With an Action Girl getting heartbreak and a Jerkass Woobie for a villain, Incredibles 2 continues the age-old Pixar tradition of making even the most enthusiastic moviegoers cry their eyes out.
- At the beginning of the movie, we see that Tony, in the midst of the Underminer attack, found out that Violet, the same girl he was planning on taking to the movies a little while prior, was a superhero. Before she could explain herself, a scared and confused Tony ends up running away from the incident. When confronted by Rick Dicker, he expresses shame that he just ran away without hearing her out and just wants the whole incident to be forgotten. He does... as well as everything else about Violet.
- Just seeing the heroes arrested in the beginning of the movie after essentially breaking the law. Worse, the ensuing stress partially resets their progress from a Dysfunctional Family in the process, and after 3 months of them getting along. Though at least the resulting argument ends more peacefully.
- Violet literally cringes when she reveals she unmasked herself in front of her crush to her parents in the paddy wagon on their way back to the motel, with Bob offering to help her resolve this by setting Tony up with an appointment with Rick Dicker. She sounds like she is on the verge of tears with guilt, and her facial expression sells it. Meaning that she knows Tony's memory would have to be erased because of this to protect her identity....but she was completely unaware how much of his memory of her would be erased (believing Rick would only erase Tony's memory of Violet's superhero idenity, only to erase the meeting of Violet herself), meaning that everything that happens to Violet afterward (being stood up, her Heartbreak and Ice Cream and her eventual renoucement of Superheroes), was all Violet's fault and she was fully unaware of it all.
- When Helen so much as suggests Bob try getting back his old job, the latter tiredly says he'd rather not. It's very telling that he'd rather keep job-hunting than retread what he had to go through: a depressing job at a corrupt insurance company with a boring environment full of cookie-cutter co-workers, and a toxic boss to boot.
- Evelyn's motivations for wanting supers to remain illegal. When there was a break in, Evelyn's father opted to call up a superhero, which caused him to get killed. Evelyn's mother died soon afterward out of grief. As such, Evelyn seemingly has a more understandable reason for hating supers in comparison with Syndrome's more petty justification.
- There are moments where Evelyn betrays a bitter yet grieving expression while talking about how her father died waiting for superheroes to come and save him. Despite everything that she's done and is about to do, she still has humanizing qualities that makes one feel at least sorry for her.
- Crossing over into Fridge Horror, it makes Bob's Speech Harsher in Hindsight. He encouraged Helen to be Elastigirl again to promote Superheroes, so their kids could have the choice to be superheroes. And the person they depended on to deliver on that promise (Evelyn) was planning all along to make it so superheroes becoming legal again would not be an option. Evelyn's speech about how Elastigirl was too trusting in the former making her hopes possible also becomes a scathing Jerkass Has a Point moment.
- Bob's phone call with Helen after her first successful mission. As she rants excitedly over the details, Bob turns on the TV to verify her claims and, sure enough, every news station he changes to is talking about her. Bob obviously feels inferior as a result, slouching on the couch, gripping the phone increasingly tighter and listening to Helen squealing in delight. And while he's genuinely proud of her and expresses it, he has to visibly choke back his own inferiority complex as he does so.
- Bob watching on TV his wife's train rescue becomes Harsher in Hindsight when you remember the reaction people had the last time he did the same.
- Tony having his mind wiped out leads to him missing out on his date with Violet, without the latter knowing what happened. Violet spends the evening heart-broken, and after she found the confidence to talk to him. After being relocated, it was probably the only happy thing she had to look forward to her in her drastically changing life...
- There's the ensuing conversation where Violet talks to Tony without knowing what's been done to his mind, and believes he's callously forgotten her.
- To say nothing about how Violet hurts over her crush now not knowing her is like having someone you had a crush on break up with you, but you haven't had even a date with that special somebody. It's enough to make Violet attempt to rip up her suit (Keyword "attempt" note ) and renounce being a Super.
- How she finds out what happened. Bob tells her the truth, and instead of making her feel better like he hoped, it only makes things worse, as she is now furious with him, and it leads to the above-mentioned 10-Minute Retirement.Bob: It's best that he forgets. It's better for you, too. I mean, I can't tell you how many memories Dicker had to erase over the years... when someone figured out your mother's or my identity.
Violet: It was DICKER! YOU TOLD HIM ABOUT TONY!
Bob: Honey…
Violet: YOU HAD ME ERASED FROM TONY'S MIND!!! - Then Bob tries to make it up to Violet by taking her to the restaurant where Tony works, but it still doesn't restore Violet and Tony's relationship due to an embarrassing "water through the nose" moment on Violet's part, as well as Bob and Dash coming on too strong. Violet only gets a happy ending with Tony by mustering up the courage to just directly talk to him again at the very end.
- On Tony's end, having his memories of a girl he genuinely liked erased from his mind. In the first film, it was Tony who instigated the conversation with Violet that led to their date, which indicated he did feel the same way about her. In this film, while under interrogation from Dicker, Tony mentions that he genuinely does like Violet, confirming that her crush was never one-sided. And then Dicker inadvertently causes him to forget she ever existed. Although he may never know it, Tony almost lost his one chance to be with Violet forever and it wasn't even his fault, and Violet herself was completely unaware that everything that happened that lead to Tony's memory erasure was her fault.
- While not an apparently sad moment, there's the context of Bob realizing his Incredibile is being auctioned on TV, and after he was told it was destroyed when supers went into hiding. For him, it's like being told your sibling died, and then years later, realizing that not only are they alive, but they're being sold to somebody.
- And then putting together context clues from both movies, you realise it's very possible Bob was lied to about the vehicle being destroyed because with all the damage he caused as Mr. Incredible they just didn't trust the Super enough to let him have it. They didn't trust a man whose very life had been saving people, because of the bad publicity that led to the Super Relocation Act.
- Bob's late night talk with Violet is very heartbreaking, especially for the parents out there. Though he's worked for days trying to do his best with little to no sleep, Bob is worried that he's letting his family down. He isn't sure that he's a good father, and he just sounds so . . . broken by that thought. Thankfully it turns Heartwarming as Violet lets him know that he is not a bad dad. He's Super! which is enough to restore his morale.
- The program that relocates Superheroes being shut down. Rick Dicker's gloomy disposition couldn't be any more fitting, given that not only does it mean he loses his job, but superheroes won't have an affordable way to hide anymore.
- There's something very depressing about how Evelyn captures Mr. Incredible. When the latter tries to snap Elastigirl from Evelyn hold by reminding her who he is, she momentarily stops and kisses him... only for it to be a trap meant to distract Mr. Incredible from the hypno-goggles being put on him.
- And later, there's a sense of helplessness as one watches the hypnotized Mr. Incredible, Frozone and Elastigirl give a televised speech of how bitter they are. Imagine how devastating it must've been for the people to see the much beloved supers return from shadows, only to seemingly go bad and burn bridges.
- Winston's understandably shocked and conflicted expression upon realizing his sister's villainous scheme.
- The man has grown up all his life loving superheroes and trusting them only to realize his sister, who he thought shared that love, has hated them and blaming them for their father's death. The realization she was using him all along to ruin what he loves hits Winston hard.
- Worse is that Winston knows their dad, who always trusted supers, never would have blamed them for what happened and would be appalled at what his daughter is doing in his name.
- How did Gazerbeam and Fironic react to Mr. Deavor's death given he was one of their best friends who they'd given a phone to call them explicitly to protect him? Even worse given at least Gazerbeam was killed by Syndrome.
- Could Gazerbeam have gone along with Syndrome's request out of guilt for how he failed to save Mr. Deavor?
- Notice how out of the supers that Winston managed to round up, Elastigirl didn't recognize any of them. You'd think that with her becoming active again some of the older heroes would take the opportunity to come out of hiding until you remember that most, if not all of the old supers that Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone knew were killed by Syndrome's Omnidroids.
- In a deleted scene, there is a memorial for all the supers that Syndrome killed. During the memorial, Bob gives a very heartbreaking eulogy about Gazerbeam and his origins. When he discovered his powers, he felt like a total freak and just wanted to be normal, until the Supers encouraged him to embrace his uniqueness by joining the Supers. When the Supers had to go underground, Gazerbeam decided to fight for the rights for Supers everywhere, but couldn't adapt to civilian life (as Bob noted when reading the paper in the first film). Then, when Syndrome started killing off all veteran Supers one-by-one, Gazerbeam went underground and used the last of his strength to write down a clue so others wouldn't fall victim to this, right before he died. Bob then tells the people how they must keep having hope on the Supers being allowed back into the world, while also taking the full blame for causing Supers to go underground in the first place.
- If the context of Bob and Lucius' conversation in the first film about Gazerbeam is really looked into, it would seem that Gazerbeam was one of their closest friends and they never saw him again when the Supers left.
- In a deleted scene, there is a memorial for all the supers that Syndrome killed. During the memorial, Bob gives a very heartbreaking eulogy about Gazerbeam and his origins. When he discovered his powers, he felt like a total freak and just wanted to be normal, until the Supers encouraged him to embrace his uniqueness by joining the Supers. When the Supers had to go underground, Gazerbeam decided to fight for the rights for Supers everywhere, but couldn't adapt to civilian life (as Bob noted when reading the paper in the first film). Then, when Syndrome started killing off all veteran Supers one-by-one, Gazerbeam went underground and used the last of his strength to write down a clue so others wouldn't fall victim to this, right before he died. Bob then tells the people how they must keep having hope on the Supers being allowed back into the world, while also taking the full blame for causing Supers to go underground in the first place.
- Unfortunately, Bob has lost faith in the people of the world; when asked why Supers were originally made illegal, his answer, with less than a second break, is "Ignorance". He no longer believes in the people of the world, the people he has to protect. They, to him, were stupid and wrong and they don't deserve his protection anymore. Noticeably, he is the happiest when Supers are made legal again as the people's "ignorance" has been proved wrong.
- In another deleted scene, the Parrs go over to Kari's house to ask her about Jack-Jack and why he was acting strange. Sadly, Kari can't tell them anything since Dicker erased her memory of Jack-Jack's powers and Syndrome arriving at the house. What's worse is that Kari's father doesn't care that the Parr's house was blown up and that they are homeless, due to them believing that they caused Kari to go mental. After slamming the door in Bob and Helen's faces, Kari's parents can be heard fighting over the Parr's predicament and what happened with Kari. This also likely severely affected Violet's friendship with Kari as a result (if not severed it completely), considering that she was the one who called Kari in the first place to babysit Jack-Jack in the first film, and thus lead to the events of the Jack-Jack Attack short. This makes Violet completely responsible for having not one but two innocent kids who just so happened to be very close to her losing their memories, considering that she was also responsible for having Tony's memory getting wiped to start this film, it's rather surprising that Violet didn't fully break down completely.
- Bob reaches his breaking point and shouts at Violet and Dash, neither of them did anything wrong as they were just collateral damage in a series of stressful events. Both them were surprised by the fact that Jack-Jack had powers and were not only calling Bob out for withholding this information, but they were also complaining about other things as well. When Bob yells at them, they are both stressed and visibly guilty from unknowingly pushing their father over the edge.
