Tear Jerker / Hulk

• Despite them being antagonists, you can't help but feel sorry for David's dogs—mutated into gamma-irradiated hellhounds—and their inevitable fate when the Hulk kills them after David sends them to kill Betty. Any Animal Lover wouldn't watch this scene without crying.
• Suffering from his anger and the nanomeds, Bruce is worthy of many tears.
• David's Beard of Sorrow, all because he was in prison for 30 years without seeing his son.
• After Betty tells him about her dream, Bruce says he'd never hurt her, but Betty only sighs sadly. However, the novelization goes further—extending the scene and making it more tragic—as it leads to Betty and Bruce arguing about his emotional detachment and its effect on their relationship. It ends with Bruce leaving Betty's cabin and returning hours later—meanwhile, Betty has reapplied her makeup after crying and drying her tears. Then they spend the night together, Betty in the bedroom and Bruce on the couch. Late that night, Betty weeps into her pillow, not caring if Bruce can hear her, causing her to wonder if that's making her more like him.
  • Even worse? When he turns back to Bruce after he saves her from the dogs, he nearly strangles her in a rageful trance as if she were reliving her dream.
• After Bruce survives the gamma radiation blast, Betty worries that he would've died like everything else the nanomeds touched and that she would've had to watch him die.
• General Ross and Betty's argument over Bruce being either an ally or an enemy.
• David confesses to Betty that he deeply regrets his wife Edith's death. The entire scene is a tearjerker thanks to Danny Elfman's score and the imagery accompanying Nick Nolte's voice.
  David: Fear? Perhaps, Miss Ross. And loneliness, too. Yes... I feel them both. But I have lived... completely once. I was so much in love, and she so much wanted a baby. My baby. I could tell from the moment she conceived that it wasn't a son I had given her but something else. A monster, maybe. I should have put a stop to it right then, but I was curious and that was my downfall. And as I watched this tiny life unfold, I began to imagine the horror of it and my curiosity was replaced with compassion. But they took away my chance to cure him. Your father threw me out. I remember that day so well, every moment, every sensation, walking into the house, the feeling of the handle of the knife in my hand. I knew I was doing a father's work, fulfilling a father's mercy. But then, she surprised me. It was as if she and the knife merged. You cannot imagine the unbearable finality of it. And in that one moment, I took everything that was dear to me and transformed it into nothing more than a memory.
• Seeing Betty on the stairs makes Hulk's eyes well up with tears. After she calms him enough to make him revert to Bruce, they have the following exchange before embracing each other tightly, with Betty moved to tears. The section of the track that plays during the scene—"A Man Again"—only adds to the emotions.
  Bruce: You found me.
  Betty: You weren't that hard to find.
  Bruce: Yes, I was.
  • The novelization gives Bruce an extra line, making the moment more heartbreaking:
    Bruce: Hey, I'm just grateful we got the chance...to say good-bye.
• The ending exchange between Bruce and David:
  Bruce: I should have killed you.
  David: Yeah? I should have killed you.
  Bruce: I wish you had.
  • Bruce's memories about his mother, who also had brown hair and brown eyes, give him Manly Tears, too.
  • David yelling in sadness in front of his son about the military demonstrates how deep—or deeper, given he went off the deep end early in the film—into madness he had fallen perfectly:
    David: Stop what?! Stop what?! Think about all those men out there, in their uniforms! Barking and swallowing orders! Inflicting their petty rule over the entire globe! Think of all the harm they've done! To you! To me! To humanity! And know this, that we can make them and their flags and their anthems and their governments disappear! In a flash! You and me!
    Bruce: I'd rather die!
    David: Oh, that's your answer. And indeed, you shall die. And be reborn... a hero! Of the kind that walked Earth long before the pale religions of civilization infected humanity's soul!
    Bruce: GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
• David's final moments in life are pretty sad when he wanted to give back the energy to Bruce because it was too much for him to handle, resulting in his death.
  • After it's all over and Bruce is floating half-conscious in Pear Lake, we're treated to a final flashback of a younger David tucking a young Bruce into bed, kissing him on the head, and affectionately bidding him "Sweet dreams."

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