History Tearjerker / Carrie

* Shortly after the pig blood falls, Tommy (who is the Prom King and actually nice to Carrie) gets hit by the bucket when it falls as well and is either knocked out or killed. Not only was he [[TokenGoodTeammate one of the few characters who wasn't a total jerk,]] if this hadn't happened, he [[ForWantOfANail might have been able to stop the massacre by calming Carrie down.]]

* Carrie's massacre is kinda sadder if you believe the theory that ''nobody was actually laughing'' except for maybe Norma and Kenny.

* A humanising moment from Chris and Billy. Unlike in the book and other adaptations, where they run off and don't hear about the massacre until later, they see everything from the outside of the gym. And when Miss Collins is crushed by the falling basketball hoop, Chris looks [[EvenEvilHasStandards horrified]]. The way Nancy Allen plays it, you almost wonder if she's realising how much trouble she's caused.

* The scene with Sue tearfully putting away her prom dress can be a little upsetting. It's more than obvious that she was really looking forward to one of the best nights of her life, and to completely miss out on it (for the better, at least) is an enormous sacrifice for her. And something similar happens to Chris right before this scene; just look at her face when she enters the empty, decorated gym. [[AlasPoorVillain She's visibly heartbroken]].

* After the prom incident, it's said that Miss Desjardin resigned from Ewen High school, entirely out of guilt that she wasn't able to help Carrie.

* Carrie's massacre is kinda sadder if you believe the theory that ''nobody was actually laughing'' except for maybe Chris's friends.

* Watching Carrie endure Margaret's abusive behavior, especially when you realize that despite everything, Carrie ''still loves Margaret'' and wants nothing more than for them to have a healthy mother-daughter relationship. (See how she seeks out Margaret for comfort and security after her rampage.) The worst part of all of it is that Margaret genuinely wants what's best for Carrie, but her idea of "what's best" is warped far beyond anything that could be called "good parenting". [[FridgeHorror Kinda makes you wonder]] [[FreudianExcuse what kind of parents]] ''[[FreudianExcuse she]]'' [[FreudianExcuse had growing up.]]
** Actually, Margaret's parents, at least in the book, were nice, normal people. It's never really explained where Margaret's psychotic fanaticism came from. She hated her stepfather, who called her "truck face" and was at least emotionally abusive. She likely suffered from mental illness and found a like-minded religious fervor in her husband Ralph. After he died, she just got crazier.
*** Her insanity, like many people's, evolved from extreme fear. Margaret's grandmother used to terrify her with her TK ability coupled with dementia. She was "senile to the point of idiocy" relatively young, but used to light the fireplace remotely and do TK stunts at the dinner table, while laughing wildly and drooling or panting "like a dog on a hot day" and doing the [[https://humberhumber.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/mano-cornuto.jpg?w=320&h=240&crop=1 Evil Eye hand sign]][[note]]This actually ''protects'' from evil, but Margaret didn't know Gram was "knocking on wood" there[[/note]]. She even seemed to have GlowingEyesOfDoom. Margaret seems to have turned to religion because she perceived her grandmother as having sold out to the Devil. When she saw Carrie floating her baby bottle soon after Gram died, she may even have thought Gram was influencing her from hell.

*** In the book it was real, and it said "Carrie White is burning for her sins. Jesus never fails."
* Just think about the story for a moment. Carrie was just a sweet, shy girl who never wanted anything more than to be liked and cared for by people and to feel like someone, anyone, would love her in the way that her horrible mother never did. Carrie went through her whole life never harming a soul but being made to feel like something was inherently wrong with her and that she didn't deserve to be loved in the way that other people were. Then she finally meets people who actually want her to be happy and feels for just a moment that she has been accepted only to have it all ripped away in the cruelest manner imaginable. All Carrie ever wanted was to feel like she deserved to be happy and all she ever got was cruelty and suffering until it just became too much for her to bear. The most heartbreaking fact of all is that there are thousands, millions even, of people like that in real life who will someday snap because the world never gave them the kind of care that they needed.
** It should be noted that King did know two girls in high school who were bullied horribly. By the time he started to write this novel, both of them were dead, one from suicide. It's extremely likely this message is exactly what he was going for on at least some level.

* Realizing that '''Bullying like this DOES exist'''. While people may not be dropping ground-up pig on people (hopefully!), the fact that people can be this cruel in real life is hard to wrap one's mind around.

*** When you realized that Carrie endured a nonstop cycle of vicious abuse for '''16 YEARS'''...

--> '''King''': ''I was afraid, both of visiting the world of teenage girls, a world I had never been part of, and of revisiting something I hadn't had the wit or the moral courage to stop.''

* The whole scene with Cora and her neighbour, recounted over on NightmareFuel, counts, but it gets even worse when you remember that Cora's daughter, Rhonda, was one of the first confirmed casualties of the Black Prom, as she burned up from being electrocuted. Cora even talks about meeting some of the survivors from the prom moments after and hearing the news that way. It's said they need to take a short recess because she became too distressed to talk.
** Cora mentions that her husband was away on a business trip that night. Imagine having to call your spouse up and tell them the daughter you love has suddenly died in a horrific disaster.

** Actually, Margaret's parents, at least in the book, were nice, normal people. It's never really explained where Margaret's psychotic fanaticism came from. She hated her stepfather, who called her "truck face" and was at least emotionally abusive. She likely suffered from mental illness, and found a like-minded religious fervor in her husband Ralph. After he died, she just got crazier.

* The ending shot of the words "Carrie White Burns in Hell" spray painted on her grave (or on the For Sale sign where her house used to be). She can't be free from the insults and the mocking even when she's ''dead!''
* Realizing that '''Bullying like this DOES exist'''. While people may not be dropping ground up pig on people (hopefully!), the fact that people can be this cruel in real life is hard to wrap one's mind around.

* The foreword to the 2004 audio book where Stephen King talks about the creation of the novel, and that Carrie is a composite character of two girls he knew in school; Tina White and Sandra Erving (pseudonyms to protect the names of the real girls). Tina had been a quiet, pudgy girl who came from a "peculiar" (in King's own words) family and always wore the same outfit, which the other students relentlessly bullied her for. One Christmas, Tina came to school in a brand new outfit, and King recalls how happy she had been... and how shocked she was when it only made the bullying worse. This was the final straw, and Tina hung herself in the family's basement. King, who was 14 at the time, didn't participate in the bullying, but didn't have the courage to try and stop it, something he regrets. Sandra came from a strict, religious family and suffered from epileptic seizures which she was also bullied for, as well as her old-fashioned clothes. The seizures eventually killed her.

[[folder:The novel]]

-->''Carrie went to see Tommy the day before the prom. She was waiting outside one of his classes and he said she looked really wretched, as if she thought he'd yell at her to stop hanging around and stop bugging him.''\\

* The epilogue reveals that Carrie's rampage effectively destroyed the town. With most of their teenaged children dead, along with a handful of the adults, the survivors note that something vital seems to have been lost as well, and people are just... drifting off. Even the local plant, which is normally the lifeblood of a small town, has been laying people off not because they're closing, but becase ''they dont have enough workers to operate full-time'' because they've all left. Many of the people who died deserved it, but not ALL of them and certainly not the whole town.

* A student called Vic Mooney is said end up in an asylum from all the trauma of surviving the Black Prom.

[[folder:The 1976 film and its sequel, ''The Rage: Carrie 2'']]
* The ending, with Sue's dream of visiting Carrie's burned-down house to leave flowers... at least, before she gets grabbed by Carrie's arm. Also, the scene immediately afterwards, which has Sue screaming and thrashing about uncontrollably as her mother attempts to calm her down.

[[folder:The musical]]

* "Evening Prayers." In this version, Margaret ''genuinely loves Carrie'', and is much more of a WellIntentionedExtremist than the other versions, though she's still the antagonist. She sincerely apologizes to Carrie for causing her so much pain, and assures her that she will always love her. It's heartbreaking, especially if you know what happens in the end.

** The Act I ending song "I Remember How Those Boys Could Dance" adds a whole new disturbing wrinkle to Margaret's whole characterization, implying that Carrie is the product of a rape while she was in high school, and she was a perfectly normal girl before then.
* The very end of the song "Epilogue." After Sue sings the last lyric, it fades into a soft reprise of Carrie's {{Leitmotif}}, which we've heard multiple times throughout the show. At first the song is triumphant, then it's terrifying on prom night, and at the end, as Carrie lays dead, it's just ''heartbreaking''.

[[folder:The 2002 film]]

** It's later revealed that she didn't know what tampons were used for (Sue stops her from using one to wipe off lipstick). So presumably at the time she thought the prank was a shot at her for being ugly. And then sometime later probably also realised the meaning.

* The death of Helen Shyres after she completed her HeelFaceTurn -- befriending Carrie at the prom, trying to stop the blood being poured, slapping Kenny for laughing at her and trying to get Tommy to safety. She showed that she was more than just a BetaBitch like Tina, and she got killed in Carrie's collateral damage.

* This version plays up the imbalance between Chris and Billy - where the latter is clearly as much of a sociopath as he is in the books (in the 1976 film they're both more bumbling comic relief, in the 2013 film it's Chris who's easily the more evil of the two). At some points she seems scared of Billy - like when he threatens to kill her if she gets caught and mentions his name. And when he sees Carrie on the road, he prepares to run her down. Unlike in the other two film versions (Chris drives the car in the 1976 film, and she cheers him on in the 2013 version) she screams for him to stop. Her last words before Carrie crushes the car are "Billy, [[EvenEvilHasStandards what are you doing]]? Billy, stop! Stop!"

[[folder:The 2013 film]]

* The death of Chris. Not because it wasn't deserved, but because seeing the look of fear on Chris' face actually makes Carrie come to her senses and hesitant to kill her. Then Chris tries to take advantage of this pause to run Carrie over, but crashes to her death instead, and the look of horror and sorrow on Carrie's face at this is just devastating.

--> '''King''': ''I was afraid, both of visiting the world of teenage girls, a world I had never been part of, and of revisiting something I hadn't had the wit or the moral courage to stop''