Fanfic / The Tommyverse

The Super Duper Party Pony and the Super Duper Party Pooper.

A series of stories by Sketcha-Holic revolving around Cheese Sandwich and his younger brother Tomato Sandwich. Is considered the main 'verse counterpart to The Rock Farmer's Daughters.

The entire premise of the series is how the two brothers had been best friends in colthood before multiple stressors—including Cheese's social anxiety and resentment of his situation, and Tomato's Innocently Insensitive and klutzy nature—drove a wedge between them and left them embittered toward each other. Shy Cheese grew up to be a cheerful party pony, while hyperactive Tomato grew up to be a grumpy business college student. And when these two collide, there's no telling what would happen.

Stories in the series include:

Tales of Two Sandwiches—The first story chronologically, though one of the later ones written. A series of events that happened in the colthood of the brothers and an establishment of their bond, starting with the day Tomato was born.

Midnight Snack—The first story written in the series, having served as the official introduction of little Tommy Sandwich and a brief look at their relationship when they were little.

It Broke the Camel's Back—A piece about the catalyst that made Cheese decide to run away. Also the official introduction of adult Tomato.

We Used to Be Best Buddies—A oneshot based on "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" from Frozen, about the years when Cheese took to shutting himself away from Tommy, who only wants Cheese to show his friends just why he thinks Cheese is the best big brother. Includes Tomato's reaction to Cheese running away.

Brother Bothers—The first multi-chapter in the series, it's the story of when Cheese and Tomato happened to be in Ponyville at the same time, and shock Pinkie Pie with their Sibling Rivalry. This prompts Pinkie to force them to spend ''brotherly bonding time" together, with disastrous results. However, the disaster makes them realize that they were being foolish, and they bury the hatchet.

Brotherly Bonding Time—In an attempt at rekindling the same bond they had in youth, Cheese takes Tomato on a summer road trip around Equestria. During the trip, Cheese juggles his big brother role and his party pony role, inadvertently shooting himself to a path of self-destruction, while Tomato deals with insecurities that had been sown since Cheese had left, trying to find a balance between his silly side and his serious side.

Tomato Sandwich also has an ask blog, which fleshes out his character more and shows off more of his quirks and interests, as well as some cute flashbacks to the Sandwiches' younger days. It also fleshes out his friends as well.

This 'verse includes examples of:

General/Ask Blog

• Affectionate Nickname: Tomato is referred to as "Tommy" by his brother, close friends, and Pinkie.
  • As a baby, Cheese was referred to as "Cheesaroo" by his father.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: In youth, Tomato was the annoying one. In their adult years, Cheese can be annoying when he wants to be... and he's the older brother.
  • He's arguably still pretty annoying to Cheese.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Yeah, Flora's a sweetheart, but she knows martial arts.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Super Duper Party Pony Cheese may be, but it's been pointed out several times by readers that a party pony can be dangerous when they're ticked off.
  • As revealed on the blog, Nimbus knows how to box. Best not mess with his sister.
• Big Brother Worship: Tomato had this in SPADES as a colt in regards to Cheese. However, the feud during adolescence made Tommy disillusioned with Cheese, and even post-feud Tomato's more willing to see Cheese's flaws than ignore them, even if they are on better terms.
• Bookworm: Tomato has shown a fondness for reading.
• Break the Cutie: Being made to believe that losing your brother and your friends turning against you is entirely your fault, being subjected to Mom's tyrannical parenting forcing you into Crippling Overspecialization and emotional repression, and feuding with your once-beloved brother can do that to a person. Just ask Tomato.
• Cheerful Child: Little Tommy. Makes it all the more shocking what he ends up growing into.
• Childhood Friend: The only friend from childhood Tomato kept was Bluejinx.
• Cool Big Bro: Cheese is this to Tomato before and after the feud. During the feud... not so much.
• Country Mouse: Flora Peace. A short oneshot on the blog reveals that she had a terrible time on her first day in Manehattan, and the first pony to show her kindness was Tomato (albeit in his usual deadpan and sarcastic way). The beginning of "Brotherly Bonding Time" implies that she still doesn't like the city that much.
• Crash-Into Hello: How Tomato met Cirrus and Nimbus; the latter had lost control of a stool and ended up picking Tomato up as a hitchhiker in the process.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • For the Sandwiches, it's paired with Trauma Conga Line:
    • The reason why Tomato's so grumpy, sarcastic, and has an aversion to fun? His colthood cheerfulness was steadily whittled away when his 'best brother buddy' Cheese shut him out with no explanation why, and when he tried to get Cheese to play and socialize, he was denied each time. Then his friends accidentally break Cheese's accordion, angering the older brother into running away for a couple of years, which leads to guilt and worry breaking Tomato, to the point that he had a fallout with his friends and fell into depression. Cheese comes back, only for an argument and Cheese's remark about Tomato's newly earned cutie mark to split them even further into feud territory. And then Tomato deals with the stresses of a lonely teenage life with the addition of his mother's nagging bordering on verbal and emotional abuse, bullying from ex-friends, losing new friends within weeks, failing to save a bookstore he worked at, his repressed jester magic exploding into chaos with certain triggers, and his future being sabotaged by his crush in the most humiliating way possible. And Cheese was convinced that Tommy's life was perfect the entire time, up until the events of Brother Bothers.
    • Not to say Cheese's life before becoming a party pony was any better. He was well aware as a small colt that his parents' marriage was failing, and was often trying to protect his brother from the damage the rift was causing, often taking the brunt of his mother's frustrations. He was taught that his jester magic was something to be ashamed of, was bullied for being a shy weirdo to the point where he was terrified of other ponies, and was made to study harder and harder to try to improve his poor grades, despite having a mental state that rendered him unable to focus and understand the lessons. His loving grandparents die, his brother makes a lot of friends and spends less time with him, and then Cheese gets jealous of Tomato for being amazingly sociable and having good grades, while Cheese himself can't get anypony else to remember his name and lags behind in school. Plus, Tomato even had the gall to try to get him to socialize, which Cheese interpreted as rubbing it in his face. The final straw was his accordion being broken by Tomato's friends, which drives Cheese to run away at the age of eleven. These issues lead to him insulting Tomato's newly earned cutie mark in front of him, resulting in the Sandwich Feud.
  • Bluejinx has one in the form of his father dying when he was five, followed by his mother suddenly moving to Manehattan in her grief.
  • At age eight, Flora was witness to a train derailing that nearly killed her brother and left him traumatized. Feeling guilty for being a negligent Big Sister Bully to him, she spent the next couple of years making sure that he recovered from the incident, which did end up with both getting their cutie marks at the same time. Even so, she still has shades of The Atoner and feels a mountain of guilt for failing to improve someone else's life.
  • Cirrus and Nimbus' parents, who were former Wonderbolts, were disappointed that the twins earned cutie marks in theater instead of stunt flying. This lead to the family drifting apart, with Cirrus hanging out with the wrong crowd (and implied to have taken drugs), and Nimbus going off to the ground to explore the wonders of nature. They both landed in the hospital when the former got sick from an overdose and the latter got caught in a forest fire. At least this gave their parents a wake-up call and they decided to be supportive of their kids.
• Dead Guy Junior: Cheese's eldest son Pizza Pockets and Tomato's second daughter Cucumber Melon were named after the brothers' grandparents.
• Deadpan Snarker: Tomato. He often has a sassy response to anything he encounters.
  • Stepford Snarker: It's Tommy's way of hiding his own sadness and guilt over what had happened in the past, as well as a couple other insecurities.
  • Tall, Dark, and Snarky
  • Cheese gets in on the snarky action at times.
  • Flora Peace has proven herself to be pretty snarky as well.
  • As has Cirrus.
• Disappeared Dad: Bluejinx's father. He fell off a cliff.
• Does Not Like Spam: Both Cheese and Tomato hate sauerkraut.
  • Tomato has also expressed distaste for mustard and pickled anything.
• Dysfunctional Family: Deconstructed. Mozzarella is incredibly domineering and fantasy-forbidding over the lives of her husband and sons, who distance themselves from her in various ways: Hay Burger ends up married to his work, Cheese runs away and despises visiting his family, and Tomato suffers from emotional repression and is Driven to Suicide in one universe where he was abandoned by Bluejinx. The only reason Cheese and Tomato get better was because they got away from their parents and developed healthier relationships with friends, lovers, and each other.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Cheese often calls Tomato "Baby Bro." Tomato doesn't like it one bit.
• Fan of Underdog: To his peers, colt Cheese Sandwich was a shy loser, to the point that not even the nicer kids bothered to remember his name. To his little brother Tomato, he's the nice, funny, and brave big brother that would always be there for him. It caused a bit of disagreement between Tomato and his classmates.
• First Kiss: Flora is incredibly lucky that her first kiss was taken by her future husband, Tomato. The blogverse has them do it just to break a spell, while it can be assumed that the ficverse would have them wait until they were at least engaged to initiate it.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Sanguine: Nimbus
  • Choleric: Cirrus
  • Melancholic: Tomato
  • Phlegmatic: Flora
  • Eclectic: Bluejinx
• The Gadfly: Cirrus. She enjoys poking fun at her friends.
• Granola Girl: Subverted with Flora Peace. At first, her name, how she feels comfortable in a natural setting, talent for helping others feel peace, penchant for meditation, and her generally sweet demeanor gives off a hippie vibe... but as the audience gets to know her, it's clear that she holds strict moral standards not unlike a devout Christian (such as celibacy before marriage) and she doesn't object to talents like Tomato's (business) or her father's (military), more likely supporting them as long as they help more than harm.
  • Best exemplified in the ask blog when she and Tomato meet Tree Hugger. She scolds Tomato for calling her weird, reminding him that they both have party ponies for brothers, but then gets flustered when Tree Hugger suggests Tommy run in the nude as a form of therapy.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Flora Peace is strawberry blonde, and she's such an unbelievably nice girl.
• Half-Identical Twins: Cirrus and Nimbus—only difference between them is the main color of their hair and the accompanying streaks (Cirrus is blonde with blue streaks, Nimbus' is blue with blonde streaks), and their cutie marks.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: The Sandwich Forelock. Cheese and Tomato have it, their mother has it, their grandfather had it... heck, even their future children have it!
• The Idealist: Flora Peace. Despite her occasional Deadpan Snarker moment, acting like a self-righteous naggy mother, or being reminded about how she hates Manehattan, she truly strives to see the best in everypony she meets. After all, she has found a reason to befriend Tomato Sandwich.
• Idiot Hair: The aforementioned forelock. Both Cheese and Tomato have it (in the latter's case, even when he slicks his hair down it remains sticking up). It represents just how weird these two truly are, no matter how much they deny it or fall into self-doubt; however, an impact on magical health can make the forelock droop.
• Innocently Insensitive: As a foal, Tomato was this to Cheese. Cheese took Tomato's invitations to play with him and his friends as his little brother rubbing it in his face, and it didn't help that Cheese was terrified of the friends taking a chance to bully him behind Tomato's back.
• Keet: What Tomato used to be, and what Cheese is now.
• Loophole Abuse: On the ask blog, someone once dared Tomato to wear his hair in its natural curly state for a day and see the ponies' reactions. And so he does... on Nightmare Night, dressed up as ponified Mr. Hyde.
  “What? You never said which day I had to do it!”
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Flora Peace is the oldest of eight foals.
  • Both Cheese/Pinkie and Tomato/Flora go on to have eight foals each.
• My Greatest Failure: The feud for both of them.
  • Tomato has mentioned that he tried throwing a party once. The end result was Cheese's broken accordion and an angry Cheese running away, which caused long-lasting grief in Tomato. Later on, his desire to apologize would always end up clouded by bitterness over his situation—he still kicks himself for that.
• Never Be Hurt Again: Tomato's main motivation for becoming a grumpy Deadpan Snarker.
  • It's implied that Cheese has this mindset as well, though he hides it behind his party pony persona instead.
• Not So Above It All: As hard as he tries to be the "normal" brother, it's obvious that Tomato is actually very eccentric. It's also been stated a few times that he's a kid trying too hard to grow up too fast.
• Oblivious Younger Sibling: Tomato held the belief that Cheese was the coolest and funnest pony in the world (since Cheese had been his only friend until he met Bluejinx). He wasn't aware of Cheese's shyness and overall unpopularity with other foals until he started school—to which he decided to try to prove everypony wrong.
  • He was also oblivious for a good long time about Cheese's resentment of his popularity in school and good grades (as well as possible depression). In Brother Bothers, he admits that he knows that the accordion incident was just the final straw; he just didn't know what exactly he did beforehand to make Cheese angry with him.
• The Perfectionist: Their mother. She wanted a perfect son, so she was trying to groom Cheese into that, while shooing Tomato away at any opportunity so he could be less of a distraction (while ironically pointing to Tomato's grades as the standard Cheese needed to reach, much to the older brother's aggravation). It was only after Cheese ran away and Tomato earned his cutie mark that she started grooming Tomato into her high standards, and well... he's only a well-dressed and snarky shell of his former self.
• Polar Opposite Twins:
  • The elder Cheese Pie twins: Outgoing, mischievous smart aleck Pizza Pockets and sweet Shrinking Violet Fudge Fondue.
  • The Flormato twins: Perky, adventurous, and artistically-inclined Wildflower and dorky, timid, and scientifically-inclined Boxthorn.
• Poor Communication Kills: In youth, Cheese was painfully shy and reticent, and is implied to have become more of a recluse after their grandparents' deaths. And nopony bothered to tell Tomato that his method of bringing Cheese out of his shell was just making it worse.
• Prehensile Tail: While plenty of ponies have used their tails for various tasks within show canon, Tomato's insanely liberal in his use of his own tail, to the point where he has fine motor skills in picking up things, can use it as a chair, and has picked a lock with it.
• Quirky Curls: It's very obvious for Cheese; however, Tomato's hair is naturally curly, and he is secretly a very eccentric pony. Of course, knowing him, he's unwilling to reveal that.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: In the past, Tomato was the Red to Cheese's Blue. In the present, it's the other way around.
• The Resenter: Cheese resents Tomato for putting his friends over him, seemingly being favored by their mother because of his good grades, and having everypony they know compare them. The accordion incident was the final straw. In "Brotherly Bonding Time", he still struggles with these feelings even after they've buried the hatchet.
  • On the other side of the equation, Tomato resented Cheese for shutting him out, running away before Tomato had a chance to apologize for breaking his accordion, and pretty much disown him as a brother.
  • Both resent their mother for being an overbearing nag that scolded Cheese for his cutie mark and forced Tomato to repress his active, fun-loving, musical side. And their father for being emotionally distant.
• The Runaway: Cheese. And he becomes a Super Duper Party Pony thanks to that decision—though it also leads to Tomato shouldering Cheese's former burdens, seeing as a high-strung Mozzarella does not have a change of heart and is only convinced to be harder on her remaining son, hence why Tomato's initially bitter with Cheese (that, and he insulted his new cutie mark).
• Sharp-Dressed Stallion: Tomato's default outfit is a brown suit jacket, white button shirt, and green necktie combo, with his dark hair slicked back. This handsome stallion pulls it off quite nicely.
• Ship Tease: The author has made no secret that she's a Cheese Pie shipper; naturally, she keeps doing this whenever Cheese and Pinkie appear in the same scene. They're an item in the ask blog.
  • On the ask blog, the author draws whatever silly Tommy ship anybody asks her to draw (keeping in mind that Tomato is straight), so Tomato receives a lot of Ship Tease with a lot of mares. Especially those which have had hypothetical foals created...
    • In both the blog and the fics, however, the most Ship Tease for Tomato has to be with his friend Flora Peace. Considering how comfortable he is around her, their color palettes going well together, their similarly high moral standards, and Flora's talent (helping ponies relax) is immensely helpful for Tomato's often-uptight personality, it makes sense that readers would find interest in it. She's the only mare that fans have attempted to have him kiss.
    • It gets funnier with the blog's recent 'shipping potion' arc, which has Tomato and Flora splashed on by a shipping potion, which puts everyone under a spell where they're forced to ship them, to the point of multiple billboards in Times Square! They had to break the spell by kissing, much to Flora's chagrin (she wanted to save her first kiss for her eventual husband... who ironically is later to be Tomato).
• Shout-Out: We Used to Be Best Buddies is written around a song based on "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" from Frozen.
• Sibling Rivalry: Hoo boy, did the Sandwiches ever have one. They feuded for over a decade before the Fall Festival in Ponyville.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Cheerful party pony Cheese and grumpy business pony Tomato.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Don't let Flora's hippie look fool you. She's quite proficient in combat.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Tomato's default way of hiding his insecurities is acting like a grouchy jerk.
• Strong Family Resemblance:
  • Pizza Pockets looks like a redheaded Cheese Sandwich with freckles and teal eyes.
  • Bell Pepper, made as a ship-neutral foal before her mother was revealed, looks very much like a female Tomato save for her gray eyes.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: When you first meet him, Tomato comes off as a grumpy jerk who doesn't want anything to do with anyone. Anypony who's close to him will tell you that as he warms up, he's rather polite and friendly, and has a sense of humor.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Mischievous prankster Cirrus and Team Mom Flora Peace.
• Tsundere: Flora's a Type B.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Tomato really likes ketchup and pizza, and his favorite kind of candy is taffy.
• Weirdness Magnet: Both Sandwiches often end up in weird situations, best exemplified in Brotherly Bonding Time with events like a "Freaky Friday" Flip with Princess Celestia, a Prince and Pauper situation with a pop star, or turning into bloodthirsty monsters.
• When He Smiles: Tomato's smile is adorable.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Tomato was this once, but he's since been subjected to Break the Cutie.

Tales of Two Sandwiches

• Afraid of Needles: An author's note says that Mozzarella said "vaccination" (which baby Tomato misheard as "vacuum station") because Cheese would've panicked if she said "shot", implying this trope.
• Babies Make Everything Better: Subverted. While the grandparents and big brother Cheese are happy to welcome Tomato into the world, there's apparently a schism between parents Mozzarella and Hay Burger that baby Tomato can't fix. In fact, Hay Burger doesn't seem to want anything to do with Tomato (he was forced to babysit him in the next chapter). Made more apparent by Grandpa Beans stating that Cheese's birth was happier.
• The Diaper Change: Not shown, but after Tomato swallows a coin under Hay Burger's watch, the father forces himself to change Tomato's diaper for a weekend to retrieve the coin and not get in trouble with his wife. The implications are pure Nausea Fuel.
• Idiot Ball: Hay Burger, you don't give a baby a coin to play with. Somewhat handwaved with statements of sleep deprivation and a headache.
• Offscreen Teleportation: At the mere age of three, Cheese was somehow able to break into his baby brother's nursery... without ever opening the door, much less unlocking it. It causes Mozzarella quite a bit of grief.
  • At the end of the chapter, Tomato pulls this off, scaring his father in the process.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Baby Tomato cries and scratches at the door when his mother and brother leave.

Brother Bothers

• Aloof Big Brother: It's strange to think of Cheese Sandwich like this, but he had been like that for over a decade.
• Big Brother Bully: It's even stranger to think of Cheese like this, since he's a Nice Guy. But he is noticeably meaner and more aggressive towards Tomato. Granted, it's never really out of any gleeful malice like most other examples; it's really his resentment of his colthood going too far. He stops once Pinkie chews him out for it and Tomato breaks his foreleg in the collapse of the stage after the Polka Quarrel.
• Cry into Chest: This is Tomato's response to Cheese forgiving him, though he still feels the need to let out a stream of apologies. Once he's done, he remarks that he needed that.
• Innocently Insensitive: Pinkie was this regarding the Sandwich feud. She didn't quite realize that forcing them to spend time together would only aggravate their bitterness toward each other. She was really lucky that the disaster that it resulted in made them realize how foolish they were being.
• Never My Fault: Surprisingly, it's Cheese who exhibits this attitude throughout the fic! He snaps out of it and apologizes at the end.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Pinkie is quite concerned when her normally cheerful and friendly party pony friend is outright hostile to somepony.
• Poor Communication Kills: Both of them suffered from resentment of their childhood, anger at the other's faults, fear of rejection should they apologize/forgive, and somber resignation of their feud, hampering their ability to talk it out. Surprisingly, it's Cheese who believes he's the faultless one while he's actually the more aggressive one in the feud, while Tomato has guilt and self-loathing issues which cause him to lash out verbally in self-defense.
• Quarreling Song: In "Brother Bothers" the final conflict was this. The chapter was even called "Polka Quarrel".
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Pinkie outright explodes at the brothers after the Polka Quarrel wrecks the stage, scolding Tomato for his sour attitude and picking fights, Cheese for being a blind, prideful jerk, and both for making the other's attitude worse and ruining everypony else's day, including hers.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Cheese does not appreciate Tomato calling Pinkie his (Cheese's) girlfriend.
• Ship Tease: Cheese and Pinkie boast a close friendship in this fic, to the point where Cheese decides to open up to her about the why of the feud. It's enough for Tomato to call Pinkie Cheese's girlfriend, even though Cheese keeps shooting it down.
• Successful Sibling Syndrome: As a colt, Cheese ran away because he resented feeling lesser than his younger brother, who had good grades and lots of friends, and caved with the pressure their mother put on him. Subverted in that Tomato's unhappy thanks to not only now burdening the same pressure Cheese escaped, but having to deal with abandonment issues (thanks to both Cheese and ex-friends-turned-bullies) and feuding with his brother on top of that. Ironically, the roles are reversed when they're adults, seeing as Cheese is now the more successful brother while Tomato's still studying in school(with Brotherly Bonding Time revealing that Creme Brulee sabotaged Tomato's career prospects in Manehattan, hence Tommy felt he was going nowhere in spite of his studies.
• We Used to Be Friends: When Pinkie presses Cheese for the reason why he and Tomato are feuding, Cheese tells the story of how they were originally inseperable before Tommy made other friends, resulting in Cheese (struggling with crippling shyness and a naggy mother over his shoulder) becoming jealous of him and shutting him out. Tomato ended up resenting being shut out like that without knowing why, and wonders what he did wrong (aside from the accordion incident).
  • Tomato also lost most of his other friends when they were sick of him struggling with grief and worry over Cheese running away. It got to the point where they laughed at him when he finally allowed himself to cry over it.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Pinkie snaps at both Sandwiches after their arguing ended in violence and made a stage collapse.

Brotherly Bonding Time

• Absurd Phobia: Considering who his brother is, Tomato's fear of clowns does come off as a little ridiculous.
• Afraid of Needles: Cheese. Leads to the Mane Six and Tomato searching for him around Canterlot.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Silk Shimmer's reaction to Tomato having turned into a vampire (and snarkily speaking in a Transylvanian accent):
  Silk: You look like an animal! Your eyes look evil, your hair's a mess, your coat looks sickly, those fangs are freaking me out, and that accent needs work!
• Battle of the Duets: Cheese and Tomato face off against the Flim Flam brothers in a music battle. Cheese and Tomato suffer a humiliating loss.
• Bears Are Bad News: A bear attacks the brothers, nearly killing Cheese. Tomato manages to drive it off with the fruit firework launcher.
• Berserk Button: Do not mess with Cheese Sandwich's little brother if you know what's good for you.
  • Same deal goes with Tomato's friend Nimbus; you mess with his twin sister, he'll knock your lights out.
  • As it turns out, disrespecting his deceased father makes Bluejinx pretty mad.
  • Putting yourself or others in danger for a petty or unimportant reason will tick Flora Peace off.
• Big Brother Instinct: Cheese has complained that he had to save Tomato's life multiple times when they were colts, because the latter was so reckless and impulsive; despite this, Cheese still does protect Tomato a lot, and tends to be a little smothering and condescending toward him.
  • He takes time to grab Tomato's tail and shimmy up a tree to escape Bighoof.
  • Later, he blasts a dangerous bandit with his party tank and gives her a "Reason You Suck" Speech when said bandit was getting ready to kill Tomato.
  • And when he learns of Tomato getting nearly decapitated during Kazam's magic act and watches as a flaming bat phases through Tomato's heart painfully, Cheese tries to locate Kazam after the show in order to get Tomato out of assisting the magician out of concern for his safety. And then when it turns out that it turns Tomato into a vampire, he immediately goes to Kazam to try to cure him. And when that falls through and a vampire army attacks Las Pegasus, Cheese then takes on the army by himself (with only an accordion for a weapon) in order to save his brother.
  • He panics when Tomato goes missing in the Crystal Empire; when Tomato shows up being chased by thugs, naturally Cheese grabs him and attempts to remove him from the premises.
  • The entirety of the Manehattan arc, even moreso considering Tomato has regressed to foalhood.
  • He has to save him from getting kidnapped by a couple of crazy pegasi because Tomato had swapped places with a lookalike pop star that they were trying to "set free" and convert to their cult.
  • He fights a bunch of animals in an attempt to save Tomato and Filthy Rich from their death threats. When he's unable to, since navigating a geyser field is dangerous without party pony magic, he rips at them like an animal and actually kills several in horrific ways until Fluttershy stops him.
  • He also has sense enough to try to convince Tomato to go home After it turns out that Cheese himself is a werewolf. He later ends up having all of his memories—especially those of Tomato—ripped right out of his head because the villain realized that the Big Brother Instinct was the most likely to make Cheese defy the curse, because you don't mess with his baby brother.
  • Inverted several times, though, where Tomato returns the favor when Cheese is in trouble. Examples include catching Cheese when the latter is dropped from a great height (helps that Tomato was a flying vampire at the time), making sure he stays in bed when sick, defending an unconscious Cheese from a thug, defends Cheese's talent from their mother's derision, trying to convince him to stay in one place after learning about the missing memories, and fighting off a memory attack and resolving to break out of his prison and get Cheese's memories back from the villain, no matter what—because nopony messes with his big brother.
• Blackmail: Windswept Goldenmane, host of the Shining Vocals Competition, has dirt on Starsong, Sapphire Shores, and Countess Coloratura (who was lucky not to be there due to some last minute family troubles, and was replaced by Cheese). He threatens the first two with revealing this dirt to the tabloids in order for his nephew to win, hiding it from Cheese (who was too focused on his chronic headaches to notice).
• Bound and Gagged: When Tomato learns of Windswept's blackmail of two of the judges and accidentally exposes himself with a sneeze, Windswept has his bodyguards snag him, tie him to a chair, and lock him in an empty room in the stadium.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Kazam hypnotizes Tomato into not only going only with several dangerous magic tricks that set off alarms in Cheese's head—one of which ended up turning Tomato into a vampire—but also into attacking a room full of innocent ponies just wanting to enjoy a magic show and turning them into vampires as well.
• Brought Down to Normal: Throughout the second half, Cheese steadily loses his party magic, which leaves him vulnerable to injury, unable to summon any items, and dampens his natural weirdness. It culminates in being unable to set up a fundraiser carnival at all in Graze Valley; Tomato has to pick up the slack and arrange help from around town.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Tomato has two attempts at this toward his mother, Mozzarella.
  • The first time is mainly defending Cheese's talent and trying to convince her that it's not what she thinks it is, but she easily shoots it down as it sounds like a naive teenager defending a toxic lover and justifying his own bad behavior (which on some level, she's right). He only manages to startle her with his inner vampire acting up and hissing in anger, but she only sees it as proving her point about him being immature.
  • Just before the climax, he finally gets to tear into her for being an overbearing perfectionist Education Mama that couldn't be bothered to give her sons proper parental affection and room to explore themselves and the world. He even points out that he managed to succeed in several endeavors without her meddling. She reacts by slapping him on the face, which just convinces him to sever ties with her.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The beginning of the fic promised nothing but fun times and wacky misadventures, with the brothers butting heads here and there. Then things started to take a darker turn once they arrived at Las Pegasus...
• Cheerful Child: The CMC, Sparkleworks, Noble Metal, Amber Waves, and Kernel Grin.
• Consummate Liar: Creme Brulee; it's the reason why Flora took her framing of Tomato with a grain of salt and took the chance to befriend him.
• Country Cousin: Inverted with Creme Brulee to Flora Peace of all ponies!
• Courtroom Antics: Surprisingly, there is little nonsense in the Courtroom Episode. The only antic is Kazam goading Cheese Sandwich into starting a fight when he learns why the party pony wasn't called as a witness. It doesn't end well for him.
• Courtroom Episode: Chapter 21.2 is Kazam's trial over the Las Pegasus disaster, with Tomato being one of the witnesses (since he was the first to turn into a vampire), while Cheese sits it out (his memory of the incident was stolen).
• Crippling Overspecialization: Tomato fears this is the case in Brotherly Bonding Time. Since party pony magic means Cheese can get by without money, Tomato feels helpless without anything around that aligns with his special talent (business/money management). He only feels he would get in the way, so all he can do is either follow somepony around to find something to do, or retreat elsewhere to read a book. He does ultimately avert it, as he finds his talent does lead to a bunch of other useful skills such as organization and management.
• Cry into Chest: Mind Realm!Cheese does this on Tomato after having a breakdown over his removed memories/werewolf situation having ultimately hurt Pinkie Pie.
• Cuteness Proximity: Coco Pommel devotes a bit of attention to toddler!Tomato when the Sandwiches come to Manehattan.
• Daddy DNA Test: In a brief argument with Sour Sweet, Lemon Zest mentions having one taken, and that Fallow is indeed her father. Tomato's taken aback by what Sour Sweet implied about Lemon's mother, Honeydew.
• Darker and Edgier: Despite being a goofy fic about Weird Al pony taking his grumpy brother on vacation, the fic features dark subject matter such as Mind Rape, depressing childhoods, a backstory about war and werewolves, bloody violence, and horrifying transformations.
• Death by Childbirth: Aunt Honeydew's fate.
• Distressed Dude: Tomato starts the story off like this. As the story goes on, he starts figuring out ways to get out of trouble on his own.
• Dramatic Irony: Thanks to some accidental train-hopping, Tomato is unaware of Twilight's conclusion (and the confirmation for the audience) that the reason Cheese is uncharacteristically savage is because he's under a werewolf spell. If he had known that, he probably would have tried to warn Appleloosa (or at least Braeburn) about Cheese's impending transformation and prepared accordingly, instead of convincing Cheese to work on their party in a gamble to keep him in one place long enough for Tommy to contact Twilight and wait for her arrival, leaving the Appleloosans open for a nasty surprise.
• Dream Walker: Aside from Luna, there are Dream Gremlins, which have the ability to make any injury or death in a dream apply to the waking world. They also have the ability to swap bodies by tossing the dream avatars (which have the souls attached) into different doors, as mentioned in the "Freaky Friday" Flip entry below. The most powerful of them is Mara, who is so dangerous that Luna imprisoned her in a dark corner of the Dreamscape.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Flora's father, March Redwood, essentially has this for a job. We don't see it in action though, instead seeing him in his spare time, generally being a laid back and caring husband and father.
• Evil All Along: Rooney, aka Wayer Rune.
• Face–Monster Turn: Cheese, as a amnesiac werewolf.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: With the Salt Lick Valley based on Northern Utah, obviously most of the residents (which includes Flora and her family) are based on Mormons. The Frontier Festival is even based on the state holiday of Pioneer Day.
• Fountain of Youth: The Sandwiches find the Fountain of Youth during a shortcut through a cave; Cheese discovers this when he throws Tomato in during an argument and Tommy de-ages into infancy.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Cheese ends up swapping bodies with, of all ponies, Princess Celestia. Twilight Sparkle is not amused, especially when Cheese nearly torches Equestria with the sun on accident.
• G-Rated Drug: Tomato says he doesn't mix well with coffee. Turns out he becomes a destructively hyperactive maniac when he drinks it, as the Our Town residents found out. Tomato's former crush took advantage of this in Tommy's backstory.
• Genki Girl: Besides Pinkie Pie, we have Comedy Gold, Flora's eight-year-old sister Amber Waves, and Lemon Zest.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: An odd case in the Our Town arc; when moping over a party that's not really going anywhere, Tomato suddenly deals with visions of his alternate party pony self and his mother on his shoulders. It's never made clear which is the angel and which is the devil especially since Other Tommy's suggestion leads to Tomato's extreme caffeine high.
• Gory Discretion Shot: We never actually see vampire!Tomato in the act of biting innocent ponies in Kazam's audience and turning them into vampires—who quickly do the same to other audience members. However, we do see the POV of Cheese, Trixie, and Silk Shimmer just outside of that hall, staring at the door and hearing the terrified screams, the cracks of multiple transformations, and the inequine hisses and screeches, all three completely unable to help thanks to a magical barrier.
  • During the Applewood arc, while the chapter ends just as Cheese gets into a fight with Applewood gangsters, it's later stated that the end result was gruesome, with the ponies' severe injuries resembling an attack from a large dog.
  • Zig-Zagged in the Aura Springs arc: when Cheese believes that Tomato (and Filthy Rich) are as good as dead in the geyser field, he begins to attack the animals responsible. The readers are treated to things like a raccoon shaken to death, bloody bites and near-neck snaps, and a porcupine straight up impaled with a stick and used to club an elk. Then it cuts away to a couple of other scenes before the other characters stumble across bloodied dead and half-dead animals, with Cheese covered in blood and still in his rampage.
• Green Hoof: Flora's preteen brother Alfalfa has this as his special talent.
• Hands-Off Parenting:
  • Grapevine adopted this style in regards to the animals, which led to them running out of control all over Aura Springs and tormenting the townsponies. It's implied that they don't listen to Fallow thanks to the conflicting messages of father and son.
  • This was Honeydew's style of parenting, in contrast to her sister Mozzarella's more authoritarian style. It caused friction between her and Fallow, and nearly killed Lemon Zest when she was small.
• Happy Rain: During a tour around Salt Lick City, it starts raining. Flora seems all too happy to dance in it, and surprisingly enough, Tomato's willing to join her... and even sing during their dance!
• Hate Sink: Windswept Goldenmane. He emotionally abuses his nephew with the claim that he's trying to make him a star (though only to keep living the high life of stardom through Herald and receive accolades for being a "mentor"), sneers at all the other contestants of the Shining Vocals, shows blatant dislike for Cheese (for his goofy way of performing) and implied dislike of Tomato (for being an annoying and nosy colt), and of course, blackmails Sapphire Shores and Starsong into rigging the competition for Herald. He was practically designed to be completely hateable.
  • To a lesser extent, Creme Brulee. In addition to a Rich Bitch personality, she has sabotaged Tomato's future career by slipping him wine and coffee, resulting in a drunk and hyperactive maniac that scared Manehattan business leaders at her father's party. And even when living with her cousins, she does nothing but whine, and it's explicitly stated that she has taken advantage of their neighbors. Heck, not even her cousins like her very much. To her credit, she does at least have Pet the Dog moments toward small foals, and regrets swapping Cheese's medicine with her mints when it puts parade-goers in Salt Lick City—among them many foals—in danger.
• Held Gaze: Between Cheese and Pinkie a few times.
  • Tomato and Flora also have one such moment.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Cheese falls into this when:
    • He's unable to save Tommy (and an audience of ponies who just want to see a magic show) from Kazam's magical mischief that turned them into vampires, leading to the Las Pegasus incident. Trixie snaps him out of it by hitting him with a frying pan.
    • His inexperience with politics and alicorn magic not only makes him mess up Celestia's duties during their "Freaky Friday" Flip, but leads him to accidentally destroy the Summer Sun Fair when he gets enraged over the Las Pegasus incident all over again.
    • Mind Realm!Cheese falls into despair when not only reminded of his situation (mind separated from body and body running around as werewolf), but that his body had bitten Pinkie and turned her as well.
  • Tomato falls into this when:
    • He realizes that outside of Manehattan, he's completely out of his element and is essentially The Load.
    • When reminded of what Kazam did to him during the Las Pegasus incident (though he does get better with time).
    • He wrecks Our Town when trying to throw a party in Cheese's place with some help from a little caffeine.
  • Flora falls into this when she feels she failed to steer her cousin to a better path.
  • Pinkie has this when Cheese gives her a "Reason You Suck" Speech and outright says he'd rather forget her.
• Honest Corporate Executive: Filthy Rich. He's shown to have some very honest respect for Tomato and recognizes that the boy has potential, especially since Tomato was good at selling the natural wonders and relaxing atmosphere of Fallow's park, enough to convince him that combining the park and Filthy's planned spa was a good idea. Until the Porcupine Mafia nearly killed them and caused Filthy to worry about potential customers' safety. Luckily, thanks to a repentant Grapevine, he decides to give them a second chance.
• Hot-Blooded:
  • Comedy Gold. Her temper flares the moment Cheese Sandwich walks into town, and insists on setting up the town festival, despite the fact that she's still recovering from surgery. Naturally, big brother Silver Shill is worried.
  • Flora's teenage sister Olive. She tends to get into trouble a lot thanks to daredevil tendencies.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Subverted. Pinkie Pie tries this on a werewolf Cheese, along with doing silly things and singing to him in hopes that he'd snap out of it. It doesn't work, because all of Cheese's memories have been removed, so he can't recognize her, period.
• Improvised Lockpick: On two separate occasions, both Cheese and Tomato have used their tails to pick locks.
• Innocently Insensitive: Cheese has unintentionally offended Tomato on a couple of occasions, as well as Comedy Gold in the Halterside arc.
• Involuntary Shapeshifting:
  • Tomato, twice. The first time he was turned into a vampire; the second time was an incident with the Fountain of Youth.
  • Cheese was subjected to this, too. He turns into a werewolf.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Wayer Rune sets a trap that imprisons the Mane Six (sans Pinkie, who wasn't there) and Tomato inside Cheese's mind, where they encounter embodiments of Cheese's personality traits, ideas, thoughts, feelings, memories, and even giant, talking Boneless and Boneless 2.
• Keet: Aside from Cheese...
  • Nimbus
  • Flora's immediate younger brother Bananas (who is a party pony himself), and their youngest brother Kernel Grin.
• Kick the Dog: Not only did Kazam threaten to kill Cheese in the Pegasus arc (and nearly succeeded in doing so), he also called him a mudhorse.
  • Aside from Windswept Goldenmane blackmailing the judges, he also emotionally abuses his nephew Herald Angel. Lampshaded when Cirrus called Herald a "professional kicked puppy".
• Knight of Cerebus: Kazam was the villain that kicked off the darker tones for the overarching narrative, with his crime leaving the biggest impact on Cheese and Tomato—with Cheese explicitly having nightmares about the event and anything related to it.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Cheese allows Rooney to remove the Las Pegasus incident from his memories, due to being unable to sleep thanks to nightmares. And later allows him to remove more under pressure/hypnosis. And ends up having the rest ripped out by force when it turns out that Rooney was Evil All Along, leaving him a blank slate of a vicious werewolf who cannot be reasoned with except by Rooney's dog whistle.
  • One of the side effects of the Fountain of Youth is that the afflicted can only remember up to the age they were de-aged to, which causes problems for Cheese when a de-aged Tomato can't recognize him and runs off.
• Laughing Mad:
  • Twilight Sparkle does this when informing her friends about the "Freaky Friday" Flip between Cheese Sandwich and Princess Celestia.
  • Cheese devolves into anguished laughter when the de-aged Tomato suddenly ages up from toddler to five-year-old, and runs off because he can't recognize his older brother, disappearing into the urban jungle of Manehattan.
  Cheese: Oh, no, he's gonna die. Ahahaha, he's gonna die...
• Make the Dog Testify: In a sense. Twilight and Fluttershy use the minor changes in personality and physiology of Vladimir the vampire bat (the bat that Kazam fused with Tomato in Las Pegasus) as evidence in a trial. The poor thing even whinnied like a horse when tickled.
• The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: There's a couple of instances where Tomato sees an alternate version of himself in the mirror. The Seaddle arc has the reflection telling him You Are Better Than You Think You Are and encouraging him to sing his heart out.
• Mental World: Cheese's "mind realm" is made up of levels:
  • The Mane Six (sans Pinkie, who wasn't present) end up in the "party zone" where Cheese's crazy ideas and purely party-related memories are held, all coming together to create a bizarre, reality-bending party with ponies he remembers and likes (but doesn't have a deep connection with) being the party guests.
  • Tomato ends up in the more down-to-earth (though still a little kooky) zone made up of Cheese's pleasant memories that have more meaning to them, party or not, and is a city inhabited by ponies who Cheese loves and trusts on a deeper level.
  • A zone made up of Cheese's bad memories.
  • A dome-shaped building stated to be the memory orb storage, and the only exit from the realm by way of a fully trusted pony (such as Pinkie or Tomato) getting their hooves on the main memory files.
  • Also of note is the fractured state of the green sky, and how its stated that its holding back a nasty storm, which would be unleashed on the realm if Cheese snaps from the Trauma Conga Line put upon him throughout the story, so it's best not to remind him about what led him to that pitiful state of mind separated from body, with said body running around as a werewolf.
• Mind Rape:
  • Rooney subjects Cheese to this by forcing him to relive his worst memories, and then performing Laser-Guided Amnesia by the very painful method of having them literally ripped out of his mind (with the final memory removal having Cheese watch helplessly as they're taken away from him until he's not himself anymore).
  • Tomato is also subjected to reliving his worst memories... only for him to accidentally conjure up an image of Flora to comfort him, leading him to realize that since Rooney wasn't there to manipulate the memories (thanks to being busy with fighting the Mane Six with his pack), Tomato had control over his own memories.
• Missing Mom: Aunt Honeydew's dead, but she did leave behind a husband and three kids.
• More than Mind Control: The only reason that Wayer Rune got as far as he did was because Cheese wanted to forget about the Las Pegasus incident, given how much the guilt and fear over it ate away at him. From there, it was a matter of convincing him to give up more memories as time went on—Rune doesn't employ full mind control until Cheese had lost enough memories to be easily controlled by an enchanted dog whistle. He just removes the rest to make sure that Cheese is unable to fight back.
• Motor Mouth: Amber Waves. She wastes no time in introducing herself to the Sandwiches, telling them stories, or telling them facts about the Salt Lick Valley any chance she gets.
• Nature Is Not Nice: Though most of their time camping between parties has been rather uneventful, the brothers still have had moments of nature biting at them; they've been chased by Bighoof, had items stolen by a yeti, ended up in a forest fire, got attacked by a bear, and were nearly murdered by a mob of animals.
• Necktie Headband: Tomato employs that when caffeinated.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*:
  • When Tomato runs into the Pie's front door:
  Tomato: Burger, I am not! I am the ultimate alicorn...
  Limestone: Where are your horn and wings, then, oh crown prince of Equestria?
  Tomato: Sesame street... what does it mean...?
  • Party Favor tips too far back on his chair:
  Party Favor: Mama, Kazam popped my balloons again...
  Tomato: (to Sugar Belle) You think he needs to see the doctor?
  Party Favor: He doesn't listen! You ground him a lot, but he doesn't listen...
  • When Tomato gets hurt by Party Favor's hijinks, he sings a line from a Billy Joel song:
  "The waitress is practicing politics!"
  "I've been searching for something... taken out of my soul..."
  • When Cheese is thrown into a piano:
  "...no lemons for me... I'm on a grapefruit diet..."
• Noodle Incident:
  • In the Shining Vocals arc, Sapphire Shores is blackmailed with the threat of a tabloid article of her botched charity event, which apparently led to some porpoises' demise.
  • Cheese once mentions that when they were colts, Tomato stole some of Cheese's taffy and somehow ended up stuck on the ceiling.
  • The reason that Manehattan cops don't like Cheese is that his confetti cannons once disrupted traffic and caused a pileup.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In the Las Pegasus arc of "Brotherly Bonding Time", Cheese grows concerned when Tomato nonchalantly states that he nearly died while serving as an assistant for a powerful magician and brags about not feeling any fear. He's also reassured a little too easily by said magician. It's implied that Tomato's hypnotized.
  • Later on throughout the story, Cheese's development of a Hair-Trigger Temper, a Never My Fault attitude, and increase in straight up non-slapstick violence does not go unnoticed by Tomato. The most telling sign to the audience that something's wrong is his dismissive attitude about Pinkie Pie. Tomato thinks that the hole left by his stolen memory is messing with him; he's only half-right, and it never crosses his mind that Cheese is turning into a werewolf (though he does guess "vampire" at one point).
• Our Vampires Are Different: Thanks to a botched magic trick, Tomato ended up fused with a vampire bat, causing him to transform into a winged vampire akin to Flutterbat... except he craves blood like a standard vampire instead of fruit. Thankfully he was still sane up until Kazam hypnotized him.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Kazam's vampire curse is inspired by the story's werewolf lore—in which a unicorn named Wayer Rune, desperate to end a war, created the werewolf by fusing himself with a wolf—with additional spells to give it an edge—and casting the new spell in drinking holes to transform fellow soldiers. After the war, the infected soldiers went insane and either killed or infected other ponies with the curse. Once Celestia received word, she cured the werewolves, banished Wayer to Tartarus, and evaporated the watering holes so that no one received the curse again.Or so everyone thought, as Cheese drinks from a magical pool and becomes a werewolf himself. Oh, and Wayer escaped from Tartarus and is using Cheese for revenge.
• Painful Transformation: Tomato's transformation into a vampire involves vomiting until there's nothing left, his eyes burning, sharp toothaches from growing fangs, a heart attack, and a throbbing backache from growing wings.
  • Cheese's transformation into a werewolf. It begins with a headache and nausea, but once he takes a good look at the full moon, then pulsating muscles, twisting guts, his teeth and muzzle feeling yanked on, and a heart attack leave him writhing in agony until the transformation is complete.
• Playing with Fire: As Cheese Sandwich finds out, Princess Celestia apparently has fire-based abilities.
• Polar Opposite Twins: The Sandwiches' mother, Mozzarella, and her sister, Honeydew.
  • Mozzarella, while trying to raise her sons into respectable stallions, is an ambitious and narrow-minded Education Mama who aggressively meddles in her sons' lives so that they fit her high standards, and snaps at them when they fall short or pursue the "wrong" career (and presumably practices Parental Favoritism toward whichever son seems more promising at the moment). Her mild-mannered husband was even driven into being a depressed Workaholic who barely acknowledges his family.
  • Honeydew may be the Open-Minded Parent, but she was incredibly irresponsible, lazy, and a spoiled crybaby with an odd vendetta against rules (most likely because of Mozzarella), thus, she let her foals be free to do as they wish, having too much faith in Children Are Innocent, and how they'd find their "true selves" without limits—while also ignoring Nature Is Not Nice. She'd even pull the "you don't love me or our foals" card and/or run off to the local commune whenever her husband tried to assert his authority as a husband and father.
• Police Are Useless: Played With. One the one hand, the Las Pegasus police do all they can to lead ponies to safety and to fight off vampires. On the other, there's only so much the Salt Lick City police can do against a hallucinating party pony, and Cheese's mistrust of the Manehattan Police is Justified; they don't like him, and considering Tomato's condition at the time, he could easily get mistakenly arrested for being a child predator.
• Post-Kiss Catatonia: Cheese gets jumped by Pinkie and smooched on the cheek. He collapses into a giggling heap.
  Tomato: I think you broke him.
• Power Incontinence: Tomato has party magic. If it's not repressed, it goes haywire, especially when Tommy has coffee.
• Prince and Pauper: Tomato meets Snapdragon Apple, a pop musician who happens to be his lookalike—and wants to trade places because his voice was blown out and he didn't want to let fans down. Tomato intially refuses, but is bribed into it by Snap unknowingly exploiting his worry about dwindling funds.
• Princess Phase: Flora's youngest sister, five- or six-year-old Willow, is going through this.
• The Quiet One: Alfalfa and Willow.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Cheese gives one to notorious bandit Roanie after blasting a giant pie at her with his tank to protect Tomato. He makes it quite clear that he's not very happy with the way she uses her talents.
  • Flora gives one to her cousin, Creme Brulee, for her petty dislike of Tomato (due to difference in economic class) and her It's All About Me attitude, which led to an attempt at sabotaging Tomato, only to end up sabotaging Cheese—which led to a ruined parade and innocent ponies in danger.
  • Tomato gives a particularly vicious one to Grapevine, who can talk to animals and thus could be persuasive with them, for not taking responsibility for the animals continually ransacking Aura Springs and making the townsponies miserable.
  • In a case of O.O.C. Is Serious Business, Cheese lays down a harsh one on Pinkie Pie on why she's so annoying, enough to make her cry.
• Reclusive Artist: In-Universe example; Flora's teenage brother, Ash Tree, would rather stay out of the way and paint/draw than participate in whatever activity is going on.
• Rich Bitch: Creme Brulee. As a result, no one, not even her cousins, really like her.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Cheese always has to shoot down Tomato's remarks about him having feelings for Pinkie. Tommy doesn't buy it.
  • He pays Tomato back by teasing him about Flora, who Tomato insists is a friend.
• Ship Tease:
  • Pinkie has appeared in four arcs so far, and there's heavy ship-teasing of her and Cheese in each one.
    • The Ponyville arc has Cheese helping her friends throw a party for her, and Pinkie is starry-eyed when he jumps out of the cake. She later gives him a big smooch on the cheek, making him collapse in a giggling heap.
    • The break between Las Pegasus and Canterlot has Cheese and Tomato visiting Ponyville, with the former going on a walk with Pinkie while the latter rests. Their noses touch as they gaze in each other's eyes.
    • The Canterlot arc has Pinkie almost instantly recognizing Cheese in Celestia's body. She also calms him down when he's in a panic about being on fire.
    • The Mane-tua arc had them throwing a golden anniversary party for Ponyacci and his wife Juneflower together. At said party, they performed an energetic dance with some blatantly intimate moments, and when Pinkie finds out about Cheese's memory removal, she's quick to offer to help in any way she can, and echoes Ponyacci's sentiment that he should inform Tomato about it.
  • In a non-Cheese Pie example, there's the hug Flora Peace gives Tomato at the beginning of the story. Cheese clearly ships it.
    • The Salt Lick Valley arc explores their friendship more thoroughly and introduces Flora's large and friendly family, who welcome both Cheese and Tomato as if they were family. Between the mountaintop picnic, the talk in Spires Garden, and the dance in the rain, it could easily be interpreted as them falling in love.
  • In Halterside, Silver Shill fondly mentions a filly named Coco he met when he was a colt, implied to be Coco Pommel.
• Shipper on Deck: Tomato seems to low-key ship Cheese Pie, despite his dislike of Pinkie. On the flip side, Cheese blatantly ships Flormato (and yes, he does like Flora). Both brothers ship each other with the respective mares because "she makes him happy." Aww...
  • Flora's siblings apparently ship Flormato as well, especially Amber Waves.
  • Wayer Rune of all ponies ships Cheese Pie!
• Shout-Out: Given that in the show, Cheese is voiced by "Weird Al" Yankovic, there are bound to be references here and there. They mostly involve Cheese, but sometimes Tomato gets in on the action.
  • There's also several Billy Joel shout-outs, namely because the author is a fan. She made Tomato a fan as well, and thus he's the source of most of the references. One scene even had him singing his own parody of "Shameless" when shaving.
    • When rammed into a wall by a balloon, he sings a line from "Piano Man".
    • He sings "The Longest Time" when it starts playing on the train.
• Shrinking Violet: Herald Angel from the Crystal Empire Arc. Clearly being forced to compete in the Shining Vocals Competition by his uncle doesn't help his nerves.
  • Alfalfa from the Salt Lick Valley arc is this too.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Aside from the Sandwiches...
  • Serious and reserved Igneous Rock and quirky and friendly Sedimentary Rock.
  • Worrywart Silver Shill and the fiery, reckless Comedy Gold.
  • Arrogant and magically-talented Nightmare Fetishist Kazam, and his more humble and sweet brother with a horn disability, Party Favor.
  • Between the Flower-Wood siblings:
    • Flora the sweet and thoughtful Nature Lover vs. Olive the Hot-Blooded daredevil.
    • Bananas the party pony vs. Ash Tree the moody artist.
    • Alfalfa the shy gardener vs. Amber Waves the friendly Motor Mouth.
    • Willow the quiet, princess-obsessed filly with a Thousand-Yard Stare vs. Kernel Grin the playful toddler.
• Sick Episode: The plot of the Our Town arc involves Cheese sick with a cold, unable to help Party Favor throw a big party for the town. Tomato is forced to take his place.
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • Cheese when a hypnotized Silk Shimmer swipes the fire hose he was using and points it at him.
  • Tomato's reaction to the Whitening Gun about to be used on his teeth.
• Toon Physics: It's its own magic subset (referred to as "jester magic") that according to Word of God, many ponies are born with, but few earn a party pony talent to match. Rarer are the non-party ponies who actually get to keep the magic long after earning their cutie mark (such as Tomato). It's noted to be extremely fickle depending on the seriousness of a situation, and outright dies out when a party pony crosses a line.
• Trauma Conga Line: What should have been a summer of wacky misadventures turns into this for the Sandwiches.
  • In order: Humiliating defeat against the Flim Flam Brothers, Tomato turns into a vampire in Las Pegasus, Cheese is almost killed during the vampire attack in that same city, both deal with trauma and nightmares from the event, Cheese has a memory removed by a suspicious character and has migraines because of it, Tomato is de-aged and forced to live through his childhood again (including what looks like a suicide attempt!), Cheese is pressured into giving up more memories, Cheese is also burned in a forest fire, Tomato has to face that one of his best friends and one of his worst enemies are related, Cheese suffers from hallucinations, is hypnotized into giving up more memories, and then is put under a spell that makes him aggressive to the point that he maims or kills anything unlucky enough to piss him off. And the kicker? It turns out that he's a werewolf, and Tomato is unaware of this until the next full moon—he was just a witness to his normally cheerfully nice brother turning into a monster, well aware that Cheese could kill him if he makes a wrong move.
• Valley Girl: The Applewood arc has changelings as this of all things!
• Wrench Wench: Olive. Her father made her learn to fix things because he was sick of her breaking everything.
• Wham Episode:
  • Las Pegasus: Where the lighthearted story starts going into Darker and Edgier territory, which starts with Tomato turning into a vampire and ends with Cheese having to fight off infected innocents and nearly getting killed, with the events affecting them in subsequent chapters.
  • Our Town: Cheese allows Rooney to remove the Las Pegasus memory so he didn't have to deal with the trauma.
  • Sorrel Canyon: Cheese drinks from a magical pool, which likely has a sinister purpose that Rooney's hiding from him...
  • Aura Springs: They meet their Uncle Fallow Track and find out what happened to Aunt Honeydew; she died in foaling twins.
  • Appleloosa:
    • Cheese is a werewolf.
    • Rooney is Wayer Rune, and he's using Cheese in order to screw up Equestria.
    • Wayer disables Twilight's horn, and Pinkie is bitten and kidnapped.
• Wham Line: There's a few.
  • Las Pegasus: "Wait a minute... you did it on purpose!"
  • Our Town: "I know a spell that can remove the bad memory from your mind."
  • Salt Lick Valley: "And you {Flora} can't seriously be cousins with Creme Brulee of all ponies!"
  • Applewood: "Ooooh... this love's tainted."
  • Aura Springs: "Sorry, boys, you missed her. She {Honeydew} passed away years ago."
  • Appleloosa:
    • "He's a werewolf."
    • "Wayer Rune?! How did you escape Tartarus?"
• Would Hurt a Child: Both Kazam and Wayer Rune more than likely knew that foals would be among the victims of their respective spells; considering that the former sicced Vampire!Tomato on his audience, which did have foals in it and the latter enchanted the water supplies of each city and town he visited with his altered Monster Plague, knowing that ponies of all ages use water, they clearly did not care.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Creme Brulee only expresses remorse for her actions when she realizes that foals could get seriously hurt from what her sabotage led to.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Several characters have told a down-hearted Tomato this, reminding him that his cutie mark doesn't exactly cover everything there is to him, and that he is able to bounce back from any mistakes or traumas in his life.
• Your Costume Needs Work: In Manehattan, Cheese bumps into princess cosplayers that remark that his shirt is too yellow for a Cheese Sandwich costume. Naturally, Cheese is irritated with the comment, especially since that's not what he asked them.