Tear Jerker / Between the Lions

• The entirety of "A King and His Hawk", both in-universe and out-of-universe. About half of the episode consists of crying.
  • The story itself is not bowdlerized: the whole tragedy is shown, including the hawk's death, and we see the body next to the king. All the king can do is sit beside his friend and cry Tears of Remorse until he realizes where his castle is. "Slowly he walked down the hill to his home, his feet as heavy as his heart. The End."
  • A good portion of the library patrons have found sad books and they are crying together.
  • Leona angrily asks Lionel why he decided to read a sad story to her. He apologetically says he should have read it ahead of time, though to be fair she just asked him to read to him so he obliged.
  • When Leona goes Break the Cutie and decides she should hide the book. She argues with her brother about it, and nearly hits him... only to remember how the king struck his hawk in a fit of fury. In a Jerkass Realization mode, she agrees to put the book back on the shelf.
• "The Empty Pot", which tells the story of how a young Chinese boy named Ping, whose entire passion was flowers, is unable to grow a single seed provided to him by the emperor in his search for an heir to the throne. Ping is forced to present an empty pot in the presence of hundreds of other young children who had grown impressive flowers, and admits that his best simply was not enough. Becomes a Heartwarming Moment as the emperor praises Ping for his honesty, revealing that the seeds he had given everyone were cooked and thus unable to grow. For his noble act, Ping is crowned the new emperor of China.
• Leona receiving "The Gingerbread Man" as a birthday gift, only to be heartbroken when the story ends with him being eaten. Part of the party ends up playing out like a funeral in the gingerbread man's memory, with the lions even singing a song to say goodbye to him. Silly as the whole thing is, it evokes the very real pain that is characteristic of such a moment. As for the song itself, even when listened to without context, it's a massive tearjerker on its own.
  • It doesn't help that Lionel is completely insensitive about Leona's feelings, saying you're supposed to eat cookies.
• The episode "But, Mama, But..." What really drives it home is when Leona sings her song "But Mama is Going Away."
  • In the same episode, Busterfield’s song, "Must I Just Be a Bust" (first heard in the episode “Icarus’s Wings”), where he sings about how he has been stuck in a dome since 1892 and wishes to be free to see the world.

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