Tear Jerker / America's Got Talent

• You can't help but feel very sorry for genuinely talented acts that crack under the intense pressure of the callback rounds, causing the judges to eliminate them on the grounds that they're not ready for the big stage. Particularly for well-loved fan favorites such as countertenor singer Andrew De Leon (season 7) and drag comedian Scott Heierman (season 10).
• New Directions and their performance of "Old Man River" in Season 5. It left the normally-excitable and talkative Nick at a loss for words.
• In season 10, one salsa group's performance saw some difficulties after one of the male dancers popped his knee completely out. As the medic examines the injury and states that it must be splinted, you can see the dancer crying, and it makes you feel really bad for him.
• Season 12. In what may be the saddest background story to ever grace the history of the show, we are introduced to Kechi, someone who is very severely scarred at 16 in her native Nigeria from a horrific fiery plane crash^note  She was one of two survivors out of 110 passengers. and the resulting surgeries. In spite of all that, the show adores her and immediately embraces her.
• Also from Season 12. Evie Clair. The entire time she's on the show, her father, Amos Abplanalp, is suffering from Stage 4 cancer and she has several tearful breakdowns on account of that along with the rest of the family. Her dad's treatment isn't working and he's aware he's dying, yet he still comes to watch her perform. Then, right before finals, the cancer finally takes his life, and Evie and her family are devastated, but she still comes onto the show to perform a moving tribute to her late dad's memory.
• 12-year-old Merrick Hanna auditioned in Season 12 with an interpretive dance to Alec Benjamin's "I Built a Friend". It is POWERFUL. It's bad enough if you hadn't heard the song before (and, let's face it, you probably hadn't) and don't expect the ending, but seeing the kid play the robot gives it a new dimension of emotion. The robot at the end when he's dying, grasping at the air, wanting to see his friend one more time... It moved Simon to apparently show the tape to his record label executives, to test him for actual music videos...
• Lastly from Season 12, Brandon Rogers, who came onto the show and moved the judges with his powerful voice, but never got a chance to return to the show because his life met a sudden and tragic end when he was killed in a car wreck, and the show memorialized him.
  • The tribute paid to Brandon Rogers doubles as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, but when you realize he died before he had a chance to make it to the live shows...
• One can make a case that Archie Williams has arguably the most tragic backstory in Got Talent history. Prior to coming on the show in 2020, he spent 37 years in prison for a rape and attempted murder crime he didn't even commit. The Innocence Project fought for him for decades to get access to evidence that could prove that he was innocent, which finally came true after a judge ordered a review of the fingerprints found at the scene, granting his release on March 21, 2019. Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when he gets a standing ovation after his powerful delivery of Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" during the auditions, with Simon Cowell going as far as to become an Innocence Project Ambassador inspired by Archie himself.
• Jane Kristen Marczewski, AKA Nightbirde, came on the show in 2021, having fought against breast cancer since diagnosed in 2017, then going into remission in 2020. However, by the time of her audition, she had another examination that revealed the cancer was back, having metastasized into other parts of her body. She was given a 2% chance of survival, and still came on the show to perform an original song called "It's OK", a testament to every bad thing she went through, such as a separation. Simon gave her a well-earned Golden Buzzer, and she would've progressed to the live shows, but her health worsened. Simon encouraged her to continue treatment, and Marczewski left the competition. She made a video appearance on AGT updating everyone about her condition later in the season. Tragically, she died on February 22, 2022, unfortunately coinciding while America's Got Talent: Extreme aired. The episode that aired on February 28th ended with a memorial for Nightbirde, after host Terry Crews and the judges from her season expressed their condolences online, especially Simon, who believed she could have won if she hadn't been afflicted by sickness. Her family also started a memorial fund in her name to fight cancer. Despite everything she went through, she summed up her philosophy with such a simple but moving phrase:
  Simon: There was something about the song after you just almost casually what you're going through and...
  Nightbirde: You can't wait until life isn't hard anymore before you decide to be happy.
  • When Simon reviewed the greatest Golden Buzzer moments in the show's history, Nightbirde was #1 pick. Simon admitted that he hadn't been able to bring himself to rewatch Jane's audition again since her passing, and while watching it again for the list and remembering her, both he and Terry Crews were visibly tearing up.
  • To make this even sadder, the song that plays as she celebrates getting the Golden Buzzer is called "Breathe Again", because she'll never get to breathe again.
• Matt Mauser's audition in Season 16. He revealed that his wife was killed in the 2020 Calabasas helicopter crash - which is better known as the crash that killed Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna Bryant.
• The final audition of 2023 had one of the most tearjerking backstories behind it, even by AGT standards. Two Moms United by One Heart are a duo consisting of Holly and Kim, two women linked by an organ donation - after Holly's son died, he had his heart transplanted into Kim's newborn. They met a few years later and decided to start singing together. They chose "For Good" as their audition piece because by pure coincidence, they both sang it to their kids, Holly as her son slipped away and Kim after she was allowed to ser her own son after the transplant.