Clara...
- The scene in which the Land of the Dolls is desolate and covered in mist, leaving Clara alone and crying out for her Nutcracker. The Nutcracker transforming into his doll form and only being able to watch helplessly as the Mouse King goes after Clara to kill her (as pictured), is both this and Nightmare Fuel. The fact that it is accompanied by Tchaikovsky's "Pas de Deux
" doesn't help matters. - The Mouse Queen belittling her son and smacking him for berating her with the prince looking scared and fearful, knowing he was going to be punished for his backtalk.
- Another one would be when (in the flashback) the Mouse Prince finds his tail crushed under a pillar and he hugs it tenderly. Also, when he realizes he's alone after losing his mother, despite the abuse she gave him earlier, you can't just help but feel like giving him a hug...right before he starts laughing and talks himself into believing he's better off without her and can now have all the power to himself, that is.
- Hans saves Princess Perlipat from the Mouse Queens curse and is transformed into a Nutcracker. Rather than show gratitude or promise help, the Royal Family insults him as "the Prince of the Dolls" and banish Drosselmeyer and the Nutcracker from their kingdom before running off to the Royal Hall of Mirrors to bask in the vain princess’s beauty. Even worse, after this humiliation, Drosselmeyer is threatened by the newmade Mouse King. The Mouse King explains his plans to raise an army and destroy Hans, not for killing his mother, but because Hans accidentally crushed his tail when he fell and bumped the pillars (never realizing that he only fell because the Mouse Queen bit him to perform her curse.)
- Hans being turned into a nutcracker, and is implied to have been put in stasis since that time, only to be brought back to fight an enemy in a situation he has no idea about. It's hard not to feel sorry for him.
- Near the end of the movie when Clara realizes that she needs to grow up and rejects the Nutcracker's offer, the lively dolls that have cheered happily before all began to turn back to lifeless toys permanently with even Clara, knowing this, struggling to try to get them back up and alive despite still talking about wanting to grow up and missing her family if she had stayed doesn't help. And that's before the dying Mouse King appears.
- The Mouse King's final stand, while intense, is also fairly sad. The Mouse King is dying, slouching after Clara at a glacial pace, and takes cakes and pies to the face without slowing down, looking more pathetic than menacing (with some implications that he was losing all his senses and not realizing that the one he's been trying to kill was not the Nutcracker, but of Clara) as he struggles to live long enough to try to end his enemy. And his final bid at revenge is for nothing, as he has another Disney Villain Death and seems to completely vanish once he's hit the water, leaving only his crown behind. Again, the music doesn't help matters here.
- In general, the climax is quiet, unsettling, and sorrowful, centering on the theme that Clara needs to put away childish things and focus on growing up in the life ahead of her.
- After the death of the Mouse King, Clara climbs back on the balcony before noticing the entire castle foggy, all the toys, including the Nutcracker, are gone. She then goes around, searching for them while tearfully calling out for the Nutcracker, despite what she said and sounding like she regretted her final words to him before the Mouse King appeared. She, all alone, cries and continues calling out for him in the empty castle, crying and begging for him to appear before everything faded to black and then she wakes up back in her bedroom.
