History TearJerker / TheBindingOfIsaac

** The Torn Photo item in ''Rebirth'', which is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a torn half of a photograph]] showing what appears to be Isaac's mother holding him. Picking it up increases Isaac's tear fire rate and makes him look absolutely ''[[http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/bindingofisaacrebirth.gamepedia.com/9/9c/Torn_Photo_App.png miserable]]''.
*** It's a torn family photo. Isaac's father has been torn off.
*** Becomes much worse in hindsight as noted below in that Isaac blames himself for his family being torn apart.

* The context for the alternate/Tainted characters. In short, they're all the characters who suffered some horrible fate in the [[BadFuture worst possible timeline]], from [[ClippedWingAngel Azazel losing his wings and horns]] to [[CameBackWrong Lazarus being stuck between life and death]] to the Forgotten's Soul literally dragging the skeleton around and [[BadWithTheBone forced to use it]] [[GrievousHarmWithABody in place of tears]]. Even the ones who got off relatively lightly look significantly more decrepit and sad, like [[CobwebOfDisuse the Lost all covered in cobwebs]] and Eve hiding her face [[PeekABangs more with her messier hair,]] plus her tears looking black. What makes it worse is that the already somber remix of Genesis for ''Repentance'' gets [[DarkReprise a more depressing, warped version with masculine vocals]] just for the alternate characters, driving in the theme of how badly they all have it.

** Another goes to Tainted Jacob. It's based on the Book of Genesis, in which Esau attempts to kill Jacob after both Jacob and their mother tricked their father [[TheLawOfConservationOfDetail Isaac]] into giving Jacob a blessing intended for Esau, resulting in Jacob fleeing from Esau's wrath. This is also further backed up by Tainted Jacob's unlock achievement name, "The Deserter." The worse part is the sprite of Tainted Jacob makes him look like he ''clearly'' regrets this.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0WaIPMqb30 Jesus Loves Viggo]]. There's something weirdly fitting that you only unlock this after you've truly done everything and gotten the Dead God achievement. It's reminding you there's nothing left at all, in a weirdly meta way: no more items to unlock, nothing left to learn, no more to see, nothing at all. At that point, there is absolutely nothing left for you to do past run through the game over and over. In story terms, this translates to the fact that there is nothing left for Isaac except the fact that he will die, and you get to listen to him sing the exact song he will likely sing to himself as he suffocates to death. Your reward for truly completing Isaac's final dying adventure, fittingly enough, is getting to actually hear him die.

** During the Ascent, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sESyMyrHMc an admittedly awesome remix of Genesis]], played backwards with additional instrumentation added in the further you go, plays throughout. It really helps sell the idea of Isaac going all the way back to the beginning, all in a heartrendingly beautiful version of the title theme that doesn't lose the tearjerking potential despite sounded warped and strange. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sESyMyrHMc&lc=UgxE38S4iVnEdmjGMyl4AaABAg This YouTube comment]] sums the whole situation up.
--> [[CerebusSyndrome This game is no longer a comedy or a satire....]] [[ReligiousHorror It’s a tragedy.]]

** During the Ascent, an admittedly awesome remix of Genesis, played backwards with additional instrumentation added in the further you go, plays throughout. It really helps sell the idea of Isaac going all the way back to the beginning, all in a heartrendingly beautiful version of the title theme that doesn't lose the tearjerking potential despite sounded warped and strange.

* Somewhere among this and NightmareFuel is Isaac finding Guppy's head ([[UncannyValley a real cat's head at that]]) in one of ''Rebirth'''s trailers, where he holds it in his hands with despair.

* The context for the alternate/Tainted characters. In short, they're all the characters who suffered some horrible fate in the [[BadFuture worst possible timeline]], from [[ClippedWingAngel Azazel losing his wings and horns]] to [[CameBackWrong Lazarus being stuck between life and death]] to the Forgotten's Soul literally dragging the skeleton around and [[BadWithTheBone forced to use it]] [[GrievousHarmWithABody in place of tears]]. Even the ones who got off relatively lightly look significantly more decrepit and sad, like [[CobwebOfDisuse the Lost all covered in cobwebs]] and [[BlindingBangs Eve hiding her face]] [[PeekABangs more with her messier hair,]] plus her tears looking black. What makes it worse is that the already somber remix of Genesis for ''Repentance'' gets [[DarkReprise a more depressing, warped version with masculine vocals]] just for the alternate characters, driving in the theme of how badly they all have it.

[[folder: ''Repentance'']]

*** To add to it, we see Isaac's mother not as the violently murderous madwoman she was introduced to us as. She's all too human and vulnerable, weeping over the bitter divorce she's going through. [[AdultFear And then she finds her (only?) son dead in his toychest.]] All the searching hinted at in the previous two endings, and [[FridgeHorror she overlooked him in his own bedroom.]]

** On that note, every memory he has during level transitions are just horrible to look at. The poor kid just ''never'' got a break…

* The definitive final ending of the game, [[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5s7Q1Lom7VE Ending 20.]] Where to begin? It serves as a MindScrewdriver to all of the other endings. In it, Isaac is within his toy chest, his life flashing before him. You hear his mom and dad arguing, and see a shot of Isaac watching his mother cry in front of her TV. As Isaac begins to turn [[WhamShot blue]] [[note]](just like Hush or ???)[[/note]] from the lack of oxygen, we see Isaac holding a family photo with his dad's face burned away, and (perhaps most heart-wrenching) a series of Isaac's drawings, [[SanitySlippage showing his descent into self-loathing and suicidal insanity]]. Finally, we see a shot of [[DeadAllAlong Isaac's skeleton]] within the chest as his mother opens it, and the missing poster from Ending 15 flies away, symbolizing Isaac's demise. The final shot of the ending is Isaac walking through the afterlife from Ending 17, while a somber remix of the title theme plays.

* As you make your way towards Dogma and the Beast, you begin to hear snippets of dialogue showing how Isaac's parents' marriage fell apart, with Mom furious at Dad blowing the family's savings and Dad horrified by Mom's increasingly deranged fundamentalism. It culminates in the day Dad leaves, with Mom ''begging'' him to stay and Dad sadly admitting that he just ''can't'' anymore.

* Isaac's life in itself is a massive tear-jerker. Everything that is presented to us about him only makes him look more and more miserable, and we're ''still'' in the dark about many other aspects of it. Not that the game leaves that many possibilities for a happy ending, and if it does, [[HopeSpot it's more than likely it won't last long]]. And now that we also know the true ending and the nature of the game itself, it's little wonder Isaac thought [[DrivenToSuicide ending his own life]] was a valid option...
** It's doubtful by this point that Isaac's mother is chasing her son around the house and into a basement with a knife on her hands, but there IS enough evidence to support that she's cold and unloving at best, and [[AbusiveParents psychologically abusive]] at worst. Isaac is still deprived of his clothes for most of the game, one of the endings shows that his bedroom window has ''metal bars'' on it, he perceives his own mother as a ''literal monster'', laughing maniacally as she tries to ''stomp him to death'', and to top it all off, he's had a pet cat (likely more than one, if items like Tammy's Head and Bob's Brain are taken into consideration) which has been long dead - most likely due to his mother's negligence - and all he has to remember Guppy by are his ''torn body parts''. The loading screen showing his mother giving Isaac a turd as a gift is probably one of the least awful things she's done, and she did that out in public for others to laugh at her own son, and, as previously mentioned with the other item examples above, there's a lot more leads to her treating her son like an afterthought, if not worse.

** And then there's his father, [[DisappearedDad a man we know very little about]] besides the fact he left Isaac and his mother behind after an angry scuffle, and the items that mention him in-game, none of them too flattering. If anything, [[AbusiveParents he seems very much like his ex-wife]]. The items are "Dad's Lost Coin" (which increases the Range stat and make Isaac look ''positively miserable'') [[note]] Which, [[http://pop-life.com/foursouls/data/cards/002DadsLostCoin(1).png if the card of it in Four Souls is any indication]], is a [[AlcoholicParent Soberity Coin of Alcoholics Anonymous fame]] [[/note]], "Dad's Key" (opens all doors), "Dad's Ring" (creates an aura around Isaac that petrifies enemies) and, albeit only implied to be his, a ''[[DontMakeMeTakeMyBeltOff belt]]'' (increases the Speed stat).

** On that note, every memory he has during level transitions are just horrible to look at. The poor kid just ''never'' got a break...

* During the Keeper ARG, the last step was for the community to use [[https://twitter.com/iamisaacsbody Greed's twitter account]] to "give him a voice". They did... and the things Greed said are positively heartbreaking.

** The trailer for this update is both tragic and terrifying. A very real terror that no one should have to undergo; A mother burying her own child's body. And to drive the knife in, she stops part of the way in to do one last thing; Drop a little handheld console into the pit. A silent admission of her guilt in abusing him by taking anything that could remind him of his father away by giving it back to him all too late. And then Isaac's skeleton reanimates.... and as the name of this character suggests, Isaac seems to interpret this as being just like why she took them away to begin with; To try and ''forget'' about him.

** Want more tears to fall? Isaac is honestly right about his mother. Sure she's not trying to kill him but she really isn't winning parent of the year reward. (See KickTheDog on Mom's trope's page for more info.) Plus, [[DisproportionateRetribution her actions are not the way to handle a child who is really trying to cope with everything he's going through.]] So honestly Isaac isn't really in the wrong for thinking his mother like that, and yet she says [[KickTheDog her own son is the disturbed one.]]

** Anyone who's had to put up with parents arguing and steadily approaching divorce will DEFINITELY emphasize with poor Isaac. Remember, Isaac is around five when this is happening, and the entire game is influenced by it. What makes it worse is how realistic it is - instead of portraying one parent as the sole bad guy and the other the definite good guy, both Dad and Mom have done equally bad things that led to their marriage falling apart (Dad taking Mom's money and being an alcoholic, Mom growing increasingly fanatical and putting a lot of blame on Dad's shoulders for how Isaac has turned out to be). In a game as insane and messed up as this, the strikingly realistic portrayal just makes everything even sadder, because it really puts into perspective how much it's affected the poor boy.

** It becomes a significantly less happy tearjerker after [[WordOfGod Edmund has confirmed that Isaac is still dead.]] Nothing in the ending actually happened. It was never a bedtime story, Isaac's father abandoned him, and the ending is either Isaac's afterlife, or his final moments before passing on. Turning what would be an unexpected happy ending into a BittersweetEnding at best, and a full-on DownerEnding at worst, only saved from being such due to Edmund noting that [[AmbiguousEnding he doesn't really know what happens to you after you die, opening the door to a lot of possibilities.]]

** Special mention goes to Tainted Isaac, who appears to have been severely beaten, being covered in bruises and having a black eye. Unlike the other Tainted characters, there's something viscerally ''realistic'' about his injuries. He's not [[WombHorror carrying a demonic fetus]] like Tainted Lilith, nor was he [[DrunkontheDarkSide corrupted by darkness]] like Tainted Judas. He just looks like a child that had been kicked down and abused, which makes it all the sadder. One of his gimmicks is that he can only hold eight items at a time, which implies that his injuries have left him so weak that he can't carry any more than that.

** It becomes a significantly less happy tearjerker after [[WordOfGod Edmund has confirmed that Isaac is still dead.]] Nothing in the ending actually happened. It was never a bedtime story, Isaac's father abandoned him, and the ending is either Isaac's afterlife, or his final moments before passing on. Turning what would be an unexpected happy ending into a BittersweetEnding at best, and a full-on DownerEnding at worst.

** Special mention goes to Tainted Isaac, who appears to have been severely beaten, being covered in bruises and having a black eye. Essentially confirming that Isaac hasn't only been abused mentally, but also ''physically''.

** The final floor, boss, and ending confirmed a morbid fan theory. None of the actual game is happening. [[DyingDream The whole game is in the final dream of Isaac's dying brain while he's suffocating from the lack of air in the toy chest he locked himself into.]] [[RealityEnsues There's no grand underground cave works under his house, no bibles falling to save him from his abusive mother, no deals with the devil to give him superpowers, no anything that we've seen thus far.]] Isaac is a suicidal boy who killed himself by suffocation and had one last wild dream as he slowly died. That's all this story ever was. [[DownerEnding It's an incredibly sobering note to end on,]] but considering how the rest of the game was, were you really expecting anything else?