Tear Jerker / Who Framed Roger Rabbit

"Oh, Jessica...!"'

Tearjerking moments in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

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• Marvin Acme's death. In spite of his cheating with Roger's wife, Jessica, he was a humorous fellow who genuinely loved toons enough to have them own their own town in accordance to his will. Doom killing him for getting in the way of his goals was as much of a shock as it was to Eddie when he found out the next day.
  • His funeral, in which toons like Popeye amongst others would carry his casket, would've made this even sadder had the producers gotten the rights to those characters.
• Basically, anything having to do with the murder of Teddy Valiant and Eddie's memory of him. It's the heart of the film, after all, and is what transformed Eddie into a grumpy, alcoholic, washed-up has-been in the eyes of others. The only reason Roger came to him for aid at all is that he seemingly never realized Eddie's changed and was under the impression he still helps toons.
  • The first time Eddie's loss is remarked upon. Eddie has just chewed out a wisecracking patron at the bar mocking him over his old profession. After Eddie storms out, Dolores recalls, with visible pain on her face, how much Teddy's death left him affected.
    • Even the patron — who’d been angrily glaring in the direction of Eddie’s departure - seems visibly shaken after hearing what happened.
  • The scene in the movie theater signals the start of the bond between Eddie and Roger. It's the first time we hear of how Teddy died... and foreshadows Judge Doom's real identity. Roger, heartbroken and convinced that Eddie hates him and wants to kill him, may be hammy, but it still tugs at the heartstrings.
    • After the death of Teddy, it's heavily implied that Eddie came to believe that any toon was fully capable of literally stabbing you in the back as much as making you laugh, destroying the notion that they were fun people to get along with in their shared desire to make others laugh. It's not so much that he hated them for being annoyances incapable of taking anything seriously (outside of some exceptions like Betty), it's that he thinks any of them is a killer waiting to happen and he is paranoid of suffering through another potential mistake like that again.
    • Roger's reaction to this reveal is heartbreaking. He anxiously mutters "A toon? No!" with a horrified expression on his face. To him, toons like himself exist entirely to make people laugh, and this is almost certainly the first time he's ever heard of a toon harming a human. He doesn't want to believe his kind is capable of something as heinous as murder.
  • Hell, even the scene of Eddie alone in his office, when the camera pans across the memorabilia of the Valiant brothers' successful cases.
    • Viewers will notice that Teddy's side of the desk is entirely untouched, covered in dust and whatever Teddy had put there. Eddie had refused to clean it up or put anything away for fear of disturbing what had become a shrine to his brother. He goes ballistic when Roger attempts to sit on Teddy's chair.
    • One may also notice a little doll of Betty Boop sitting on Teddy's desk. This explains why Eddie is so open and relatively nice to Betty when she runs into him — she was Teddy's favorite toon.
    • The most heartbreaking scene is when Eddie is looking at his newly-developed vacation photos and smiling at all the pictures of him and Dolores. Only to look crushed when he finds one of Teddy.
    • Look carefully and you can see Eddie's lip quivering as he looks at the pictures. Then we see his eyes glistening as he looks up, thinking about his brother.
  • Note that Eddie and Teddy had made their careers out of helping toons together. One can sense the betrayal Eddie feels at having lost his brother to one.
  • When it's revealed that Judge Doom isn't just any old toon, but the one that killed Teddy, the look of absolute terror on Eddie's face while being confronted by his brother's murderer is nothing short of heartbreaking.
    • Then there's the implication that Doom himself orchestrated his steam roller death to making the Reveal more shocking. Heavily implying that it was a sick joke that Doom himself found amusing to sadistically twist the knife of the man he already had traumatized years before.
  • The sweeping track that plays during these scenes, and kicks off the end credit sequence, is called "Eddie's Theme" for good reason.
• Judge Doom dipping that shoe!
  • Especially because the shoe was so innocent and acted like a little defenseless puppy... and the anguished sounds and expression it made when Judge Doom dipped it!
  • It was snuggling up next to Judge Doom's shoe! The poor little thing just wanted to be friends!
  • Knowing that there's another shoe out there that will always be alone now.
  • Then there's the fact aside from a demonstration of Dip's effectiveness, there was no reason for why he did other than he found the cuddling unbearable. Cementing Doom as a completely ruthless monster with no tolerance for anyone.
• Seeing Roger sobbing desperately after he believes Jessica has cheated on him with Marvin Acme, especially when he pulls out pictures of their wedding and honeymoon. To see Roger, normally so cheerfully wacky, obviously completely heartbroken really hits you...
  • The fact that, in between sobs, he even does his trademark "P-p-p-please?" It's a small reminder that, yes, this is the same Roger you just saw bouncing off the walls for our amusement.
  Roger: Oh, Jessica ! P-p-p-please tell me it's not true ! (sobs desperately) P-p-p-please...
• Wheezy's death. As he's dying, his angelic soul floats from his body. He desperately tries to grab it back, but it flutters off, and he dies.
  • This could double as a Moment of Awesome for Wheezy, as he is the only weasel who at least tries to avert his death.
• Jessica's line about how difficult it is to go around looking the way she does. If the hooting in the nightclub is any evidence, she doesn't get much respect.
  Jessica: I'm not bad—I'm just drawn that way.
  • It could also be interpreted as her stating that people don't take her seriously because she's a toon. Needless to say, such a notion isn't much better.
  • Alternately, other toons don't take her seriously because she's sexy--and sexy isn't funny. There's a reason she's considered the lucky one for snagging Roger as a husband by other toons such as Betty Boop.
  • Or, perhaps, all of the above at once. Poor Jessica's got it pretty bad regardless of how you interpret her statement, really.
• Toontown is home to all toons, no matter the animation studio. If Judge Doom's plan on flooding Toontown with the toon-killing Dip had succeeded, Snow White, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and every other Disney character kids love, along with the likes of Looney Tunes such as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, would be dead forever. And not only that, but it would've also meant that all toons created after the 1940s would've never been around either, including all of Snow White's fellow Disney Princesses in Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, and Moana, Anna and Elsa, Alice, Wendy and her brothers, Tinker Bell, the Dalmatians, Lady and Tramp, Simba, Nala, Lilo & Stitch, WALL-E and EVE, Woody, Buzz, Bo Peep, Jessie, and more, along with Bugs and Daffy's fellow Looney Tunes in Sylvester, Tweety, Wile E. and the Road Runner, Lola, Porky, and the rest.
  • This could have even caused Walt Disney himself, along with his brother Roy, to never build and open Disneyland or Walt Disney World after losing their earliest creations to Judge Doom. Ditto for Universal Studios.
• Even though he was a greedy and manipulative Jerkass, R.K. Maroon did care for toons and not just from a business standpoint. He ultimately wanted Acme's will to ensure their safety making him a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  Maroon: I'VE BEEN AROUND TOONS ALL MY LIFE, I DIDN'T WANNA SEE 'EM DESTROYED!
  • The fervor in his voice when shouting the above line can make you imagine the kind of impact toons had on him possibly going back as far as early childhood. Alan Tilvern's solid performance just nails it.
  • His terror through the entire scene as Eddie punches him out for answers. He is reduced to a frantic and sobbing mess who's clearly in fear for his life, and Eddie is not there to pull his ass out of the fire.
  • The way he cries out when he's shot in the back. He'd thought Eddie shot him and died thinking he was betrayed by him believing he was there to keep him occupied until the assailant finished the job.
• If you know Betty Boop's history in regards to her anthropomorphic dog boyfriend (short explanation, her boyfriend Bimbo was changed to being her pet when the Hays Code deemed their relationship to be a promotion of bestiality), then the part where she is staring wistfully at Jessica as she comments on how lucky Jessica is might tug at your heartstrings a little.
  • Betty's entire situation is pretty sad, really. She used to be a big star, but after cartoons went to color she's been struggling to find work (and probably the Hays code didn't help matters, with how they removed pretty much everything about her cartoons that made them memorable), and even though she's still got it (Boop-boop-a-doop-boop!) she's reduced to selling cigarettes in a shady night club just to make ends meet.
• This is going to sound weird, but Lena Hyena leads a very sad life when you think about it. Toons are depicted in this movie as being creatures very much bound to their nature. Everything they do has to, in some way, contribute to the ‘joke’ as it were. In Lena’s case, the joke is that she wants to love and to be loved, but she is simply too obsessive and clingy. She can’t help it, that’s just her role in the ‘joke’. No matter what, she’ll never receive the love she desperately craves because, from a toon’s logic, it’s funnier for the object of her affection to run screaming for the hills.
• Eddie's reaction to Doom's actual death. While he turned away while Doom seemingly died from being flattened by his own steam roller - dismissing him as a genocidal, corrupt, racist human that needed to be stopped even if it wasn't his direct intention - he doesn't when Doom gets hit by his own Dip, much like he didn't for the shoe when everyone else turned away, hinting at his Hidden Heart of Gold for all toons with the exception of Smart Ass. Aside from the sheer horror of the seeing the toon being erased from existence, it's heavily implied that there's some pity for the toon in spite of killing his brother and ruining his life. He was probably wondering what sort of extreme circumstances led to him becoming self-loathing of his identity to the point that the toon disguised himself as a human and wanted to kill his own kind.
  • It's subtle, but when Doom finally dies for real at the hands of his own Dip, Eddie isn't taking any joy or anger at the sight of his brother's killer finally being put down for good. He had turned away to not look at the previously assumed human's demise at the hands of his own steamroller- being too repulsed to look at the death in spite of Doom's mass murder spree, hypocrisy, and plans of genocide for the sake of profit. However, much like the shoe's demise had caused Eddie, even at his most cynical, to not look away from a Toon passing away, on some level Eddie likely felt a mix of pity and horror for a Toon who, likely one that used to entertain for the sake of laughter and the enjoyment of others, could end up becoming a complete antithesis and how it all ended up horribly. No words are spoken, but the expression conveys a lot of it.