Tear Jerker / The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

• The general state of the Tributes is downright tragic, especially compared to how the Tributes of the 74th would be handled. Whereas Katniss and her fellows at least got a taste of luxury, proper nutrition and training, the Tributes of the 10th are packed into a truck and dumped into a zoo cage to be put on display like animals. Dill and Jessup are actively sick with debilitating illnesses, and Lucy Gray has to beg Snow and the other Mentors to give them food. All in all, most of them seemed to have the fight kicked out of them long before the game even began.
• Marcus being strung up in the arena as an example after his failed escape. Seeing him causes Sejanus to snap and declare the rest of the attendants monsters, unable to watch. For his part, Marcus is left alive, too weak to do anything but beg for a swift death.
• Dill dying after unknowingly drinking the poisoned water that Lucy Gray left out for the more violent Tributes. Not only does Lucy Gray have to watch Dill die, but she also sees as Reaper holds Dill in his arms as she dies.
• Following this, Reaper gathering the bodies of the dead Tributes and covering them with the Capitol flag.
  • Also, the reactions of Snow, Lucky and the rest of the Capitol audience who show more anger and sadness over Reaper's act of 'desecrating' the Capitol flag than the senseless deaths of several children given the smallest dignity.
• One of the Tributes, Wovey, approaching the giant snake container and asking if the games are over. The container then breaks open, covering Wovey in snakes as she dies. Moments later, Reaper accepts his fate and lets the snakes devour him.
• While she was one of the more vicious Tributes, Coral dies pleading with Lucy Gray as the snakes kill her, saying out loud that she couldn’t have killed all the other tributes for nothing.
• The sequence of the man being hung in District 12, while his lover rushes forward calling out his innocence, while he tells her to leave. The entire ordeal inspires Lucy Gray to write "The Hanging Tree".
• Sejanus calling out to Coriolanus for help right before he is executed and hears the recording of his plan played back to him seconds before he is hanged.
  • Later Coriolanus finding the picture of the two of them in Sejanus's personal effects, causing Snow to break down in tears.
  • Lucy Gray's look at Coriolanus shortly after Sejanus is hanged. She realizes he likely was the cause of it and has a mix of both fear and disgust in her face.
• Lucy Gray abandoning Coriolanus in the forest and setting a trap for him with a snake. Just seeing the younger Snow alone as a delirious, heartbroken mess desperately calling out his beloved's name is pretty gut-wrenching, especially when it looks like he may have killed her. And although he probably deserved it for everything he had done, her simply vanishing on him without remorse is genuinely difficult to watch as it was clear Snow loved her very much. Even worse, this moment pretty much serves as the catalyst for Snow choosing to return to the Capital and travel down a dark path by becoming Dr. Gaul's apprentice, starting his gradual transformation into the tyrant that will one day rule Panem with an iron fist.
• When Snow presents himself in the best clothing for his success in the Capitol, his grandmother is overjoyed to be back in luxury. When he asks Tigris how he looks, she softly says "just like your father." While Snow takes it as a compliment, it's really Tigris realizing sooner than anyone that her cousin is going down a dark path. That it'll eventually result in the complete dissolution of their relationship makes it even sadder too.
• Highbottom's revelation that he never actually intended the Hunger Games to ever be presented, let alone implemented. The whole thing was a lark he cooked up in college after a night of drinking, only for his supposed best friend to present it as a real concept. After that, Highbottom was forced to "take credit" for it. That's right: the horrific event that would claim countless lives over three generations was born of a drunken joke.
  • That it reveals Highbottom's disdain for Coriolanus was a Cruel to Be Kind stance in trying to keep him from becoming like his father. That it didn't ultimately work and was probably the wrong approach too only makes it worse. That he basically reveals the bit about the Hunger Games having been conceived as such an insane idea that it wouldn't possibly be used at a point when Snow is arranging for him to die and is convinced the Games have to exist also makes it incredibly tragic too—as instead of Snow working with him to end the Games for good before they get any worse, he chooses instead to kill the one person who could've stopped them way sooner.
  • It's further revealed that Highbottom is an addict because he took a massive dose of drugs the night of the very first Hunger Games out of despairing guilt and became hooked because it was the closest thing to an escape from his remorse that he could find. Making it even more hideous when Coriolanus kills him by poisoning the drugs that Highbottom has become dependent on to function.
  • Highbottom's speech also makes clear that Snow and Gaul's actions in trying to ensure the Hunger Games keep happening is what's really pushed him completely and utterly past the Despair Event Horizon. The Games becoming a real thing despite being utterly stupid, insane, and immoral was bad enough. Them showing Highbottom just how far some people are willing to go to make a profit and put on a show - even if it comes at the cost of human lives - utterly destroyed what faith in humanity he had left.
  • In general, the fact that Snow gets told - to his face and in no uncertain terms - that the Hunger Games he's become so reverent of and the entire foundation of his authoritarian beliefs and motives was all nothing more than a moronic joke scribbled up by a drunk one night and never meant to even be proposed, let alone implemented, and that his father was a backstabbing asshole and idiot who somehow thought it was a good idea despite knowing it's source... and just keeps going. Most people would be utterly destroyed by having their worldview so thoroughly torn down, but Snow doesn't even acknowledge any of what he's just heard. He just keeps pushing through all these things that he should logically know are pointless at best, atrocious at worst. It borders on I Reject Your Reality and makes clear that a great deal of the horror that occurs over the events of the series is simply because Snow just refused to face basic facts even as they punched him in the face.
• Retroactively while Snow by the end of the series is unapologetic and unmoved by all the atrocities he committed for the sake of keeping control, he also does seem to consider the futility of the whole thing once he's come to the realization he's lost and is admitting it to Katniss while insisting he didn't cause Prim's death. It's as he says: "I'm not wasteful". It makes it even more poignant that while he believes everything he did was for the best, he still can't help but reflect on how meaningless it all ultimately was too though.
• That Snow knew from the moment he killed Highbottom that there was never any going back and that he probably continuously reflects upon how the way things ended up with Lucy Gray are what drove him to it.
  Snow: ...it's the things we love most, that destroy us.