This troper just now returned home from seeing a school production of The Nutcracker. This ballet school had a number of young children as students, and so decided to have some of them play mice along with the Mouse King's entourage. When the Mouse King was killed, the school, this troper supposes, thought the kids deserved a little more show for how good they were, so they had the mouse children walk across the stage one last time crying. This brought a very
sad reminder of how death is never worth rejoicing