Tear Jerker / Murdoch Mysteries

• From "Blast of Silence", when Wallace Pike shoots himself in the head after the bells and factories start up again. Even more so with the fact that he saved the mayor from his own contraption, but found that suicide was a better alternative to the sound.
  Wallace Pike: I want silence...
  • Also earlier on after the bomb kills Richard Welsh, his wife Cecily (who had been haughty seconds before) is close to tears as she is remorseful of her behaviour. She points out that, regardless of Murdoch's failure, her husband's fellow businessmen would have started their factories and triggered the bomb moments later anyway, and thanks him trying his best.
• The entirety of "What Lies Buried". The vile Dirty Cop Constable Finch extorted and even murdered young male street prostitutes several decades ago. Chief Constable Giles, who was originally a beat constable at the time, tried to investigate and arrest Finch. Unfortunately, Finch turned the tables by getting proof Giles was gay, which would've led to him being the one arrested. Giles's friend and fellow Constable Hodge, who'd been a recurring character since the start of the show, accidentally kills Finch and he and Giles bury Finch's body under the station house. Finch's body is exposed when the station house is being renovated, and Murdoch's investigation leads to the whole story finally being exposed. Giles is disgraced, and he and Hodge are both imprisoned. It's a classic case of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, since they were simply trying to help the young men Finch was targeting. Giles also made himself an Armored Closet Gay, denying himself any chance of finding love so he didn't get arrested.
• In the Episode "Artful Detective", Season 8, Episode 18, George is arrested, suspected of murder of Edna's husband who was NOT dead all along, as he was at war. It's understandable why George would have done such a thing. George has had his heart broken many times in the show; Edna is his latest sweetheart. To witness the outcomes of a violent husband on his Edna and her son, it's easy for Murdoch and Co. to suspect him of killing Edna's husband in order to be with Edna and to protect her from her violent husband. It's heartbreaking to see everyone being torn apart from this turn of events.
• The death of Lillian Moss. Emily is heart-broken.
• The end of "Wild Child". Murdoch and Dr. Ogden give Roland back to his rightful father.
• In "The Missing", Watts reveals that his sister has been missing for 15 years, ever since they were both children. A few episodes later, he finds her again, and she tells him that she never wanted to be burdened with the task of raising a child, and left because she wanted to.
• "Up from Ashes": The revelation that Jackson didn't survive the ambush.
• "The Accident" follows minor character Dilton Dilbert through the Five Stages of Grief after he is pinned down and fatally injured by the titular accident. While Brackenreid stays at his side, he expresses his regrets over losing his chance to live a fulfilling life, having spent his all his his time dedicated to his work without any personal ambitions or attachments. He even insists that he has done nothing to warrant "such a passionate act" once Murdoch determines that he may have been deliberately targeted. However, by the end of the episode, Dilbert finally achieves some pride in himself after realizing that his diligence in his work has saved Toronto from a fraudulent corporate scheme, helping Murdoch catch his attacker, and confessing his love to fellow Toronto city worker Mildred Ash. When the time comes to free him from the car, he shares a final kiss with Ms. Ash and appears to accept the inevitable. Soon after, he quickly bleeds to death despite Dr. Ogden's best efforts, leaving the rest of the characters distraught.
• "Shadows Are Falling" is effectively one long Tear Jerker:
  • After months of anticipation and excitement over Julia's pregnancy, she suffers a sudden, unexpected miscarriage while at the morgue and loses her baby. She and Murdoch are left devastated, and shortly after find themselves compelled to help clear Nate Desmond's name when he is accused of murder. They both attempt to sink themselves into solving the case to distract themselves from their loss, with their grief affecting their work. Late into the episode, Murdoch is nearly brought to tears while interrogating the victim's wife, Isabelle Lewis, as he can't stand the idea of Julia working to help him solve the case when she should be resting.
  • Murdoch eventually learns that Rebecca James (née Desmond) performed an abortion on Mrs. Lewis and deduces that Julia gave her the knowledge to do it.^note The act of abortion was outlawed in Canada until 1988. Murdoch, like many people of the era, considers it a reprehensible act which contradicts his faith; previously coming into conflict with Julia over the issue in "Shades of Grey". Once the real killer has been arrested, he confronts her about this and accuses her of recklessly breaking the law and ending an innocent child's life. In response, Julia accuses him of thinking that her miscarriage is divine punishment for her role in Isabelle Lewis' abortion and/or the abortion that she had years ago. The episode ends with Julia screaming at Murdoch to leave before breaking down crying. The two do not reconcile with one another until the end of the following episode.
  • The murderer himself, Eugene Loft, is also quite sad in his confrontation with Murdoch and Inspector McWorthy. He claims to have spent years loving Isabelle Lewis from afar, all the while being too cowardly to intervene when her husband repeatedly beat her. His only motivation in killing Mr. Lewis was to free his wife from his abuse once and for all.
• "Brother's Keeper" is another one:
  • Watching the quirky, affable, and seemingly detached Watts break down upon learning that his foster brother was dead over the course of Murdoch's investigation into Watt's purported shooting of a suspect is heartbreaking.^note When the foster brother's body is discovered, Murdoch confronts Watts with the theory that Watts discovered the killing, and murdered the killer himself in cold blood. Watts didn't know until then his brother was dead, and thought he was the killer and was trying to take the fall to protect him.
  • The murders themselves are pretty horrifying too. The twin brothers that Asshole Victim Nigel Baker murdered both had Down Syndrome. Nigel constantly bullied and terrified them because of their condition, all For the Evulz.
  • Even the real killer, Nigel's father Thomas, is arguably a Sympathetic Murderer. Thomas sincerely thought Nigel was innocent and being railroaded by the police, and managed to get the charges against him dropped. He was just trying to do right by his son, but he's so aghast to learn not only that Nigel committed the first murder but that he unwittingly let Nigel free to murder a second man that he finally kills Nigel himself to try and make things right. When Murdoch arrests Thomas, he's so crushed by guilt that he's pretty much a broken man.
• The ending of "Drowning in Money" is absolutely heartbreaking. The initial murders were caused by a woman who suffered an abusive childhood, basically raised from birth with the sole goal of having her marry into royalty so her parents could join high society deciding to kill her parents when she discovers that they intend to do the exact same thing with their other daughter, exacting revenge and trying to ensure that her little sister had a better life. Tragically, this backfires spectacularly when her husband figures out that she murdered her parents and gets into a fight with the younger sister, which ends with him getting pushed to his death. While she's spared from the noose due to being a child, she's still going to prison while her older sister is most likely facing execution, meaning that the murders accomplished virtually nothing. The sole ray of hope is that Murdoch promises to sue for clemency abecause of the circumstances which, given his reputation, may factor into the justice's decision.
• The entire episode "Sins Of The Father" is a gut punch for Murdoch. His father Harry is murdered, and Murdoch never gets any true reconciliation with him. He further learns about Harry's involvement in a ghastly crime, namely the abduction and Accidental Murder of a rich family's baby son. Murdoch suffers from Tranquil Fury throughout the episode, but he gets some closure when he learns that Harry was trying to make right his part in the crime and wanted Murdoch to be the one to bring justice. He also avenges Harry by capturing the other people in the crime, who murdered him to keep him quiet. Murdoch gets some peace at the end when Harry is laid to rest, but it's still a very Bittersweet Ending.
• The truth behind the killing in "Forever Young" is a tragic one. The victim, a young woman who had been dying from tuberculosis, is revealed to have been accidentally killed by her father as a result of a desperate attempt to cure her. Inspired by a realization that the radiation from sunlight kills viruses and not fully understanding the nature of the then-recently discovered X-Ray, he subjected his daughter to prolonged X-Ray exposure, unwittingly killing her. In his grief, he kept her body in a glass coffin, much like Sleeping Beauty, until he died from a heart attack a decade later, at which point his widow (under the advice of an Amoral Attorney) hatched a plot to plant her body and fake her murder, with the intent of marketing the X-Ray device as an Immortality Inducer by showing how the machine had kept her from aging for a decade before she was "murdered". Even worse, the widow and attorney get away nearly scot-free for their actions; while the intent to defraud thousands of people was there, due to the way the law is written, the fact that money had not yet changed hands means that no crime was committed, there's no hard evidence that the pair knew the machine was the cause of the woman's death so they can't be convicted for knowingly endangering the public, and while they can charge the attorney for the desecration of her corpse for his role in their scheme, the maximum sentence is a mere 12 months while they can't prove that the widow played any part in it, meaning she gets to go free.
• "Prodigal Father" features a case of Bipolar Disorder that doesn't shy away from how badly it can hinder the life of someone suffering from it, and if not treated, everyone around them. The man in question is a businessman with grand ambitions, an uncanny knack for foreseeing highly successful ventures decades before they eventually end up happening, and an talent for successfully pitching his ideas to investors. Unfortunately, most of his ventures crash and burn when the depression part of his Bipolar Disorder kicks in and leaves him borderline catatonic for the duration, causing the venture to fall through and losing the invested money. The killing in the episode was, in reality, one part of a husband-wife team trying to kill him accidentally drinking a poisoned drink intended for the businessman as part of a revenge plot for costing them their considerable fortune on a previous investment. When Murdoch and the rest of the constabulary (including George, who learned that the man was his long-lost father, and Brackenreid, who had invested a large amount of his own funds and the constabulary's Widows and Orphans Fund into his latest business) learn of his former ventures, they initially believe that he's a conman, when in reality he's merely a man with the best intentions held back by a debilitating mental illness nearly half a century before it was fully understood.
• When Watts' boyfriend cracks under pressure to marry a woman, he is so heartbroken that he asks Julia to enact Cure Your Gays with hypnotism. As she predicts, it doesn't work, and he doesn't want to hear her tries to explain his sexuality isn't something to be "fixed".
• "Murdoch Knows Best" has one for Terrence Meyers, of all people. He's devastated when he learns that his wife was an Austro-Hungarian spy sent to seduce him, taking so far as to spend nearly twenty years married to him and bearing him two children. She refuses to become a double agent when Meyers invites her to, and she'll be deported to her home country in a prisoner exchange, but it's made clear that, in spite of everything, she really did come to love him and their kids.
• Despite their often tumultuous relationship over the course of their marriage, Violet Hart is revealed to have truly loved (or at least formed a strong bond with) Arthur Carmichael. She is left devastated by his death at the hands her father, Maurice Majors, and her part in helping cover this up for so long.