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Characters / Friendship Is Magic: Background Ponies – Others

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Main Index
The Main Cast: Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Spike, Starlight Glimmer, the Cutie Mark Crusaders
Supporting Cast: The Princesses (Princess Celestia, Princess Luna), Mane Family Members, the School of Friendship, Ponyville, Other Locations, Animal Companions
Antagonists: Major Villains (Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra, Lord Tirek, Cozy Glow), Dangerous Creatures, Jerks and Bullies, Redeemed Antagonists (Discord)
World of Equestria: Races, Historical Figures, the 2017 Movie, Expanded Universe, Toyline Exclusive, Miscellaneous
Minor Characters: One-Shots, Other Characters, Background Ponies (Common Background Ponies, Special Background Ponies, Other Background Ponies)
Equestria Girls: Heroines (Sunset Shimmer), Villains, Supporting Cast


Other Background Ponies

There is a whole stable of other background ponies who recur throughout the series. These ponies aren't quite as common, tropable, or popular as the above ponies, or we simply haven't gotten around to giving them their own entries. Some of them, too, have made their marks on the fanbase, if not to the extent of the more prominent.

To see a comprehensive list of most ponies (background and otherwise) from the show, go to the Friendship Is Magic Wiki.


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    Other ponies and their tropes 
  • The Voice: The Wonderbolts Derby announcer from "Sweet and Elite".
  • Winged Unicorn: It's not unheard of for mixups with Flash models to turn background characters into alicorns.
    • The most notable example would be the construction worker "Rivet", who in "Grannies Gone Wild" appears as an alicorn for a scene several seconds long and while dominating the foreground — unlike most "background alicorns", which usually appear in blink-and-you'll miss it snapshots and well in the background — and then reappears in the background of a following shot, still with wings and horn and alongside another construction worker who was also turned into an alicorn.
    • More minor examples include one of the townsponies stampeding towards the cutie mark vault in "The Cutie Map" and one of Twilight's students in a crowd shot in "What Lies Beneath".
  • Wrench Wench: During one shot in "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", unicorn mare Silver Spanner (who makes multiple other appearances, but without her cutie mark visible) has a wrench cutie mark.

Non-Pony Background Extras

These characters act and are used just like background ponies except for the simple fact that they're not ponies. Some of the hoofed species on this list currently fall into Furry Confusion territory seeing as many of them are seemingly treated as any other domesticated animal yet at the same time can talk with the ponies or act in a rather civilized manner.

    Non-Ponies List 

The Cattle

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cows.png
"Oh my! Begging your pardon, Applejack, but Mooriella here saw one of those nasty snakes. And it just gave us all the willies, dontcha know."
Daisy Jo, explaining what caused their stampede in "Applebuck Season"

The cows from "Applebuck Season", "Boast Busters", "A Friend in Deed", "One Bad Apple", and "Sleepless in Ponyville" produce Ponyville's daily supply of fresh milk, but they get spooked by snakes easily. The oxen from "Hearts and Hooves Day" and "Apple Family Reunion" pull carts.


  • Animal Stampede: The cow herd is introduced stampeding en masse towards Ponyville, causing a mass panic among the townsponies as the thundering herd bears down on the village. As Daisy Jo explains once Applejack manages to divert the stampede away from the town, one of the cows had spotted a snake and this sent the herd into a panicked stampede.
  • Furry Confusion: They live on farms and are corralled and milked in the same exact way as real-life cows... except that they can speak, and by all indications they're just as intelligent as the other ungulates who run their farms, which the show portrays as unambiguously intelligent human-like people.
  • National Stereotypes: Their Wisconsin mannerisms and thick accents mark them as a play on the stereotypical association of the U.S. state in question with the milch cattle farms and the dairy industry.
  • No Name Given: With the exception of Mooriella and Daisy Jo.
  • Verbal Tic: Daisy Jo tends to end her sentences with "dontcha know".

The Mule

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mule____none_taken_by_cobaltwinterborn_d5eqevx_3.png
"None taken."
Voiced by: James "Wootie" Woottonnote 

A polite and friendly fellow who isn't easily offended. He appears in "Applebuck Season", "Hurricane Fluttershy" and "One Bad Apple".


  • Cool Shades: He wears a pair in "One Bad Apple".
  • Creator Cameo: His one line (used in both "Applebuck Season" and "Hurricane Fluttershy") was provided by one of the show's co-directors.
  • No Name Given: He's never referred to by name by other characters, and he's simply listed as "mule" in the credits.
  • Present Company Excluded: In the first two seasons, there's a minor running gag of the characters using the word "mule" in a derogatory sense like we would in real life... before realizing that an actual mule is in hearing and apologizing.
    • This happens for the first time in "Applebuck Season":
      Twilight Sparkle: [concerning her friend Applejack] That pony is as stubborn as a mule!
      Mule: [snort]
      Twilight Sparkle: No offense.
      Mule: None taken.
    • Done again in "Hurricane Fluttershy":
      Rainbow Dash: Be cool, or be a mule! No offense.
      Mule: None taken.
    • Subverted in "One Bad Apple" — the same set-up as before is used where a pony, Diamond Tiara, refers to Babs Seed as being "too cool for mule" and the mule hears and takes notice. However, unlike the previous two times, Diamond Tiara does not apologize or even appear to notice — which is admittedly perfectly in-character for her.

The Sheep

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sheep_fim.png
"You coulda just asked."

Woolly animals that come in different colors. "Sisterhooves Social" shows a flock of white and black sheep presumably kept at Sweet Apple Acres for their wool. "Dragon Quest" shows a few wild black sheep up in the snowy mountains, one of whom lets Spike hitch a ride on him. In "Party Pooped", another flock halts Pinkie's train by loitering on the tracks.

"The Crystal Empire - Part 1", "The Crystal Empire - Part 2", and "Games Ponies Play" show some tiny ewes of various colors in the Crystal Empire.


  • Amazing Technicolor Population: The Crystal Empire's tiny ewes, whose wool comes in pink, lilac and cyan pastel colors, and with teal and lilac skin.
  • Eyes Out of Sight: The black sheep's wool hangs over their foreheads, completely obscuring their eyes.
  • Furry Confusion:
    • The regular sheep are as intelligent as the ponies and the other intelligent species in the show — at the very least they're capable of speech — but unlike the other species who are unambiguously portrayed as civilized people, they are shown living like regular sheep do, as livestock on farms... except they're just as intelligent as the farmers in this instance.
    • In regards to the Crystal Empire's tiny ewes, however, it's not clear whether they're this trope or they're actually just animals.
  • Happiness in Slavery: When Applejack and Apple Bloom corral them, the sheep complain about being chased in and of itself rather than being chased into a pen.
  • Horse of a Different Color: In "Dragon Quest", Spike climbs up a steep snowy mountainside on the back of a passing ram.

The Animal Contestants

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pet_finalists.png
The four finalists

A group of twelve flying animals — a hummingbird, an owl, a male and a female mallard, a monarch butterfly, a peregrine falcon, a bald eagle, a toucan, a ladybug, a wasp, a flamingo and a bat — who compete to be Rainbow's pet when she decides she wants an animal companion of her own. To do this, she puts them through a series of trials to test their speed, agility, guts, style, coolness, awesomeness and radicalness, culminating in four finalists racing her through Ghastly Gorge.


  • Feather Fingers: Many of the birds use their wings in much the same way as fingered hands, such as the eagle using its wings to knit a sweater or the duck using his to hold a hat and cane. This is most visible when the falcon shakes "hands" with Tank at the end, its primary feathers folding to grip Tank's foreleg like four fingers and a thumb.
  • Graceful Loser: The falcon technically won the race through Ghastly Gorge that was meant to determine which of the four finalists would be Rainbow's pet. When Rainbow chooses Tank instead by virtue of the tortoise having been the only animal to actually notice she was in trouble and stay behind to help her, the falcon accepts his disqualification with dignity, shaking "hands" with Tank in congratulations before leaving.
  • Impossible Shadow Puppets: For the Talent Contest, the wasp decides to do shadow puppets despite lacking fingers, and somehow manages to do a galleon in full sail.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: The ladybug is the first of the contenders to drop out when Rainbow warns them during the lineup to bow out now if they don't think their up for it, before they humiliate themselves before their peers. The ladybug evidently feels it isn't, and sheepishly leaves before the first trial.
  • Noble Bird of Prey: Since Rainbow Dash is looking for the coolest possible pet, and since she naturally enough requires one capable of flight, several feature. The most notable ones are a falcon, an eagle ("both quite regal", as described by Fluttershy) and an owl that advance to the finals thanks to being mighty, majestic and dignified creatures. The falcon is even a Graceful Loser.
  • The Owl-Knowing One: During the style contest, which takes the form of a photo shoot with Dash, the owl goes for a bookish and learned aesthetic. While the other animals mostly go for sporty and dynamic styles, the owl's picture shows it and Dash posing in sweaters and bowties, with Rainbow's mane slicked back and the owl standing on a pile of books.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Watch as the bold and majestic eagle... knits Rainbow Dash a sweater?

The Goats

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tie_munching_goat_s2e19.png

One shows up as a pet at Fluttershy's cottage in "May the Best Pet Win!", "Magical Mystery Cure" and "Princess Twilight Sparkle, part 1", and two others appear as Iron Will's assistants in "Putting Your Hoof Down" and "Once Upon a Zeppelin". They invoke Furry Confusion more than other creatures, since they don't talk and other goats are treated as pets, but Iron Will's are able to operate electric devices and wear ties.


  • Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Iron Will's assistants wear ties (one red and one blue), name tags, microphone headpieces and nothing else, matching Iron Will's own black tie and headpiece.
  • Animal Eyes: Goats have horizontal pupils, a rarity among most animals, and a fact carried into the design of MLP's goat characters.
  • Extreme Omnigoat: Iron Will's goats can be seen in "Putting Your Hoof Down" munching on each other's neckties and, at one point, Pinkie's tail. In "Once Upon a Zeppelin", when Iron Will and one of the goats are reclining on deck chairs and drinking from hollowed pineapples, the goat just takes a large bite out of the pineapple instead.
  • Furry Confusion: They don't talk, but wear clothing, use furniture and seem to employed by Iron Will, and display a fairly high degree of intelligence. It doesn't help that other episodes show goats as animals in Fluttershy's menagerie.
  • Intelligible Unintelligible: They only make braying noises, but Iron Will seems to understand them just fine.
  • No Name Given: Iron Will's assistants are not referred by name in either episode they appear in, and since they don't talk they're not named in the credits either.
  • The Unintelligible: They can only bleat, but they're understood by Iron Will anyway.

Equestria Games Griffon Team

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/equestria_games_griffons.png
Debut: "Rainbow Falls"

A set of nameless griffons who competed in the Rainbow Falls relay team qualifying round, and later appear in the Games proper in "Equestria Games".


  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Ponies don't have a monopoly on strangely colored beings. One of the griffons on the team is colored pink and maroon, another is solid purple and third is cyan with teal head and wing feathers.
  • Our Gryphons Are Different: They're the only non-ponies in the relay competition, and some are also much more brightly colored than griffons tend to be in fiction.
  • Palette Swap: The two male griffons in the team use Gustav le Grand's model, one recolored brown and the other purple. The four female griffons use slightly modified variants of Gilda's model with different head feathers (one model has two tufts sticking out from the temples, the other has a backward-pointing crest in the middle of the forehead), each recolored twice.
  • The Voiceless: None of them have any spoken lines in either of their episodes.

The Background Monsters

Debut: "Pinkie Apple Pie" (horned creature, buck-toothed flying creature)
"Trade Ya!" (fish monster, large-mouthed flying creature, many-eyed flying creature)
"Make New Friends but Keep Discord" (birdlike creature)

A collection of monsters and weird creatures that turn up whenever the show needs bizarre, nonspecific monsters to populate a strange location, such as the Scariest Cave in Equestria, a beast seller's menagerie, Discord's dimension or the pit of Tartarus.


  • Armless Biped: The birdlike creature isn't seen to possess front limbs, instead only having a pair of long legs.
  • Extra Eyes: Several creature types have multiple eyes — the horned beast has three in a fan-like arrangement, the fish creature has a central eye and two more on stalks, and the red flying creature has multiple eyes arranged in a cone shape around the top of its head.
  • Eye on a Stalk: In addition to a single central eye, the fish creature has two smaller ones at the end of long stalks.
  • Our Monsters Are Weird: They're bizarre, anatomically improbably monsters with exaggerated or supernumerary body parts, and are only found in the most alien and outlandish environments.
  • Palette Swap: Some of them are occasionally recolored to add greater variety to their appearance — a greenish-cyan version of the buck-toothed flying creature appears in "Make New Friends but Keep Discord", while "School Raze" includes a teal variant of the horned creature, a light grey variant of the buck-toothed flying creature, a navy blue variant of the fish creature, and a brown variant of the large-mouthed flying creature, in addition to ones in their normal colors.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: In "School Raze", several are seen locked in cages in Tartarus.

The Feelings Forum leader

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hippieling.png
Voiced by: Ellen-Ray Hennessy

A mint green changeling who wears rather hippie-ish robes. As the name implies, they run the Feelings Forum, a place where the post-reformation changelings go to air their issues and grievances.


  • Ambiguous Gender: They're not referred to as male or female or called by any pronoun in the episode itself, their voice doesn't have a particularly masculine or feminine timbre, and their clothing is by and large gender-neutral.
  • New-Age Retro Hippie: They talk a lot about feelings, sharing and the importance of "affirming" each other. They also dress in stereotypical clothing, such as the robes and the flower headband.
  • No Name Given: The feelings forum leader is not referred to by any name in the episode, and is listed in the credits as simply Group Leader.
  • Not So Above It All: Despite running the peaceful feelings forum for the purpose of solving problems in a calm and nonaggressive manner, they get upset upon being ignored, and angrily shout at the other changelings to leave after having had enough of them talking over each other.

Other Animals

These are the other creatures that inhabit Equestria. They are mostly non-sapient, but they display some behavior that suggests otherwise. Most of Ponyville's animals appear to be under the care of Fluttershy. They can also be potential companions for ponies.


  • Ambiguous Gender: Any of the ones who aren't referred to as "he" or "she", and that don't belong to species such as mallard ducks with obvious sexual dimorphism, as their lack of voice or personality makes it impossible to determine their gender.
  • Ascended Extra:
  • Canon Immigrant: A few of the animals who were originally just toys have gone on to appear in the animated segments of toy commercials (though they still haven't appeared in the actual show): the mouse from this commercial and the hedgehog, butterfly, and chipmunks from this commercial.
  • Furry Confusion: In general, the show's avoidance of humans or human-like beings means that all characters are either Civilized Animals or mythological creatures used in the same manner. While some patterns exist as to which creatures are treated as people and which as animals, exceptions are far from rare — for instance, ungulates are usually intelligent beings, but deer and giraffes are just animals. Further confusion stems from the fact that all of the "regular" animals are still near the level of sapience as their owners, or at least display the typical high level of awareness and intelligence that cartoon animals often do, but otherwise behave like wild animals, wearing no clothing, using no tools and living in dens and nests in the wilderness or under the care of pony owners. Further, even some creatures that talk, like cows and sheep, live in farms like real-life livestock while ponies live in houses. Generally speaking, it can be difficult to tell whether any given creature is a person or an animal until it opens its mouth and either speaks or makes animal noises.
  • Messy Pig: Several live at Sweet Apple Acres, where they are fed kitchen scraps and bruised apples and live in a mud wallow.
  • Misplaced Wildlife: This is mitigated by the show being set both in a fictional world and in a highly magical and fantastical setting, but it remains pretty strange to see toucans, spider monkeys and sea lions as staples of the background fauna in Equestria's general mild-temperate continental climate.
  • Noble Bird of Prey: The roles the bald eagles get used for often fit these birds' usual stereotypes. One appears in the "Your Heart Is in Two Places" song in "Surf and/or Turf" when Sweetie Belle is trying to convince Terramar to live on Mount Aris, citing the fact that "the eagles are regal" as one of the the mountain's attractive characteristics as an eagle swoops down to perch on her hoof.
  • No Name Given: With the exception of Elizabeak from "Stare Master", Hummingway and possibly Mr. Mousey from "A Bird in the Hoof", Little Piggington from "Spike at Your Service", Mr. Beaverty Beaverton from "Keep Calm and Flutter On" and Constance from "Flutter Brutter", none of the background animals are ever given a name.
  • Palette Swap: Many of the animals are recolors of a single model used for multiple members of species.
    • The bats are all recolored either grey or brown, and the white mice used in most instances are sometimes recolored grey instead.
    • The turtles use the same model Tank does, with their shells recolored with different shades and patterns.
    • The basic white chickens are recolored brown and golden-brown when more than one is in the same scene.

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