Tear Jerker / That '90s Show

• One of the biggest tearjerkers is that despite all the misadventures they had together, the original gang have drifted apart and seemingly have no contact with each other. It's unfortunately a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome to the fact that the gang was already drifting apart by season 8, and it was obviously going to continue.
  • Eric and Donna rarely visit Point Place, but despite coming for the weekend, neither one thinks about visiting Kelso, Jackie, or Fez, who stayed. This is despite Jackie having been Donna's best friend and once living with her for a while.
    • Although, despite nominally being best friends, it's not like Donna and Jackie liked each other all that much:
    Eric: Donna, you have to let her stay with you. Come on, she's your best friend.
    Donna: She's not my best friend.
    Eric: Well then, who's your best friend?
    Donna: Oh crap. How the hell did that happen?
  • Out of the group, Fez had always been closest to Kelso, with the two even becoming roommates eventually. After Kelso left Jackie moved in, with Season 8 showing them becoming closer friends before starting a relationship. This show reveals that she suddenly broke up with him to be with Kelso after Fez found Jackie talking to him on the phone, and despite it being fifteen years later, he's still clearly heartbroken by Jackie leaving him and furious at Kelso.
    • Given how suddenly it happened, it raises the possibility she might have been cheating on Fez. Also, given Jay's age, there are high chances that Jackie and Fez's relationship only lasted a few months at most.
    • Adding to that, in the Season 1 finale "Kids in America" Fez remembers (or hallucinates) Jackie and Kelso as they were in the seventies, when they were friends. His resentment aside, he clearly misses the friendship they used to have.
  • Despite their son being friends with the daughter of the Forman's new neighbor, neither Kelso nor Jackie seem to have had any contact with Red and Kitty to the point they are unaware the two are getting remarried. Considering how often Kelso was at their house and how close Jackie was to the Formans while dating Hyde, it's sad that they've lost touch despite living in the same town.
  • Leo seems to have suffered the same fate as Kelso and Jackie, as without the gang he ended up living alone and apparently stopped seeing the Formans. And to make things worse, while explaining who Leo was to Leia, Kitty realizes how odd it was that an old man was friends with a bunch of teenagers, and for a moment worries he might have been a pedophile. Meaning that after fifteen years, she no longer trusts him as much as she once did.
• While they are doing better than they did in the "It's a Wonderful Life" episode, Jackie and Kelso have ended up in the exact same fates seen in that episode. They have a complicated relationship where they break up before getting back together, with Kelso explaining that they are getting remarried for the second time.
  • It has been shown in the original show that despite all the Character Development in the latter half of That '70s Show, Jackie remained prone to Emotional Regression and showed flashes of her original personality when left alone with Kelso (like in the Season 7 finale, when he drove her to Chicago), which he didn't mind. Between the two shows, with her renewed relationship with Kelso and the gang having drifted apart, she apparently let herself slide back into her old habits, with nobody left to steer her straight and Kelso only happy to enable her. By the time she appears in "That '90s Pilot", she has completely regressed to her Season 1-4 personality, her character development undone.
• In the first episode:
  Kitty: I love having a house full again. It just fills me with joy. And then you leave, and it's sad. And then winter comes. And I visit Mom's grave, and I tell her how much fun it was when the house was full.
  • The audience awws when Kitty mentioned her mom's passing. Given that said mom was played by the universally beloved Betty White, there's a chance that it was a tribute to her.
  • You can see how much Kitty misses her parents:
    Kitty: (crying) I miss my dad, too. He took me to the dog track on my tenth birthday and he gave me a sip of his beer, and I barfed my popcorn, and it still looked like popcorn.