Tear Jerker / Vinesauce

Sad moments from Vinny and Joel's Tomodachi Life and Meme House streams go on their respective pages.

Moments pages are spoilers off!

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• Joel laments the loss of Cursor Mania in his "Windows 8 Destruction" Stream. Yes, that's right, Joel (and the viewers too) get upset about a piece of dead malware. For many late '90s and early-to-mid '00s kids, the super death sword cursors were their childhood, and part of that died with them.
• In his Fighter Maker stream, and later in Druggy Final Fight, Joel plays "Hulkster in Heaven", a song that Hulk Hogan wrote in tribute to a young fan of his who died.^note Hogan actually made this up. It sounds like it should be ridiculous. It's not.
• Various streamers mourned the loss of Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata:
  • Joel's response.
  • Vinny gaining notice about his death should also be noted since he first heard about the news during the beginning of his (second) 2015 charity stream (which raised money for the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, an organization combating the very thing Iwata died from).
  • This continues during his next Splatoon stream, where he beats Octo Valley (single-player) mode, as several Miiverse tributes get him kind of sad. Then he gets to the end of the credits:
    Executive Producer
    Satoru Iwata
  • Jen said that when she heard the news, all she could do was cry for a couple of hours. Made worse by the fact that Iwata died from the same type of cancer that killed Jen's mother. Jen then went on to stream EarthBound (a game that had notoriously shoddy programming until Iwata cleaned it up, resulting in the game actually becoming playable) in Iwata's memory. During that run she named Jeff 'Iwata' because she believed that, like Jeff, Iwata was a genius.
• When Joel played Undertale he got quite emotional when his character and Toriel had their Final First Hug, and he remarked throughout the stream this was the moment that really got to him.
  • This game is one of the rare times he doesn't want to be evil in video games, and it shows. Possibly the worst part of the Genocide stream was watching him solemnly strike down Papyrus. At that point, you can plainly see how much the Genocide run was paining him.
    Joel: (in the comments) "video games like these make me drink ( seriously by the end of this I had downed like 4 beers )"
    • He audibly breaks down as he reads Sans' dialogue moments before being given the choice to spare him, genuinely wanting to stop fighting and spare his friend. Of course, he had no idea it was a trap.
    • Joel was fighting against completely breaking down as he selected the spare option, even through the shock of getting dunked on.
• David Bowie passed away on the night of January 10, 2016, two days after his 69th birthday and the release of his ★ album. Vinny was streaming at the time and when he found via the chat that he had passed away. He first dismissed it as a hoax, until later finding out that it was actually real during his BRB, while a David Bowie song was being played as Background Music. You could hear the disbelief and sorrow in his voice. Later that night, he played a music video of Bowie's entire "My Death" song. When the song ended, Vinny said "fuck cancer", and you can tell he wasn't able to hold his tears.
• Vinny and Joel losing to Dio in the Vinewrestle 2016 stream. They do get avenged by GPM later, but watching poor Vinny get absolutely beat down as he struggles to even keep himself up and conscious during the fight is painful to say the least.
• While Vinny's Active Worlds stream is mostly known for being frightening, there's a period before things get scary where Vinny is wandering the abandoned server and thinking about how it used to be so full of life. It gets surprisingly somber, something you wouldn't expect from a Vinny stream.
  Vinny: Think of all the virtual graveyards that now exist. They're leaving behind a lot. Stuff that had years of work put into it. It's just, y'know— so what, it's virtual. Still stuff that meant a lot to some people.
• Joel's old Xbox 360 RRODing, after seven years of service. Just... his reaction sells it all, even if he accepts it at the end of the video.
  • His panicked screams when it begins to happen:
    Joel: Oh shit, it is! NO!! OH MY GOD, NO- IT'S ACTUALLY DOING IT! OH SHIT!! OH NO!! HOLY SHIT...IT'S ACTUALLY RED-RINGING!! OH MY GOD!! NO!!! NO, GODDAMMIT... *cries*
• After seeing the Game Over screen from the bootleg Felix the Cat game (shown in the Nightmare Fuel page) the obvious shock he has in his voice is surprising. You can almost feel that somewhere inside him that game hit him deep in his childhood.
• Hootey audibly breaking down sobbing while playing "That Dragon, Cancer" during the 2016 Charity Stream
• Joel once shared a story from his childhood about a time his mom said she would take him to the supermarket to meet The Phantom (part of an advertising partnership being done with supermarkets to promote the upcoming film). Joel, a huge fan of the Phantom at the time, excitedly agreed to go. He and his mom went there, walked to the Phantom table... and saw a guy whose "costume" consisted of nothing more than a purple shirt. He left the store in tears.
• Crossing with Nightmare Fuel, Vinny's playthrough of Terminal 7, a SourceMod game made by Vinesauce viewer Nooke. After its name and first couple minutes suggests it's just going to be a Vinesauce Meme fangame, it quickly reveals itself to be an extremely elaborate psychological horror game depicting Luigi's descent into madness as his "terminal 7 brain cancer" takes hold, eventually leading to him discovering that Mario locked himself in his room and committed suicide.
  Vinny: "We did it. We beat the final boss of Vinesauce. I'll just retire now."
  • After that, Luigi goes to Princess Peach's castle, which is just a decrepit old house in the middle of nowhere, to discover her skeleton in a bathtub. Even worse, it's heavily implied that Luigi killed Princess Peach in a fit of rage after Mario told him the truth about his brain cancer, and that's why he's in prison at the beginning of the game.
  • Vinny's Luigi impression stops being funny by the end and just devolves into depressingly terrifying screaming. The only remotely funny thing is him declaring that he's going "Terminal 8," but even that sounds less funny and more psychotic.
    Luigi: "I don't even fucking care anymore. Everything that I've ever loved, it's GONE! Mario. The princess. Brooklyn. I AM MY OWN WORST ENEMY! Everything is gonna die! You hear me, Mario?! THIS IS WHAT YOU DO TO ME, MARIOOOOOO!"
• During Vinny's 11th stream of Darkest Dungeon, he loses Willoughby, a Memetic Badass and a fan favorite bounty hunter of his team during a boss fight going south. Despite managing to kick some serious ass right before the boss battle itself, Willoughby dies from a bleed effect that Vinny couldn't heal. In contrast to most of his party losses where he usually delves into anger (and occasionally Angrish) over the RNG, he wails out a Big "NO!" and falls silent as he abandons the quest.
  The Ancestor: I remember days when the sun shone, and laughter can be heard from the tavern.
  Vinny: I remember those days when we all used to laugh... This is a Vine-Sponge moment. It's a shame. We lost Willoughby.
• Vinny finally beats The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ in the third stream of the DLC, and finally gets to see the Downer Ending for one of his most streamed games. While he mentioned at the beginning of the stream that his allergies were getting to him, he is still rather solemn and unusually open about his family during this moment, if only a little bit, and almost sounding like he was on the brink of tears at points. Whether he was trying to hold back an emotional outburst or (more likely) if it was just the weather getting to him, a lot of viewers expressed concern and understanding.
• Just one day before his 2017 Charity Stream, Vinny discussed the unfortunate suicide of Chester Bennington and how depression is very real, even in people who are successful. Vinny, who very rarely opens up about himself or his personal life, discussed that at times he has suffered from depression too, but has managed to overcome it using various methods like music and Video Games, or with the help of some good friends. His voice noticeably breaks during this speech, and he encourages people who suffer from depression to seek help, because there is always a better option than taking one's own life.
• In the 'Toad Games' stream, Vinny encounters an Ear Rape 'fangame' planted in the collection he was sent, supposedly by 'Zedrin', who had provided him with the collection of games used in this stream, and one for the third Quality Android Games stream which had taken place a few days prior. His reaction is more that of abject disappointment than anger. It turns out that this 'Zedrin' was an impostor, who aimed to slander the real Zedrin by placing a piece of the latter's NSFW flash artwork in the previous Android Games stream in addition to planting the Ear Rape 'games' in the Toad Games collection. To say that the rest of the stream was tense was an understatement — even after the real Zedrin personally apologised in the impostor's place and proved he wasn't behind it — as everyone (including Vinny) were hoping anxiously that there wasn't more pornography or ear-splitting noises in the collection.
• By the end of Vinny's playthrough of Silent Hill 2, it becomes increasingly clear that the subject matter, particularly the very raw portrayal of Mary suffering through her illness, has struck a chord with him, with moments of muttered "Jesus..." and a steady decline in jokey commentary. His voice breaks when he first speaks after hearing Mary's full letter at the end, and when he's going through footage of the other endings he didn't get for the stream's sake he makes sure that the letter is the same every time so he can safely skip it, because he can't listen to it again - not just because it's getting late and he's tired, but because "it's hard." He doesn't elaborate on what the game tapped into for him, beyond saying "It's tough, especially if you have loved ones or relatives who have suffered some time in your life."
  • Vinny's reaction to listening to the entirety of Mary's speech in the endgame corridor. His voice is entirely devoid of energy, as he then declares complete respect for the game's voice acting.
    Vinny: [in an unenthusiastic singalong voice] Video games are fun... video games are fun... make me want to die... video games are fun...
• In the middle of playing a Super Mario 64 Rom Hack based around The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!,Vinny went eerily quiet for a little bit, before asking the question to the chat, if they remember the most heartbreaking moment as a child, when you realized your favorite TV Show has a finite number of episodes. He talks about how he slowly experienced it with the aforementioned Super Show, and how he couldn't comprehend why the show he loved just...stopped. What makes it a little bit worse, is that you can tell through his tone, he's actually quite saddened by the memory. Vinny loved the show to this day, even through all the Memetic Mutation and thoughts of it being So Bad, It's Good. It's applicable to the fact that it can be rather disheartening when one of your favourite shows from your childhood just ceases to be.
• Chapter 6 of Mother 3. Vinny starts out making a joke but cuts himself off when the ghost/vision of Hinawa appears and is mostly silent and somber for the rest of the scene.
  • For the final battle against The Masked Man, aka Claus, as he fires off his lightning one final time to have it reflected back onto himself, what Vinny says is heartrending:
    Vinny: Oh no... He wants to die. He's just a fucking kid!
    • Later, Vinny admits that he was actually starting to tear up during that scene.
• While he has a fun time playing the remake of Resident Evil 2, Vinny is then rendered silent by the scene in Kendo's gun shop involving Robert Kendo and his daughter Emma, which ends with the implication that Kendo had to euthanise the poor girl. While at first Vinny thinks Emma is about to attack her own father, he's still left somber when that doesn't happen and Kendo tearfully carries Emma into a side room to end her misery.
  Vinny: Why do video games have to make me sad?
• During the end of his Hypnospace Outlaw stream, when he starts reading the goodbye notes to the victims of Mindcrash, Vinny gets heavily silent and starts sounding choked-up when he starts speaking again.
• Vinny shares his thoughts on Etika's passing:
  Vinny: I didn't know him personally, but as a fellow New Yorker and streamer, I'm pretty fucking devastated about all this. It can feel like an uphill battle to get better, but please get help if you need it. "Internet Personality" isn't a normal career by any means and there isn't a guide book on how to do it without fucking up or losing yourself. Take breaks, find ways to disconnect whenever possible. I'm acutely aware of my mental health state these days and work at it when I can.
  • He also has a video on the topic here.
• The first episode of Vinny's Final Fantasy VII Remake playthrough has him comparing Midgar to New York City (mostly the Manhattan area), spending most of his time in awe. Then he talks about being homesick for NYC and getting a little emotional over said fact, not having traveled there for the better part of two months, due to unspecified "real life reasons" that are quite obvious given the video's date.^Context Aired on April 10, 2020, when New York City was just hitting the peak of the then-current COVID-19 outbreak For those that survived said "real life reasons" and had their sense of normalcy taken away from them, this hits home a little too hard. Later on in the same episode, he presents another sadly relatable situation in the form of anxiety welling up even at the sight of fictional people crowded together, as he found out when seeing the rest of AVALANCHE on a train together.
• Part 5 of Vinny's Minecraft series (the one where he builds a second portal in the Nether to explore a new location) starts off hilarious, with such mishaps as Vinny finding a Creeper in his home, and him falling off a cliff to his death immediately after retrieving his items from his previous death. Later, Vinny finds two cats (a black one named Alfador and a white one named Ziggy), tames them, and tries to bring them back to his home to prevent any more Creeper-related mishaps. That sounds like a recipe for hilarity (complete with more blunders, like Vinny returning home through the Nether, only to realize the cats didn't follow him, getting killed by a Zombie Pigman, and respawning in a distant village where he accidentally slept), but just before stepping through the portal to return home, Ziggy catches on fire and dies. If you don't find it hilarious (due to Vinny telling Ziggy to stay away from the fire before it happens), it's a surprisingly sad end to the stream, with Vinny saving Ziggy's string and framing it inside the lighthouse as a tribute.

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