Tear Jerker / Time Trials

• The Bad Future is as nightmarish as it is depressing. Your favorite character- whoever they might be- is almost certainly dead. Royce’s internal narration also mentions that it seems like the planet itself seems to be in its death throes, and the descriptions of the war-torn Green Hill Zone and Mushroom Hill Zone leave little doubt that even your favorite level didn’t escape unscathed.
• Knuckles’ lonely childhood, his desperate attempts to find other echidnas, and his cruel betrayal by Robotnik are all detailed in Chapter 3 (& Knuckles). The latter is not even slightly played for laughs.
• Cream being separated from Cheese and frantically searching for him in Chapter 4 (Welcome to Station Square) will strike a chord with any pet owner. Then there’s the horrific image of a little kid being almost crushed in a stampede and drowning in a flash flood.
• Although Vector is able to help save the other diner patrons and employees in Chapter 7 (Breakfast Time), he’s unable to find another waitress even after he dives back into the floodwaters to look for her...and the people he saved insist she was never there to begin with.
• Big Griz’s reaction to Mad Mike’s death. He flies into a Berserker Rage, complete with Berserker Tears, throwing aside his weapon and whaling on Omega with his fists, and for a moment it looks as though he might actually win...before he gets stabbed in the abdomen and has a burst of minigun rounds unloaded directly into his chest.
• The other Resistance members don’t fare much better than any of the ones who came before them. It’s already been made clear that Anyone Can Die by this point, but Chapter 15- appropriately titled Almost Dead- is just one cruel Hope Spot after another.
  • Cindy’s death is arguably the most horrific- she’s grabbed by the head and lifted off the ground, screaming, clearly terrified out of her wits and in excruciating pain, to be used as a makeshift meat shield before being mercy-killed by Carlos. All the rest of her teammates can do is watch in horror while this happens.
  Wild Cat: What the hell did you do?!
  Carlos: The same thing I’d expect any of you to do for me!
  • Cutlass is trampled to death when he falls to the ground and Omega just marches forwards, crushing his torso without even breaking stride. It’s not a quick death, and Scarlett’s anguished screams makes it even worse.
  • Perci tries to use her Enerbeam to hold Omega back, and ends up having her arm yanked out of its socket. Hayward charges in to try and save her, gets swatted aside like a fly, and then both of them are incinerated by Omega’s flamethrowers. The internal narration says that Hayward’s last thoughts of his parents’ farm where he grew up; Perci feels Hayward squeeze her hand, and is comforted, ever so slightly, to know that she isn’t going to die alone.
  • Scarlett actually manages to deal the most damage out of anyone involved in the Resistance’s last stand, but then she takes a vicious punch in the face that sends her flying backwards and is killed instantly. All things considered, she actually got a pretty quick, relatively clean death; what makes it especially brutal is Demo’s reaction, which starts with him urging her to get up before the realization sets in.
  "Oh, no. No. No, no, no. Please. Come on. Not you, baby girl. Please, not you."
  • Sergeant Doberman is a Sergeant Rock type who has a quiet Pet the Dog moment with Hayward before the shooting starts, then spends the duration of the battle desperately trying to keep his troops alive as their formation crumbles. When Perci and Hayward are killed in front of him, he has a brief Heroic BSoD before a wounded Pane snaps him out of it, vowing that he won’t let any more of his soldiers die. Needless to say, it doesn’t work out.
• At the climax of the Resistance's final stand at Hidden Palace, Professor von Schlemmer gets the teleporter working, and for a moment it really looks like the survivors are going to make it. Then Demo- who’s all but stated outright to be a future version of Bean the Dynamite- ends up dooming his allies by triggering a bomb blast that not only kills him, but everyone else except Carlos.
• Cream’s sheer inability to comprehend why someone would shoot down a rescue helicopter is a stark reminder that she’s still just a little kid, but even repeated run-ins with Eggman’s theatrical brand of evil hasn’t shaken her belief that people are inherently good.
• Blaze undergoing Cold-Blooded Torture on Captain Metal’s orders would be harrowing enough, but poor Cream is Forced to Watch while it’s happening. Even Swash, who’s doing the torturing, and Buckle, who’s holding Cream back, aren’t happy about it.
• Johnny Lightfoot's appearance in the Mystic Jungle during Chapter 16 (We Three Kings) has him arrive without the faintest idea of where he is or how he got there. Big rescues him and immediately offers to help him, which takes the edge off somewhat, but it’s implied that he was plucked from his native universe right before his death in StC canon...or maybe even after it.
• If Scarlet Garcia’s news report detailing panicking civilians scrambling for safety as the floodwaters spread in Station Square weren’t harrowing enough, poor Vanilla goes into shock upon realizing that Cream and Cheese are still in the city- and as far as she knows, they’re all on their own.
• In the same chapter, it’s implicitly clear that Gemerl remembers the events of Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3, and he’s torn between wanting to use the full extent of his power to help Cream and worrying that he might hurt someone.