"It's just a bad dream. When I wake up, they'll all be back."
Centaurworld may be set primarily in a Sugar Bowl but that doesn't mean you won't ugly cry.
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Season One
"The Key"
- Durpleton's issues with his farts is both this and Funny, since he's psychologically projecting his verbally abusive father unto them and he's clearly still haunted by the abuse.
"What You Need"
- Wammawink's past. Her family is dead, her village was devastated, and she is the Sole Survivor of said devastation. It is even implied that she sought for Waterbaby's help since she is like the closest mother figure to her.
- When Horse first sees Wammawink the girl is in tears and in denial that everything she's loved is now gone.
- Baby Wammawink finds a ladybugtaur and tries to make friends on the grounds that they're the only other living thing that isn't one of the Tree Shamans. The ladybugtaur flies away before she can finish speaking, and baby Wammawink can only let out a very quiet "oh" and curl in on herself as though she's been stabbed.
- Seeing the orphaned baby Wammawink going to the Tree Shamans and asking them to use their powers to bring her herd back. The Trees tell her that though it may be what she wants, it's not what she needs. Wammawink, on the verge of tears, just thanks them for sharing their shade with her village. The fact that the Tree Shamans don't even offer her comfort is enough to enrage Horse into promising vengeance the next time she sees them — and delivering on this.
- Wammawink packs up a bag filled with a few sticks and rocks, and a clump of someone's fur. As soon as she ties it up, she lies on her side while staring into space without seeing. In a combined moment of tearjerker and heartwarming moment, Horse sings a reprise of "Rider's Lullaby" to her even though Wammawink's been unable to see or hear her throughout the entire flashback. Nonetheless, it does seem to have some affect on her as she falls asleep when Horse rests her head on Wammawink's own.
"Ride the Whaletaur Shaman!"
- The reason the Whaletaur Shaman is called "The Last Shaman" is because centaurs with emotional pain come to her to end their suffering by allowing her to eat them. Horse, suffering from severe depression due to a crisis of identity over the changes to her body, finally admitting that she can't remember Rider's face, which is one of her greatest fears, and feels like she no longer deserves to be reunited with the person she loves most, willingly attempts suicide by jumping off the cliff and into the Whaletaur's mouth.
- The reactions of the herd seeing Horse's apparent death are heartbreaking, and Wammawink is left questioning why anyone would choose to take their own life.
- Despite his Dissonant Serenity, Sunfish Merguy tries his best to distract centaurs who come to the Shaman with games and Blatant Lies that she's never there, but "everyone always chooses the whale".
"The Rift: Part 2"
- The Herd breaking down after the Mysterious Woman stole back the key. Even Wammawink, the normally optimistic centaur, is on the verge of tears as she yells at Glendale for never stealing anything useful.
- Surprisingly, the Nowhere King gets a Cry for the Devil moment implying he wasn't always the fearsome abomination he is now. When the Mysterious Woman shows up he immediately stops attacking the herd and all of his attention becomes focused on her. When he speaks, he sounds both elated and in disbelief to see her again. It's a very humanizing moment for a literal monster.Nowhere King: She... She's here. She's come to set me free.[...] I never stopped thinking of you. Of what we could have had together.[...] You made me what I am. But it's okay. I forgive you. (bows his head to her so she can strike him down)
- While the Mysterious Woman is an antagonist, it's hard not to feel a certain level of tragedy about her. It's strongly implied that she has some sort of history with the Nowhere King, and something happened that resulted in her completely rejecting feelings like love and trust. And yet, even after having an entire Villain Song about not getting attached to others because you'll just end up hurt, when the Nowhere King willingly allows her a chance to finish him off...she can't do it.
- After spending all season trying to find Rider, Horse willingly gives up a chance to go back to Earth with her when she sees the centaurs aren't ready for the Nowhere King returning. Rider says she speaks like a true warrior, and they have a heartbreaking song that this goodbye isn't forever.
Season Two
"Bunch O’ Scrunch"
- Baby Wammawink, desperate to keep someone safe, singing "Fragile Things" to a bugtaur who doesn't want to know.
- The backstories revealed for some of the herd members.
- Ched wanted to be a tulip fighter like his heroes, the Centaurs™. When he tried, they ridiculed him, with the Duchess even allowing her grandson to use him as a croquet ball.
- Glendale was found by Wammawink all alone, driven to isolation and kleptomania by her magical portal which compels her to steal. Glendale couldn't even remember if she had parents with the implication her portal stomach might have eaten them. She is also shunned by others for her portal and is deeply afraid of it.
- Durpleton is seen trying to win his parents', especially his father's, love and approval with homemade toys. When his father tosses one toy out the window of their moving house, Durpleton falls out trying to get it, landing in the mud and rain. After being told his father doesn't want him back unless he grows up, it's shown the toy Durpleton was working on was a gift for his father. (Possibly the biggest one of this set.)
"The Ballad of Becky Apples"
- Rider really misses Horse, and wants them to go as far as they can, but because they want to instead of having to fight a war.
"The Last Lullaby"
- Everything related to the Elktaur. He fell in love with the Woman and, not believing she would love him as a centaur, used the key they created together to split himself into a human and elk, sharing each other's memories and love for the Woman. The human half married the Woman only for the elk to be left as a lonely outcast. When the elk wanted to re-merge, the human now known as the General, attempted to kill his elk half and then locked the elk up for 10 years in a room so small he could barely stand. When he finally escaped, the elk was driven by vengeance, using the Key to create a minotaur army while also turning slowly himself into the Nowhere King. All for revenge on the General and all because of unfulfilled love for the Woman. Even worse is that the Woman reveals that she would have been willing to love him in his original Elktaur form, meaning everything the Elktaur had done and the suffering as a result was all an avoidable tragedy born from his own self-loathing.
- Knowing the Elktaur and the Mysterious Woman's backstory makes the song "Nothing Good" all the more heartbreaking to hear knowing the context. The first lines are a Dark Reprise of her wedding vows, denouncing love as something dangerous to extinguish instead of something beautiful to nurture and grow. "Keep it locked up, keep it sealed tight, shut it down and turn away" reflects how her betrayed feelings towards the Elktaur have festered into a skewered and bitter hatred towards love itself. And her lines about how those nearest and dearest to our hearts, it doesn't even come close to how betrayed she must've felt when she learned her husband lied to her and covered up the truth about his Elk half, or how she witnessed first-hand the latter's transformation into the Nowhere King.
- Her previous meeting with the Nowhere King proves to be a Dark Reprise of "Once Shattered Now Whole". It turns out, the mysterious woman wasn't chanting: she was reaffirming her wedding vows so she could muster her courage to put her 'husband' out of his misery. And the Nowhere King's words (about how she came to "set [him] free" and he "never stopped thinking about [her]") is everything the General said at their wedding, it's sad on two levels. First, he wanted so badly to be in the General's shoes that he imitated his vows. Second, it could reflect that irony that although the human half made those vows, it's the elk half that missed her most.
- In the end, it's the Mysterious Woman who lands the killing blow on the Nowhere King/General, but not before fusing them back together into the Elktaur she loved. She clearly doesn't want to do it, but it's also clear that the Elktaur's self-hatred and his actions as both the Nowhere King and the General have caused too much damage to both her and countless others for their relationship to ever recover. In order to finally free herself from his toxic influence, the Mysterious Woman finally puts the Elktaur out of his misery as tears stream down her face.
- The visual of the Elktaur broken-heartedly caressing his antlered shadow, either a somber indicator of his guilt from all the atrocities he committed as the Nowhere King, or him acknowledging too little too late he should've accepted himself more.
- Alternatively, it could be that the Elktaur's two halves (The General and the Elk) are respectively reeling from having each other's familiar features for the first time in years. The General half is reacting to the antlers, and the Elk half has hands again. And now, just as they've reunited, they must die.
- The visual of the Elktaur broken-heartedly caressing his antlered shadow, either a somber indicator of his guilt from all the atrocities he committed as the Nowhere King, or him acknowledging too little too late he should've accepted himself more.
