I must have seen this movie a dozen times - it was one of my children's favorites - but there's an Easter egg I missed until I was told about it yesterday on
the TV Tropes Merlin Sickness page.
As people who have read the original book will know, Merlin lives his life backwards, remembering the future and only having vague ideas about the past. It is thus completely logical that he has tears in his eyes just after he meets Wart. From his point of view, he's never going to see him again.
How could I have walked past that?