Tear Jerker / Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

"I don't wanna go back out there...I can't do this anymore..."

All spoilers are unmarked.

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• In the game's prologue, little BJ being choked out by his father and waking up to his father binding his arms to a workbench, sticking a shotgun between his two little arms and ordering him to kill his dog. For being friends with a little black girl. If BJ refuses then his father does the job himself, though thankfully offscreen. Rip Blazkowicz is a bastard.
• Blazkowicz spends the game's opening in a Heroic BSoD. He knows that he is dying because of the grenade that crippled him in the previous game. He has no idea how to tell Anya, pregnant with twins, that he is dying, and that she is going to have to raise their children on her own. It's heartbreaking to hear this hard-as-nails tough guy on the verge of breaking down. It gets even worse when Caroline dies, see below.
• The Eva's Hammer in general, once you consider just what a Dysfunction Junction it really is - everyone there has a noticeable Dark and Troubled Past. Especially Grace's black resistance members - one of them has severe claustrophobia, and another one had this to say:
  Connie Scott: "Dad's face melted down to the bone. Mom is on fire, trying to stand up. Brother pushed under a concrete block. Blood pooling around the train tracks."
• Caroline, the Big Good of the past two main games, tries her best, but in the end she's knocked out, stripped of her Powered Armor and decapitated infront of BJ and Wyatt/Fergus. The resistance is devastated by the revelation afterwards, and it doesn't help that Frau takes the opportunity to Kick the Dog while it's down and use the severed head to mess with both BJ and her own daughter.
  • Notable in that compared to his Unstoppable Rage in the previous game or his Tranquil Fury later in the game, after this BJ is in a sort of extended Heroic BSoD, constantly praying to Caroline to watch over him but also admitting that he's running on empty and bound to die like her sooner or later. Her death breaks him, even if only partially.
  • Throughout the rest of the level B.J. constantly talks to the deceased Caroline for strength and then when escaping brings her decapitated body with him for a burial at sea. The reactions of the rest of the circle to seeing their leader's desecrated body are heartbreaking. As if to kick the player harder while they're down, B.J. then internally remarks on the fact that his body likely won't hold up much longer and that he'll see Caroline soon.
• Grace's backstory: she was in New York when the bomb hit. Keep in mind, this is what the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saw in real life.
  Grace: I survived relatively unscathed cause I was underground at the time. When I came up. Looked like a vision out of Dante's Inferno, you know what I'm saying. I remember maimed people just wandering through the smoke. I remember...the scream echoing through the bombed out buildings. Like howling ghosts. And I remember this mother and son. This was blindly stumbling through the chaos, his arms were out stretched...Calling out for his mama. And the heat from the bomb had...melted the skin on his arms and they just drooped......like he was wearing a shirt that was a couple of sizes too big. And I remember his mama. She was crawling to get to him. And the half of her body...was all gone. It was just......gone. What are you thinking in a moment like that? When you know you're losing everything you love? What are you thinking in a moment like that, huh?
  • Her Thousand-Yard Stare really sells it. She hides it, but Grace is definitely dealing with a lot of pain and trauma and most likely PTSD.
    • It is also likely her trauma is also what made her distrustingly hostile and paranoid when meeting new people like B.J. and ex-Nazi Sigrun and an insensitive Sassy Black Woman in general, to a point she has to subject a Secret Test of Character to make sure they are cool.
• In a weird way, this line from BJ after he's kidnapped an actor. Knowing his faith in the concept of the United States, and in the American people... then seeing just how readily White America quickly sided with the winning team and accepted Nazi rule, his faith in the White American people has been broken on some level.
  BJ: You a Nazi? I can't tell anymore.
  • Earlier, when in Roswell, B.J. watches a Nazi parade and whispers this line, cursing the White American people for not only being so ready to jump in bed with the winning team, but for cheering them on as well.
  BJ: Look at you people. Celebrating your own destruction.
  • The trip to New Orleans, where BJ finds the city in ruins. It's been transformed into a giant ghetto surrounded by a massive concrete wall, where Death Squads and Panzerhunden systematically slaughter the surviving population. After he dives into the water, swimming beneath several floating bodies, BJ thinks this to himself.
  BJ: The Big Easy. Can't undo your tragedy. But I can punish the people responsible.
• Sigrun's childhood at the hands of her fascist mother, as detailed in her diary.
• The entire mid-section of the game. From having BJ confront his twisted asshole of a father after finding out he and other like minded neighbors sold out all the Jews, non-whites and homosexuals to the Nazis - including BJ's mother - to being captured and put to execution, this entire portion of the game is easily the bleakest moments in the series.
  • It doesn't help that Super Spesh meets his demise by being shot in the head by Frau while he was trying to help BJ escape. There's nothing a restrained BJ can do but watch a person they've gotten to know fairly recently get gunned down as the Nazis and Frau laugh and mock the guy post-mortem.
  • After BJ is captured and presented before an audience by Engel, a middle-aged woman runs up to BJ and slaps him in the face, screaming "You murdered my son!" repeatedly to remind everyone that even those faceless evil Nazi mooks of whom BJ has killed thousands had families of their own.
  • And there's also the moment where BJ comes to terms with the fact that his mother's dead in probably the only time you'd ever see the Ax-Crazy One-Man Army actually cry and weep. And then he gets pulled back to the brutality of reality in the blink of an eye, and hauled off for his globally-broadcasted execution.
    BJ: I don't wanna go back out there. I can't do this anymore.
    Zofia: You are strong, Billy. We are survivors, you and I. We keep fighting even when we do not know how. You cannot help but be my son.
    BJ: I'm having twins, mama. They're not born yet, I... I wanna see them. I wanted you to see them. I miss you.
    Zofia: We will be together, soon. You just have one more hardship to go through.
    • The man's being through all kinds of hell: Castle Wolfenstein, Deathshead’s X-Labs, Heinrich I,, Isenstadt, the Black Sun Dimension, the Thule civilization, Castle Wolfenstein again, Wulfsburg, King Otto's monster, Deathshead's Compound, Belica, the moon and right back to Deathshead's Compound, losing friends, comrades and years of his life along the way. It’s sobering to see him finally break down like this.
• It's more Tears of Joy, but Blazkowicz telling Caroline to take her wings back after getting his new body and Coming Back Strong might make some people well up. Regardless of what your religious beliefs are, it really does seem like Caroline is watching over the Resistance.
• Spesh's letter to Grace.
  Spesh: I know you don't believe in the mommy-daddy-nuclear-family thing, and I get where you're coming from. Don't want to argue about it. Since I'm dead I guess you were right. I'll just say that our child was born out of love and you're just going to have to love her for both of us from now on. I don't ask for anything else but for you to love Abby every day, with every fiber of your being, for as long as you can. Do that for me. Yours, Super Spesh.
• Wyatt's incredibly bad trip. After a big celebration in honor of BJ securing the ODIN codes, Wyatt seems to go missing. BJ manages to track witness reports of him among the crew to a dugout near the firing range, where he finds Wyatt huddled up on the floor, petting the space next to him. He claims his little lizard friend died of starvation, and proceeds to slowly announce that the reason he drops acid is because his life has felt almost entirely meaningless to him. BJ attempts to console him, only for the kid to pull a gun and press it to his own head. BJ wrestles with him while Wyatt yells about how he's lost any and all hope before Blazko punches him unconscious and gets him to the medical bay for detox.
  • His story is no less sad. Wyatt's father planned for him a bright future, but Wyatt joined the military instead and thus was disowned. His mother was so depressed she killed herself the day he was sent off to Europe, which is saddening because she was right to be worried. Suddenly the Sadistic Choice that the player faced in the New Order's prologue mission finds a new level of meaning of tragedy, should you choose Wyatt as a sacrifice for Deathshead.
• While it has been a source of comedy, Fergus Reid's robot arm becomes a Tear Jerker moment when he tries to introduce himself to a woman he likes only for the arm to grope her breasts. Angry, she slaps him in the face and tells him to bugger off. His one chance to go out with someone he likes is ruined and he sounds like he's on the verge of crying as he rips the arm out of his socket and beats it on the ground.
• When William returns to his family ranch midway through the game, he's assailed by memories of Billie, the Afro-American girl his father berated and assaulted him for befriending in the game's prologue. The memories themselves are depressing, as the sincere friendship between the two proves just how stupid the Jim Crow laws and racism of the time were, but the worst is the memory that you unlock if you check out the ivy-wreathed tree near the front door to the ranch house: Billie confessing to B.J that she likes him in the Puppy Love sense. This one is just extra-tragic, because you know that even if it hadn't been for the war, they almost certainly couldn't have been together.
  BJ: Are you out there somewhere, Billie? Inclined to this day. To endure amongst the living?
  • BJ showcases his Innocent Bigot side during his first meeting with Billie, who eventually becomes a Morality Pet to him, as she tearfully pleads with him to save a drowning rat that he was excitedly watch die because "it deserves it". This becomes Heartwarming in Hindsight when you see him let a trapped rat free again while aboard the submarine, as Billie's lesson in empathy clearly overrode his father's influence in the long-term.
• Related to that, the memory that plays if William examines the box of B.B. pellets in his old bedroom. Whilst it's undercut by his casual admittance that he tried to just beat B.J into stop having nightmares, trying to end B.J's night terrors by giving him a B.B. gun and taking him down to the basement with the plan of "shooting the monsters" is still tragic, because it shows that Rip could have been a decent father... if he wasn't such a goddamned awful excuse for a human being.
• Most the readable collectibles simply reinforce the player's hatred of the Nazis, with their casual callousness and cruelty. But, there are those ones that show a more human side to their authors. Letters from proud fathers to infant children, or encouraging aged parents to come and enjoy a life in a beautiful new home. Its these little reminders that the Nazis aren't just mindless mooks, they're living people who have thoughts and dreams and are just Punch Clock Villains Trapped in Villainy.
  • Perhaps the worst of these is a letter you find late in the Roswell sector, from Kommandant Johan. He talks about a recent mission to Morocco, and how they did good work there... then notes that it required a heavy sacrifice, and not from his fellow Germans. He talks about how "they" are people too, with hopes and dreams, and asks why God would demand that they be placed lower on the totem pole, before begging the recipient of his letter to reassure him that they're doing the right thing. It just has the ability to stick in your mind, reminding you that not all of the Nazis are complete monsters reveling in their own malice; some of them are just so screwed over by the propaganda that they don't understand the true impact of what they're doing.
  • Another Kommandant - nicknamed the Butcher of Boston for reasons his own men are too scared to discuss - writes a note to his deceased wife. While he expresses no regrets over his past actions, his faith in the Nazi cause has begun to waver since finding out that the technological advancements they took credit for were actually reverse-engineered from the inventions of the Jewish Da'at Yichud.
    What does that say about us? Does that make us the sub-humans? What if Terror-Billy is not an agent of Satan, but sent by God to punish us? What if we deserve it?
    I think I must face the fact that I am no longer doing this work because I believe it is good and just, but for the love and respect of the men under my command.
    I am lost.
    I wish I could hear your voice. You were my rock.
  • The fate of the Eva's Hammer Section F crew, after Blazkowicz and the Kreisau Circle took over the sub and killed Captain Krieger they were forced to hide out in a maintenance sector that isn't on the subs schematics for five months and send an SOS signal waiting for rescue. When Frau Engels initial attack is repelled she decides to just sink the sub with everyone onboard and Blazkowicz is forced to get into section F and kill them all to stop the signal so she can't. Several conversations between the hiding crew men include two brothers who ended up working on the sub together and a pair of crewmen talking about what they'll do once they're rescued to keep up morale.
  • A mook conversation during the New Orleans Wall Ubercommander mission has two nazi mooks talking about another one who got disintegrated in the nuclear explosion when Blazkowicz fired the Eva's Hammer cannon at the end of the New Orleans mission because it ran aground and needed the recoil to get knocked into the water. He apparently got a childhood toy he always wanted for his birthday recently.
  • All of this comes back to echo something Grace says earlier in the game: "Monsters didn't do this. Men did." She was speaking more of the more nightmarish aspect of how it was other humans who committed monstrous acts against them, but in hindsight, its heartbreaking to consider that human beings, with families, loved ones, siblings, parents, and so on, were driven to commit these atrocities against fellow humans, and, in many, many cases, they believed themselves to be the good guys, to the point that the ones who begin to realize that perhaps they're not are shaken to the core. Imagine working every day of your life on a cause that you genuinely, passionately believe is making the world a better place, only to be confronted with evidence that you are actually making it worse.
• Throughout the game, the player sees residential gentle giant Max Hass drawing and coloring on pieces of paper. He's pretty skilled, as evidenced by the painting he's done on parts of the ship and the helicopters. The player can see that he's building a mural in his own room. However, what will really get the tears flowing is once you realize what the mural is all about: Once he finishes the central piece, he pulls the "Professor" into his room to show her that the mural was of Klaus Kreutz, Max's adoptive father, who died back in The New Order.
• Bombate believes that being happy is a choice, and in New Order says this is more or less his coping mechanism from going insane. He tells this to Max, who is distraught that he might lose the piggy he's been raising and over Caroline's death. When Bombate later finds Max, still distraught, Bombate breaks down and tries to force Max to smile. After he fails, he angrily walks off saying he doesn't want to be near Max and his sadness. Under that mellow cheerfulness, it's clear Bombate has some serious issues and despite his coping mechanism, it is slowly eroding him.
• While it pales in comparison to a lot of what happens in the game and can be excused due to Tragic Bigot-induced paranoia from long years of fighting Nazi threats and the nuclear bomb dropping in New York that scarred her and her aforementioned trauma of witnessing the victims of the fallout as noted above, Grace treating Sigrun badly and still calling her a Nazi despite her being nothing but loyal after her Heel–Face Turn still seems pretty cruel, particularly given how hard her life has been already. Though it could be tempered by the implication it could be a Secret Test of Character for Sigrun to show off some backbone to convince her of her deep-down true allegiance and show her motivation-related effective usefulness to the resistance's cause.
• For another fairly downplayed example: there's a scene where Sigrun sits to eat lunch with some resistance members, only for them all to immediately get up and leave. Fortunately, you can sit with her to make her feel better.
• A rather sobering moment occurs at the end of the Uberkommandants side mission. After getting all the other death cards, unlocking and going through the new hidden level, you climb a tall ladder and find yourself staring at the ruins of the Statue of Liberty. It's a depressing sight that disperses the good mood you might be in after completing the side quest.