Fallout Equestria / Tropes E to M

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Tropes A to D
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Tropes N to Z

E

• Eldritch Abomination: Zebras believe that the stars are an entire race of these, looking to destroy Equestria. This was part of the reason the zebras were so dead set on winning the war: they believed Luna was their agent, and the events of the war were oddly similar to a prophecy for how the stars would finally kill them. It's strongly implied that there is some truth to this... but it's ultimately subverted. The falling stars were just rocks. Poisonous rocks, yes, but still rocks.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Alicorns. Like Celestia and Luna, they have wings of pegasi and magical horns of unicorns and are pretty darn hard to kill. As long as the shields are up anyway. Without them, or when caught by surprise, they're just as vulnerable as any other pony. Not to mention their powers of cloaking, regenerating, and shooting lightning bolts. And if they've absorbed an especially large dose of radiation, then you'll also be dealing with an Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever.
  • Hellhounds. They are the equestrian equivalent of Deathclaws. Fast, intelligent and able to burrow underground at amazing speeds. Oh, and they know how to use energy weapons.
• Ending Theme: Obviously, being a fan fic, there is no music. But somebody made a good contender for something that you could hear playing over the credits.
• Enemy Civil War: In the epilogue, Red Eye's army splits into various factions that fight one another for control, and the Enclave begins a civil war once the rest of the pegasi find out what their government has been doing to the surface and how much they've been lied to.
• Enemy Mine: When the Enclave starts to invade the Steel Rangers and Applejack's Rangers temporarily put aside their differences to fight side by side.
• Energy Weapon: A trait carried over from Fallout.
• Epigraph: Each chapter starts with a disembodied quote, sometimes from the show, usually from one of the Fallout games.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: The Everfree Forest in the show was already a wild, dangerous place populated with Dungeons & Dragons monsters. In FO:E it's mutated into a honest-to-Celestia patch of instant death. And it's on fire when Lil'Pip and co. visit.
• Evil Versus Evil: Red Eye vs The Enclave.
• Evil Weapon: Starmetal weapons are this. They are described as wanting to kill and are capable of obliterating a fully shielded alicorn in a single attack.
• The Exile:
  • Littlepip and Velvet Remedy, who can never come back inside the Stable once they've left. Irrelevant now that the surviving Stable members have been relocated to Shattered Hoof Ridge after the Steel Rangers raid it.
  • Calamity, for daring to descend to Equestria before the rest of his kind are ready for their glorious return, and for following Rainbow Dash and becoming a Dash-ite.
  • Scootaloo, who became the very first Dash-ite.
  • Littlepip again, upon activation of the Single Pegasus Project.
• Expanded Universe: The author has done a lot of world building, and, due to a large amount of fan interest, has encouraged others to try their hoof at making a story in the Equestrian wasteland. Which some people have actually done and can be read here. According to Word of God however, only A Mare Worth Fighting For (the infamous 'Chapter 20.5', in which Littlepip and Homage discuss their motives and perform various sexual acts upon one another) can be considered canon to the main story.
  • Four of FoE's side stories - Project Horizons, Pink Eyes, Heroes, and Murky Number Seven - have grown to the point of getting their own trope pages.
• Expecting Someone Taller: The Griffins in Chapter 18:
  Griffin 1: Where are the rest of you?
  Littlepip: This is it. Just us.
  Griffin 2: Well, this isn't much of a rescue.
  Littlepip: Gratitude. Look it up.
• Expy: To be expected, since the story is based off Fallout 3's. Though usually very loosely (ex. Ditzy has already finished the Wasteland Survival Guide and is over two-hundred years old).
  • Obviously, Littlepip is based on both the Vault Dweller and the Lone Wanderer.
  • Ditzy Doo to Moira Brown.
  • Tenpony Tower to Tenpenny Tower.
  • DJ PON3 is a combo of Three Dawg and Mr. New Vegas.
  • Mint-als to Mentats, Dash for Jet, among others.
  • Red Eye to Lord Ashur (with shades of President Eden and the Mutant Lieutenant), and Fillydelphia to The Pitt.
  • The Zebra Empire to China with a few shades of Caesar's Legion.
  • Hellhounds to Deathclaws.
  • Steel Rangers for the Brotherhood of Steel, though they seem to act in their West Coast ideology.
    • Applejack's Rangers or the Outcasts to the Brotherhood Outcasts, though in a reversal, the Outcasts of this story are the ones who want to use their technology for altruistic means rather than just hoard and study it.
  • Balefire and Megaspell bombs as a stand in for nukes.
  • The Taint (or rather, Impelled Metamorphosis Potion for FEV.
  • The Alicorns are meant to be the Super Mutants of the universe.
    • The Goddess / Trixie for the Master.
  • The Pegasus Enclave is, well, the Enclave.
  • The Canterlot Ruins for the Sierra Madre with a few elements of the Big MT thrown in. Similarly, Elder Cottage Cheese for Father Elijah with a few shades of Mr. House.
  • The Ministry of Technology as a combination of Vault City and Underworld.
  • Arbu for Arefu, at first. It's a much closer parallel to Andale.
  • Glyphmark for Big Town.
  • Qarl Death-Hoof for Garl Death-Hand.
    • Making Xenith's former tribe an expy of the Khans, and thus Glyphmark's Angels are an expy of the Great Khans.
  • Maripony for the Mariposa Military Base.
  • Friendship City is a mix of Rivet City and Junktown.
  • Old Appleloosa to Paradise Falls.
  • New Appleloosa to Megaton.
  • Old Olneigh to Old Olney.
  • Canterlot represents Washington DC with the Ministry Walk practically being a remapping of the National Mall, with the Ministry of Wartime Technology's hub being a combo of the Museums of History and Technology (featuring a Stable/Vault filled with a community of ghouls).
  • Colonel Autumn Leaf to Colonel Augustus Autumn.
  • Barkin' Saw to Arkansas.
  • Neighvarro to Navarro
  • Calamity's Father to Sergeant Dornan
  • The Everfree Forest to Vault 22 but with even more terrifying things, like now magical deadly plants and spore creatures.
  • The Sky Bandit for Fallout 2's Chryslus Highwayman.
  • Fluttershy to Harold.
  • Gardens of Equestria, to the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (GECK).
  • Pink Cloud, for The Cloud in Dead Money.
• Eye Scream: Spike takes a plasma cannon shot to the eye in Chapter 44.

F

• Fake Defector: Zecora
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Subverted. After finally descending, the Enclave attempt to set themselves up as this, claiming to be Equestria's saviors and trying to take credit for Littlepip's deeds. No one buys it, largely because of Homage doing her best to spread the truth and the Enclave's going around and killing innocents just to kill a select few ponies.
• Fallen Hero: While we don't get details, Homage has seen many of these throughout Equestria. So many, that when it appears that Littlepip has become one, she doesn't find it hard accept that her girlfriend might be evil.
• Fantastic Drug: Naturally, as a Fusion Fic with Fallout, magical stand-ins exist for the games' library of chemicals. Healing potions replace stimpaks, some drugs are named the same, and others are given a more ponyish spin. Like in the games, most drugs have obvious downsides; addictiveness, post-use crashes, the risk of overdose, etcetera.
  • The most notable example are Mint-als and the stronger Party-Time Mint-als, FOE's equivalent to the brain-boosting Mentats. Littlepip overcomes a lot of problems due to the increased clarity of thought. Pinkie Pie became addicted to Party-Time Mint-als during the war because they amplified her Pinkie Sense to unseen heights, giving her full blown precognition and even telepathy. They also drove her absolutely mad.
• Fantastic Nuke: Megaspells in general are supercharged versions of spells intended to be deployed over a much larger area than usual. The concept was, of course, weaponized to create the magical equivalent of superweapons. The most notorious megaspells were the zebras' balefire bombs, which exploded in a burst of necromancy-infused dragonfire that could burn flesh and souls alike and lingered in the area it scorched, creating literal magical radiation; these are what reduced Equestria to its present state. Ironically, the first megaspell was a supercharged healing spell, used to flood an area with healing magic and instantly restore a sizable group of injured soldiers.
• Fantastic Racism: People distrust ghouls, expecting them to turn into mindlessly murderous zombies, even the nice ones like Ditzy Doo. During the war, zebras were almost always represented as monsters in war propaganda.
• Fantastic Science: Equestria and the zebra nation alike studied magic as just another kind of science, using it to create first wonders that improved the quality of life, and then horrific weapons of destruction. Twilight Sparkle even led the Ministry of Arcane Science during the war, which literally was all about studying magic to find new ways to use it to win the war.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • The fate of those who survive the ghoul doctor's experiments.
  • Twilight, who gets dragged into the Goddess's consciousness, hanging on the edge of insanity for over two centuries.
  • Fluttershy, who gets turned into a tree and is forced to watch the deaths of anyone who wanders too far into the Everfree Forest. She gets better, though.
  • Rarity is the most extreme example, because she let her own soul be ripped into forty-three pieces to stuff most of it into 42 Ministry Mare figurines.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Littlepip and Calamity. Possibly Velvet Remedy as well.
• Flashy Teleportation: The purple alicorn's unique ability. Acquired from Twilight. As seen in Chapter 18:
  With a flash of light, one of the alicorns appeared right between us.
  "They can teleport too!?" Velvet Remedy blurted,
• Fling a Light into the Future: Pinkie Pie, high on mind-altering Mint-als, Pinkie Senses Littlepip (who has not been born yet) listening in on her memory orb (which has not been recorded yet). This inspires her to have Rainbow Dash collect a series of memory orbs from each of the Mane Six, one of which of herself communicating directly with Littlepip, and stash them in the Canterlot Ministry of Awesome after the apocalypse kicks off so that Littlepip can stumble across it 200 years later. The information in the orbs turns the entire tide of the story. Sunshine. And. Rainbows.
• Footnote Fever: The end of every chapter includes a little footnote describing Littlepip's current level and/or acquired Perks.
• Foreshadowing: While trying to fend off the Wonderbolts, Littlepip's mind is assaulted by a group of alicorns, who are ordering her to kill Velvet Remedy. She resists with the help of the Ministry Mares statuettes, only for the alicorns to say as a reminder to "Tell Red Eye that she has passed." Not too much later, Littlepip learns that the exact same thing happened to Colonel Autumn Leaf, which is a part of Red Eye's well-crafted Batman Gambit.
  • In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment during Red Eye's conversation with Colonel Autumn Leaf, the former mentions that a few things can get through the shield at the main hub of the Single Pegasus Project. One of them is certain kinds of dragon magic.
  • Chapter 19 depicts through Memory Orb a conversation between the Crusaders regarding a scene we won't see for much, much longer. Namingly, they've heard Rainbow Dash call Fluttershy a traitor, although they don't know yet that Fluttershy created the megaspells.
• Freudian Trio: Littlepip and her two most constant companions, Calamity and Velvet Remedy.
• Friend or Foe?: The E.F.S system on the PipBuck somehow determines the status of all living beings and marks them as either hostile or friendly.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The Diamond Dogs, once some of the most pathetic villains around, have been transformed by magical radiation into one of the deadliest and most dreaded threats in the Wasteland.
• Fusion Fic: A blend of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Fallout, particularly Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

G

• Gladiator Games: The pit.
• God Is Dead: Celestia and Luna sacrificed their lives to protect Equestria during the apocalypse. Since the sun and moon now move on their own, (though differently, as eclipses never occurred under their watch) many ponies, especially the pegasi, have turned to atheism. On the other hand, just as many believe that Celestia and Luna ascended and now perform their duties and watch over Equestria from there, similar to more conventional gods. Turns out Celestia survived, but her grief in losing Luna caused her to flee to the S.P.P, if you count uploading your mind while your body dies.
• God Job: Discussed. Red Eye thinks that Equestria can't function without a god, and that ponies will turn to anarchy and cruelty without someone carrying a big stick to watch over them. In other words, a god like Celestia or Luna doesn't just move celestial bodies, they make civilized society possible without the props of violence and slavery. Littlepip disagrees, believing that Equestrians can heal the world through the magic of love and friendship.
• Godzilla Threshold: To the Zebras, Luna's takeover of Equestria's government meant that if they lost the war then they faced a fate worse than death at the hooves of Nightmare Moon. When it looked like that had become inevitable, risking Mutually Assured Destruction with a first strike became the preferable option.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Goddess was created in an attempt to artificially generate alicorns. See Hive Mind for the results.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Type C. One of the major plot points for story is for Littlepip to find ponies that represent the Elements of Harmony so that she can activate the Gardens of Equestria and hopefully rid Equestria of all the Taint and radiation.
  • In universe, the magical statuettes of the Mane Six also work like this.
• The Government: In the war, after Princess Celestia stepped down, Princess Luna formed a war government by having the Mane Six form the Ministries to deal with the war. In the wasteland, there isn't much of a government until after Red Eye, the Goddess and the Enclave are defeated, and the Single Pegasus Project and Gardens of Equestria are activated.
  • The Mane Six's Ministries all had a purpose in the war effort and had influence over Equestria's culture - Twilight Sparkle's Ministry of Arcane Sciences, Applejack's Ministry of Wartime Technology, Rarity's Ministry of Image, Fluttershy's Ministry of Peace, Pinkie Pie's Ministry of Morale, and Rainbow Dash's Ministry of Awesome.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Similar to Fallout, there aren't any overtly evil or good people. Instead there are mainly people with similar goals, and differing methods. Such as Littlepip and Red Eye (though admittedly Littlepip is A Lighter Shade of Grey in comparison).
• Guns Akimbo: Battle Saddles. Sort of.
  • Reggie also uses twin pistols modified by Calamity.

H

• Hammerspace: Littlepip's saddlebags. Able to carry at any time up to almost a half dozen guns, including full sized rifles, several healing potions, the Ministry Mare statuettes, and other assorted items.
• Healing Factor: All ghouls and alicorns when exposed to radiation. Later Littlepip herself gains the "Rad Regeneration" perk following exposure to Taint.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Littlepip's only spell is telekinesis, which is the most basic unicorn spell, and she has a significant amount of angst over it. Velvet later points out that she is capable of doing telekinesis better than any other unicorn in existence. The Black Book later gives her Hemokinesis. Yes, power over blood.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Big Macintosh. To save Celestia from a Zebra assassin.
  • Celestia and Luna to prevent the Pink Cloud from devastating Equestria. Celestia survives.
  • Rarity, teleporting Fluttershy and Angel to safety from the Pink Cloud. Technically, she's still alive.
  • Littlepip upon entering the Single Pegasus Project. Celestia offers her the chance to leave so that she won't spend the rest of her life in an artificial coma. Littlepip decides to stay, saying that no one should have to be without friendship.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Littlepip spends a brief stint as this after she kills the Arbu cannibals. Information on the massacre spreads slowly at first, and all anypony knows initially is that Littlepip massacred an entire village for no apparent reason. To their credit, everypony is aware that they're acting on incomplete information, but they're also aware how much damage an evil Littlepip could cause, and well, better safe than sorry. Fortunately, the whole thing is cleared up fairly quickly, and Homage delivers a public apology.
• Hidden Elf Village: Of a sort. When Cloudsdayle was hit with a megaspell at the start of the war, most of the pegasi brought about a permanent cloud cover and built new hidden cities to hide from the zebra forces. The pegasi living up above the clouds maintain that they'll be back to help the world eventually, though 200 years after the war's end they're still in hiding. In Chapter 38, they finally descend and bring the Wasteland under martial law. However, the real reason they've arrived is so they can deal with Red Eye, and they don't have any plans on staying once that's done.
• Hit Me, Dammit!: At the end of Chapter 44, when Littlepip needs Spike to breathe fire on her.
• Hive Mind: Littlepip comes to the conclusion that the alicorns have one when they state they remember her killing them. They also refer to themselves collectively as 'Us'.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Some of the characters swear by/pray to Luna and Celestia. Littlepip comes up with gems like "Luna shitting moon rocks". Really, some of the joy in this story comes from the brilliant color of Littlepip's vocabulary. Including "Stick a horn where Celestia don't shine" and "Solar-flaring orgasms of Celestia". To her profound embarrassment, Celestia recognizes her as "she of the colorful vulgarities".
• Honor Before Reason: See Cannot Tell a Lie.
• Hope Spot: "Everything will end in sunshine and rainbows!"
• How We Got Here
• Hurricane of Puns: As expected when the source material is half from MLP:FiM.

I

• I Am Legion: The alicorns, and by extension the Goddess, who is (at least partly) The Great and Powerful Trixie.
• I Call It "Vera": Throughout Littlepips' journey throughout the Equestrian Wasteland, she comes across several weapons that have been given their own names. Though even in this case, there are certain standards to what would be an appropriate and acceptable name for a weapon.
  Gawd: "No."
  Regina: "No what? I haven't..."
  Gawd: "No. I ain’t lettin’ you have a crossbow so you can name it The Fart.”
• Idiot Ball:
  • Littlepip converses with Watcher while she's wearing raider armor - the only thing she could find at the time - and Watcher fails to warn her about the negative connotations which later lead to a near-fatal misunderstanding.
  • The first alicorn Littlepip meets decides to stand perfectly still and hurl taunts while Pip puts everything she has into casting a powerful spell. Naturally, that spell kills her.
  • In his planning, Red Eye somehow forgets one way Littlepip might use her signature ability - extremely powerful telekinesis - which leads to his humiliating defeat during the final confrontation between them. He immediately lampshades the moment.
• I Lied: While not quoted outright, Littlepip bluntly lampshades her dishonesty as she turns her gun on Colonel Autumn Leaf instead of fulfilling her end of their deal.
• I'm a Ponytarian: The residents of Arbu are cannibals, killing and eating ponies including a wandering preacher and various bandits. Littlepip does not approve.
• Incompatible Orientation: Littlepip had a crush on Velvet Remedy since she was little. Unfortunately, Velvet is straight. Though this was probably for the best, as they're distantly related.
• Indy Ploy: Expect these every time you see the words 'Stealth mission,' as well as pain, violence, explosions and more violence.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: When Calamity and Velvet start making out, in Chapter 41, Littlepip excuses herself with a "Time to go do the thing, in the place!"
• Insane Zebra Logic: Littlepip's first impression of Xenith's philosophy.
• Instant Expert: Littlepip leaves the stable with no knowledge of how guns work. She learns how to operate a shotgun simply by seeing it fired a few times, and within hours is capable of winning gunfights against groups of armed opponents. It's not long before she adds a revolver, an assault rifle and a sniper rifle to her arsenal as well.
• Invisibility: The blue alicorn's unique ability. Acquired from Trixie.
• Ironic Echo: When Littlepip meets Monterey Jack again, and accuses him of robbing her:
  Guard: Sorry. But it’s your word against his, and frankly, seeing as you aren’t a Tenpony citizen, your word doesn’t mean much here.
  • After he confesses, she finds out that there's a death penalty, and she claims he didn't do it:
  Guard: Sorry kid. But it’s your word against his. And like I said, your non-citizen word doesn’t mean the dirt on my hoof around here.
• It Only Works Once: Due to their hive mind, the same trick cannot be used on alicorns more then once. They are also capable of learning said tricks themselves, and once the hive mind is destroyed, they form an alliance with Velvet Remedy because they realize it's a better option than fighting Littlepip, the pony who outwitted and blew up their Goddess.
• It's All My Fault: Calamity's reaction when Littlepip has to come to terms with her addiction to Party Time Mint-Als.
  • Celestia's reaction to Big Macintosh's sacrifice and the destruction of Luna's academy. Ironically, if she hadn't stepped down as ruler of Equestria, the apocalypse may never have happened.

K

• Killed Off for Real: SteelHooves
• Killer Rabbit: Angel Bunny Took a Level in Badass during the Great War, gaining the title of Doombunny from the Zebra army.
• Kill Sat: Of a sort. Celestia One - the megaspell in Tenpony Tower - focuses the sun's energy into a devastating beam.
• Kirk Summation: Littlepip tries to talk Elder Cottage Cheese out of plugging himself into the Crusader Maneframe. It doesn't work, and she resorts to shutting down the entire system instead.

L

• Lady Land: A minor example; inspired by the show, the lead authority of the Stables is always female, as Matriarchy is the natural government for ponies. (Exception: Stable 24, which had a patriarchal culture as its sociology experiment.)
• Large Ham: The Goddess, AKA, the Great and Powerful Trixie.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The memory orbs work either by copying or completely extracting the victim's memories, meaning they can't look back on them without accessing the orb. At the end of Chapter 31, Littlepip uses this to set a plan in motion against The Goddess, without the telepath finding out about it in advance.
• Legacy Character:
  • DJ PON-3. The current holder of the title being Homage.
  • All of the Element Bearers, particularly Calamity and Velvet Remedy, for their admiration of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, respectively.
  • Littlepip herself is this in part for Twilight Sparkle, for finding the majority of the Element Bearers, as well as being the 'spark' responsible for helping them fulfill their destinies.
• Left Hanging: Rainbow Dash's ultimate fate and the Bearers of the Elements of Magic and Generosity were never revealed.
• Light Is Not Good: Littlepip finds other characters who embody the virtues in ways that causes more harm than good. It's explicitly stated by Watcher that the virtues can't do any good without friendship behind them.
  • Loyalty: The mercenary that is loyal to money and contract, but could easily betray co-workers.
  • Honesty: The pony who caused his own death by telling the truth, even when it was not necessary.
  • Laughter: The filly who tried to suppress all negative emotions, turning into a Stepford Smiler.
  • Generosity: The dictator who goes to monstrous lengths to gift Equestria with a future.
  • Magic: The Goddess Trixie, absorbing Unicorns and turning them into the powerful Alicorns, stripping away their identity and free will.
  • Kindness: Littlepip herself, at least at first. At multiple points in the story, she goes to great lengths to save the people living in the wasteland, only to abandon them when the danger has passed or to find out that the people she helped weren't as good as she thought and saving them may not have been the right thing. The Goddess notes her "virtue" is Corrupted Kindness, words that haunt Littlepip more and more after he leaves her. In the end, however, she realizes her true virtue is Sacrifice — fighting for others, yet being able to let go so others can fight for themselves.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Littlepip, Velvet Remedy, and SteelHooves are distant relatives, connected through the Apples lineage.

M

• Mad Doctor: The ghoul doctor, who tries to create a pony-manticore hybrid capable of resisting the taint, killing many individuals in the process.
• Mad Scientist:
  • Doctor Glue, and he's completely unrepentant about it.
  • Twilight Sparkle qualifies as well. While she had very good intentions, she left a lot of collateral damage in her wake, to the point that Spike feels the need to preemptively defend her to Littlepip.
• Magitek: Pre-War Equestria and their zebra rivals ran on a mixture of natural technology, industrialized magic, and enchanted technology. Even after the apocalypse, this remains the same. A number of game mechanics from Fallout are included in the story and justified as enchantments provided by the PipBuck. Then there's also the vast array of magical weaponry, ranging from energy weapons justified as just mass-produced wands built in the style of guns to conventional guns and ammo enchanted to apply Damage Typing.
• Meaningful Name: As in the show, character names often reflect something about their personality, status, mentality, or other notable character element.
  • Littlepip: Diminutive, and a PipBuck technician.
    • Mythology Gag: Van Buren was going to have a stand-in for the Pipboy called a Lil Pip.
    • Littlepip's Red Baron, the Bringer of Light, takes significance later: she's convinced that her purpose is to bring the sun back to Equestria.
  • Velvet Remedy: Remedy as in a medicine or treatment, more appropriate for a healer than a singer.
  • Deadshot Calamity: Expert markspony. Also many of his plans have a habit of either backfiring spectacularly or having tons of collateral damage. And his mother died in childbirth.
    • Also a reference to Calamity Jane.
    • Zig-Zagged: He bears no obvious similarity to Calamity, a ghoul in Fallout: New Vegas.
  • SteelHooves: Never takes off his steel armor. Technically his nickname though.
    • His real name, "Applesnack", is oddly similar to his former girlfriend's name. Much to Dash's amusement.
• Mechanical Horse: Security robots that shoot lightning.
• Medieval Stasis: Averted even harder then in canon. Before the war that destroyed Equestria happened, many technological achievements happened, from the fantastic (like PipBucks and suits of Powered Armor) to the mundane. (like guns and radios)
• Memory Gambit: Littlepip's big plan with Red Eye and the Goddess hinges on her NOT knowing what the plan is.
• Messianic Archetype: Littlepip. From humble beginnings, she faced a tyrannical empire and helped many times to free the slaves they owned, encouraging them to start their own societies. In the end, she undergoes a metaphorical 'death' at Spike's flame and ascends to the clouds to meet a figure she has repeatedly characterized as a god. She decides to stay here, watching over the wasteland with said god, and only returns to give the aptly titled 'Book of Littlepip' as a record of her life. Said book being the one we've all been reading.
• Mind over Matter: Littlepip's only magic is telekinesis, which all unicorns can do, but the sheer level of her capability is staggering; during The Pit fight, she manages to levitate herself, an ally, a lance and several gallons of toxic goo, the last being stretched out to cloak them from snipers. And then she decides to pick a lock, without tools, by grabbing the tumblers from inside. And succeeds. She's extremely taxed by the feat but it would probably be flat-out impossible for any other pony short of Celestia or Luna. (Admittedly she had spent several traits on this.)
• Mind Rape: The surviving alicorns under Red Eye attempt this on Littlepip, forcing her to turn her gun on Velvet Remedy. Littlepip manages to break free of their control before she pulls the trigger, however.
• Misplaced Accent: Calamity's family (with the exception of Autumn Leaf) seem to be the only ponies in the Enclave -– possibly the entire Wasteland –- to speak with "Southern" accents.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The snake/cat/wasp beasts in Stable 24.
• Motive Decay: In-Universe. The Steel Rangers were originally some of the foremost protectors of Equestria. After the nuclear holocaust, many of them began misinterpreting their oath as "protect Equestrian technology, and kill anyone who gets in our way." This eventually causes the Rangers to splinter into two factions: one loyal to the old ways (protecting the citizens of Equestria) and another loyal to the new interpretation.
• More Dakka: SteelHooves' armor is equipped with a rocket launcher and a grenade machine-gun. Even with this arsenal, Calamity still considers adding a plasma rifle to the armor.
• Mutagenic Goo: Taint, a viscous, rainbow-colored liquid that was created by Twilight Sparkle with the aid of the Ministry of Arcane Sciences. It's the setting's equivalent of the Forced Evolutionary Virus, and was originally known as Impelled Metamorphosis Potion (I.M.P).
• Mutually Assured Destruction: The only thing the zebras could think of to escape their presumed slaughter under the reign of Nightmare Moon was to take out the entirety of Equestria with them as they went down. As stated in chapter 36:
  The zebras had already lost. Equestria had won. It was only a matter of playing it out. Checkmate in a predictable number of moves. And if the zebras truly believed that there was no possibility of surviving a surrender, that they were facing annihilation or worse under Nightmare Moon... and they did truly believe that... then the only move left was to blow up the board.
  The zebras didn’t see any other choice.
  • Befitting to the setting, this trope had a rather different and more ironic name in Equestria: Communally Assured Reciprocal Existence, or CARE — Fluttershy came up with it, naturally.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Littlepip in Chapter 19 which leads to her flushing away all her Party-Time Mint-Als.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • Arbu for Littlepip, to the point where she starts obsessing over it.
  • Luna's magic academy is this for Princess Celestia. There were three equally good sites for the school, but she picked the one in Crescent Moon Canyon for the sake of a joke on her sister. Because this allowed for the later massacre as the school was near the Zebra border, escalating the war to the point of no return, Celestia blames herself for the eventual apocalypse and Luna's death.
  • The apocalypse likely never would have happened if Fluttershy hadn't given megaspells to the zebras as a sign of good faith. She acknowledges this.
• Mythology Gag: When Kage notices Velvet Remedy's medical supply boxes, and she mentions whom they're based on, he then says this.
  Kage: But… you said [Fluttershy] was the one who created the megaspells? Which caused the apocalypse. So… you’re a follower of the apocalypse?”