History Tearjerker / ThisIsUs

* Randall is with Kevin when he runs into a co-star from ''The Manny." Randall doesn't recognize him, saying "I must have missed that episode" before being told the guy was a regular on the show. It thus hits Kevin that his brother has ''never'' watched his TV show.

** The first is basically one long FixFic; Jack and Kate's dog both make it, Randall reconnects with William much sooner and is able to help him get both his addiction and his cancer treated properly, and Rebecca likewise gets her Alzheimer's diagnosed quicker. On one hand, its all blatant WishFulfillment and denial on Randall's part. On the other, it hits you with just how easily the Pearsons could've avoided the many hardships they faced if things went even slightly differently.

* The flashback to the Big Three watching the space shuttle ''Challenger'' explode in 1986. It's a naturally traumatizing event but also how it sinks in for the first time to them that one day their parents will also die.

'''Kevin''': Thanks.

* Early in the same episode we learn Kevin’s way of dealing with his fathers death is simply not bringing it up and changing the subject when someone does later Kevin while filming a scene in which his character rescues Sylvester Stallone’s he begins remembering the good times with his father and it shows just how much Kevin himself is still affected by his fathers death.
* Lets just say Kevin throughout the entire episode of “Number One” and leave it at that.

* The therapy scene in “The Fifth Wheel” where the family finally bring up their issues:

** Rebecca having to tell her children the news. There’s no dialogue, we don’t hear how she says it or delivers it, and we don’t need to. All the kids know that their father has died.

** Kevin and Kate don’t do much better with Kate watching the video of Jack recording her singing and blaming herself for his death because Jack went back to save her dog and Kevin basically avoids it altogether until he finally goes to his father's tree and admits to how far he’s fallen.

* Just seeing Rebecca fall into depression after the loss of Jack is definitely saddening. Very good make up along with Mandy Moore’s performance shows just how much Rebecca is still reeling from losing her husband. She even tells Randall that getting out of bed in the morning requires incredible effort and after that she has nothing in her emotionally to deal with problems such as Kevin’s drinking and Kate's excessive eating.

* Toby fighting and trying to hide his depression from Kate. After she announces the news to him that she is able to become pregnant, Toby, still trying to hide his depression from her, just breaks down sobbing. To see someone who is always usually so positive and happy become a sad emotional mess like that can bring tears to anyone’s eye.

* The full story of Nicky: while high on his own medical supplies, he made a horrible mistake that killed the young son of the woman whose necklace Jack later gave to Kevin. Because of some racist comments he’d made earlier about hating all Vietnamese, Jack assumed he’d deliberately murdered the boy and refused to consider anything else, and cut Nicky out of his life completely after getting home by telling everyone he was dead.

* In the Season 3 finale, Rebecca insists on taking comprehensive notes about baby Jack’s care. What at first seems like annoying helicopter parenting is revealed at the episode’s end to actually be because she’s begun to suffer from dementia, and in the flash-forwards set around fifteen years in the future is bed-ridden and needs to be reminded who her children are.

** Miguel confronts Randall while she gets tested, insisting that it’s just a normal part of getting old. But when it’s confirmed that she’s started to develop dementia, he falls apart and admits he’d noticed little issues she’d been having and was in desperate denial.

* The continued animosity between Kevin & Randall is highlighted by their messages to one another regarding Madison’s pregnancy - they both initially start writing lengthy messages to one another, before deleting them & sending the below instead.

* The murder of George Floyd causes Randall to finally start coming to grips with how he's spent his whole life shoving down his feelings about racial injustice to keep the rest of his family from being uncomfortable, which is a big part of what's made him such a neurotic mess as an adult. He ends up having a sobering discussion with Kate about how, through the fault of no one in the situation, he simply ''can't'' talk about these things with any of them for his own emotional well-being.

* After Kevin learns that Rebecca has changed her mind about the Alzheimer's treatment and that Randall was the one who convinced her, all the tensions between the two finally just ''explodes'' in the worst way possible. They initially just argue about Rebecca, but soon both are absolutely tearing each other to pieces over all their myriad issues and disagreements. It all culminates in Kevin accusing Randall of letting Jack die in the fire out of cowardice, causing Randall to call Kevin an unreliable flake and terrible actor who Jack would've seen as a disappointment, which in turn makes Kevin hatefully spit that the worst moment of his life was the second Randall was adopted, all but saying that he wishes they had never been brothers. No wonder they're not talking to one another anymore in the flashforwards.

** The second is the exact opposite of the first; everything that could go wrong for the Pearsons ''did'' go wrong. Jack and Randall are never able to forgive Rebecca for lying about William, while William himself never quits using and cruelly rejects Randall to avoid the emotional strife. Kevin's acting career never takes off, leaving him stuck in a SoulCrushingDeskJob he hates and resenting Randall for moving away. Kate never meets Toby, instead ending up married to Mark. Randall becomes a self-centered {{Jerkass}} professor who sleeps around with students and coworkers while barely tolerating the other Pearsons. It ends with William DyingAlone from his cancer (he tries to leave Randall a box of mementos, but Randall just throws it away), while Rebecca's Alzheimer's seems set to kill her after decades of borderline estrangement from her family.

** It isn't commented on, but in both scenarios, [[DemotedToExtra Miguel and Nicky are basically non-entities]]. Miguel only appears briefly, giving the family a place to rest right after the fire. Nicky is never even mentioned. Really drives home [[TheFriendsWhoNeverHang how distant Randall is with the two of them]] compared to the rest of the family.

* It's brief but in the flashback to the family visiting New York City in the 1990s, one of the first sights they have coming over the bridge are the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

* Randall and Kevin start to become estranged due to Randall blaming Kevin for Rebecca deciding not to take an experimental treatment for her condition, followed by the reveal that he's always blamed himself for Jack's death just like Kate as he imagines threatening to follow him back into the house, causing him to escape the fire with the others. The next episode is all about Randall's fantasy of what their lives afterward would have been like with Jack still around.

* Watching a teenage Kate suffer through her abusive relationship with her boyfriend Mark.

** Miguel confronts Randall while she gets tested, insisting that it’s just a normal part of getting old. But when it’s confirmed that she’s started to develop dementia, he falls apart and admits he’d noticed little issues she’d been having and was in desperate denial.

** Randall is concerned about Rebecca being forgetful at Thanksgiving but tells her that he now thinks he was just overreacting. Instead of letting him think that, Rebecca tearfully confesses she'd been at the movies and it was halfway through a trailer that "I forgot what movie I was going to see. I think I need to see a doctor."

* Kate manages to keep it together about her son Jack being incurably blind for days, but finally breaks down when she unthinkingly brings up how she looks forward to him "watching" the Steelers with her, realizing right there how he won't be able to fully participate in something that's been so central to the family.

* In the Season 3 finale, Rebecca insists on taking comprehensive notes about baby Jack’s care. What at first seems like annoying helicopter parenting is revealed at the episode’s end to actually be because she’s begun to suffer from dementia, and in the flash-forwards set around fifteen years in the future is bed-ridden and needs to be reminded who her children are.

* Randall learning that [[spoiler: his mom knew his birth father all along and deliberately hid it from it. During his MushroomSamba, he yells at a vision of his mother about robbing him of years with William before realizing that she was just scared and trying to protect their family]].

* [[spoiler:Rebecca]]'s second visit to William. [[spoiler:At that point he had been clean for over five years and had gotten his life back on track. When Rebecca tells him that Randall wants to meet his biological father, William just lights up with joy...until Rebecca walks out while he's not looking. All she left him was Randall's picture]]. And her reason for this? [[spoiler: She was afraid William would take Randell away from her. Just to twist the knife in a little deeper, in the same episode Randall says: "If I knew the man who abandoned me regretted it... that he wanted me back, that would have made all the difference in the world"]].
* The flashback to William crying as he reads her letter and puts the picture [[spoiler: in a book he had written entitled, "Poems for my son."]]
* "The Big Day" returns to the day the triples were born and shows Jack having to tell Rebecca that they lost the third baby. She just keeps denying it.

* Kevin [[spoiler: leaving the premiere of his show to comfort Randall after he realized his brother, who just called him and spoke nonsense, was having a nervous breakdown]] in "Jack Pearson's Son."

* The flash-forward to the night of Jack's death: [[spoiler: Randall and Kate breaking down at Miguel's house, Kate saying she needs to get in touch with Kevin (who is on a date with Sophie, seemingly unaware of the situation) and, worst of all, Rebecca driving home with Jack's things, until she gets to the house and sees it burned down, at which point she just ''screams'']].

** Some moments have to be highlighted, especially his breakdown outside Charlotte's house after [[spoiler: leaving his father's necklace on her bedroom floor,]] when he begs her to be let back in, calling it the only thing he has of Jack. He then collapses into BrokenTears in her front yard, finally admitting, "I just need somebody to help me," over and over again. Then, when he finally gets the courage to go to Randall for help, he finds out that [[spoiler: Kate lost her baby.]] Once again, he is overshadowed by his siblings.

* The therapy scene in “The Fifth Wheel” where the family finally bring up thier issues:
** When Rebecca talks of how Jack won't be there for Kate's wedding or Randall's children being born, Kevin bows his head. It takes the therapist pointing it out for Rebeca to realize that she automatically thought of Kate and Randall first and Kevin has always been the odd one out.

** Almost making it worse, the audience knows that Jack left a note for Kevin. It read, [[spoiler: "Kevin, in case I don't see you before work tomorrow, I love you. You owe us an apology. Dad.]] Kevin doesn't know, though, because [[spoiler: it burnt in the fire.]]
** Then, at the end of the episode, after Kevin has apologized to everyone on his list, he flips it over to reveal one more name, unchecked: [[spoiler: Dad.]]
* "Super Bowl Sunday" is a rather poignant episode in that [[spoiler:it shows the final day of Jack's life. The audience never gets to see the moment he dies, but the [[MeaningfulBackgroundEvent nurses running around in the background]] as Rebecca checks in on her loved ones and the glimpse of his corpse in the window of his room were all that were needed.]]
*** Mandy Moore didn't know that Milo Ventimiglia was going to be lying in the hospital bed so her reaction was real.

** Randall in the present day is the only one of the Pearson children who chooses to gleefully and fully celebrates Jack's life on the anniversary of his death, but after having a [[spoiler: brief funeral for his daughter's dead lizard,]] Randall starts to flashback and almost ends up in tears.
** Kevin and Kate don’t do much better with Kate watching the video of Jack recording her singing and blaming herself for his death because [[spoiler: Jack went back to save her dog]] and Kevin basically avoids it altogether until he finally goes to his father's tree and admits to how far he’s fallen.

* The reveal that Nicky was born just two minutes before midnight, which would have saved him from being called to Vietnam where he was killed. And then the point is driven home when we see all the other babies born on the same day who'll be named in the draft 21 years later.

-->'''Zoe''': [[TheAlcoholic His water bottle was full of Vodka.]]

* A few months after Jack's death, Rebecca runs into a widower father of one of the kids' classmates, and after some nice conversation he asks her to have coffee, causing her to realize for the first time that people are now going to be seeing her as on the market again. Made all the more powerful by the show not feeling the need to spell it out with dialogue and letting Mandy Moore's facial acting do all the work.

* The full story of Nicky: while high on his own medical supplies, he made a horrible mistake that killed the young son of the woman whose necklace Jack later gave to Kevin. Because of some racist comments he’d made earlier about hating all Vietnamese, Jack assumed he’d deliberately murdered the boy and refused to consider anything else, and cut Nicky out of his life completely after getting home by telling everyone he was dead.

* Early in their relationship, Jack and Rebecca take a road trip so Rebecca can see a record label. Along the way, Jack has PTSD-influenced nightmares but can't bring himself to discuss them with Rebecca, and it turns out he's using the trip to visit the parents of one of the soldiers under his command, who was killed when he stepped on a mine while playing catch. They tell Jack it wasn't his fault, and soon afterward he breaks down in tears while hearing Rebecca's song about dealing with guilt.

* Toby fighting and trying to hide his depression from Kate. After she announces the news to him that she is able to become pregnant, Toby, still trying to hide his depression from her, just breaks down sobbing. To see someone who is always usually so positive and happy become a sad emotional mess like that can bring tears to anyone’s eye.

** Rebecca is eating a candy bar when the doctor tells her and is in utter denial which leads to heartbreak when she realizes the truth.

* Toby fighting and trying to hide his depression from Kate. After she announces the news to him that she is able to become pregnant Toby still trying to hide his depression from her just breaks down sobbing. To see someone who is always usually so positive and happy become a sad emotional mess like that can bring tears to anyone’s eye.

* The reveal that Nicky was born just two minutes before midnight, which would have saved him from being called to Vietnam where he was killed. And then the point is driven home when we see all the other babies born on the same day who'll be named in the draft 21 years later.

* Just seeing Rebecca fall into depression after the loss of Jack is definitely saddening. Very good make up along with Mandy Moore’s performance shows just how much Rebecca is still reeling from losing her husband. She even tells Randall that getting out of bed in the morning requires incredible effort and after that she has nothing in her emotionally to deal with problems such as Kevin’s drinking and Kates excessive eating.