Tear Jerker / Twisted Metal

Even Evil Has Loved Ones, exploited.

• Pulled off with Grasshopper's Head-On ending. The reason Krista's ghost is in the tournament? Calypso wants her to win so she can wish herself back to life. Then when she actually does win, she fails to realize what he was after (or refused to believe it would be worth all the death and destruction she needed to cause to achieve her wish), and simply accuses him of using her to kill more people. And just to make things worse, she wishes that the accident that killed her and gave Calypso his powers never happened. Calypso is forced to grant her wish, and we see her happily playing with a younger, friendlier father. Then we see her comatose in a hospital, with Calypso watching. He can't give her what she wants (since trying to Ret-Gone anything in Twisted Metal never works and in this case would cause a Temporal Paradox), and she can't actually come back because that wasn't her wish. The best he can do is leave her in a happy dream state until she recovers. Just... damn.
  • Her ending in Twisted Metal 2 is an awful, awful thing. Krista, surviving the hell-war that is the Twisted Metal contest, is overjoyed to see her father - and Calypso feels the same for her, having thought that his daughter had died in a car accident that scarred him... But it's all a ruse. Krista is actually a cyborg reconstructed by the LAPD, as she's the only person that Calypso would allow in his direct presence, and is wired with an explosive that would detonate once she achieved an audience with Calypso. Before the bomb within her goes off, Krista says to her father, "Hold me daddy: I'm Just a Machine now, but I'm afraid the explosion will hurt." And Calypso, who you would think would have full rights to claim "That Thing Is Not My Child!", and certainly would've damn well knew he'll be Killed Off for Real if he doesn't try to Outrun the Fireball... hugs his daughter in her final moments, just as the bomb's detonation obliterates them both. Who'd have thought that Calypso would have deserved any sympathy?
    • And to really twist the knife, the Explosion to Black cuts to a message saying "The LAPD thanks you for putting an end to Twisted Metal. You have won!". What should feel like a Moment of Awesome, where the literally world-shattering Blood Sport has been ended for good, is delivered as the king of all "You Bastard!" moments, for abusing Calypso's sole redeeming relationship with his daughter by piecing what was left of her from her fatal accident back together, only to force her to become a mechanized suicide bomber in the hopes she would deliver a warhead right in Calypso's face. Even if this was the only way to stop Calypso, (which future endings in games like Twisted Metal: Head-On have disproven, as plenty of contestants can injure, arrest, or outright kill Calypso) and that The End Justifies the Means in this case, it's still a bitter pill to swallow.
• Virtually all of the characters from Twisted Metal: Black (well, okay, aside from Needles Kane and Cage) are this, each having a Dark and Troubled Past or Freudian Excuse worthy enough to push them into the Blood Sport that is Twisted Metal, and excuse the actions that some of them take in their endings that would've been flat-out monstrous in any other circumstance:
  • Dollface, full-stop. Everything about her is just so... tragic: first, in her manual-only backstory, her mother died when she was ten, and her father took his grief out on her, with him claiming "It's all your fault". Then, getting into the backstory now provided in her story mode, she worked as an intern for Mr. Kreel, who one day completely snapped because she spilled coffee over some of his files, and sealed her in the Dollface mask as punishment. He even made sure to lock it with a special, one-of-a-kind key so that Dollface could never free herself from the mask. After Mr. Kreel left her for dead, Dollface was found dumped on the streets, and carted off to Blackfield Penitentiary. There, she was put into solitary confinement, and if her "Patient Profile" is to be believed, her treatment involved equal amounts of antidepressant drugs, and shock therapy - all while her mask was beginning to crush her head, and give her brain damage on top of all the trauma she experienced so far. By the events of Black, she'd been imprisoned for over 7 years, and she legitimately thinks that It's All Her Fault for being the way she was now. Even when she joins the contest, she comes off as the Only Sane Man for feeling remorse and regret for killing the other contestants, openly wondering if winning Twisted Metal to free herself from the mask would be worth all the death and destruction she must cause to get her wish. And in her ending, she's forced into a Friend-or-Idol Decision: if she takes the key to free her mask, Mr. Kreel would be killed by being slammed into an Iron Maiden. ...Okay, that probably isn't much of a tearjerker in comparison, but when Dollface does get the key after sealing Kreel's fate? She tosses it away, claiming she now preferred the mask to her old face. She then ends by driving off in Darkside, claiming "There's a whole lot of people in the world just like Mr. Kreel. Someone has to show them they can't do bad stuff to people like me..." It gets worse, as this is the final take of the character. Deleted scenes reveal that Mr.Kreel was going to be her own father who had murdered her mother and exacted disproportionate retribution on her own daughter for just making a little noise.
  • Raven: Sure, being a Goth Emo Teen, it was all too easy to make her a Wangsty excuse to compete - but good GRIEF does her motivation genuinely hurt. It turned out that she was pretty well-adjusted, all things considered, until her best friend Kelly was pushed into the harbor by a couple of Jerk Jocks, who wanted to "see if a witch could swim" - not knowing or caring that neither Kelly or Raven knew how to swim, causing Kelly to drown while Raven could only watch. Raven was carted off to Blackfield by her parents shortly afterwards, and any chance of her thinking of any way to cope with Kelly's death - besides killing the guys who killed her - was utterly gone. Her Establishing Character Moment has her carving Kelly's name into her arm, and her quotes in her story mode have her going From Bad to Worse - some even imply she wants to kill herself, or at least get herself killed in the contest, just so she could be with Kelly again.
  (Intro) "Kelly was my best friend in the world. I would've died for her! ...Who knows? Maybe if I'm lucky... I'll get the chance."
  (Skyscrapers Stage): "100 stories up. I should just drive my car off the edge. Then I'd never have to worry about anything anymore..."
  • Mr. Grimm: Being a Shell-Shocked Veteran from The Vietnam War is probably par for the course, but Grimm had the misfortune to experience a terror even most 'Nam vets would be mortified at: He and his best friend Benny were behind enemy lines, desperately fighting for their lives after the rest of the squad was cut down. Benny eventually gets hit, and as Grimm desperately tries to help him, he's knocked out by a Vietnamese soldier. Grimm and Benny were then imprisoned in a hole 25 feet deep, and were left starving for several days. After Mr. Grimm desperately begged for help non-stop for five days, an adviser to the Vietnamese showed up; he claimed that Mr. Grimm would have to eat to stay alive, and dropped a knife into the hole - the implication being that he wanted Grimm to kill and cannibalize Benny. Grimm refused, but after Benny died from his untreated wounds two days later, Grimm caved in, and started to chop up his friend for food. As a Tragic Keepsake, he forged the shattered remains of Benny's skull into a makeshift helmet. When a bunch of Marines rolled in to save Grimm, one of them tried to take the mask off, and Grimm killed four of the Marines before being subdued. Now shipped back to the states, Grimm slowly rots in his cell at Blackfield, still holding a craving for human flesh...
  Grimm: "They say the mind bends and twists in order to deal with the horrors of life... I think my mind bent so much it snapped in two."
  • Preacher's story. Sure, he skirts on the edge of being a Holier Than Thou lunatic, but wanting to find forgiveness after butchering a whole church is pretty understandable. And his "My God, What Have I Done?" breakdown he has after finding out he was never a victim of Demonic Possession, but was genuinely insane, is utterly heartwrenching. It gets even worse when he crucifies himself to beg for God's forgiveness, and then, when that didn't work...
  Preacher: "A man cannot hide from himself. There is only one path before me..." (Drops himself off the ledge of a building)
  • Agent Stone: A By-the-Book Cop who one day snapped when facing a Hostage Situation, being angered over how criminals could kill indiscriminately, and eventually got released from court or prison to kill again. But in his Unstoppable Rage, Stone accidentally gunned down a mother and her daughter in the crossfire. Utterly horrified at what his haste had cost him, Stone attempted to Eat His Gun - only to be thwarted as it was out of ammo. Now that he's joined the contest, he's finally gets a chance to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and in his ending, he seemingly gets it, and is able to take out the terrorists without killing the mother and daughter in the process. However, he doesn't notice one of the terrorists is still alive (who is heavily implied to be Calypso given his sunken eye), and gets a bullet to the brain for all his trouble.
  Agent Stone: " I was so close... to making it right..."
  • John Doe: A man with Amnesiac Dissonance, who starts to find himself increasingly unnerved with how easy it is for him to kill others in the Twisted Metal contest. Then, when he gets his first decent flashback, he remembers running with a gang of nobodies, who only committed random muggings and bank robberies. Since they couldn't stand being known as "nobodies" the gang came up with a plan: they would detonate a bomb at the Midtown Center of Disease Control, which would launch viruses and diseases across the world. When the memories stop there, he muses "I don't think I like the man I'm turning out to be..."
    • Then, in his ending, he discovers the truth: he was The Mole from the FBI who was sent to infiltrate a doomsday cult, and that his amnesia came from tossing the bomb out the window of the hospital, which knocked him unconscious, but prevented any of the hospital's diseases from spreading. John basked in the glory of being a hero, who was willing to sacrifice himself to save the world... before realizing he was standing before the Number 2 on the FBI's Most Wanted list. After Calypso thanked John for playing Twisted Metal, he shoots him to death. As John lay dying, he suddenly remembered having a wife and two kids....
  John Doe: " God, I was just starting to remember..."
  • No-Face: A former small-time boxer, No-Face had his jaw and nose shattered after being put in a losing fight - when he went to a Back-Alley Doctor who could fix up his face since he couldn't afford a better one, the Doctor in question was pissed at losing $20,000 on No-Face that night. After sedating No-Face, the Doctor tore out his eyes, his tongue and stitched his mouth and eyelids shut. In No-Face's understandable Unstoppable Rage after realizing what happened, he murdered six innocent people trying to get to the doctor by tearing them to pieces, and was locked in Blackfield as a result.
  • Billy Ray Stillwell: Once an average farmer, Billy Ray's life was torn upside down when a crop duster sprayed him while he was checking out the fields - it killed all of the crops, and left Billy horribly disfigured. Still more shocked than angered, Billy Ray limped back home to find his wife, Annie, thinking she could figure out what to do. Only to find Annie kissing the pilot that just sprayed him, and the two talking about how they were going to collect Billy's life insurance. Outraged, Billy grabbed a hoe, beat Annie to death then kept hitting the body for an hour, and vowed to hunt the pilot down... And in his story, he eventually regrets killing Annie.
  Billy Ray: "My poor, sweet Annie! I don't blame her no more. It was that damn pilot done steered her wrong!"
  • Bloody Mary is one of the most greedy and bloodthirsty of the drivers, but after always being mocked for being ugly, and constantly watching her friends get married while she remained alone, Mary definitely holds justifiable anger under the Ax-Crazy Yandere mania. Even worse are some of her quotes in story mode, which highlights one hell of a Freudian Excuse:
  Bloody Mary: My daddy used to say I was the prettiest girl in the world. Even after he killed my mom, he still said I was beautiful.
  Bloody Mary: Daddy said ugly girls are tramps and losers. I promised my dad I would stay pretty forever.
  • Charlie Kane - or more accurately, his son. After Charlie took his son away from his Big Brother Bully (Needles Kane), Charlie got his brains blown out of his skull one day, likely by Needles himself. Since Charlie's son was desperate not to live without his daddy, he pieced back his father's head, and now remotely controls Charlie. Entering the contest under Calypso's promise to "make it all better" it turned out to be a lie, and Calypso kills Charlie again by crushing his son's remote. Before Charlie's son has a chance to rebuild the remote, Calypso takes him away from his father's corpse the way Charlie took him from Needles: turns out, what Calypso meant by "making it all better" was to tutor Charlie's son to become the heir to the Twisted Metal tournament, especially now since he killed Needles during the competition: after all, "It's in his blood."
  • Axel, who one day had his wife kidnapped when he wasn't looking, and had her body mailed back to him piece-by-piece. Believing his act of carelessness led to his wife's death, Axel designed his vehicle just so the pain would serve as punishment for failing his wife. And in his ending, he finally faces off against his wife's killer, Needles "Sweet Tooth" Kane, and guns him down after Needles bragged about how his wife cried out for his help as he slowly gutted her... but still feels like he should still be punished for his wife's death.
  Axel: The clown is dead... but so is my wife. Now I can never be free...
  • Simply put, many of the contestants really feel like they have to compete in order to make things right, usually saying the fatal How could I refuse?, either sealing their fate or going further down a path of darkness.
• Mr. Grimm from the reboot can get some of this too. Even though all three of the characters in the story are serial killers, Mr. Grimm is the most sympathetic. In this incarnation, Mr. Grimm's name derives from his father, who was a daredevil who could seemingly perform any stunt, until one gets him killed. Realizing how tough the world is, he turned to a life of crime, but starts to feel for all the people he hurt and killed. His wish is to go back to the night his father was killed so he could prevent his death from happening. And when he does, his father starts to attack from when he suddenly appears in the backseat, distracting him from the road where they collide with another car. Mr. Grimm crawls out of the wreckage, and looks up to see that his past self was holding his father's gun and is shot dead, presumably repeating the cycle once more.
  Mr. Grim (before death): I gotta admit, I woulda shot that motherfucker too.

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