroes of being nothing but destructive brutes who do not care about civilians, when in reality all they want is to do the right thing.
  • Compounding it is the fact neither Godzilla or Moonbeam have anything personal against each other. The latter is just wanting to keep her world safe and thinks Godzilla is too potentially dangerous to have out in the open should he snap, seeing him as a legitimate threat. The way she talks is described as a mix of strong accusations and desperate pleading to be told her worries are unfounded. Junior, an inexperienced speaker, meanwhile can't articulate himself enough to defend or defuse her worries and only makes them worse.
  • What's worse is the following two chapters show Moonbeam wasn't entirely wrong about Godzilla Junior. Yes he is a hero and not amoral because he's had to use lethal force for the greater good; however he does have a temper issue and did snap when he tried to kill Xenilla. It's enough to cause he himself to question if he's really good or not; and worry he will turn out to be like his father.
• Xenilla's entire scheme to protect Terra and his little brother has worked entirely in his eyes, but came at the cost of burning the bridges with the only family he has left. While he doesn't express it, when Blade Dancer gets him to finally take his psychological masks off, it becomes clear the dude is heartbroken about it.
• Xenilla being filled with horror and regret when he finds out all those years ago, he had attacked his father over nothing. What he thought was a vision of the future depicting Godzilla Senior destroying the world, was a vision of the past depicting Bagan's original rampage.
• Mothra Lea going into screaming convulsions when she experiences the memories of the deaths of her ancestors.
• Junior attacking Xenilla after mistaking his attempts to help Lea after the above for Xenilla attacking her. A highly destructive fight ensues where Junior goes into Meltdown and Xenilla absolutely refuses to fight back. Xenilla is beaten within an inch of his life when the princesses finally manage to stop Junior. When Blade Dancer tells Junior the truth about why Xenilla made himself his enemy, it doesn't lessen his hatred of Xenilla at all.
  • Not helped by the fact Xenilla was completely aware that revealing his Good All Along plan wouldn't work and the bridges between him and his little brother are too badly burned. By the time Blade Dancer spills the beans for him, he's completely lost hope.
  Junior: "I, hate you..."
  Xenilla: *whispering* "... I know."
• The pony Flash Sentry lamenting that all he wants to be is the hero, but he was never in the right place at the right time to help whenever a crisis happened. It's not about getting fame and fortune, it's about ponies getting hurt and him not being able to prevent it.
• The ending of Chapter 32 where after spending a day in Equestria as a pony and getting to be with her son again, Azusa Aoki nee Gojo fades away and returns to Terra.
• Moonbeam Glimmer visits her parents' graves to talk to them every week, clearly suffering from survivor's guilt.
• Fancy Pants is still traumatized that he and Stalwart Sentry had arrived too late to save Moonbeam's parents and neighbors.
• According to Word of God, Moonbeam Glimmer and Starlight Glimmer were adopted by Sunburst's parents, yet Starlight still lost touch with him.
• After Rodan was pulled into the Shimmerverse and back, he first starts frantically calling for his friend Sunset Shimmer, then his memories of his adventure fade away.
• When Mariner Moon says she wants to be just like Junior, he sadly says, "You don't."
• While trying to teach Mariner Moon that with her power Comes Great Responsibility, he suddenly flashes back to his father's death. He believes it was his fault because he wasn't able to keep Senior from fighting Destroyah.
• The story of how Cho Yon's grandfather lost his original family to Jeog's hunger, and how years after sealing her away, when she escaped, he died a broken old man when no one would believe his story and help him.
• Ki Seong losing her fiance Cho Yon when he was murdered by Jeog, then her constantly having to flee for her life.
• Seong and Anguirus' anguish when Jeog tries to fool them with an illusion of Gentle Leaf in danger, and Seong even considers sacrificing herself.
• The backstory given by Electra about their mothers heavily implies the Sirens were conceived by rape, with their mothers later being exiles for spawning them.
  • Word of God confirmed the sirens were not conceived consensually.
• After King Caesar spirited Princess Amore and Bene Lyric's child, the future Princess Cadance, to safety after failing to kill King Sombra; he suffers a breakdown over his failure to protect his friends and destroy Sombra's spellbook. All he can do is fall to his knees and clutch the baby close to him to keep her out of the rain as he quietly collects himself.
• We find out why Starlight Glimmer learned her magic from a lost spellbook that belonged to King Sombra under his original identity as Archmage Saros. The dark magic inside it taught her to propagate and channel her darker emotions like anger and rage, gradually warping an eager, impressionable young filly into mentally unstable villainess we saw her grow into.
• Starlight Glimmer kidnaps, chains down, and locks Chibi Moon in a jailhouse to show Godzilla Junior after she removed her Cutie Mark; in order to try and goad Godzilla into dropping his guard. Even worse, Junior had earlier promised that he wouldn't let anything happen to her. When he finds her, Chibi wordlessly reminds him of his promise, and he realizes Starlight made a liar out of him.
  • Poor Chibi then gets a front-row seat to her sensei's Nightmare transformation!
• Later when Grand King Ghidorah arrives and is clearly seeking out Godzilla Junior, Chibi Moon is adamant about not leaving her sensei alone to face him. Junior assures that this fight will be no harder than fighting a few Gyaos at Canterlot and assures her he can win and won't be long. Unfortunately it's all False Reassurance. He knows full well Grand King Ghidorah is too strong for him to handle alone and he is probably going to die. He gives Chibi a mutual bow and tells her to help the others, before dropping the facade of strength while whispering to Rarity to not let Chibi look back at any point in the fight and asking her to find the other Kaiju so they can help.
• After a time skip, Sonata Dusk was brutally attacked and her necklace stolen. Monster X is hellbent on avenging her, and apparently thinks Twilight Sparkle was involved somehow.
• The Spirit of Hearth's Warmings Yet To Come shows Xenilla the future. In the vision, he sees that Granny Smith and Chibi Moon's parents have passed away. While he is slightly affected, he shrugs it off, saying everything dies eventually. Having read several variations of this story, he assumes he's about to be shown his own grave, and assures the Spirit that he's Not Afraid to Die. Instead, he is shown Blade Dancer's grave. Xenilla then goes nuts, screaming that he will find a way to stop her from ever dying, but the Spirit parrots back his own words about how everything dies eventually. In a fit of rage, Xenilla attacks the Spirit with the Red Spiral Ray, but it does nothing. He is utterly spent and crying, but then the Spirit hugs him and reveals himself to be his father Godzilla Senior, who tells him since it is true everything dies, it is important to make as many good memories as possible.
• Wysteria's death. Full stop. She rushed into the fray when the windigos were ravaging a city because she knew innocents were in harm's way, intentionally drawing the monsters' attention to rescue them. She fights the windigos in a 1 on 3 battle and fends them off while destroying almost all of their power, but dies from her injuries knowing she was successful.
• Sci-Twi and Wallflower are recruited by what they think are benevolent spirits guiding them toward good. Unfortunately for them, the spirits are the insanely monstrous Windigos, who manipulate them into doing atrocious things in the name of the greater good.
• Adagio finally learns that when the Sirens were banished to the human world, they were jumped roughly a 1000 years into the future. She doesn't take it well.
• Aria has a nightmare where her mother Hymnia tells her she doesn't belong. Aria starts to think her mother blames her for her exile and death.
• The fight between Aria and Sci-Twi:
  • Sci-Twi honestly thinks she is freeing Aria from a brutal spell...only for Aria to attack and mercilessly wail on her with her superior combat abilities. By the end, Sci-Twi has her nose broken, a rib broken, and her arm broken.
  • Aria attempts to take Sonata's necklace back from the badly beaten Sci-Twi, only to be stopped by the necklace's force field. She says that is not possible and demands to know what she did to Sonata's birthright. She strangles Twilight in a rage, which drives the poor girl into becoming an even deformed version of Midnight Sparkle out of fear, hatred, and sheer pain.
  • Wallflower Blush walks in on Aria and X standing over a defeated Sci-Twi. Believing them to be killing her only friend, she blasts them with the Memory Stone. X shields Aria and ends up losing all of his memories. Before he does, in a Call-Back to the scene where Aria gave him her necklace, he transfers his Kaizer Ghidorah personality to her and gives her the same words, "Don't lose." Then the Windigo Boreas possesses X's body, thanking Aria, his daughter, for providing him with a powerful Empty Shell for a host body.
• Gigan has a huge grudge against Junior because in the past, Junior had mauled Megalon and ripped his arms off, which is why they were replaced with drills.
• Mothra Lea gets possessed by Battra, becoming very ruthless, then forcefully turns Junior into his Kaiju form against his will. Once she snaps out of it, she is horrified.
• Wallflower Blush is manipulated into using the memory stone on a very traumatized Sci-Twi, her only friend, by Zephyrus. Sci-Twi, fully comprehending the sheer evil of Zephyrus for the first time and her part in unwittingly helping him, is forced into stillness and not able to stop her.
• Adagio Dazzle suffering a mental breakdown once fully confronted with the horror that her rapist sire is indeed back, hunting her, and was the cause for all the tragedy as of late towards her and her compatriots. Blaming herself for everything, she yanks off her siren heart and tries to tearfully give it to Gigan while shrieking at him to leave and that it's all her fault. Gigan himself is so guilt-ridden for breaking his promise to Princess Twilight by letting his grudge against Godzilla escalate into a fight that he ends up locking himself in his room out of shame.
• Notus possesses Flash Sentry and preys on his own feelings of uselessness for not having any magic to help Sunset with.
• Wallflower learns how horrible the Wendigos are in the worst possible way:
  • Boreas steals the Memory Stone and proceeds to play a really sick and twisted game with her; chasing her down to the point of collapse and exhaustion, threatening to murder innocent bystanders, and then erasing her memory to repeat the process over again, while mercilessly taunting her as weak and useless.
  • Zephyrus proceeds to possess the now Empty Shell Sci-Twi, using her as a vessel. While Zephyrus is more composed than Boreas, he also plays a twisted game on Wallflower: pretending to release Sci-Twi from his possession, only for "Sci-Twi", Wallflower's only friend mind you, to suddenly say "she" doesn't know her. Zephyrus also pledges to "thank" Wallflower for her "help" by making her watch as he and his brothers unleash destruction upon Canterlot. He even hints he'll slaughter Twilight for good should they fail.
• Notus mentally tormenting Sunset Shimmer with her past misdeeds, such as forcing her to relive and witness Flash Sentry's painful memory of their break-up. After Flash had gone behind an increasingly cruel Sunset's back to try and help Rarity win the Fall Formal prior to Twilight's arrival, only for Sunset to torment her and Sweetie Belle to get her to drop out, she angrily confronted him when he left in shame. The stress, misunderstanding some words Sentry said about how she wasn't acting like herself anymore, and the surprise of finding out he knew she wasn't human caused her to lash out and slap him in the face hard; spurring him to walk away and break up with her. The remembrance of how she so thoroughly screwed up tormenting those who'd be her friends and driving off an Understanding Boyfriend nearly breaks Sunset's will and makes her think she'll never be worth of her Element of Harmony.
• After Flash is freed from his possession, not only is Sunset horrified that she didn't notice earlier, Flash is still deprecating himself.
• The fragments of Sci-Twi's memories are completely emotionally broken by what they did to help Zephyrus, on top of being traumatized in general by the horrors they've endured. So much so, that the fragment of Monster X can't bring himself to punch Sci-Twi, instead choosing to console her.

The Bridge: Sound of Thunder

• Raiga pleading for answers from the Mirror Universe's Godzilla Junior. After seeing the broken remains of the deer kingdom and clear evidence he had a part in its destruction, she's understandably distraught in she thinks is a Broken Pedestal moment. For those who've seen the heroics of the Main Universe Junior, the knife twists in a bit more when she sadly begs for some excuse as to why he did it.
  Raiga: "-please, please tell me that somehow you didn't do this..."
• The little run through hell poor Starlight Glimmer gets put through while in captivity, being strapped to an operating table in a laboratory full of dark magic and severed magical body parts like unicorn horns and deer antlers. The fact this is the Mirror Universe Starlight Glimmer also means this Starlight never did anything cruel or villainous like the one from the show had, being instead a kindly young mage who devotes her time to helping others. Break the Cutie moment indeed!
• Mirror Universe Xenilla has lost a lot of friends to his brother, and he blames himself for every single one because he didn't kill the tyrant when he had a chance. He remembers each and every name of the fallen out of respect for the dead and to hold against himself.
• In a semi-canon backstory event, "The Tyrant and the Alpha Predator", "Gojira" from Godzilla (2014) attacks Mirror'verse Godzilla Junior. Despite a good early lead thanks to his extra bulk, body armor, and experience, Gojira's age starts to catch up to him while the younger Godzilla just keeps coming back for more. Even the "Kiss of Death" finisher backfires spectacularly, super charging Godzilla and completely shifting the tide of the fight. Even though he came so close to killing off that world's Big Bad, Gojira loses with lethal end results. The Bad Guy Wins with a dash of Downer Ending.

The Bridge: Shimmer in the Dark

• The flashback to the night Sunset Shimmer was orphaned. Not only did her birth mother die trying to keep Countess Mircalla from kidnapping her to be raised as a warlock, but Mircalla was only doing it to guarantee the safety of her vampire coven and took no pleasure in it. Capped off when it's revealed the death of Sunset's mother was an Accidental Murder that's haunted Mircalla for decades.

The Bridge: Tales of the Amalgam'verse

• "Godzilla meets King Kong" follows on a toddler aged Godzilla Junior, whose child innocence is still intact at the time. He thoroughly believes humans are wonderful, kind, and friends to be had; and that they'd never do anything to hurt him. Come twenty years later and they tried to kill him with Dimension Tide...
• "Monster X vs. Ultraman Belial: Angels and Demons" shows us a Pre-Dark Hunter Monster X, fresh off first being used as a living weapon by the Xilians but before meeting Gigan and Megalon. A heroic Ultra, Corona, realizes X is a heroic soul deep down and tries to save him but his damaged mind means he places his abused loyalty to the Xilians above all else and rejects her help.

The Bridge: The Eclipse Times

• "Total Eclipse" is basically nothing but this for the young Princess Celestia.
• Commander Hurricane doing his best to keep everything together and keep the citizens safe despite his advancing age.
• Celestia actually once considered abandoning ponykind to its fate.

---