10 MORE Character Reveals That Didn’t Have To Go THAT Hard
6. McCoy Killed His Dad
In the fifth Star Trek film, Sybok, Spock's half-brother, boards the Enterprise-A and quickly assumes control. With Kirk, Spock, and McCoy being among the last holdouts to his space-age mind-control, he corners them in the observation room. There, the audience is granted some of the most heart-wrenching reveals about both Spock and McCoy.
For Spock, he relives the day of his birth, remembering Sarek's disappointment at his apparent humanity. Though the logic of remembering his own birth is questionable, the scene is stark and directly feeds another entry on this list.
However, it is the depiction of McCoy's pain that is truly devastating. We learn that his father was suffering from a terminal illness, was constantly in pain, and McCoy was powerless to help him. The scene is quiet and the acting is perfect. Deforest Kelley played the grumbling yet good mannered doctor since Star Trek's earliest days, but to see him broken by this memory is painful to see.
To ease his father's suffering, McCoy deactivates the life support keeping him alive, which allows the man to die within seconds. If that weren't bad enough, McCoy then reveals that a cure for the illness was found a short time later, burying this son with guilt for years to come.