WARNING: Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies to Tear Jerker pages.
- Old Major's death. Just imagine how he would have reacted to see his words of freedom become twisted into something unrecognizable.
- The death of Boxer. Even The Cynic Benjamin mourned Boxer's death. If he could have you just know he would have torn the van apart with his teeth to get Boxer free.
- Probably more cruel is when Boxer is taken away in the van, only for the moment where the animals realize what is written on the side of the van ("Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon"). They shout out for Boxer to get out of the van and how they hear Boxer try to escape, but he's too weak. It doesn't help that it's two horses pulling the van and taking him to die.
- It gets worse. Displaying their Lack of Empathy, the pigs have a feast in Boxer's honor with the beer that was bought by selling Boxer to the knacker.
- As he lies on the ground after having fallen from working himself to exhaustion, Boxer says that he had actually been looking forward to retirement, and hopefully the pigs will allow Benjamin to retire as well so they can keep each other company in their old age.
- The ending, in which the farmers and the pigs become so much alike, none of the other animals can tell the difference between them anymore. What was worse was that Orwell didn't describe Clover's reaction, so we were left to imagine it...
- The death of that poor little sheep.
- The chickens. Their big dream of the revolution was that, finally, nobody would take their eggs—their potential unborn children—and eat them or sell them. They wanted to raise their chicks so badly. And then the revolution came, and it seemed like that impossible dream was suddenly going to become a reality. And then Napoleon decided that the farm needed more income... So, the chickens resolve to smash their eggs rather than give them up.
- In the same line, Jessie's puppies. They weren't even sold to support Animal Farm; she couldn't even tell herself she was helping the others or being patriotic. They kidnapped her children and she never knew why or what happened to them. It may be a mercy that she died before Napoleon could reveal what he did do with them.
- In the live-action movie, the scene where she goes to Napoleon and pleads with him to give her puppies back. After Napoleon smirks and insists they're just "educating" them (cutting her off in the middle of crying "But they're my babies!"), Squealer does his vaguely-threatening "You wouldn't want to disadvantage your own puppies, would you?" She can't argue with it. Her expression is nothing short of heartbreaking. And then as she walks out the door:
Jessie: They still need their mother.- At the end Jessie heads back to the ruins of Animal Farm to look for survivors after Napoleon's dictatorship collapsed. In the muddy wreck, she finds one of her puppies (an adult at that point), who still recognizes her. Although their reunion is happy, the fact that he seemed to be the only animal left on the farm, and perhaps the only attack dog left, veering it into Fridge Horror.
- Even more so considering whatever happened to said dog has completely evaporated all its ferocity taught under Napoleon and it merely slinks back to its mother for comfort, humbled and through with whatever it experienced in its duties there.
- Clover's reaction to Napoleon's brutal purge. Is it gutwrenching to see the motherly mare's dreams for a better future shattered by Napoleon's greed and lust for power.
- Just the complete failure of the animals to improve their lot in any way, shape, or form, especially when you consider this has happened in numerous real-world revolutions and not just Russia's.
