21 of the Saddest Scenes Where Nobody Dies

‘I’ve had a rough year, dad’

When was the last time a movie made you cry? Mufasa’s death? Snape’s death? The death of the shoe in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Are you sensing a pattern here? The easiest way to wring some cheap tears out of an audience is to murder a beloved character, but that’s the coward’s way out. The real masters know how to leave you staring into the abyss without anyone, even a magical Nazi, needing to die.

Redditor Ok-Impress-2222 gets this. “When talking about sad scenes in movies, the majority of what gets mentioned are scenes of a character’s death, understandably,” they recently told r/Movies. “But that exact notion makes it all the more interesting to try and name a sad scene that isn’t a death scene.” They named “the last scene of Pursuit of Happyness” and “Jessie’s backstory from Toy Story 2” as their “personal favorites” and then asked, “What’s the saddest non-death scene in a movie?” 

Fair warning: A good percentage of them involve Haley Joel Osment.

The Sixth Sense

Little Miss Sunshine

Stand By Me

Hope Floats

Les Miserables

Still Alice

Schindler’s List

Flight

Dumbo

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

The Fox and the Hound

Coco

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Good Will Hunting

Friday Night Lights

Saving Private Ryan

The Royal Tenenbaums

La La Land

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Forrest Gump

Cast Away

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