Tear Jerker / Finding Dory

"Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming..."'

• In the first film, Dory gave some delightfully random bits of talking in her sleep. What does the teaser start off with? "Don't cry, Mommy. Don't cry."
• When Dory begins to remember her parents. It's Marlin's response that brings on the tears: in a single word, he reminds us that, no matter how many Spotlight Stealing Squads he shares the screen with, he's still our leading man, by fitting every bit of pain he went through in the first movie into that one word. Major acting props to Albert Brooks for that.
  Dory: I miss them. You know what that's like?
  Marlin: Yes.
  • Not to mention that shortly before he answers, he and Nemo exchange a sad look.
• This:
  Dory's Mother: We'll never forget you Dory!
  Baby Dory: What if I forget you?
  • For a moment during her Heroic BSoD, Dory does forget them.
  • The actual context of those lines is even more heartbreaking: baby Dory is faced with her parents looking extremely concerned. Up until that point she's been so giggly and excited that she was barely coherent, but she sees those expressions, has no idea why her parents are looking at her like that, and soberly asks, "Did I forget again?"
• When it looks like they're about to find Dory's family, Nemo frets about the implications:
  Nemo: Does this mean we have to say goodbye to Dory?
  Marlin: [sadly] Yes.
• True to Pixar form, the film tries its darnedest to make you cry, even in the first five minutes. Watch as Dory is separated from a kind and loving home, only for her memory to slowly degenerate. First, she forgets where her parents are. Then she starts to look for them, but keeps forgetting who she's talked to and what she's said. Cue a montage of her slowly forgetting who or what she was looking for in the first place.
  • It hits especially hard when baby Dory, all alone, seeks shelter during the night and softly sings, "just keep swimming, just keep swimming..."
    • This sums up the new context "Just Keep Swimming" is used in.
• Like the first film, Dory reuniting with her parents is on the heartwarming side of tearjerkers.
  • Dory suddenly breaking down in tears after being reunited with her parents. She apologizes for her memory loss, getting lost, and forgetting her parents. Notice that Jenny and Charlie watch Dory struggle through her tears with sympathy. She is then explained to by her parents that it was never her fault because she had found them.
  • Also, as Jenny tries reaches out to console Dory, Dory backs away a little. Wow, Dory really thought she didn't deserve any mercy from her parents.
  • When Dory is reunited with her parents, they reveal that the entire time they were separated, they went out every day to collect seashells, hoping that Dory would be able to use the trail to find them like they taught her to. They still each had an armful of shells when they got home and found a confused adult blue tang floating there...
• Remember in the first film where Marlin thought that his son was dead? This time around, after Marlin, Nemo, and Dory go to California to search for her parents, they end up in a Quarantine room where they thought that Dory's parents were going to be. However, the other regal blue tang (who recognize Dory) tell her that her parents aren't there ... Dory then starts to look extremely devastated and follows up with a panic attack, which makes things worse due to Hank grabbing onto Dory (but forgetting Marlin and Nemo) and accidentally putting her back in the sea. Then we get a repeat of Dory desperately trying to remember what she was doing ... almost as if her childhood was repeating. Thankfully, she ends up finding her parents.
  • Dory's Despair Event Horizon. It's her heartbreaking soft voice as she's alone in the ocean. Her crying just sells it. Just TRY watching this scene without tearing up.
  • Dory's panic attack after learning the (supposed) fate of her parents is just heart-rending. Particularly the things the is saying to herself in an almost catatonic state: "I was too late..." "I have no family..." "I'm all alone..."
    • Dory blames herself for losing her parents in the first place, so this is just confirmation of that feeling to her.
• The flashback that shows how Dory lost her parents to begin with. As a child, she awakens one night to the sound of her mother Jenny crying over Dory's predicament. Remembering her mother saying that she loves purple shells, Dory goes to get one for her, only to get swept up by the undertow.
• Though also extremely heartwarming, Dory's parents and their endless patience, playing games to help her memory and comforting her when she falters, can easily become this. Especially after we see Dory's mother crying with Dory's father trying to comfort her, overwhelmed at whether or not their daughter could survive without them. Maybe even worse when you think about how happy they are in Dory's other memories, implying that they were trying not to worry or upset her, even while worrying over her future, and the strain was tying them into knots.
• In a scene like Gil's My God, What Have I Done? moment in the first movie, Dory has one when she ignores the locals and Marlin's pleas to keep her voice down and think things through. This gets Dory, Marlin, and Nemo chased by a squid and nearly gets Nemo eaten. As soon as the dangers passed and Dory sees how shaken up it left Nemo she's horrified. It becomes even more gut-wrenching as the movie continues and it becomes clear the two have become rather close between the two films. It's only lightened by the fact that Nemo recovers from the ordeal pretty quickly and doesn't blame Dory at all for it.
  • Even worse is that shortly after she apologizes profusely and is horrified, she immediately forgets, only to see Marlin consoling Nemo. Marlin (albeit justified, but still saddening regardless) blames her for nearly getting Nemo killed when they spent the entirety of the last movie trying to find and save, and she can only sit there and apologize for something presumably horrible and she can't even remember what she did, just that it hurt Nemo. To have someone mad and upset at you for something you can't even remember doing must be devastating.
  • The kicker: when Dory tries to help after the incident, Marlin retorts with "Just wait over there and forget! It's what you do best." Ouch. And just to make it worse, this one remark indirectly leads to Dory being captured by the Marine Life Institute, at which point Marlin has a My God, What Have I Done? moment of his own, which Nemo does not let him forget.
• When Dory and Hank are stuck in the touch pool, Hank is absolutely terrified and curls up on himself as he tries to hide. This is the first time he's really seen expressing anything other than anger or annoyance, so seeing him so scared really makes you wonder what could have possibly happened to him to make him both lose his tentacle and make him hate being touched so much.

---