What's the most you've cried at a fictional character's death?

NightmareWarden

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Sofus said:
Well this is highly disturbing. If a fictional character can provoke strong emotional responses, then i'm somewhat worried what some of you might do or how you would react when a family member dies.
My understanding of culture is that one of art's purposes is to provoke an emotional response. Art is made up of drawings, paintings, sculpture, literature, movies, graphic novels, and even video games. They can make you feel happy, excited, sad, disgusted... If an artist or a video game developer spends thousands of hours on their work and the only response they get is "that is pretty", they would probably feel terrible. A developer would feel happy if they learn that players are able to make an emotional connection to the characters because that means they have made a memorable and high quality experience.

These aren't disturbing or unnatural, they're just part of what it means to be human. If you tell a scary story to someone while on a camping trip and they actually get scared by it, does that mean they'll go catatonic when a real terrifying experience rears its ugly head? Not necessarily. Should we withhold any reactions we feel from every single movie, play, tv show, novel, and game simply because we know it is fictitious? Of course not! We care about and react to everything around us, regardless of its true nature.
 

Lynx

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Dumbledore, Snape, Fred and Lupin
in Harry Potter, and
Rue, Finnick and Prim
in The Hunger Games.

Cheezeypoofs said:
Anybody remember that HBO show Oz? The night before Cyril was to go to the chair was hands down the saddest thing I have ever seen.
Oh god, I'd forgotten that. Poor Cyril...
 

NightmareWarden

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lord canti said:
SkarKrow said:
sanquin said:
SkarKrow said:
Yea, one piece is filled with emotional moments. And that while it's a shounen/comedy most of the time. It balances those three very nicely. Same with the series 'Scrubs'.
It's very successful at building characters that the view/reader cares about and sucking you in to their world. It makes you genuinely care and as a result when something bad happens you feel bad about. It hits such a perfect balance between it all, it's a shame it's not more popular in the west (and yet Naruto with it's atrocious train wreck of a story is...)
Another thing it does well for me is that the characters genuinely seem to care for each other and that almost every single character has their own back story. I never get that sense of friendship with Bleach and Naruto. Never has either of those series made me believe that Ichigo and Naruto truly care for their comrades the way One Piece does.
In regard to Naruto's characters, I think that the development of squads outside of Team 7 is more of a professional respect for one another as opposed to friendship. Remember that they did not get to choose whose squad they were put in. Lee and Neji weren't friends for the longest time, however they grew from rivals to respected allies. Ino hated her group at first, yet they learned to work together and value each other's strengths. Gaara's group grew from a monster and two fearful siblings playing bodyguard to a professional group of ninjas that rose to great heights in their village. The same sort of thing happens when groups combine for missions like in the Sasuke Rescue arc. They gain respect for people they previously thought were slackers/loud mouths/fattys even if they don't become friends that eat together on their days off. Outside of Naruto himself, the "power of friendship" doesn't run wild in the ninja world.
 

Sarah Kerrigan

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Probably Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid 4. I sobbed loudly and made a fool of myself. Every metal gear character has made me cry at least once.
 

Artina89

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I didn't cry, but I was upset when Snape died in the Harry Potter series, because he is my favourite character, and when his backstory was revealed it just made it even more tragic.

Also in Doctor Who when the Doctor learns that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart had passed away was very touching. The brig is another favourite character of mine, and the fact that Nicholas Courtney, who portrayed him, had passed away in real life made that moment all the more poignant.
 

dancowan15

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Thane and Mordin. And Garrus. And Tali. And Legion. And Liara. And EDI. Man, looking back at it, I lost a lot of people in Mass Effect, didn't I?
 

omglazorspewpew

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I am also going to agree with John from the Green Mile. I was practically bawling by the end of that movie.

Oddly enough the only other piece of fiction that has given me such a strong reaction was another story by Stephen King. Shawshank Redemption also made me cry but for the opposite reasons. I was incredibly happy when Red was incredibly hopeful about his new life and seeing his friend again
 

SquidVicious

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It's funny, I've cried over the deaths of fictional characters from books far more than movies or TV shows. I believe the first fictional character's death I ever cried over was the dog Searchlight from the novel Stone Fox that I had to read in 3rd grade.

The next character's death I distinctly remember crying over was Dinobots sacrifice in Beast Wars. He was always my favorite character because of his straight man routine to the more comic relief characters Rat Trap and Cheetor. It's funny though, despite "dying" twice over the course of the series, I never felt sad when Optimus Primal got offed.

I also remember crying at the end of All Quiet On The Western Front, although it was more Katczinsky's death that triggered it.
 

Crispee

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I have to say, Light's death quite affected me, I never expected it to, he wasn't a sympathetic character by any stretch, I just liked him because I admired his ambition and ingenuity, and followed him for the same reason Ryuk did, because interesting things happened because of him. To both me, the viewer and Ryuk, Light was just a story that would end the moment he failed. I guess it upset me because it meant the end of the cat and mouse between Light and the Detectives and the various other adventures that cropped up in his wake.

I'd expected him to give a grand speech about the nature of evil and the necessity of his goals, like a villain does. But instead he gets shot and he screams and cries in a really sad and pathetic way, then he tries to run away and escape, panting and crying as he does so. Before Ryuk catches up to him, as we knew he was always going to, and dies of a heart attack, alone, unloved. In the middle of trying to save his own skin, on a staircase, as the ghost of his arch enemy taunts him a final time.

Even though he'd racked up one of the highest body counts in history, I still find that scene hard to watch, because I think we all fear to die that way, with our life's achievements undone in a split second with nobody to tell you you did good.

Also.

Probably Tali. Not because of who she was, because she wasn't my love interest, merely a good friend to the Shepard I was role playing. But what her death meant, it meant that Shepard could not save Rannoch. I actually turned off the game for several weeks after that point, because I couldn't bear the thought of letting down any more characters.
 

songnar

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torno said:
The first freaking twenty minutes had me in tears when Sarah died. I'm the kind of guy who gets as emotionally invested as he can during a game or movie so things have a tendency to hit me harder. That, coupled with the fact that I'm kind of a pansy, meant that that intro was pretty strong for me.
Gonna have to second this one. That was pretty rough.
 

kingpocky

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I can't think of any other time I've cried while playing a video game, but Claus's death at the end of Mother 3 had me bawling.
 

MarsProbe

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The death scene of a particular character in Lost Odyssey really got to me. Even now, if I ever watch that scene, I find it almost too much. It's those kids.

I don't think I've ever got that emotional over the death of a character in any tv series/film/book. Guess I just don't feel there is the same connection to such characters. The one exception would probably have been

the death of The Lone Gunmen

I can't actually now remember if it happen in The X-Files or The Lone Gunmen spinoff. Oddly, I didn't think I was that upset about it at the time, but I got a major lump in my throat when I was recounting the story to my dad. Figures.
 

Zipa

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Persona 3 and 4 , while I didn't cry the deaths in those games meant a hell of a lot more than the normal oh we need drama lets kill someone routine that a lot of games have now.

Thane Krios in ME3 to, he dies while listening to his son read a prayer basically asking for Shepards soul to be guarded against evil.

Raziel in legacy of Kain defiance, while he is not dead as such it was still one of those moments that hits you. The amazing VO work realy helps to sell it to.
 

J.McMillen

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Sep 11, 2008
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Eleuthera said:
I've never actually cried over any character death in fiction. But I did get choked up at the end of "On the Beach", and at the death of
Anya

I also got chills when I read the "Death of Superman" story for the first time.
While I didn't cry, these two probably affected me the most:
Tara, because it was so unexpected

Holly, her murder made me sick to my stomach
 

mrhappy1489

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I just lost it during the Red Wedding scene. I just felt so much sympathy for the Starks and watching so many of them die, along with cause, just broke me.

If it turns out the Jon Snow really is dead, then I will actually stop reading the books. I wouldn't have the same reaction to any of the other characters, but if it was snowy; there'd just be no way I could keep going. Also Oberyn Martell's death hit me pretty hard, the same with Ygritte's and I felt a sense of absolute gut wrenching sadness with Quentyn's death as well, though that's more to do with the fact that he was such a young man and the reaction from his friends.

Well that was a lot of spoilers there from A Song of Ice and Fire. For deaths outside that series, Seymour in Futurama, because it's heavily implied that he dies, Boromir in Lord of the Rings, but only on subsequent viewings, after learning about his back story, also after seeing Neddy die.
 

Murais

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Grave of the Fireflies ranks pretty high. That one hit close to home, and the utter helplessness of that film is soul-crushing.

Other than that:

"I'll miss you, sweet pea."

Tears for days.
 

PBMcNair

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Probably not the fictional death I cried at most in one go, but in terms of gets me every time:

The mercy execution of Agun Soric at the end of Only in death. EVERY.GOD.DAMN.TIME.
My copy has actual tear stains on those pages now.
I think it might be to do with how its the end of that whole arc, where Dan Abnett seemed to decide that the Ghosts stories weren't grimdark enough.